28 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



wonderful what a lot of little and bigger pieces 

 of history and folk-lore, not to mention the 

 picturesque and curious, you may hit. 



The Gratwicke Stakes is cited as showing 

 the strangeness of there not being a Lord George 

 Bentinck. Bentinck would scarcely do nowadays 

 as a new stake, because the reference would be 

 taken as applying to the Duke of Portland 

 instead of to the Napoleon of the Turf, who in 

 some of his methods was very Napoleonic 

 indeed, seeing how exhaustively he believed in 

 Heaven's helping him who helps himself to what 

 he wants, as witness the style in which Red 

 Deer's Chester Cup was engineered. A game 

 like that wouldn't be stood at an unrecognised 

 flapping meeting in these enlightened times. 

 Certainly there is more call for a Lord George 

 Bentinck Stakes than one named after Mr 

 Gratwicke. Was Lord George properly Sussex ? 

 I am not so sure about that, though one way or 

 the other that does not affect the classical 

 connection between the great dictator of racing 

 and Goodwood. Squire Gratwicke was Sussex 

 as Sussex can be. He lived at Ham Manor — 

 whence, I presume, the Ham Stakes — a very 

 pretty place at Angmering, just off the road from 

 Worthing to Arundel, and only a bittock from 

 Patching Pond, the name of a village not far 

 from which used to be a decoy. Patching Pond 

 lies about half-way between Angmering and the 

 most charming training quarters, formerly William 

 Goater's, at Michel Grove, later Halsey's for Mr 

 J. A. Miller, and later still Captain Davies's. 



The little inn at Patching Pond, on the 

 shores of the lakelet, is a sort of half-way house 

 between Worthing and Arundel, though you 



