A GREAT YEAR 



extensive one, but in consequence of his having carried 

 an enormous amount of money in the Derby, and the 

 association of the leading owners of the period with 

 his sensational victory. The Duke of Hamilton laid 

 the Captain 180,000 to 6000 against the colt, though 

 the bet was scratched. I have in my possession a copy 

 of a letter from the Captain stating the fact. What the 

 Marquess of Hastings lost is not on record. Hermit 

 had broken a blood-vessel shortly before the Derby 

 and consequently been stopped in his work, so that he 

 drifted out in the market to hopeless odds, or 

 rather it should be said to odds which were apparently 

 hopeless, seeing that the 66 to 1 chance fructified. 



It is astonishing, by the way, to find a judge who is 

 trying a case in connection with racing knowing any- 

 thing about the Turf. A few years ago I went to the 

 Lewes Assizes to give evidence as to the value of a 

 horse that had been killed by a motor 'bus. Counsel 

 for the Plaintiff, Mr. Kennedy Jones, dilated on the 

 breeding of the equine victim. He was, Sir Henry 

 Dickens remarked, descended from " the famous 

 Hermit who won the Derby in a snowstorm. I 

 cannot, I am afraid, give you the exact date of this 

 occurrence, gentlemen," he observed to the jury, when 

 the Judge, Mr. Justice Bray, leaned over his desk and 

 remarked, " It was in 1867." Hermit, however, who 

 thus comes into our story as an ancestor of Grand 

 Parade, was a son of Newminster, who won the St. 



i6£ 



