A Heart to Heart Talk with Breeders 



I cannot close this chapter without bearing down heavily upon the burning ques- 

 tion of individuality. A stallion owner in England, having a horse that has been a 

 failure there and having heard that many stallions have succeeded in the United 

 States after having failed in England, sends the horse over here to be sold or to be 

 stood on a percentage with some well-known breeder in the "dark and bloody ground." 

 Nobody takes the trouble to look further than the number by which the Weatherbys 

 have registered him in the English Stud Book, but takes it for granted that he must 

 be good because he's "English, you know." In this way a great many horses have 

 "left their country for their country's good" and been foisted upon the breeding public, 

 being of the class which an Illinois breeder once described as being "all pedigree and 

 no horse." My own belief is that both Lexington and Hanover owed their wonderful 

 fertility to individuality and not to their breeding. It is an open question in my own 

 mind whether either of them was strictly thoroughbred, for Lexington was a male- 

 line grandson of Timoleon, whose pedigree was a forgery as stupid as it was deliberate ; 

 and Hanover's fourth dam was Ophelia by Wild Medley, whose breeding was as bad 

 as that of the Australian-bred Tim Whiffler, of whom Adam Lindsay Gordon de- 

 clared : 



"The breed of his dam is a myth unknown 

 And we've doubts respecting his sire." 



Old and wise heads like Dr. Elisha Warfield, Dr. B. W. Dudley and others of the 

 type that has made Kentucky famous as the great breeding-ground of America, shook 

 their heads knowingly when Wild Medley was mentioned. And when Grey Eagle 

 was mentioned, old Robert Wooding would say to me, "A very handsome horse, sir. 

 It's a pity he had not a better authenticated pedigree." But in spite of all this, the 

 obstinate fact confronts you that Lexington headed the list of winning sires for 

 eleven seasons and Hanover for four, under a competition so severe that, had Lexing- 

 ton been subjected to the same, he would hardly have been premier for five seasons. 

 Lexington came on just after Glencoe was dead and while Sovereign and Yorkshire 

 were fading as fast as twenty-year-old horses can fade. The only horses likely to 

 be dangerous were Leamington and Bonnie Scotland and they made their invasions 

 of Kentucky "few and far between." Lexington, on the other hand, was domiciled at 

 the Big Spring and his owner's great wealth had enabled him to buy up all the Glen- 

 coe mares and nearly all the best daughters of Albion. Hanover, in the later years, 

 was surrounded by the very best and most fashionable blood of two continents 

 Rayon d'Or, Eothen and Deceiver, among Touchstone horses ; and Wagner, Esher, 

 Order, and a dozen other good Stockwell horses, so you see that while Lexington, in 

 1876 had more money to his credit than did Hanover in his very best year, the sixth 

 horse in Hanover's year had more money won than did the second horse in 1870. 



My own belief, reiteratd a dozen times in racing newspapers before this book was 

 begun, or even contemplated, is that one-half the earlier Virginian pedigrees are the 

 most stupid kin'd of forgeries. The element that followed Daniel Boone into the 

 land of blue grass was of a sterner and stronger type of manhood, believing that a 

 stain upon a man's honor is worse than a wound in his heart. They had lots of good 

 "hard horse-sense" likewise and knew that dishonesty is sure of detection, because 

 the greed of crooked people is insatiate and "the pitcher always goes to the well once 

 too often." So it is that where a Kentucky pedigree is obscure I always feel inclined 

 to give it the benefit of the doubt. But not so with the clouded pedigrees that have 

 emanated from the "Old Dominion." That of Sir Charles had a very bad look and as 

 for that of Timoleon, any money paid for the service of that horse was obtained under 

 false pretenses. 



