298 THE ENGLISH TURF 



Hazlehatch, and Melanion should keep his name alive. I 

 can hardly enumerate all the good ones sired by Mr. 

 Chaplin's horse, but I may mention that one of them was 

 Ascetic, the champion Irish steeplechase sire, sire of Cloister ; 

 and another was Retreat, who was also responsible for a 

 Grand National winner in Father O'Flynn. In the second 

 generation Hermit's stock seem to take wonderfully to the 

 jumping business, and some of the best hunters I ever saw 

 were by Friar Rush a very beautiful Hermit horse who, 

 in spite of his extraordinary good looks and grand pedigree, 

 was allowed to become a Queen's Premium sire. 



Another very good Hermit horse was Heaume, who started 

 first favourite for the St. Leger of 1890. This race was 

 won by Memoir, and it will doubtless be remembered that 

 Heaume (who won the French Derby of that year) was one 

 of the victims of a series of scrimmages which took place 

 about half a mile from the finish. Other sufferers were 

 Queen's Birthday and St. Serf, and Heaume when he re- 

 turned to the paddock looked as if he had taken part in a 

 serious cavalry charge, so knocked about was he. In the 

 opinion of many competent authorities Heaume was the 

 best three-year-old of his year, and he has already made 

 a high reputation at the stud in France, and notably has 

 sired Le Roi Soleil, the winner of the Grand Prix de Paris 

 in 1898. In America the Hermit horse St. Blaise has been 

 a great stud success. 



Extreme quality combined with excellent symmetry and 

 medium size are as a rule the chief characteristics of the 

 family of Hermit. Some of them have been delicate and 

 difficult to train, but this delicacy was only occasionally 

 encountered, and there probably never was a harder horse 

 than Tristan, who remained in training for five seasons, 

 and was just as good when six years old as he had been 

 in his early days perhaps better. Then take Cloister, a 

 grandson of Hermit in direct tail male. It has been the 

 fashion to sneer at this horse and to say that he beat a very 

 moderate lot when he won the Grand National ; but facts are 

 stubborn things, and about him there is the fact that he won 

 the Great Aintree Steeplechase in a canter by forty lengths 



