44 JOHN PORTER OF KINGSCLERE 



sold to Lord Rosebery. After severing his con- 

 nection with the Findon stable, Mr. Padwick 

 placed his horses with John Scott and Alfred Day. 

 Mr. Padwick died in 1879. The Turf 

 writers seem to have thought that the less they 

 said about him the better. He had got himself 

 into bad odour in the middle 'sixties owing 

 to his transactions with the ill-fated Marquis 

 of Hastings — transactions that called forth the 

 famous letter of Admiral Rous to The Times 

 in which the stinging phrase ** the spider 

 and the fly" occurred. Bailfs "Van Driver," 

 whose obituary notices of Turf personalities 

 were generally of generous dimensions, dismissed 

 Mr. Padwick with a notice extending to about 

 twenty lines only. He wrote: 



The death of Mr Padwick removes from the scene a 

 name for the last thirty years or more intimately as- 

 sociated, for good or evil, with Turf history. A country 

 solicitor in good position and practice, he, on the retire- 

 ment of Lord George Bentinck, became, with his client 

 Mr. Mostyn, the temporary proprietor of that nobleman's 

 stud. How it was re-sold to Lord Clifden we all know, 

 but from that time Mr. Padwick was a racing man. He 

 was not very fortunate in the horses he bought, but he 

 was extremely happy in their sale. . . . Mr Padwick tried 

 hard to get good horses, and we fear the mania for giving 

 large sums for young stock owes much of its rise and 

 influence to his example. A man of mature age and 

 experience giving four figures for a yearling was an in- 

 centive to the young plungers of the day to do likewise. 



