CHAPTER XII 



THE RECORD OF CAPTAIN BEECHER 



The editors of the Badminton volume on Steeplechasing 

 lament their inability to give details of the exploits of 

 famous chasers and the riders with whom their names are 

 associated. Limitations of space prevented them from 

 utilising much interesting material which lay ready to their 

 hands. As I am not thus hampered, I propose to give 

 some anecdotes of one or two heroes of this fascinating 

 branch of sport, I have already written of Tom Olliver, 

 and I shall devote this chapter to the famous gentleman 

 rider Captain Beecher, for whom Olliver had the profoundest 

 admiration. 



My own recollection of Captain Beecher as I saw him in 

 1862, a couple of years before his death, is that of a short, 

 thick-set, sturdy man, with bushy beard and thick grey 

 locks — a shrewd, kindly, rugged face, enlivened by small 

 but bright and penetrating grey eyes. There was some- 

 thing very resolute and vigorous about his bearing even 

 then, which was quite in keeping with the stories told of 

 his daring in the saddle. 



He had served with Wellington in the Peninsular War — 

 I believe in the Commissariat Department — and was after- 

 wards with the army of occupation in Paris. When the 

 piping times of peace set in he returned to England, but it 

 was not until the year 1823 that he made his first public 

 appearance in cap and jacket. The famous Tommy 

 Coleman of St Albans, who had an eye like a hawk for a 

 good horseman, spotted Beecher, and then commenced the 

 Captain's brilliant career as a cross-country rider. 



The first St Albans steeplechase came off in the spring 

 of 1829 ; sixteen started from Arlington Church to the 



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