AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE 



477 



gain this wealth by riding fees? or by betting or 

 presents? Certainly not by fees, although it must be 

 admitted that the leading horsemen of the time com- 

 mand retainers equal to the income of an ambassador 

 to the court of St. James. Is this not altogether a 

 paradox, and does it not give a jockey a position quite 

 out of proportion to his brains and talent? Surely 

 there is something rotten in the state of Denmark when 

 a matured stable boy becomes a comparative millionaire 

 before he is thirty by the mere accomplishment of being 

 able to ride a horse better than another of his 

 fraternity! The anomaly arises, without doubt, from 

 the fact — the sorry fact — that gambling is in the 

 ascendant amongst owners, and that the race of sports- 

 men, of whom Lord Derby — the great Lord Derby — 

 Lord Glasgow, Lord Falmouth, and the recently- 

 deceased Duke of Westminster were grand types, have 

 not the controlling of affairs. The best horse, the 

 purest-minded trainer, and the most upright owner, 

 each at times is at the mercy of a youth who may 

 be subject to the pernicious and occult influences 

 of unscrupulous gamblers, who he in waiting for their 

 prey and surround with a mesh-work of temptation 

 almost irresistible. 



Over the extended period from 1846, when he rode 

 his first race, to 1892, the year of his " long farewell " 

 to riding in pubhc (though not to riding on Middleham 

 Moor at exercise, and to hounds — both of which he does 

 even now in his sixty-eighth year with rehsh), it goes 

 without saying that John Osborne must have met the 

 best horsemen England could produce. To have been 

 contemporary with John Robinson in '46, and with John 

 Watts in '92, is what no living jockey can boast of. This 

 long reign proves that John Osborne, if nothing else, is 



