SOME EARLY VICTORIAN OWNERS. 



497 



and determined hostility to the Government." It is strange how such history 

 repeats itself, even to the detail of an ex-Prime Minister, once famous on the Turf, 

 making brilliant but impractical speeches in the country and the House of Lords. 



As the grandson of the twelfth earl, who gave his name to the greatest race 

 in the world, Lord Derby was bound not only to be "the Rupert of Debate," 

 but also to train racehorses for his own pleasure and the improvement of the breed. 

 He never won either Derby or St. Leger ; but out of the 243 horses John Scott 

 trained for him, 54 won over ,94,000 in stakes, which cleared all his expenses 

 for the twenty-one years he raced. In those days of small stakes comparatively 

 few owners could do so much without betting largely, even if the Oaks, the 

 Two Thousand, a 

 Doncaster Cup, a 

 Cesarewitch, and two 

 Goodwood Cups were 

 amongst the spoils. 

 Lord Derby hated 

 unprincipled gambling 

 quite as much as 

 Admiral Rous ; and 

 when the Jockey Club 

 seemed negligent 



about their duties, he 

 roused them with an 



indignant letter that Surplice " and " 



made them warn off 



the Turf a scoundrel named James Adkins, who owned racehorses and kept loaded 

 dice at a gambling hell in Albemarle Street. 



Lord Derby's best animal was the mare Canezou, who ran second to Surplice 

 for the Leger, and his prettiest was Itkuriel, whose statuette was placed on the 

 Goodwood Cup of 1845. Long after he had given up racing for politics and 

 literature, his greatest pleasure was a walk round the Knowsley paddocks among 

 the foals and yearlings ; and in spite of all the brilliant conversations he must 

 have enjoyed with the best men and women in Europe, his visits to Whitewall 

 to talk horse with John Scott were among the things he would most have missed 

 in a full and strenuous life. 



VOL. III. F 



