SOME EARLY VICTORIAN OWNERS. 489 



Turf. One of his first actions was to secure a lease of the training-ground at 

 Newmarket for the Jockey Club at 30.?. an acre for 99 years. By 1874 their 

 revenues had increased sixfold ; but the eye of the old sea-dog was still on the 

 alert, and in his memorable manifesto of that year on Turf prospects, he expresses 

 alarm at "the black cloud on the horizon," and points out, as coming dangers, 

 many of those weaknesses which I have had to chronicle as in existence now. 

 "Suppress betting by legal enactment," he wrote once, "and the game is up; 

 thoroughbred stock would be depreciated sixty per cent., and our racecourses 

 ploughed up. . . . Racing has always been, and will always be, in the United 

 Kingdom a gambling speculation." But he was not going to let it degenerate into 

 a blackguardly conspiracy. Owning few horses, betting scarcely at all, the Admiral 

 was in favour of sensible reforms with a full knowledge of what was possible and 

 what was not ; with a fixed determination to raise the standard of sport and of 

 horsebreeding, as a whole, without regard to individual likes or dislikes. 



But it is, of course, as a handicapper that his fame is greatest, and the first 

 success that marked his amazing natural talents for this difficult art was when Lord 

 Eglinton's Flying Dutchman (5 yrs.) met Lord Zetland's Voltigeitr (4 yrs.), and 

 he made the older horse give his rival 8|lb., with the result that there was only a 

 short length between them after a race of two miles. It may be doubted whether 

 his promotion to be Rear-Admiral of the Blue, the year after, gave him so much 

 real satisfaction as his appointment as handicapper by the Jockey Club in 1855. 

 From that day onwards he was never dull. His mind was constantly occupied in 

 handicapping. " It's a very odd thing," he said once, just before his last illness, " I 

 lose my way now going from Grafton Street to Berkeley Square ; but I can still 

 handicap." Mr. Frederick Swindell is said to have leased the house next door to 

 his with the express object of watching who drove up to see the Admiral, and 

 drawing his own conclusions. It was not without reason that the old sailor uttered 

 the startling words on one occasion that "every great handicap offers a premium to 

 fraud, for horses are constantly started without any intention of winning, merely to 

 hoodwink the handicapper." But it was very rarely that trainers or jockeys either 

 managed to hoodwink the Admiral once. They never did so twice. 



It may be worth while to consider a little what the difficulties of a handicapper 

 are in attempting so to impose different weights on various horses that the result shall 

 be a dead heat. To begin with, he has no control over the state of the course, and 

 all the difference may be made by the turf being hard, or soft, or exactly right. He 



VOL. III. E 



