ORGANISED STEEPLECHASING 69 



Shylock, formerly belonging to the Duke of Rutland, 

 and a vicious brute he was. In fact, Coleman declared 

 that he would one day have shot him had he not been 

 prevented from so doing. 



Coleman used to give an account of how he once 

 trained a horse for old Ben Land, who was at one 

 time apprenticed to a chemist in Norfolk. He one 

 day came to town and never went back to the Eastern 

 Shire. He before long took the Cross Keys at St. 

 Albans (a house Coleman once rented) and then re- 

 moved to Edgeware, where he had a horse named 

 Needwood, a mean-looking animal that did not look 

 worth much more than about twenty sovereigns. On 

 Land and Coleman meeting in London one day, the 

 former asked the latter to run down and see the horse. 

 To Coleman's astonishment the horse was clothed with 

 a heavy blanket, quarter piece, and hood, while the 

 litter was banked up against the door to keep the 

 stable warm. 



"The horse was being slowly parboiled," said Cole- 

 man, who told Land that he was only injuring his 

 horse; but that if he would send him down to St. 

 Albans he would try to get him fit for the Tring 

 Steeplechase, which was to be run in about seven 

 weeks' time. Ben Land was desperately hard up 

 at the time, and, as Coleman said, "rode for his 

 very life " ; he won and cleared altogether about 

 ;^36o ; but, he added, "he never remembered to pay 

 me his training bill." 



I have dwelt somewhat at length upon Coleman 

 and his St. Albans venture because the inauofurator 

 of those gatherings quite vindicated his right to the 

 title "Father of Steeplechasing." The St. Albans 

 steeplechases were the foundation of steeplechasing 

 as we find it to-day, and connected with them were 

 men and horses whose names are even now household 



