AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE 121 



the spare and gaunt John Holmes, who told the 

 solicitors of a well-known nobleman, when they offered 

 him a composition of ten shillings in the pound, that he 

 would make his lordship a present of the flesh he had 

 got off for him ; Charlton, the nattiest of the Yorkshire 

 school and the champion rider of the light-weight 

 handicaps, full many a time and oft donned his jacket 

 here and yet all have passed away! 



" In this little room, also, we reflected, had stood 

 the famous Duke of Cleveland watching the weigh- 

 ing of Dainty Dame, by Traveller out of Slighted- 

 by-All, who won the Gold Cup here four years 

 in succession, Mr. Sutton's Silvia being second on 

 each occasion. Here, also, might have been seen 

 around the clerk and the ' tryer,' as the judges were 

 called in those days, the Dukes of Ancaster, Bolton, 

 and Northumberland, as well as the Marquis of Buck- 

 ingham, Lord Tankerville, Sir Marmaduke Wyvill, Sir 

 T. Dundas, the Charterises, the Shaftoes, Stapyltons, 

 -and other names on which Yorkshire gossips like to 

 dilate, and which called up the departed great. Now, 

 Lord Zetland was the only representative of the peerage 

 present, and as the good Earl's mare came back to weigh 

 there was no mistake in the cheers that greeted her, for 

 the Aske men completely surrounded him, and would 

 not allow him to escape from the manifestations which 

 he tried to avoid. Mr. Williamson, another of the links 

 between the two generations of racing and hunting men, 

 was also present, full of legendary lore and pleasant 

 gossip, contrasting the past with the present and 

 speculating as to the future." 



Then this pleasant recorder of Richmond reminis- 

 cences relates an accident to the scales, revealing how 

 primitive and haphazard the old meetings were carried 



