ECLIPSE & O'KELU ECLI *775 I906 THEODORE ANDREA COOK LIBRARY UNIVERSITY^ PENNSYLVANIA ) jXittmhoust tfrmy C' 5"/ 5>3 University of Pennsylvania Libraries Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/eclipseokellybOOcook .v^ ( ^¥ ECLIPSE @> O'KELLY BEING A COMPLETE HISTORY SO FAR AS IS KNOWN OF THAT CELEBRATED ENGLISH THOROUGHBRED ECLIPSE (1764-1789) OF HIS BREEDER THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND & OF HIS SUBSEQUENT OWNERS WILLIAM WILDMAN DENNIS O'KELLY & ANDREW O'KELLY NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME SET FORTH FROM THE ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES & FAMILY MEMORANDA By THEODORE ANDREA COOK m.a. f.s.a. AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF" ETC. ETC WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS PEDIGREES AND REPRODUCTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY MCMVII C774 Copyright All rights reserved ONtVERSJTV t -LIBRARIES* I TO GENERAL HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE CHRISTIAN OF SCHLESWIG HOLSTEIN, A K.G., G.C.V.O., P.C., »-» {/I AIDE-DE-CAMP TO THE KING AND Ui RANGER OF WINDSOR GREAT PARK, AS THE RESPECTFUL TRIBUTE OF A SINCERE GRATITUDE TO ONE WHO LIVES WHERE LIVED THE BREEDER OF SPILETTA'S FOAL, AND GUARDS THE PASTURES WHERE THE SON OF MARSKE WAS BORN THIS HISTORY OF ECLIPSE IS DEDICATED BY THE WRITER 3 i & : PREFACE £htis mihi tribuat ut scribantur sermones mei ? $>uis mihi det ut exarentur in libra ? Y readers may be glad to learn that the circum- stances of the race in which Hiero, King of Syra- cuse, won the Olympic crown with his good horse, M Phrenicus, are not sufficiently well known to enable me to enlarge on the antiquity and development of horse- racing. But the description of the owner is worth recalling. " August he was in his converse with citizens, and he upheld the breed of horses after the Hellenic wont." No other poet save an Englishman could have so written ; and of no other king save of an English king, could Pindar's ode hold true. England has yet another parallel with ancient Greece. It was a matter of vital importance to Alcibiades, over two thousand years ago, to win that Olympic crown himself. He entered seven, and almost equalled the record of M. Edmond Blanc by owning the winner and the second. An English Prime Minister has done even better ; for Lord Rosebery has won the Derby thrice, and the origin of that historic race has never been more tersely described than in Lord Rosebery's words " In the last quarter of the eighteenth century a roystering party at a country house founded two races, and named them gratefully after their host and his house—the ' ' Derby ' and the Oaks.' Seldom has a carouse had a more permanent effect." It is chiefly with this eighteenth-century beginning of England's classic races that these pages will deal ; "for it was Dennis O'Kelly's son of Eclipse who won the second Derby, and out of the 127 races, including the first, Eclipses descendants have furnished eighty-two winners VII PREFACE up to 1906. No complete study of this remarkable horse's career has ever been published, and since the valuable essay of Vial de Saint Bel in 1791, no monograph has been devoted to his history. He was sold as a yearling for less than a hundred guineas. Of his direct descendants, a yearling filly has lately been sold at 10,000 guineas ; a racehorse in training has fetched at public auction ^39,375 ; two sires have each produced stock winning over half a million sterling; and other horses tracing to him in direct male line have won the " Triple Crown " nine times out of ten, and hold the record for the pace at which the Two Thousand, the Derby, and the Leger have been won. These are hard facts, and they explain why it is worth while to pay so much attention to a single animal ; for there is probably no other in the history of the world which has been the prime cause of so much money changing hands. But let us not be sordid. If our legislators go on as they have begun, there will probably be no Derby or St. Leger for our descendants to admire, and no more lists of winning stallions for our breeders to contemplate with envious eyes. Newmarket, Ascot, and Epsom will be abolished, with the Stock Exchange, as the haunts of the immoral gambler, and betting will be adding fresh offences to the calendar in directions hitherto unknown. While I hasten, therefore, to use the statistics that exist before they pass into oblivion or are added to the growing stock of information that is subject to criminal proceedings, I cannot refrain from emphasising that there are wider themes in such an essay as I have attempted than merely the money made by other people out of racing. Eclipses breeder, the Duke of Cumberland, and the two O'Kellys, uncle and nephew, who owned him, are all three most interesting people, and each in an entirely different way. The mention of their names leads me to an apology which should have been made with my first line. This book was written and ready for the printer some eight months before it was offered to an indulgent public. viii PREFACE To my readers and my publisher alike I owe an explanation of this apparently inexcusable delay, and I confidently believe that both will pardon me. I had just completed a study based on what seemed to be all the available evidence, when from Major Philip Langdale in Yorkshire, and from Sir Thomas Grattan Esmonde in Ireland, I received a large number of the papers and memoranda con- nected with the career of Dennis and Andrew O' Kelly on Turf. They revealed Andrew to me for the first time the ; and I think they will materially change the verdict hitherto passed on Dennis. Apart from that, they present details of racing and social life from 1770 to 1820 which I have never seen elsewhere ; and by the kindness of their owners I have reproduced several of the more important manu- scripts in facsimile. To take one example of their value : this is the first book that will reproduce both the portraits and the handwriting of Dennis O'Kelly and his heir. Apart from the Stud-book of Cuthbert Routh of Yorkshire, (17 18-1752), discovered by Mr. J. S. Fletcher, I know no older memoranda of a racing stud which have been published. It will be as well to say, here and at once, what has to be said about the rest of the illustrations. The dedication of this essay to H.R.H. Prince Christian is no mere formal recognition of the interest so appropriately taken in its subject by the tenant of the house where Eclipse s breeder lived, and by the guardian of the historic paddocks where Eclipse was born. It is my only way of expressing my sincere thanks for valuable help given by His Royal Highness in many essential details of this work, and for the use of several pictures now in Cumberland Lodge which are reproduced in these pages. To Sir Walter Gilbey, for whose portrait I am indebted to the skill and kindness of Mr. William Nicholson, I owe the possibility of printing here the two finest portraits of Eclipse ever painted by Stubbs. Mr. Hargreaves, of Pendleton, sent me the painting of Spiletta, and from Mr. Parsons, of Alsager in Cheshire, I received the portrait of Waxy. I believe ix b PREFACE neither of these latter have been seen before. To Lady Dorchester I owe a fine portrait of the horse by Sartorius. Mr. J. Jeffery sent me the map of Epsom showing Clay Hill, O'Kelly's racing stables. Mr. Max Beerbohm very kindly gave me his delightful drawing of the Prince Regent and Beau Brummell. Mr. Julius Sampson was good enough to let me reproduce his paintings of Gimcrack and Eclipse by Sartorius. I have to thank the Stewards of the Jockey Club for kindly allowing Mr. Hailey to photograph their Eclipse foot for me. Mr. Ducros, the present occupant of Cannons, permitted me to photograph O'Kelly's house. Messrs. Virtue & Co., the publishers of my " History of the English Turf," have generously allowed me to reproduce some pictures that originally appeared in that publication. To Mr. Ridewood, of the British Museum of Natural History, I owe my hearty thanks for most kindly superin- tending Mr. W. E. Gray's admirable photographs of Eclipses bones, and to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in Red Lion Square I must express my sincere gratitude for allowing their precious relics to be photo- graphed. The proper illustration of a monograph on Eclipse is a very difficult problem ; and, as will have been realised, it has only been made possible at all by the kindness of many sympathetic correspondents. Something of what is in- volved may be imagined from the fact that Lord Rosebery possesses the following paintings of Eclipse in his wonder- ful collection at The Durdans : (i) By F. Sartorius 1770, a picture very like the Stubbs type, but without the jockey and a different back- ground. (2) By Stubbs, showing the horse cantering at exercise in his clothing, not very successful. Stubbs, (3) The original of the well-known engraving by of the horse standing saddled near a stable. the jockey. (4) A sketch for this original, showing only depicting the (5) A somewhat impossible Sartorius, animal "at full stretch," with his jockey.