CHAPTER IX 



THE ADVENTURES OF TOM OLLIVER 



" We have no great steeplechase riders now, sir ; the 

 race is extinct." Such was the sweeping statement of a 

 veteran sportsman whom I met at the Queen's Hotel, 

 Birmingham, a week or two before the Grand National of 

 1904. I demurred to the statement, and had the names 

 of Tom Olliver, Jem Mason, and Captain Beecher flung in 

 my face with the emphatic query, " Where can you show 

 me any steeplechase rider now, sir, who could hold a 

 candle to any one of those? I've seen 'em all three ride, 

 sir, and I know what I'm talking about." 



Now, as I never saw any of that celebrated trio in the 

 saddle, for they were long before my time, it was not easy 

 to dispute that assertion. It was no use quoting such 

 names as Ede, the fine horseman known in the saddle as 

 " Mr Edwards," who met his death on the Aintree course, 

 Yates, Coventry, and Beasley : he scoffed at them all. It 

 was like mentioning the name of Henry Irving to some 

 cranky old worshipper of Edmund Kean or Macready. 

 For the jockey, like the actor, leaves nothing behind him 

 by which future generations can judge of his excellence. 

 For my own part, I am ready to allow that the heroes of 

 the past were all that their admirers make them out to 

 have been, but at the same time I decline to admit that 

 we of to-day are in any branch of sport inferior to our 

 fathers and grandfathers. If we are not their superiors, 

 we are at any rate their equals, and the great horsemen of 

 to-day are certainly not unworthy successors to their pre- 

 decessors. 



But in regard to steeplechasing I must say this, that 

 the feats of its exponents are thrown into the shade by 



88 



