Captain Townley 



He was riding a heavily backed horse in a welter race, 

 when he found, to his horror, that he could not quite reach 

 Count Batthyany, who had been making all the running on 

 one of his superb welter-weight horses — either Loiterer or 

 Suburban — both by Stockwell. Tom, making a spurt, just 

 got up to the other's girths, and no further, so, picking up his 

 whip in desperation, he caught his opponent a tremendous 

 crack on what the Yankees term the " western " part of his 

 person, which, acting like an electric shock, caused poor old 

 ** Batt " to clutch wildly at his horse's head, thereby enabling 

 Tom Townley to get up and win on the post. And now comes 

 the amusing part of the story. 



After pulling up, not without sundry misgivings as to how 

 the Count would take the unceremonious treatment he had 

 been subjected to at his hands, Tom, by the way of being on 

 the safe side, trotted sharply back to the paddock with the 

 object of getting passed at the scale and away, before the 

 other arrived. 



Imagine then the relief it must have been to his guilty 

 conscience, when, on being overtaken by the Count, the latter 

 overwhelmed him with apologies, *^for getting in the way of 

 his whip ! " 



Except for an occasional visit to Newmarket, Captain 

 Townley spent the last few years of his eventful life in com- 

 parative retirement, and, after a long illness, died at his house 

 in Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, on the 9th April, 1895, 

 at the age of sixty-nine. 



83 



