THE FRENCH JOCKEY CLUB 29 



he mio^lit have had wliat the Americans call a ' o;ood 

 time,' and the newspapers might have had a charming 

 variety of catastrophes to record. He was much com- 

 forted in his last moments, it is related, by a neat device 

 he hit upon for making the loss of him felt and regretted 

 by his servants : he left not a penny to any of them, 

 expressly that they miglit miss liim. It has been hinted, 

 however, that he had another reason — that he knew 

 how he had been plundered by those servants during his 

 lifetime ; that he had submitted uncomplainingly, for 

 the sake of peace and quietness, as long as he lived ; and 

 that his apparent want of generosity was merely his 

 ' playful way ' of showing that he had not been so blind 

 as they had supposed. However that may be, he was 

 generously and tenderly mindful of his favourite horses, 

 leaving annuities to four or five of them, together with 

 an injunction that they should be exempt from saddle 

 work (presumably from any kind of work). And it is 

 Lord Henry's connection with horses that gives him 

 prominence here. 



He may be said to have ' encouraged ' horse- racing 

 almost from his cradle, both by example and by precept, 

 by personal performance in the pigskin upon the 

 ' amateurs' ride ' in the Bois de Boulogne and by proxy 

 in the form of a professional jockey to whom he gave 

 instructions ; and when, in 1833, he and some of his 

 associates said to one another, ' Go to ! let us found a 

 Jockey Club after the English fashion (only more 

 gregarious) and a Society for the Amelioration of the 

 French Breed of Horses,' he threw himself enthusias- 

 tically into the work and set about improving his stock 

 and his stables (whether at Sablonville, or Glatigny, or 

 elsewhere), which had already attained considerable 

 celebrity. 



