,<U A HISTURy OF THE i \GLJSH TURF. 



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she has an even greater claim to an immortal place in English History, for, after 

 being divorced from Sir Charles Bunbury she married the Hon. George Napier and 

 became the mother of General Sir Charles James Napier, K.C.B., Commander-in- 

 Chief in India; of General Sir George Thomas Napier, K.C.B. ; and of General Sir 

 William Francis Napier, K.C.B., author of "The History of the Peninsular 

 War." It was no doubt largely owing to the services of their father that 

 Lady Sarah obtained, in 1805, the pension of /Soo she so much needed, through 

 the help of Mr. Pitt and Lady Hester Stanhope. Her correspondence was 

 given to the world as I was writing these lines, and I am therefore tempted to follow 

 her fortunes just a little further before I leave the men and women of the eighteenth- 

 century Turf in order to look rather more closely, in the next chapter, at their horses. 

 Many were the men she fascinated ; among them, Lord William Gordon, and that 

 good, kindly, chivalrous young nobleman, Lord Carlisle, who was one of Fox's 

 greatest friends and most staunch allies, who was a member of the Jockey Club when 

 he was two-and-twenty, and who had the love of the Turf transmitted to his veins 

 from the family of which Bernard Howard was the ornament, in the Stuart days. 

 Carlisle's constant pecuniary advances to "Charles" crippled his finances more 

 than any extravagances of his own had been able to do, on the Turf or off it ; but it 

 was owing to his membership of the Jockey Club that we indirectly learn some 

 information about Lady Sarah Bunbury at Newmarket during her first years as Sir 

 Charles's wife ; for Lord Holland wrote to her some playful verses on the subject of 

 Carlisle's passion, in imitation of Horace's " Lydia, die per omnes " : 



" Sally, Sally, don't deny, 

 Eut for God's sake tell me why 

 You have flirted so to spoil 



That once lively youth Carlisle? 



* * * * 



Manly exercise and sport, 

 Hunting and the tennis court, 

 And riding school no more divert. 

 Newmarket does, for there you flirt." 



It is clear from all the family records that her return to Goodwood House in i 769, 

 after the episo.le of her flight with Lord William Gordon, was the beginning of a 

 very different life to that of the young and high-spirited girl who had married 

 Sir Charles Bunbury after so nearly becoming Queen of England. She never entered 

 Sir Charles's house again, and lived in comparative seclusion till George Napier 

 insisted on marrying her after the divorce of 1776. Sir Charles behaved admirably, 



