62 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



displays of speed. Traffic has grown with the growth 

 of villages and townships along these fifty-two miles, 

 and sport and public convenience are on the highway 

 antipathetic. Yet every kind of sport has its will of 

 the road. 



The reasons of this exceptional sporting character 

 are not far to seek. They were chiefly sportsmen who 

 travelled it in the days when it began to be a road : 

 those full-blooded sportsmen, ready for any freakish 

 wager, who were the boon companions of the Prince ; 

 and they set a fashion which has not merely survived 

 into modern times, but has grown amazingly. 



But it would never have been the road for sport it 

 is, had its length not been so conveniently and alluringly 

 near an even fifty miles. So much may be done or 

 attempted along a fifty miles' course that would be 

 impossible on a hundred. 



The very first sporting event on the Brighton Road 

 of which any record survives is (with an astonishing 

 fitness) the feat accomplished by the Prince of Wales 

 himself on July 25th, 1784, during his second visit to 

 Brighthelmstone. On that dav he mounted his horse 

 there and rode to London and back. He went by way 

 of Cuckfield, and was ten hours on the road : four and 

 a half hours going, five and a half hours returning. 

 On August 21st of the same year, starting at one 

 o'clock in the morning, he drove from Carlton House 

 to the ' Pavilion ' in four hours and a half. The 

 turn-out was a phaeton drawn by three horses harnessed 

 tandem-fashion— what in those days was called a 

 " random." 



One may venture the opinion that, although these 

 performances were in due course surpassed, they were 

 not altogether bad for a " simulacrum," as Thackeray 

 was pleased to style him. 



Twenty-five years passed before any one arose to 

 challenge the Prince's ride, and then only partially 

 and indirectly. In May, 1809, Cornet J. Wedderburn 

 Webster, of the 10th (Prince of Wales's Own) Light 

 Dragoons, accepted and won a wager of 300 to 200 



