CLERMONT. 417 



to the Jockey Club Rooms, to breakfast there, 

 as was my invariable habit. It was a wretched 

 morning, and as I approached the Rooms I ob- 

 served that old Richard Tattersall looked unusually 

 'downcast and damp,' as he stood in a sort of open 

 box in the High Street, Newmarket, endeavour- 

 ing to sell some blood stock. My eye caught 

 sight of a scraggy-looking chestnut yearling, by 

 Euclid, a horse of whom I was always fond. 

 Turning to Tattersall as I passed, I exclaimed, 

 pointing at the Euclid colt, ' If that lot goes 

 cheap, buy him for me.' When I came out from 

 loreakfast I found that he had bought me the 

 colt ill question for the moderate sum of fifteen 

 guineas. You know the rest of Clermont's his- 

 tory. He was a slow, moderate two -year -old, 

 and the only man that ever tried to buy him at 

 that age was your friend John Kent, who would 

 have given a smart sum for him at Goodwood in 

 1846, had Treen, my trainer, been willing to accept 

 his terms. In the winter I tried the horse to be 

 a good fair stayer, and if the spring had been 

 dry I fully believe that Clermont, as I sub- 

 sequently called him, would have won four out 

 of the five great handicaps in which I entered 

 him. But he was a ten -pound worse horse in 

 dirt than on the top of the ground, his weak 

 twisted ankles disqualifying him from getting 

 through mud. Fred Swindell won me a good 

 stake on the Newmarket Handicap, and still more 



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