Gentlemen Riders 



VISCOUNT MALDEN 



When in the spring of 1905 we found ourselves assisting 

 once more at the time-honoured one-day meeting in the Vale 

 of Aylesbury, for years past a favourite battle-ground for 

 aspirants to the highest honours of the pigskin, and looked 

 on admiringly as the youthful Lord Maiden, whom we had 

 seen to advantage in the Heavy-weight Hunt Steeplechase 

 earlier in the day, in which he was second on Black Diamond, 

 came out and beat eight others on a good-looking horse named 

 Dirkhampton, by Dirk Hatterick — Woodhampton, in a selling 

 steeplechase in masterly style by half a length after a rattling 

 set-to from the last fence with Lord Villiers on Didn't Know, 

 our memory carried us back to those halcyon times nearly 

 half a century ago, when another Viscount Maiden, far and 

 away the most popular Master they ever had, presided over 

 the fortunes of the Old Berkeley Hounds, and we pictured 

 to ourselves how he would have beamed through his spectacles 

 could he have been present in the flesh to-day, to witness his 

 grandson's brilliant finish on Dirkhampton. 



Lord Maiden's reign over the Old Berkeley Hounds, 

 though extending over a comparatively brief period, was a 

 brilliant one while it lasted, as indeed it deserved to be, seeing 



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