3o6 The Derby 



the largest sum ever accumulated by a horse up to that 

 time, and only smce surpassed by Mr. McCalmont's 

 Ismglass. 



In 1889 the two-year-old fillies were far better than 

 the colts, for that was the year of the flying Signorina, 

 one of the speediest animals that ever ran, and she was 

 supported by Memoir (not nearly so good as she after- 

 wards became, for she improved greatly with age), 

 Kiviera, and Semolina. During the winter the wise men 

 agreed that, so far as the colts were concerned (and 

 Signorina w^as not entered for the Derby), the race lay 

 between two, Surefoot and Le Nord, though Mr. Douglas 

 Baird's Martagon had once got to Signorina's head, and 

 that, too, soon after he had been coughing and was thought 

 to be not at his best. To search beyond the two was, 

 however, esteemed ridiculous, and as there was a doubt 

 about Le Nord's ability to stay, the Derby looked good 

 for Surefoot. It looked better still a little later on, for 

 he won the Two Thousand Guineas handsomely ; and 

 another of the turf vignettes imprinted on my memory 

 is of Surefoot after that race, as he stood, head uplifted, 

 gazing round him in the little railed-off enclosure before 

 the weighing-room door in the Birdcage, a glorious 

 specimen of the English thoroughbred horse. But 

 Surefoot had a dreadfully bad temper. I am told that, 

 when sent from his training quarters to run for the 

 Eclipse Stakes next year, it occupied a troublous two 

 hours to get him a couple of miles along the road to the 

 station. In the Derby he was so busily occupied in 

 trying to savage his neighbours that he could not be 

 persuaded or coerced into galloping, and the race fell to 

 one of the w^orst animals that ever carried off a Derby in 

 Sainfoin, a chesnut colt that John Porter and Sir Eobert 



