Eclipse (44 page)

Lloyd's Evening Post
(1764, 1765)

London Chronicle
(1764, 1765)

London Evening Post
(1764, 1765)

The London Magazine
(1772)

Monthly Review
(1788)

Morning Post
(1775)

The Newgate Calendar
(exclassics.com)

Observer
(Clare Balding, ‘The Sheikh Is Unstirred', October 2005)
Pacemaker
(Tony Morris, ‘Sorting Fact from Fiction', October 2007)
Racing Post Bloodstock Review 2007 St James's Chronicle
(1765)

The Sporting Magazine
(various issues)

The Tatler
(July 1927)

The Thoroughbred Record
(September 1920; June 1924)

The Times
(digital archive)

Town & Country
(1769, 1770)

The Veterinary Record
(March 1991)

Whitehall Evening Post
(1788, 1789)

World Fashionable Advertiser
(1788)

York Courant
(1770)

Websites

Ascot.co.uk

Australian Government Culture and Recreation website/ Melbourne Cup

Bloodlines.net

British Horseracing Authority website

Coolmore.com

The Cox Library website

Epsom Salt Council website

Horsesonly.com (Mariana Haun, ‘The X Factor')

HotBoxingNews.com

The Jockey Club website

Measuring Worth website

National Museum of Australia website

North London Collegiate School website

Pedigreequery.com

Royal Veterinary College website

SportingChronicle.com

TBHeritage.com

Traceyclann.com

Victorian-cinema.net

Weatherbys website

Archives

Canons records, North London Collegiate School

Clay Hill papers, Surrey History Centre

Fitzwilliam/Langdale papers, Public Record Office, Northern Ireland

Fleet prison debtors' schedules, London Metropolitan Archives Fleet records, National Archives

Noble Collection, Guildhall Library

Papers of Colonel Andrew Dennis O'Kelly, Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull

Plumer papers, London Metropolitan Archives

St Lawrence, Little Stanmore, burial records, London Metropolitan Archives Wills of Dennis O'Kelly, Andrew Dennis O'Kelly and Charles Andrew O'Kelly, National Archives

Timothy Cox has been extraordinarily hospitable and helpful, allowing me to work at the Cox Library and hunting down information that I would never have discovered on my own. He has also offered many useful suggestions about the text. Any surviving errors are mine.

I got the idea to write this book when I read the passage on Eclipse and Dennis O'Kelly in Glenye Cain's excellent
The Home Run Horse
. She has been very generous in her encouragement. Sean Magee, another writer with far better qualifications than mine for this venture, has given me kind assistance. Michael Church, author of the splendid
Eclipse: The Horse, The Race, The Awards
, also selflessly welcomed me as I stepped on to his territory. I am grateful, too, for the help of the racing writers Tony Morris and Rachel Pagones, and of Martin Stevens of
Pacemaker
.

Caroline Baldock and Gerald Goodman of the Epsom Equestrian Conservation Group took me on a tour of Dennis O'Kelly's and Eclipse's haunts in Epsom. The trainer Philip Mitchell showed me the old stable block at Downs House, home to the O'Kelly racers. I thank John and Rebecca Morton of Thirty Acre Stables, and Jeremy Harte of Bourne Hall Museum.

David Oldrey answered my questions about the O'Kellys, the Jockey Club and the
Review of the Turf
. Dr Renate Weller made time to see me to discuss the Royal Veterinary College's work on Eclipse's skeleton; and I thank her colleagues Professor Matthew Binns and Elspeth Keith. Dr Mim Bower, of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, patiently explained her genetic research.

I thank Judy Burg and Helen Roberts at the archives in the Brynmor
Jones Library, University of Hull; Karen Morgan and the library staff at the North London Collegiate School for Girls; Anne Craig of the Public Record Office, Northern Ireland; Jane Lewis of the Surrey History Centre; Graham Snelling and Alun Grundy of the National Horseracing Museum; Diane Bellis of Waddesdon Manor; Kathryn Jones of The Royal Collection Trust; Wes Proudlock of the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies; Dermot Mulligan of Carlow County Museum; and the staff at the British Library, National Archives at Kew, London Metropolitan Archives, Westminster City Archives, and Guildhall Library.

I also wish to thank Robin Blake, author of
George Stubbs and the Wide Creation
; Peter Mackenzie and Lindsay Ankers of Mainstream Publishing; John Sharp of Weatherbys; Adam Caplin; and Marion Regan.

My editor, Selina Walker, has been a constant guide, never allowing my knowledge of her faith in the book to settle into the complacent assumption that I could not make it better. I thank Sheila Lee for her expert and resourceful work on the illustrations; and everyone at my friendly, collegiate publisher, Transworld. And I thank my agent, Ros Edwards, a friend and support as always.

Endpapers (hardback edition only):
Gentlemen on Horseback Watching a Race
by Thomas Rowlandson, ink and watercolour: courtesy of Sotheby's Picture Library.

Images reproduced in the text:

9
The Covent Garden Morning Frolic
by L. P. Boitard, 1747: Guildhall Library and Art Gallery © Corporation of London.

16 ‘The Whore's Last Shift', anonymous engraving from
The Covent Garden Magazine
, 1770.

29 Portrait of Charles Fox by J. Bretherton, 1782.

32
View of the PUBLIC OFFICE, Bow Street, with Sir John Fielding presiding and a Prisoner under examination
, engraving after Dodd, c. 1779.

47 William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland
by George Townshend, 1751–58: National Portrait Gallery, London.

77
The Coffee-house Politicians
, engraving, 1772: Guildhall Library and Art Gallery © Corporation of London.

88
Plan and Survey of Epsom Race Course
by William Kemp, 1823: by permission of the British Library, Maps 5375 (1).

106 A Late Unfortunate Adventure at York
, engraving, 1770: © The Trustees of the British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings.

121
One of the Tribe of Levi, Going to Brakefast with a Young Christian
, engraving, 1770: courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

151 The Oaks, Surrey, anonymous engraving.

156 ‘The Derby – At Lunch' from
London: a Pilgrimage
by Gustave Doré, 1882.

174 A view, in Indian ink, of Cannons, in the parish of Little Stanmore, or Whitchurch, near Edgeware, the seat of D. O'Kelly, Esq., c. 1790–1810: by permission of the British Library, Maps K Top 30.25.c.

202
George IV at Ascot
, drawing by John Doyle: © The Trustees of the British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings.

207
How to Escape Winning
satire by Thomas Rowlandson¸1791: © The Trustees of the British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings.

217 Dorsal view of the muscle structure of a progressively dissected horse, study No 7 from ‘The Anatomy of the Horse', 1766 by George Stubbs: Royal Academy of Arts, London/The Bridgeman Art Library.

237 Anonymous portrait of Lord George William Cavendish Bentinck, pen and ink, nineteenth century: private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

268
Elements of the veterinary art, containing An essay on the proportions of the celebrated Eclipse …,
by Charles Vial de Sainbel, 1791:The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, RB 614264.

Colour sections

First Section

Eclipse,
by George Stubbs, 1770: private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

View of the Piazza, Covent Garden
, coloured engraving after Thomas Sandby, 1770: Guildhall Library Print Room © Corporation of London;
Vauxhall Gardens
, aquatint after Thomas Rowlandson and A. C. Pugin, 1808: © Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy;
The King's Place
, watercolour by Thomas Rowlandson: © Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancs./The Bridgeman Art Library;
A St James's Beauty
, coloured engraving, 1784: © The Trustees of the British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings.

Marske aged 20
, oil painting by George Stubbs, 1770: courtesy of Sotheby's Picture Library;
Eclipse with John Oakley Up
, oil painting by John Nost
Sartorius, 1771: © Christie's Images Ltd;
A Riding Party in a Country Landscape
, oil painting by Judith Lewis, c. 1755; detail of
Eclipse with Mr Wildman and his Sons
, after an oil painting by George Stubbs, c. 1770: © Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy;
The Eclipse Macarony
, coloured etching by R. St G. Mansergh, 1773: National Portrait Gallery, London.

A Hint for an Escape at the next Spring Meeting
, engraved satire after Isaac Cruikshank, 1792: © The Trustees of the British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings;
The Jockey Club or Newmarket Meeting
, coloured engraving after Thomas Rowlandson, 1811: Jockey Club Estates;
Sir Charles Bunbury with Cox, his trainer, and a Stable-Lad
, painting by Benjamin Marshall, ?1801, a study for
Surprise and Eleanor
: © Tate, London, 2008.

Eclipse
, coloured illustration from
Cassell's Book of the Horse
, 1890, after a painting by George Garrard: © Mary Evans Picture Library/ Alamy.

Second Section

Detail of
Hambletonian
, oil painting by George Stubbs, c. 1800: Mount Stewart, The Londonderry Collection (The National Trust) © The National Trust.

A Bookmaker and his client outside the Ram Inn, Newmarket
, pen and watercolour, by Thomas Rowlandson: Paul Mellon Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library;
Dennis O'Kelly with Others, at Newmarket
, ink and watercolour, by Thomas Rowlandson: The Halifax Collection;
The Race Meeting
, ink and watercolour, by Thomas Rowlandson: courtesy of Sotheby's Picture Library;
The Betting Post
, watercolour by Thomas Rowlandson, 1789: copyright © V&A Images.

Tattersall's Horse Repository,
coloured aquatint after A. C. Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson, from
Ackerman's Microcosm of London
, 1808: © Historical Picture Archive/Corbis;
The Subscription Club Room
, pen and watercolour by Thomas Rowlandson: private collection/© Agnew's, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library;
Richard Tattersall with Highflyer in the background
oil painting by Thomas Beach: private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

The Derby Jig
, ink and watercolour, by George Moutard Woodward, 1797:
courtesy of Sotheby's Picture Library;
Fête Champêtre at The Oaks, near Epsom: the Supper Room
, oil painting by Antonio Zucchi (1726–95): © The Right Hon. Earl of Derby/The Bridgeman Art Library;
Derby Sweepstake
, oil painting by J. Francis Sartorius, 1791–2: Epsom Library, Surrey/The Bridgeman Art Library;
Derby Day,
poster by Vera Willoughby, 1932: © Transport for London; Derby Day, 1928, coloured photo by Francis Frith: Francis Frith Collection/akg-images.

Eclipse relics: Jockey Club Estates; Eclipse skeleton: Royal Veterinary College.

George Stubbs's best-known painting of Eclipse shows him at Newmarket, before the toughest challenge of his career.

Scenes from the louche London over which Charlotte Hayes reigned: (
main picture
) Covent Garden, her spiritual home; (
left
) the Vauxhall pleasure gardens, where Londoners gathered to see and be seen; (
centre
) a gentleman is the centre of attention for some King‘s Place #8216;nuns#8217;; (
right
) a St James#8216;s beauty looks out towards the palace, expecting her royal lover.