118 ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



Near Marlborough Alec Taylor had an abiding 

 place, around which hung the halo of the Tedding- 

 ton and St. Alban's glories. Still pursuing the 

 line northwards along the Wiltshire Downs, not 

 forgetting the American stable at Newbury, with 

 its nigger boys and its orders given in unmistake- 

 able Yankee nasal, and quitting the once-renowned 

 quarters of Stevens at Chilton on the right, Swindon is 

 reached, with its handful of " small men," before 

 Beckhampton, where Freen trained the winner of the 

 first Metropolitan Handicap and of the Cesarewitch, 

 completes the topographical view of trainers and 

 training centres of some forty years ago, when John 

 Osborne had already come into note as a jockey. At 

 this period of his career he was a smart young fellow 

 of some twenty-seven years, having already made his 

 mark as a jockey by riding a One Thousand and a Two 

 Thousand Guineas winner to victory. Still plodding 

 along in his home at Brecongill, in this closing year of 

 the nineteenth century what mixed memories must 

 arise in his moments of reflection when he reviews all 

 the havoc made by death amongst the masters of the 

 horse whose names are incidentally mentioned above, 

 and who were numbered amongst his friends and 

 contemporaries ! 



Richmond is one of the extinct meetings that has 

 been swept out of the calendar by the migration of 

 patrician supporters to the South, not to speak of Jockey 

 Club enactments in regard to the endowment of stakes 

 altogether out of proportion to the resources of so 

 isolated and thinly populated a place as the picturesque 

 and historic little Yorkshire town. With its High and 

 Low Moor, Richmond, as a training ground, has quite a 

 family resemblance to Middleham, alike in its topo- 



