ORGANISED STEEPLECHASING 23 



Lord Clanricarde's fame came in advance to the St. 

 Albans steeplechase course ; for when Captain Mac- 

 Dowall asked how he should ride Wonder, the reply 

 was that he was to pay no attention to anybody, but that 

 he was to wait upon Lord Clanricarde. These directions 

 the gallant Captain carried out to the letter. He never 

 left his leader, and finally beat Nailer for speed and 

 won, the two coming in some way in advance of the 

 remainder. 



The rider of Mr. Angerstein's Tatler lost his way, 

 so, of course, the horse had nothing to do with the finish, 

 which was so far unsatisfactory to Mr. Angerstein that 



the Curragh in 1822, winning the first Corinthian race ever run in Ireland 

 on Penguin by Waxy Pope, and in the following year won the same race 

 on the same horse. Among his other flat race successes was a good race 

 at Loughrea on a miserable-looking horse named Sarsaparilla, belonging 

 to the parish priest, and the result of the race so delighted the peasants 

 that they were heard to exclaim, " Sure, if he was on an ass of Father 

 Pater's, wouldn't he have a right to win ? " For flat racing, however. Lord 

 Clanricarde cared little, much preferring the more risky amusement of 

 steeplechasing, of which he enjoyed his first experience soon after leaving 

 Oxford, winning on Hawk, by Scherdone, over the stiff Roxburgh course in 

 County Galway. In the line were four five-feet walls ; but the last one 

 measured five feet nine inches where Hawk jumped it. In the next year he 

 won the same event on Mr. Perose's RoUo ; but nine inches had by that time 

 been taken off the last of the walls. After riding Nailer as above mentioned 

 at the first St. Albans steeplechase, he won a couple of cross country events 

 in the metropolitan district on Elmore's Moonraker, a determined puller, but 

 such a fine and big jumper that he is said to have cleared a lane with Lord 

 Clanricarde during a steeplechase near the Edgeware Road. His Lordship 

 hunted with Mr. Grantley Berkeley's stag-hounds at Cranford, and also with 

 the Oakeley after Mr. Berkeley took that country. It was at this time 

 that Mr. Berkeley organised a steeplechase at Bedford, and asked Lord 

 Clanricarde to ride for him. Parliament was then sitting, but his lordship 

 hacked down from London, rode in the steeplechase, hacked home and was 

 in his place at Westminster in the evening. He was very hard over a country 

 with hounds, and in Leicestershire he broke his collar bone at a fence, 

 mounted again, and came to grief in a brook three fields further on. Among 

 his best hunters was Leatherhead, a grey, the last that the famous Valentine 

 Maher rode with the Quorn in his old form. This horse carried his owner 

 up to the age of twenty-seven years, and jumped an undeniably big place 

 then. Angelo and Gehazi were also two of the Marquis's favourites ; while 

 Caustic, with his head and neck all wrong, a bad mouth, and a decided 

 rusher, won the Irish Grand National in 1864 within six weeks of his making 

 his appearance at a Leicestershire covert side. 



