56 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



latter's desire to come on to the Turf, and he de- 

 scended from his coachman's box at Hedley for that 

 purpose, and sported his " noble lord" hat, white 

 cords, deep bass voice, and vulgar dialect on it for the 

 first time about 1812. He did not trouble it much 

 after he " dropped his sugar" on Shillelah, though 

 that contretemps did not completely knock him out of 

 time. His acute rough expressions, such as " niver 

 coomed a-nigh," and so on, as well as his long nose and 

 white flabby cheeks, made him a man of mark even 

 before he got enough, by laying all round, to set up 

 a mansion in Piccadilly. Joe, his brother, had origi- 

 nally been a postboy, and rose from thence to be a 

 stable-keeper in Great Wardour-street ; but the great 

 hit of his life was his successful farming of turnpike- 

 gates, at which he was supposed to have made about 

 2?25,000. " Ludlow Bond" was not so coarse in his 

 style as this par nobile fratrum, but ambitious and 

 vain to the last degree. It was the knowledge of this 

 latter quality on the part of Ludlow's real owners, 

 tc The Yorkshire Blacksmith and Co.," which induced 

 them to put him forward as the ostensible owner, as 

 no one would back a horse which was known to be 

 theirs. Bond liked the notoriety which this nominal 

 ownership conferred on him, and was no doubt a 

 mere puppet, without exactly knowing who pulled the 

 strings. Discreditable as the affair was, he always 

 gloried in it ; in fact he was so determined not to let 

 the memory of it die out, that he christened a yearling 

 which he bought from the Duke of Grafton, "Ludlow 

 Junior." At times he appeared on the Heath with a 

 grey hack, and went by the nickname of " Death on 

 the Pale Horse ;" and, shortly after the Doncaster 

 outburst, he came on in a handsome travelling 

 carriage, with two livery servants in the rumble. 



Mr. Gully, although he did great execution at the 

 Corner in Andover's year, may be styled a mere fancy 

 bettor now, and as a judge of racing and the points 

 of a horse combined, he has scarcely a peer among 



