FRENCH SALES OF BROOD MARES 149 



about her, you had better buy her yourself" which 

 Tom Castle thereupon did for 520 guineas. 



The sequel to that was that he took her over together 

 with five or six of Sir Blundell's mares to the Deauville 

 sale of the following year, covered by Common, and 

 M. Edmond Blanc gave him 2500 guineas for her, 

 while Sir Blundell Maple's own mares were sold for 

 quite moderate prices. That sale spoiled the whole 

 future career of poor Tom Castle, though he remained 

 with Sir Blundell Maple to the day of his death. He 

 was a most capable man, but could not stand the corn 

 that was so freely administered at such an early age. 

 His father, John Castle, Lord Ellesmere's stud groom, 

 was a dear, good man, of the very best, and all the family 

 are right ones, including George, who has been for some 

 thirty years stud groom to Baron Oppenheim, but alas 

 and alack ! those Deauville days will never return for 

 me ! Once, for example, we had Merman running for 

 the Grand Prix de Deauville on the Sunday, and he 

 would have won it too had Nat Robinson ridden him 

 decently well which he did not. 



And now here am I writing a farrago of trifles about 

 past trifles. I wonder whether the game is worth the 

 candle ; but those French sales of English brood mares, 

 whether at Deauville or in Paris, were such cheery and 

 useful affairs that I cannot think that they have even 

 now died out from the interworking of the great scheme 

 of Life and the Universe. 



How, for example, could the cheery spirit of Mr Taylor 

 Sharpe ever die ? 



The fly in the ointment which eventually spoiled these 

 sales discovered itself when the French buyers became 

 too artful and by mutual arrangements took to allowing 



