CHAPTER XII

TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF

In the whole drama of the British Peerage there are few figures at once so splendid in promise and opportunities, so pathetic in failure and so tragic in their exit as that of the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings. Seldom has man been born to a greater heritage; scarcely ever has he flung away more prodigally the choicest gifts of fortune.

When Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet was born one July day in 1842 it was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank and wealth and exceptional personal gifts should have ensured for him a leading rôle . He was still in the cradle when his father, the second lord, died; and he was barely nine years old when the death of his elder brother made the school-boy a full-blown Marquess, the inheritor of vast estates and a princely rent-roll.

But Fate, which had showered such gifts on the young lord had, as so often happens, marred them all by the curse of heredity. The taint of gambling was in the boy's blood. His mother had won an unenvi able reputation throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the "jolly fast Marchioness" was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess, was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they manifested themselves in a dangerous form.

While he was still an undergraduate at Oxford the young Marquess who, from childhood, could not bear the sight of a book when there was a dog or a horse to claim his attention, began that career on the turf which was to be as tragic in its end as it was dazzling in its zenith. He bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for £13,500 a horse called Kangaroo, which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser, and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts of a hansom.

But, so far from being disheartened by this initial experience, Lord Hastings had barely thrown aside his cap and gown before he was owner of half a hundred race-horses, with John Day as trainer; and was fully embarked on his turf-career. From the very first year of his enlarged venture success smiled on him. Ackworth won the Cambridgeshire for him, in 1864; the Duke captured the Goodwood Cup two years later; and the Earl carried off the Grand Prix de Paris. In the four years, 1864 to 1867 the Marquess won over £60,000 in stakes alone, while his winnings in bets were larger still. So excellent a judge of a horse was he that he only spoke the truth when he boasted, "I could easily make £30,000 a year by backing other men's horses." Indeed on one race, Lecturer's Cesarewitch, he cleared £75,000. Such was the brilliant start of a racing-career which was to close so soon in failure and disgrace.

In the world of the Turf the youthful Marquess was hailed as a new deity. At Epsom, Newmarket, and a dozen other race-courses his appearance created as much sensation as that of the Prince of Wales himself; he was greeted everywhere with cheers and a salvo of doffed hats; and the way in which he scattered his smiles and his bets was regal in its prodigality.

Such was the splendid, reckless fashion in which the Marquess would fling about his wagers until he frequently stood to win or lose £50,000 on a single race. If he had always kept his head under the intoxication of this wild gambling he might perhaps have made another fortune equal to that he had inherited. But his wagering was as erratic as himself, and his gains were punctuated by heavy losses which began to make inroads on even his enormous resources.

The first crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867, to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely laid against him.

Hermit's sensational victory was the climax of a singular and romantic story. Three years earlier Lady Florence Paget, daughter of the second Marquess of Anglesey, had been the affianced bride of Mr Henry Chaplin, who was passionately devoted to her, little dreaming that another had stolen her heart from him. One day Lady Florence, with Mr Chaplin for escort, drove to Messrs Swan & Edgar's, ostensibly on shopping bent; but the shopping was merely a cloak to another and treacherous design. She entered the shop, slipped out through the back entrance where Lord Hastings was awaiting her, jumped into his cab, and was whirled away while her fiancé patiently and unsuspectingly awaited her return at the opposite side of the building.

When Mr Chaplin realised the dastardly trick that had been played on him, he bore the blow to his pride and affection right bravely. No trace of resentment was ever shown to the world; but he would have been less than a man if he had not cherished thoughts of retaliation. His opportunity came when Hermit was offered for sale by auction, and Lord Hastings was among the keenest bidders for the son of Newminster and Eclipse. At any cost Mr Chaplin determined to baffle his betrayer for once—and he succeeded; for, when the Marquess stopped short at 950 guineas, Mr Chaplin secured the colt by a further bid of 50 guineas.

At the time he little realised—nor did he much care—what a bargain he had got; for Hermit not only sired two Derby winners in Shotover and St Blaise, before he died his sons and daughters had won among them £300,000 in stake-money alone. Not much later came that ill-starred Derby, which none who saw it can ever forget. Lord Hastings, angry at having lost the horse to his rival, laid the long odds against Hermit so recklessly that he stood to lose a large fortune by his success; and Hermit's last few gallant strides cost him over £100,000.

It was a staggering blow, under which the most stoical man with the longest purse might well have reeled; but the Marquess met it with a smile of indifference; and when, a few minutes later, he drove off the course, with his friends, in a barouche and four to dine at Richmond, he seemed the gayest of the company. A few days before his death, recalling this tragic moment in his life, he said proudly, "Hermit fairly broke my heart. But I didn't show it, did I?"

That his smiling face must have masked a very heavy heart, it scarcely needed his own confession to prove. Rich as he still was, the loss of more than £100,000 was a very serious matter. Indeed we know that he was only able to meet his liabilities by parting with his magnificent estate of Loudoun in Scotland, which realised £300,000. When the doors of Tattersall's opened on the morning of settling-day, the first to present themselves were his agents, who handed over £103,000 in settlement of all claims against the Marquess. Mr Chaplin had scored, and scored heavily; but at least it should never be said that his defeated rival had shrunk from paying the last ounce of the penalty the moment it was due.

When next his lordship appeared on a race-course—it was at Ascot, a few months later—he was greeted with thunders of cheers from the bookmakers, a tribute to his pluck and sportsmanship, which must have taken away some of the sting of defeat. But fate which had dealt this merciless blow to the Marquess was in no mood to spare him further disaster. The second stroke fell within five months of the first—at the Newmarket second October Meeting. The favourite for the Middle Park Plate was Lord Hastings' filly, Elizabeth, whose chances he fancied so much that he backed her heavily, confident that he would recover a great part of his Derby losses.

When Elizabeth, instead of running away from her rivals, passed the winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. "Tell me how I stand," asked her ladyship, as she placed her betting-book in his hand. The Marquess made the necessary calculation; and with a smile of sympathy, answered: "You have lost £23." And he, who could thus calmly calculate so trifling a loss, was £50,000 poorer by his filly's failure to win the Plate!

He knew well that he was a ruined man—worse than this, unutterably galling to his proud spirit—he knew that he was a disgraced man. His vast fortune had crumbled away until he had not £50,000 in the world to pay this last debt of honour. And yet he continued to smile in the face of ruin, carrying through this crowning disaster the brave heart of an English gentleman and a sportsman.

He sold the last of his remaining acres, his hunters and hounds, and all his personal belongings; and all the money he could raise from the wreckage of his fortune was a pitiful £10,000. His last sovereign was gone, and he was £40,000 in debt, without a hope of paying it. When he next appeared on a race-course the very men who had cheered him to the echo at Ascot greeted him with jeers and angry shouts at Epsom. The hero of the Turf, the idol of the Ring, was that blackest of black sheep, a defaulter!

And not only was he thus branded as a defaulter. Strange stories were being circulated to his further discredit as a sportsman. The running of Lady Elizabeth in one race was, it was said, more than open to suspicion. The Earl, who was considered a certainty for the Derby, was unaccountably scratched on the very evening before the race, though the Marquess stood to win £35,000 by her, and did not hedge the stake-money.

The public indignation at these discreditable incidents found a vent in the columns of the Times ; and although Lord Hastings denied that there was "one single circumstance mentioned as regards the two horses, correctly stated," and offered a frank explanation in both cases, the public refused to be appeased, and the stigma remained.

So overwhelmed was he by this combination of assaults on his fortune and his good name that his health—undermined no doubt by excesses—broke down. He spent the summer months of 1868 in his yacht, cruising among the northern seas in search of health; but no sea-breezes could bring back colour to his cheeks or hope to his heart. He was a broken man before he had reached his prime, and he realised that his sun was near its setting. When he returned to England no one who saw him could doubt that the end was at hand. But his ruling passion remained strong to the last. He was advised by his friends to stay away from the Doncaster races; but he would go, though he could only with difficulty hobble on crutches.

The last pathetic glimpse the world caught of this former idol of the Turf was as, from a basket-carriage, with pale, haggard face and straining eyes, he watched Athena, a beautiful mare which had once been his, win a race. As she was being led to the weighing-house he struggled from his carriage, hobbled on his crutches up to the beautiful animal, and lovingly patted her glossy neck.

Such was the last appearance of the ill-fated Marquess on a scene of his former triumphs. For a few months longer he made a gallant fight for life. He even contemplated another voyage, and a winter in Egypt; but, almost before winter had set in, on the 11th November 1868, he gave up the struggle and drew his last breath—"leaving neither heir to his honours nor the smallest vestige of his ruined fortune; but leaving, in spite of his final failure, the memory of a true sportsman, and of a perfect gentleman who was no man's enemy but his own."

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Before the Marquess of Hastings had mounted his first pony another meteor of the Turf, equally dazzling, had flashed across the sky, and been merged in a darkness even more tragic than his own.

Lord William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, commonly known and loved as "Lord George," who was cradled at Welbeck in February 1802, was the second son of the fourth Duke of Portland, a keen sportsman who won the Derby of 1809 with Teresias. The boy thus had the love of sport in his veins; and a passion for racing was the dominant note in his too brief life from the day, in 1833, when he started a small stud of his own, to that fatal day on which, piqued by his repeated failure to win the coveted "blue riband," he sold every horse in his stables at a word, and abandoned the Turf in despair.

From the day he joined the Army as a cornet of Hussars in 1819, to the tragic close of his life, Lord George always cut a conspicuous and brilliant figure in the world. He was the spoilt child of Fortune; and, like all such spoilt children, was constantly getting into hot water—and out of it again. As a subaltern, for instance, he showed such little respect for his seniors that, one day on parade, a Captain Kerr exclaimed aloud: "If you don't make this young gentleman behave himself, Colonel, I will." Whereupon the insubordinate sub. retorted: "Captain Kerr ventures to say on parade that which he dares not repeat off."

Such was the youth and such the man—gay, debonair, and popular to the highest degree, but always uncontrollable and reckless. As a sportsman he was the chief of popular heroes, his appearance on a race-course being the invariable signal for an ovation, such as the King might have envied. And, indeed, his Turf transactions were all conducted on a scale of truly regal magnificence. Though he was never by any means rich, he often had as many as sixty horses in training, while his racing stud numbered a hundred. He kept three stud farms going, and his out-of-pocket expenses ran to £50,000 and more a year. To provide the money for such prodigality he wagered enormous sums. For the Derby of 1843, for instance, he stood to win £150,000 on his horse Gaper, and actually pocketed £30,000, though Gaper was not even placed. In 1845 his net winnings on bets reached £100,000; and he thought nothing of staking his entire year's private income on a single race.

One by one all the great prizes of the Turf fell to him—some many times—but the only prize he ever cared a brass farthing for, the Derby, always eluded his grasp, though again and again it seemed a certainty. So deep at last became his disgust and mortification at the unkindness of Fate in withholding the only boon he coveted that, in a moment of pique, he decided to sell his stud and leave the turf for ever.

"I'll sell you the lot," he impulsively said to George Payne at Goodwood, "from Bay Middleton to little Kitchener (his famous jockey), for £100,000. Yes or no?" Payne offered him £300 to have a few hours to think the offer over, and handed the sum over at breakfast the next morning. No sooner had the forfeit been paid than Mr Mostyn, who was sitting at the same table, looked up quietly and said: "I'll take the lot, Bentinck, at £10,000, and will give you a cheque before you go on the course." "If you please," was Lord George's placid answer; and thus ended one of the most brilliant Turf careers on record.

And now for the irony of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of pique, for "an old song" was Surplice, the winner of the next year's Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his hand and had let it go!

How keenly he felt the blow may be gathered from the following passage in Lord Beaconsfield's biography:

Just a few months later, on 21st September 1848, his body was found lying, cold and stiff, in a meadow about a mile from Welbeck. That very morning he had risen full of health and spirits, and at four o'clock in the afternoon had set out to walk across country to Thoresby, Lord Manvers' seat, where he was to spend a couple of days. He had sent on his valet by road in advance; but the night fell, and Lord George never made his appearance. A search with lanterns was instituted, and about midnight his body was discovered lying face downwards close to one of the deer-park gates. He had been dead for some hours.

What was the cause of his mysterious death? The coroner's jury appear to have found no difficulty in coming to a decision. Their verdict was, "Died by the visitation of God—to wit, a spasm of the heart." Thus vanished from the world one of its most brilliant and picturesque ornaments, in the very prime of his life and his powers (he was only forty-six), and when he seemed assured of a political future even more dazzling than his Turf fame.

But there were many, among the thousands who deplored the tragic eclipse of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this tragedy. "The hand of God" it was, no doubt, which struck the fatal blow—it always must be; but was there no other agency, and that a human one? Could it not be the hand of a brother? Some have said it was; and although the story is involved in obscurity and may be open to grave doubt (indeed it has been more than once flatly contradicted) there can, perhaps, be no harm in including it in this volume. This is the story as it has been told.

Though Lord George Bentinck was the handsomest man, and one of the most eligible partis of his day he never married; yet, no doubt, he had many an "affair of the heart." But not one of all the high-born ladies, who would have turned their backs on coronets to become "Lady George," could in his eyes compare with Annie May Berkelay, a lovely and penniless girl, who could not even boast a "respectable" parentage.

Miss Berkeley was, so it is said, a child of that most romantic union between the Earl of Berkeley and pretty Mary Cole, the butcher's daughter. This girl he professed to have made his countess shortly after in the parish church of Berkeley. That his lordship legally married his low-born bride at Lambeth eleven years later is beyond doubt, but that alleged first secret marriage was more than open to suspicion. There seems little doubt that the entry the in Berkeley church register was a forgery; and that, not until Mary Cole had borne several children to the Earl, did she become legally his wife by the valid knot tied at Lambeth. It was, in fact, decided by the House of Peers that the Berkeley marriage was not proven, and thus seven of the children were illegitimate.

It was one of Lord Berkeley's children thus branded to the world who is said to have won the heart and the homage of Lord George Bentinck. And little wonder; for Annie May Berkeley had inherited more than her mother's beauty of face and of figure, with the patrician air and refinement which came from generations of noble ancestors.

But handsome Lord George was only one of many wooers whom her charms had enslaved. There were others equally ardent, if less favoured; and among them none other than the Marquess of Titchfield, Lord George's elder brother, and the future "eccentric Duke" of Portland, often referred to as "The Wizard of Welbeck." The Marquess and his younger brother had never been on the best of terms. They had little in common; and when they found themselves rival suitors for the smiles of the same maiden this incompatibility gave place to a bitter estrangement.

It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual relations became strained to a dangerous degree. It is said that the brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George, whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no physical match for him. One day, so the story goes, their constant squabbles reached a climax. After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother's chest, over the heart. Lord George's heart was diseased, and the blow proved fatal.

This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that September day in 1848; of that "spasm of the heart" which, according to the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is explained; as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother, however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from the world in sorrow and remorse? 1p4dtydre2DrYlSpfrdKZmm5DKGs8koSay2qZ2DDV0zQdVExm/NhFXxoeZd9eLhq

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