"Squire" Bean 



steeplechases, all of more or less importance, and won seventeen. 

 Something like an average ! 



In his later years " The Arch Trespasser of England," as 

 the "Druid" styled him, lived at Golders Green, next to Jim 

 Mason's farm, where he kept a few couple of hounds and a 

 red deer or two, with which he used to trespass to his heart's 

 content, if not to the farmers* whose land he rode over ; his 

 custom, when chivvied by an irate agriculturist, being to shout 

 out, ''Fin very sorry that I can't stop now, but we will meet at 

 your place to-morrow ! " 



At last he got too infirm to sit on a horse, so his little pack 

 was broken up, his favourite hind finding a purchaser for fifty 

 pounds in Baron Rothschild, an unprofitable purchase on the 

 part of the latter, for on the first occasion on which she was 

 turned out in the Vale, she unfortunately lost her life. 



Chunee, " the Druid," tells us, was one of Bill Bean's best 

 horses, although he did give him thirty-seven falls in a very 

 limited space of time. The biggest and stupidest of hunters, he 

 received his name from the elephant which attracted so many 

 visitors to Exeter Change. " The Druid " adds that a noble 

 lord who was not averse to the Drag, gave two hundred guineas 

 for him and declared that he would now " serve out all the 

 white gates in Yorkshire." In due time his lordship reported 

 from his bed to Bill that he had, in an incredibly short time, run 

 up his fall score to seventeen on his new purchase, and at last, 

 in despair of stopping him when he took the bit in his teeth, 

 had sent him at a haystack, in which Chunee had buried his 

 head eight feet and then tumbled backwards. Knowing his 

 locomotive antecedents. Bill replied that he could believe all 

 that and a good deal more of Chunee. 



"Squire" Bean eventually died in April, 1866, his age 

 being reckoned at somewhere between eighty and ninety years. 



