Gentlemen Riders 



saddle," as his father expressed it, from his cradle. Entered 

 to hounds on a pony which no other boy could hold, it was 

 not many years before he was quite capable of schooling the 

 horses his father was constantly buying. Struck with admira- 

 tion at his horsemanship, a patron, with a view to his advance- 

 ment in life, procured young Becher, then a lad of sixteen, a 

 berth in the Storekeeper-General's department of the Army, 

 in which capacity he spent two or three years with the army 

 of occupation, being stationed at Brussels during the Battle of 

 Waterloo. Steeplechasing and hurdle racing under the auspices 

 of the ubiquitous Tommy Coleman of St. Albans, who may 

 well be described as the father of the sport, were just then at 

 the height of their popularity, and what wonder, therefore, 

 that Becher, on his return to England after two years' absence, 

 finding himself without employment, should enter heart and 

 soul into — to him — such congenial amusements ? And Coleman 

 taking him in hand, it came to pass that, in an incredibly short 

 time, the name of Captain Becher became a household word 

 throughout the land. 



For upwards of twenty years the Captain — whose courtesy 

 title by the way was conferred upon him by the Duke of 

 Buckingham, whose regiment of Yeomanry he had joined * — 

 made Coleman's house his home, riding most of his horses for 

 him during that period ; their owner pointing with pride to the 

 fact that he it was who gave his prot^g^ his first mount at 

 Hounslow on a horse of his own named Reuben Butler. 



In the spring of 1829 the great Leicestershire Steeplechase 

 was revived, and brought together many runners, amongst 

 them being Captain Becher on Bantam. The casualties began 

 early, Tom Heycock coming to grief at the second fence, on 



* With this corps (the only Yeomanry regiment selected for the service) he did 

 duty near Westminster Abbey, at the coronation of George the Fourth, and, in 

 common with the other officers, received a medal in commemoration of the occasion. 



