HORSES ON THE ROAD. 77 



in my buggy. If the weather proved wet, our 

 difficulties were greatly increased, as it took an 

 infinity of trouble to dry all the clothes at the 

 inns where the horses stopped for the night. 

 Colds and coughs, attended with distemper or 

 strangles, were of frequent occurrence, and it was 

 with a knowledge of all this that Lord George 

 exercised his resourceful ingenuity to devise some 

 plan of carrying his horses on wheels to the scene 

 of action. Previously, the endeavour to win the 

 St Leger with what were termed in those days 

 South Country horses had signally failed, al- 

 though such superior animals had been sent to 

 Doncaster as Sultan, Plenipotentiary, Shillelagh, 

 Ascot, Revenge, Byzantium, Rubini, Marcus, 

 Priam, Frederick, Exquisite, Mameluke, Transla- 

 tion, Spondee, Redgauntlet, and Preserve. With 

 the exception of Mameluke, who ran second to 

 Matilda, and of Priam, who was placed second 

 to Mr Beardsworth's Birmingham, not one of the 

 above-named starters got a place, although some 

 of them were backed heavily. 1 Those were indeed 

 primitive times, and Lord George seemed to possess 

 a special faculty for revolutionising and galvan- 

 ising them. Previous to the construction of vans, 



1 For the following statement I am indebted to Mr W. H. Lang- 

 ley : " This was not surprising in Plenipo's case, as he came to the 

 post as fat as a bullock, from having done little or no work during 

 the time he was located at Brocklesby Park during the previous 

 month. Such information was volunteered to me by a resident at 

 Limber, who saw the horse daily." ED. 



