20 HORSE-RACING IN FRANCE 



of Qiieensberry, believed to liave a daughter's claim 

 upon tliem, and to whom they both consequently left 

 a fortune), and had an Englishman's tastes and peculi- 

 arities, including a touch of ' horse upon the brain.' It 

 appears to have struck him and some of his associates 

 that the time had come for ameliorating the breed of 

 French horses, and that it would be a good idea to 

 relinquish the mongrel sort of establishment which 

 combined a kind of ' Eed House at Battersea ' with 

 a travesty of the ' Englisli Jockey Club,' and to found a 

 new Club, a ' Members' Club,' which should be both 

 what the Englisli Jockey Club is and what it is not — 

 namely, both a tutelary guardian, as it were, of the Turf 

 and a luxurious and fashionable lounge. At any rate 

 that is what the French Jockey Club, after shifting 

 quarters from Eue du Tlelder to Eue Grange Bateliere, 

 has become in its own house at the corner of the Boule- 

 vard des Capucines and Eue Scribe (where they built 

 their magnificent rooms in 1863), ' horsiness ' being 

 now not required as a qualification on the part of a 

 candidate, apparently, and the ' horsey ' business being 

 confided to a Eace Committee, which has had no regular 

 titular president since tlie lamented death of Viscount 

 Paul Daru in 1876, though there is still a titular presi- 

 dent of the Jockey Club, who by virtue of his office is 

 always (since about 1865) an hon. member of the 

 English Jockey Club. Lord Henry Seymour was the 

 first president of tlie Club, which consisted of twelve 

 substantive members (one of them being treasurer and 

 two vice-presidents). Associated with him as original 

 members were Count Maximilian Caccia, Count de 

 Canibis (equerry to the Duke d'Orleans), M. Casimir 

 Delamarre, Count Demidofi", M. Fasquel of Courteuil, 

 M. Charles Laffitte (treasurer of the Club), M. Ernest 



