1 26 In Scarlet and Silk 



but one of my forebears, who himself was 

 fond of a gallop between the flags, has many 

 a time given me a description of their 

 prowess. We are much indebted to the 

 late Henry Hall Dixon ("The Druid") for 

 chronicling many of their doings, which 

 would otherwise have been swept away into 

 the forgotten limbo of the past. Some of 

 those fine old-fashioned matches, such as 

 that between Vivian and Cock Robin, with 

 Becher and the Marquis of Waterford riding ; 

 Grimaldi and Moonraker, steered respectively 

 by Osbaldeston and Seffert ; and the match 

 between Captain Horatio Ross's Pole Cat 

 (owner up) and Mr. Gilmour's Plunder, the 

 hard-riding farmer, Field Nicholson, steering 

 the latter, must have been events worth 

 travelling any distance to see. 



The dull dead level of the modern galloping 

 course gives no such opportunity for the 

 exercise of a man's sound judgment (or any, 

 indeed, of his knowledge of, or eye for, a 

 country) as these contests of a past age did. 

 But for all that, where will you find a prettier 



