ICO The Book or- tj/e Horse. 



Fair Nell, the subject of one of the coloured illustrations, who never ran in luigland, but 

 whose reputation became world-wide amongst horsemen for a few years after she beat the Pacha's 

 best Arab, may have been thoroughbred, but as her pedig'-ee was not enrolled, she would have 

 been set down in England as half-bred. The following is her story :— Abbas Pacha, whose rare 

 stud is mentioned at page 34, in the chapter on Arabs, somewhere about 1853 sent a challenge to 

 the Jockey Club to run any number of English racehorses against his Arabs for any sum not 

 less than ;^ 10,000. The Jockey Club owns no horses, but is in effect a little autocracy for settling 

 the rules of racing generally, which exercises absolute control over the races run on Newmarket 

 Heath, and fixes the weights and conditions of certain matches and handicaps run there. The 

 challenge was therefore necessarily declined, and it was understood that the Pacha would not 

 make a match with any private individual; at any rate, nothing came of it. 



Haleem Pacha, the foolish boy who inherited Abbas Pacha's unequalled stud of Arabs — a 

 stud which had cost his father nearly a million sterling to collect and breed — did condescend 

 to make a match with some Cairo merchants to run eight miles for ;^400 a side. The Cairo 

 merchants sent to England and purchased Fair Nell, an Irish mare without a pedigree, from 

 Mr. Edmund Tattersall, who had used her as a park and covert hack. 



The race came off within two weeks of her landing in Egypt; and in the eight miles she beat 

 the Pacha's best Arab over a rough stony ground by a full mile, doing the distance in iSi minutes, 

 and pulling up fresh. In fact. Fair Nell won so easily that it was found impossible to make 

 another match. 



The portrait is from a picture in the possession of Mr. Tattersall, by the late Byron 

 Webb. She was a bright bay, with black legs; stood 15 hands i^ inches high, with such 

 beautiful shoulders, with so much before you, and with such an elastic stride, that it was easy, 

 even delightful, to sit on her, although her temper was hot, and at times she plunged violently. 

 She pulled hard, but had a good mouth, and required light give-and-take hands. She often carried 

 Mr. Tattersall, riding twelve stone, sixteen miles to covert, including stoppages, within the hour, to 

 meet hounds, and seemed to be cantering all the time until you tried to trot alongside her. She 

 was bred in Ireland, and was not in the " Stud Book," but was supposed to be by the celebrated 

 Irish sire Frency. There is no doubt in the mind of the writer of this chapter, who frequently rode 

 Fair Nell', that — half-bred or thoroughbred — she would have beaten any Arab in the world in a 

 twenty-mile race, or would have equalled the most "extraordinary feats ever recorded in long 

 distances for several days in a temperate climate. 



At one time real half-breds, the produce of a thoroughbred sire out of a cart mare, were 

 cultivated with the view of producing weight-carrying hunters, on the recommendation of 

 " Nimrod " (Mr. Apperley), who had found at Melton at least one extraordinary bit of the 

 kind carrying Mr. Edge, an cighteen-stone yeoman, in the first flight in Leicestershire ; but it 

 was soon found that the prizes were rare and the blanks numerous. The more common 

 result of such inesalliauces is a monster, conqioscd of two different kinds of horses badly joined 

 in the middle. Sometimes when a blood-mare refuses to breetl with sires of her own degree, 

 she will take a cart-horse ; and from such accidents here and there an extraordinary performer 

 is obtained, with great power, and the courage of the nobler dam. In the winter of 1S73 an 

 American gentleman, a heavy weight, was riding a hunter of very plebeian appearance in the 

 best runs in Leicestershire in a good place which was bred by Mr. John Bennett, of Husbands 

 Bosworth, got by a cart-horse stallion out of his famous thoroughbred mare Lady Florence, 

 dam of many good thoroughbred horses. When Lady Florence failed to breed with blood 

 sires, she was put to a cart stallion. 



