174 HORSE-RACING IN ENGLAND 



other ' moderns,' including ' Mr. Jersey ' (which, 

 being interpreted, is Mrs. Langtry, the ' Jersey 

 Hly '), to say nothing of such cases as owed their 

 conspicuousness to disaster more than to anything 

 else, like the ' Julius ' Duke of Newcastle (the 

 sixth) and the Lord Courtenay who became 

 thirteenth Earl of Devon, was rather a bettor 

 tlian a racer, and died in 1891. 



Of these nobles, gentles, and ignobles, there 

 stand out, head and shoulders above the rest, 

 Lord George Bentinck, Sir Joseph Hawley, Lord 

 Derby, and Admiral Rous, as patrons who, ac- 

 cording to their lights, did their best to cleanse 

 the Augean stable of the turf. Of the four. Lord 

 George Bentinck and Admiral Rous were known 

 as ' dictators '; but the ' dictatorship ' of the former 

 lasted but a very short time compared with that 

 of the latter, and was of a different kind. It was 

 the Admiral who, so far as the Jockey Club was 

 concerned, attained a supremacy resembling and 

 even transcending in some respects that which 

 had been wielded by Sir Charles Bunbury ; it 

 was Lord George who, without dominating, for 

 all that appears to the contrary, the other members 

 of the club, gradually extended the paramount 



