1 02 Silk and Scarlet, 



not leave well alone, so he raised his whip near the 

 finish, and the horse turned to it, and just let Robin- 

 son come on the post. 

 „ o , The Sam division, which has been so 



Sam Barnard. , . ^ _ , / , r • ^ ^ 



proline oi great jockeys, also lurnisned 

 another in Sam Barnard, who rode seven-six all his 

 life, and whose constant expression when he had a 

 difficult horse to handle was, " / never could carry him, 

 no hoivy His horse fell with him at Ascot, and his 

 eyes were so nearly cut out of the sockets, that he 

 eventually went stone blind. Shortly before, he had, 

 singularly enough, ridden and won the Claret Stakes 

 for Sir John Shelley on Comus, without any intima- 

 tion that he had lost his sight, and on his return to 

 the weighing room he described his whole ride as one 

 marvellous " succession of leaps/' 

 r^ .,. He is not the first old jockey whom the 



David Jones. i • i 11 



same calamity has overtaken, and among 

 them was David Jones, who survived every other wit- 

 ness on the Dan Dawson trial. He began his life as 

 one of the scarlet penny posts, and rode with his horn 

 and saddle-bags between the General Post-office and 

 Hampstead Heath, three times a day. Then followed 

 a stable apprenticeship under old Chifney, and from 

 being a head lad at Newmarket, he rose to be head 

 groom to the Marquis of Westminster and General 

 Grosvenor, and was one of the first two persons that 

 ever slept in Eaton Hall. He sailed next to India 

 and Spain, and was all through the Peninsular war, as 

 head groom to a General of Brigade, and came home, 

 speaking three languages, to train and ride once more. 

 Priam winning the Derby, was about the last image 

 that impressed itself upon his failing retina. Total 

 blindness, and the ruin of the London season by the 

 death of George IV., which left his May Fair lodging- 

 house unlet, broke him down in the same year, and at 

 last the workhouse at Chelsea was his lot. In the 

 summer time we used often to meet him among the 



