i8o " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



with my old decrepit plater, Drum Major I say therefore "we," 

 had this horse, the Cardinal, in both the Merton and Christ Church 

 !< Grinds '-' of that year, and W. H. P. Jenkins was somehow mixed 

 up with it, so was Lord Harris who, I think, rode a winner 

 and so was C. S. Newton. By the same token, however, our horse 

 knocked up against some pretty hot stuff in Merlin and Scarrington, 

 the latter of whom ran third for the Grand National the following 

 year. Lindsay Smith, who is now an austere and very eminent 

 banker, rode the Cardinal, and he was opposing something very 

 much better than the usual undergraduate jockey. He finished 

 a good third in the Merton " Grind " in a field of about fifteen, 

 and I think C. S. Newton tried to buy the horse afterwards he 

 will correct me if I am wrong. Merlin was the winner, and I 

 think Scarrington was second. In the Christ Church "Grind- 

 a fortnight later our horse having meanwhile done very well 

 Merlin was penalised 7 lb., and, to cut a long story short, the 

 Cardinal was winning by half-a-furlong when the bank of a 

 ditch on the taking-off side gave way with him at the last fence 

 but one, and he broke his back, leaving Merlin to go on and win; 



The vicissitudes of banking in war time may have troubled 

 Lindsay Smith in these last few years, but I question whether he 

 was ever more troubled than he was that day by the death of 

 the Cardinal, who must have been a smashing good horse, for his 

 opponents, which I have mentioned, had been fairly and squarely 

 trained by experienced men, whereas we were the merest novices 

 working from the Randolph stables, where you paid 243. 6d. a 

 week to keep your horse. The late C. G. Symonds "Master 

 Charles " however, who had the stables, was a sportsman, and 

 so was his head man " John " ; they helped us in every way 

 they could, and there was no food controller in those days. Still, 

 it is manifest that our horse must have been something " extra 

 special " to do what he did under such conditions. Whether it 

 was Merlin or Scarrington that Jenkins had to do with I cannot 

 for the life of me remember, but I know it was he who somehow 

 contributed to the defeat of the Cardinal, whose victory, as he 

 was the property of a Balliol undergraduate, would have been a 

 record indeed. He was only six years old, and was by Pontifex, 

 brother to Surplice, with many other crosses of blood. 



It was twenty-five years later when I met " Master Charles '' 

 in Oxford, the morning after I greatly daring had been the 

 principal speaker at the Union in a debate on the need for the 

 old Sporting League, and he recalled the Cardinal episode in 

 every detail, together with many other experiences of my day 

 which it is needless to mention. He no longer had the Randolph 

 stables ; " John,"- his head man, was dead, but he himself was 

 as genial and bright as ever. He died a few years later, and I am 



