SIR CUTHBERT SLADE, BART. 



It will be generally agreed, we feel sure, that at the time he was 

 in the saddle it would have been hard to name the superior 

 — whether amateur or professional — of the brilliant horseman 

 named above, whose all too premature death, in the February 

 of 1898, was the source of genuine regret to all who knew him. 

 Born in 1863, and educated at Eton, he succeeded his father 

 as fourth baronet in 1890, previous to which, in 1884, he joined 

 the Scots Guards, of which distinguished — and, we might add, 

 sporting — regiment he became Adjutant in 1 890 and Captain in 

 1897. I^'is first winning mount was at Windsor in April, 1888, 

 when on the happily named Climb-Axe, a hunter described as 

 half bred, by Alpenstock, dam by Pantaloon, belonging to 

 Mr. E. E. Hanbury, a brother officer in the Scots Guards, he 

 carried off the Garrison Plate. Sir Cuthbert altogether rode 

 Climb-Axe in thirty events, of which he won sixteen ; most of 

 these being Hunt and Military races. In 1890, he scored a 

 sequence of seven successive wins, and at Hawthorn Hill accom- 

 plished the feat of winning in under a week four steeplechases 

 on the same horse, over the same course. With one single 

 exception, Sir Cuthbert rode Climb- Axe in all his engagements, 

 the occasion being at Chelmsford in April, 1891, when, being 

 unable to ride owing to a bad fall, another jockey was put up ; 

 with unfortunate results as it turned out, for the bridle coming 

 off in the course of the race, the old horse ran against the wing 

 of a fence and so injured himself that he had to be destroyed. 

 It is a surprising fact that neither Climb-Axe, nor vEsop — 

 which last was probably the best horse he was ever connected 



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