The Lite of Fred Archer 39 
first married ; they used to go about together to most of the 
race meetings. Father was a very successful rider, and people 
took a good deal of notice of mother, both on his account and 
because everyone liked her. Though mother did all the corre- 
spondence, I remember that in later years, when Fred had 
letters from all sorts of ' swells ' — and you know what a hand 
these people write — it was father that could generally read 
every word. For one thing, it was nearly all about horses, 
and father knew everything that had to do with them by a 
sort of instinct. Anyhow, he'd always drop on the word, and 
then he would say to my mother : ' There now, with all your 
fine education, I can read that and you can't.' And mother 
would smile. 
" Father was very fond of boxing, and when Fred and Charlie 
were quite little boys he would set them to spar with one 
another in the club-room. They got on very well until they lost 
their tempers, which they often did. I once went to see Tom 
Sayers's grave in Highgate Cemetery. It has just the one word 
' Time ! ' on it. I thought it was so nice. 
" Once a week a great event happened in Prestbury. 
Bell's Life came. It was sixpence then, and a weekly. Now it 
is joined up with the Sporting Life and is a daily paper. 
Well, when it came, father would shut himself up in the private 
room, or at any rate in a room where all the rest of us weren't, 
and he would read the paper in peace. After it had been 
lent all round the village, to Mr. Holland and all the rest, father 
would cut out all his own and Horatio Nelson Powell's and the 
Joneses' races and paste them on great sheets of brown paper. 
It was all very interesting, and we had them till about six years 
ago, when we lived in a house that had a damp kitchen, and 
these papers were all put away in a box there, and they all 
got into a sort of pulp and became quite illegible. 
" The original of this picture of father on Thurgarton is 
at Newmarket. My brother had it. But I have one of 
him on his old cob as well. He had a good seat on a horse 
