Dennis was buying horses as well as property. His name appeared for the first time, as subscriber and owner (and as ‘Dennis Kelly’), in the 1768 Racing Calendar, the book recording the Turf results of that year. The entry gave no hint of the triumphs to come. Dennis owned a single horse, Whitenose, who ran in a single race (the previously mentioned one at Abingdon), and came last. The winner of the £50 prize was Goldfinder, later to play a small role at the end of Eclipse’s career; third was the chestnut filly belonging to William Wildman.
By the time of publication of the 1769 Calendar, however, Dennis, now sporting his ‘O’, owned Whitenose, Caliban, Moynealta and Milksop – the horse rejected by her mother and nurtured by hand at Cumberland’s stud. Milksop, formerly owned by a Mr Payne, was little, and specialized in ‘give-and-take’ races, in which weight was allocated on the basis of height. He proved to be a money-spinning purchase. In 1769, he won £50 races at Brentwood, Maidenhead and Abingdon, meeting his only defeat on his home turf at Epsom. He won at Epsom in 1770, and also at Ascot, Wantage and Egham. But by then Dennis owned another horse, who, living up to his name, put the others in the shade.
Eclipse ran his trial against the opponent supplied by Dennis a few days before he was due to contest his first public race. Such trials were common, as a means of getting horses fit and of assessing their abilities. They were popular with the touts – gamblers and their associates who would invade gallops and racecourses in search of intelligence. Sir Charles Bunbury, first head of the Jockey Club and owner of horses who competed against Eclipse, disliked the practice. ‘I have no notion of trying my horses for other people’s information, ’ he grumbled.
Trials have gone out of fashion, but the acquisition of inside information never has. Nowadays, journalists and other ‘workwatchers’ scrutinize horses on the gallops, and stable staff earn a few bob to add to their ungenerous incomes by disclosing news about their charges. This horse is so speedy that he is catching pigeons in exercise, they might report; this one has suffered a setback and will not be fully fit on the day; this one will not be ‘off’ (primed to do his best) for his next race, but is being laid out for a later contest. By the time horses get to the racecourse, the betting market is well primed, and offers a fair reflection of their chances of success.
One would assume that Dennis, with his gambling interests, wanted to keep this trial quiet. If so, he failed: Eclipse’s early biographers report that touts, no doubt members of Dennis’s circle, travelled down from London to see Eclipse in action. But, likeWildman (reputedly) at the Cranbourne Lodge auction, they arrived too late. Scanning the Downs for a chestnut with a white blaze, and unable to spot one, they asked an elderly woman, who was out walking, whether she had seen a race. The woman replied that ‘she could not tell whether it were a race or not, but that she had just seen a horse with white legs, running away at a monstrous rate, and another horse a great way behind, trying to run after him; but she was sure he would never catch the white-legged horse, if they ran to the world’s end’. The touts returned to the capital. By that evening, the prowess of Eclipse was the talk of Munday’s coffee house.
51 The English Triple Crown. Nijinsky was the last horse to achieve this feat.
52 Medley’s obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1798 stated that the sum had come from the Jockey Club.
53 Dennis would covet today’s stud earnings. Fifty guineas, Eclipse’s initial fee, is the equivalent of about £6, 000 today. Montjeu’s covering fee is 125, 000 euros – and he covers a hundred mares in a season.
54 One local history spoils the story by telling us that Dr Nehemiah Grew of the Royal Society had made the discovery some thirty years earlier.
55 Defoe’s lines give you an idea of the atmosphere in which, a few years later, the Protestant Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, would be greeted as a hero for destroying the Catholic Jacobites.
56 Now West Hill.
8
The Rest Nowhere
ON WEDNESDAY, 3 MAY 1769, Dennis O’Kelly set out on horseback for the two-mile journey from Epsom to the racecourse on the Downs. An imposing man in his mid-forties, Dennis wore a thick overcoat, which emphasized his increasing bulk; perched on his bewigged head, above blunt features tending to fleshiness, was a battered tricorn hat. Observers would have sympathized with the beast of burden beneath him. Dennis was on his way to watch the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Plate, a good but not top-class contest open to horses who had not previously won £30, and carrying a £50 prize. He may already have backed Mr Wildman’s Eclipse; he certainly fancied that the afternoon would offer further betting opportunities. But his interest in Eclipse would not be satisfied by betting alone.
The racecourse was roughly at the site it occupies today, with a finishing straight running from near Tattenham Corner – the downhill bend on the Derby course – and stretching towards the rubbing-house, now the site of the Rubbing House pub. At about this time, a Frenchman called Pierre-Jean Grosley visited Epsom while researching a book called A Tour to London (1772), in which he described the scene:‘Several of the spectators come in coaches, which, without the least bustle or dispute about precedency, werearranged in three or four lines, on the first of those hills; and, on the top of all, was a scaffolding for the judges, who were to decree the prize.’ Some courses, such as Newmarket, were marked by posts. When Charles I visited Lincoln races in 1617, he ordered that rails be set up a quarter of a mile from the finish, ‘whereby the people were kept out, and the horses that runned were seen faire’.57 At Epsom, there were no barriers. The crowd towards the finishing post pressed forward from either side, allowing only a slender passage for the racers. There was no betting ring either, on this or on any other course; gamblers congregated at betting posts, shouting out the prices of horses they were prepared to back or lay. The betting post was Dennis’s first port of call.
This map of Epsom racecourse shows Dennis O’Kelly’s stables inside the course. The course now runs inside the site, and Downs House. Eclipse’s first race may have started from near Banstead, off the map to the right.
When he arrived, he realized that the blacklegs from Munday’s coffee house had got wind of Eclipse’s ability, as Eclipse was the only horse in the race that anyone wanted to back. In response, his odds had contracted severely, and no layer was prepared to take bets on him at longer than 4-1 on. In other words, you would have to bet £4 to win £1; or, to put it another way again, if a horse trading at that price were to compete in five races, the betting says that he would win four times and lose only once. Eclipse had, the betting said, an 80 per cent chance of victory. Those are extraordinary odds for a debutant, and they did not interest Dennis. He had another idea for making money on the race.
Meanwhile, Eclipse’s groom, John Oakley, was walking his horse to the start, four miles away in Banstead. The field were due off at 1 p.m., and Oakley was to ride. This doubling up as groom and jockey was normal. Until the early eighteenth century, owners – from Charles II, winning by ‘good horsemanship’, down – often rode their own horses in matches. Otherwise, they employed stable staff, who were not yet recognized as ‘trainers’ or ‘jockeys’ (the latter term might mean, as it did in the context of the Jockey Club, anyone associated with the Turf).
The riding groom was a humble figure. But a groom from Oakley’s era who managed to transcend the role was John Singleton, who worked for the Marquis of Rockingham. After Singleton had ridden the Marquis’s Bay Malton to victory at Newmarket over a field including Herod, Rockingham commissioned for him an engraved gold cup, gave him several paintings showing him mounted on the stable’s best horses, and generally treated him ‘more as a humble friend than as a servant’. Singleton went on to acquire several fa
rms and stables – a rare ascent. But it was not until the next generation, when the roles of trainer and rider split into specialities, that jockeys became noted figures, and even so they remained lower in social rank than training grooms had been. It is a class structure that persists. Jockeys such as Frankie Dettori in Britain and Garrett Gomez in the US may be jet-setting millionaires, but they are nearer in status to stable lads and lasses than they are to the leading trainers.
All we hear of Oakley (c.1736–1793) is that he was ‘a very celebrated rider, in great repute’; we cannot even be sure, because the racing calendars do not tell us, 58 that he was Eclipse’s regular partner. John Lawrence, who saw Eclipse at stud, stated, ‘We believe, Oakley, a powerful man on horseback, generally, or always rode Eclipse’, and there is a J. N. Sartorius painting entitled Eclipse with Oakley Up. But a catalogue entry for George Stubbs’s portrait of Eclipse at Newmarket identifies the jockey as ‘Samuel Merrit, who generally rode him’. This was written more than twenty years later, when Stubbs made a copy of his original work, but it presumably reflects an accurate memory for such details. Merriott (as he is more usually spelled), who has in the painting the long, lugubrious face of the comic actor and writer Eric Sykes, is also associated with Eclipse’s two 1770 races at York. Nevertheless, the earliest report we have asserts that Oakley was Eclipse’s jockey on 3 May 1769.59
Jockeyship required nervelessness and aggression. Some contests permitted ‘cross and jostle’, meaning you could hamper your opponents. At a race at York, ‘Mr Welburn’s Button and Mr Walker’s Milkmaid, in running the last heat, came in so near together, that it could not be decided by the Tryers [stewards]; and the riders showing foul play in running, and afterwards fighting on horseback, the plate was given to [the owner of the third horse] Mr Graham.’ Jockeys wore spurs, and used them; in the days before whip rules, they beat their mounts without restraint. But no jockey ever spurred or whipped Eclipse.
There were four rivals for the Epsom Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Plate: Mr Castle’s Chance and Mr Quick’s Plume, both six-year-olds; and the five-year-olds Gower (Mr Fortescue) and Trial (Mr Jennings).There was no starting tape, or even a flag; there was simply a starter, who shouted ‘Go!’
The five set off, well out of the viewing range of the Epsom crowd, and with only a gathering of local spectators lining their route, as at an early section of a stage of the Tour de France. Oakley and Eclipse took the lead, galloping easily and waiting until they approached the Epsom Downs, with about a mile to go, to pick up the pace. From their perspective, the banks of people swelling forward on either side of the course ahead formed converging lines, narrowing at the finishing post almost to a point.
While his rival jockeys began to wield their spurs and whips, Oakley, who wore no spurs, sat motionless in the saddle. He knew that his mount would rebel against any urging. The racers sped through the banks of spectators, and Eclipse, seemingly cantering, eased further ahead. As the field went by, local gentlemen on horseback peeled away from the crowd and galloped behind, braying encouragement.60 Eclipse passed the post first without having at any point stepped up from a low gear; Gower, Chance, Trial and Plume followed, in that order. Oakley offered his mount a tactful hint that they should pull up. But this was not the end of the contest. It was only the end of the first heat.
Plate races – the most important contests – were staged in heats, and if three different horses won three heats, they would meet again in a decider. The way to settle the matter earlier was to do what Eclipse did several times, and win two heats; or to take advantage of another rule, centring on the distance post, 240 yards from the finish: as the winner passed the finish, horses that had not reached the distance post were declared to have been ‘distanced’, and were eliminated. Adding to the ordeal of up to four races in an afternoon, each was a marathon by modern standards, two, three and more commonly four miles in length, and had been so ever since medieval times.61 Most Flat races in Britain today are contested at distances between five furlongs (five-eighths of a mile) and twelve furlongs (the Derby distance). The Ascot Gold Cup distance of two and a half miles is unusual. The Queen Alexandra Stakes, which also takes place at Royal Ascot, is the longest race in the Flat calendar, at two miles and six furlongs. In the US, the emphasis on speed is greater still. The twelve-furlong Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown, 62 is regarded as a stamina-sapping anomaly.
Why did the Georgians subject their horses to these gruelling tests? The answer is their admiration for ‘bottom’. If menhad bottom, they were sound fellows; if horses had bottom, they were sound horses. Dennis O’Kelly was remarkable, in the fond words of John Lawrence in The Sporting Magazine in 1793, ‘for his attachment to horses of bottom’. In other words, Dennis valued staying power; and, Lawrence may also have meant, he profited in his betting from horses with the ability to cope with racing in heats. If they lost one heat, by design or otherwise, they could win the next. Eclipse had superlative bottom, and never lost either a heat or a race.
However, within ten years of his racing career – and thanks in part to his siring of speedier, more precocious racers – the priorities of men of the Turf started to change, and heat racing died out. New types of races, run over shorter distances, were introduced, the most prestigious ones acquiring the status of ‘Classics’. Breeders aimed to produce horses that might win these races, and no longer wanted stout stayers, unless they were breeding for the emerging sport of steeplechasing.
Eclipse was speedy, and would have excelled, as his sons and daughters were to do, at these new contests. But on 3 May 1769, and throughout his career, he needed stoutness too. After heat one, he and John Oakley retired to the rubbing-house for a break of just half an hour. Perhaps William Wildman joined them there, to check on the well-being of his horse. Oakley got on the scales, with his saddle, to assure the stewards that he had ridden with the required weight, while another ‘boy’ tended to Eclipse with a special sponge or cloth – special in that it had been soaked in urine and saltpetre, and then dried in the sun. At some meetings, but probably not at a reputable one such as Epsom, the horses enjoyed tots of alcoholic refreshment, as long as no one in authority was about. The rules from 1666 at the Duke of Newcastle’s course at Worksop stated, ‘If any other relieve their horses with any thing but faire water … the offender shall lose the Cup. ’The five horses were then walked back to Banstead. This retracing of a four-mile course seems an odd arrangement, and one would be inclined tosuspect that the plate was run over a different, circular Epsom course were it not for the fact that local historians imply that the Banstead one was in more common use.63
Meanwhile, the Epsom crowd may have been entertained by boxing matches. There were probably cock fights, the enjoyment of which by people ‘of all ranks’ bemused Monsieur Grosley, who considered them to be ‘after all, no more than children’s play’. Gypsies, who had set up an encampment on the Downs for race week, offered to tell your fortune. Other attractions at the course included food and drink stalls, and gambling booths at which you could play EO, an early form of roulette (the wheel consisted of compartments marked ‘E’ and ‘O’), as well as card and dice games, which the inexperienced were well advised to avoid. At Doncaster in 1793, the EO tables, which had been producing results suspiciously biased towards the operators, were seized and burned in front of the Mansion House. Six years later, at Ascot, a gentleman’s servant who had lost all his money, as well as his watch, denounced those who had got the better of him as rogues and thieves; a brawl ensued, and then a riot, which was quelled only by the arrival from Windsor of a party of the Light Horse Brigade. Racegoers also had to keep their eyes open for pickpockets, who themselves had to take care that they were not caught: they risked summary judgment by the crowd, w
ho would cut off their pigtails, duck and beat them. A report from 1791 described a pickpocket’s death ‘from the severe whipping the jockey boys gave him’.
Dennis O’Kelly thought that there was more gambling to be done on the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Plate, in spite of the apparently foregone conclusion of the contest, and returned to the betting post. You get a flavour of the scene from a caricature by Thomas Rowlandson featuring Dennis as well as his lateracquaintance the Prince of Wales. Mounted men crowded round. They roared, pointed and waved their arms, somehow in the confusion hoping to find layers or backers at their chosen prices.64 Dennis, who knew how to make himself heard, got the assembly’s attention when he put in his bid: he would name, he shouted in his rough Irish accent, the finishing positions of the horses in the second heat. He tempted three layers, who offered him even money, 5-4 and 6-4. Then he made his prediction: ‘Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere.’
It is the most famous quotation in racing, the line that summarizes Eclipse’s transcendent ability. It was not a simple piece of hyperbole, of the ‘the other horses won’t know which way he went’ or ‘they’ll have to send out a search party for the others’ kind: it had a precise meaning. Dennis was predicting that Eclipse would pass the post before any of his rivals had reached the distance marker; they would not receive placings from the judge, who would make the bare announcement ‘Eclipse first.’ Gower, Chance, Trial and Plume would be, in the context of the official result, ‘nowhere’.
Dennis’s words have proved telling in other contexts too. Reviewing a new (1831) edition of James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the historian Thomas Macaulay wrote, ‘He [Boswell] has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.’ As ever in our story, however, there are alternative versions. One has Dennis saying, ‘Eclipse first, and the rest in no place’; another, ‘Eclipse, and nothing else. ’There are also reports that he made the bet before a race at Newmarket. It was a neat piece of blackleg’s trickery: an interpretation of the letter, if not the spirit, of the bet. At the later, Newmarket race, Eclipse faced only one rival after the first heat, and was backed heavily to win heat two by a distance. Dennis is certain to have been among the backers. He would not have referred to ‘the rest’ then, but he may have predicted something along the lines of ‘Eclipse first, the other nowhere’.
Eclipse Page 9
