Gentlemen Riders 



the face — not written in chalk, you may depend — when the 

 numbers went up at the principal steeplechase meetings all 

 over the country, has laboured under the impression that the 

 little band of horsemen just mentioned constituted in themselves 

 the entire race-riding talent of the British Army. Such, it is 

 needless to state, was far from being the case — very much the 

 contrary indeed ; there being in reality many first-rate riders 

 in the background, who, though their performances in public 

 were mostly confined to military races, were none the less 

 quite capable of holding their own in the best of company, 

 when it came to a pinch. 



Lord Rossmore of the ist Life Guards, for instance, whose 

 sad death when riding in a steeplechase at Windsor in the 

 late seventies will be in the memory of many, was a most 

 capable horseman in every way. Lord Charles Innes Ker, 

 whom Mr. John Corlett once aptly described in the Pink ' Un 

 as "the deau ideal of a light cavalry ofificer," was another. 

 "A little too fond, perhaps," as a well-known gentleman rider 

 expressed it, "of going off at score, as if he were in a hurry 

 to catch a train," but a fine horseman nevertheless. 



General Magennis again, of the Royal Artillery, a bold 

 and plucky rider who owned and rode many a good horse 

 in his time, notably Fervacques on whom Fordham once won 

 the Northumberland Plate — it was said that the horse never 

 got over the rib-binder administered by the Demon in the 

 very last stride, and which won him the race by the shortest 

 of heads — whilst Mr. Annesley, in the same regiment, won 

 the Gold Cup at Croydon for Captain Turnbull, and many 

 another military steeplechase as well. His namesake, Captain 

 Jack Annesley, nth Hussars, who, amongst other events, won 

 the Light-weight Grand Military, was another dashing soldier 

 rider. 



484 



