The Life of Fred Archer 6i 
to be seen at every Newmarket meeting watching the racing 
with longing eyes. 
The first racehorse Mathew Dawson remembered was Mrs. 
Barnet, dam of Filho da Puta, the winner of the St. Leger of 
1815. Mr. Dawson was once asked how long it was since he 
trained his first Derby winner. " My first runner — not winner, 
mind you — I trained in Scotland for Lord Glasgow, and thought 
I was certain to win, and I told Lord Glasgow so. It was Little 
Wonder's year, and my horse finished two hundred yards behind 
the last ! You see, young men are apt to be over-confident." 
Nothing was more interesting than to hear Mathew Dawson 
describe the incidents which befell him during his first long 
journey (now more than a century ago) from the Land o' Cakes 
to the South of England, in charge of Pathfinder. His journey 
was performed principally by road, as railways were then in 
their infancy. On their way southward the horse and his 
custodian stopped at Catterick Bridge, where Pathfinder, 
ridden by George Nelson, won a match for three hundred 
sovereigns against Mr. Meiklam's Remedy, ridden by Tommy 
Lye. George Nelson was the jockey in whom, by reason of his 
famous name connecting him with the sea, William IV., the 
Sailor King, took an interest and put him on the back of Fleur- 
de-lis when she won the Goodwood Cup in 1830, followed 
home by Zinganee and The Colonel, both of them, like the 
winner, the property of His Majesty. The King had inherited 
them from his brother, George IV., on the death of the latter 
in June, 1830. So little did William IV. care for racing that he 
invariably turned his back on the course when his horses were 
running. 
Mathew won the Cumberland Plate with William le Gros 
as far back as 1843, and again in 1845 with Pythia for Mr. 
William Hope Johnstone. His first engagement on his own 
account was as private trainer to Lord Eglinton. At this 
time he married the devoted wife who was one of the good 
angels of Fred Archer's professional career. 
