Eclipse (14 page)

A
T EPSOM ON THAT
early May day, William Wildman and his team at Mickleham saw for certain that they had a potential superstar in their stable. Their tasks now were to maintain his form, to keep him sound, and to plan a programme of races that would prove his greatness.

Modern trainers would have let Eclipse take it easy for a while. Following the race, they would have given him no more than gentle exercise, only by gradations building up to a stiff gallop or two; finely tuned, he would have returned to modest workouts in the days before his next race. It is a regime that would have struck Georgian trainers as namby-pamby. At Mickleham, Eclipse was back to the uphill gallops and ‘sweats' right away.

Getting to race meetings was tougher then as well. There were no horseboxes: you had to walk. Setting off, with his groom beside him, in the small hours of the morning, a horse could cover about twenty miles in a day. So Eclipse and Oakley probably made their journey from Mickleham to their next race, thirty miles away at Ascot, in two stages, with an overnight stop at an inn. They would have arrived about five days before the race, and continued training on the racecourse, where they may have run a trial against their prospective opponents. Perhaps Eclipse's performance at the
trial explains why just one other horse braved turning up for the race itself.

Eclipse's rival at Ascot on 29 May 1769, for another £50 Noblemen and Gentlemen's Plate, was called Cream de Barbade. Eclipse was quoted at 8-1 on. He won the first heat as easily as the betting had suggested he would. But Cream de Barbade was not a distance behind him, so they raced again. It seemed an unnecessary exercise, and it was: Eclipse won again.

This was when Dennis O'Kelly stepped in to make William Wildman an offer. He asked for a share in Eclipse, and Wildman accepted. Why did Wildman give up any portion of this exciting horse to a man such as Dennis? No doubt Dennis was very charismatic and persuasive, and he certainly offered a generous sum, 650 guineas, for a share that was, according to
The Genuine Memoirs of Dennis O'Kelly
, ‘half a leg'. Six hundred and fifty guineas (assuming the sum was reported correctly) must have been worth more than that, even in a horse of Eclipse's potential: Herod, a proven champion, had cost 500 guineas at the Cumberland dispersal sale, and his buyer got all of him. Whether Dennis's share was half a leg or a whole one or even two or three, his intention was clear: having bought property in Epsom, with land for racehorse stabling, he wanted the star inmate to be Eclipse. The horse would make his name and his fortune – he knew it. With hindsight, one is tempted to describe Wildman's decision to take the money as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of horseracing, but one can see why the price at that time, for a horse with victories in just two moderately significant races, was irresistible.

Eclipse's next race was a greater challenge. King's Plates, instituted by Charles II, were the most prestigious contests in the racing calendar, worth 100 guineas. To add to the test of ‘bottom' that heat racing set, they usually stipulated that horses should carry twelve stone.
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For the King's Plate at Winchester on 13
June, Eclipse faced five opponents, including Slouch, who already had a King's Plate under his belt, and a decent horse called Caliban, who belonged to Dennis. Caliban was 2-1 in the betting, one report stated. The short price is a mystery, because Dennis, knowing Eclipse, cannot have fancied Caliban's chances. One possible explanation suggests itself: Dennis and his associates backed Caliban in order to lengthen Eclipse's odds. Eclipse was available to back for the plate at even money – the longest price at which he would ever start a race.
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The backers of Caliban knew by the end of the first heat that they had, as the punters say, done their money: the horse trailed in a distance behind, and was eliminated. Did Dennis bet on this result? Did he instruct Caliban's jockey not to offer serious opposition? One can get carried away with conspiracy theories, particularly when someone such as Dennis is involved. In any event, Eclipse needed no help from him. He won the first heat, and the second too, this time at odds of 1-10. Even less effort was required two days later, when he turned out for the £50 Winchester City Plate. There were no opponents. It was a walkover, literally: Oakley mounted Eclipse, and they walked over the course to collect the prize.

Rivals were either scared off by Eclipse's growing reputation, or by his performances against them in pre-race trials. At his next engagement, the King's Plate at Salisbury on 28 June, he walked over again. At the same course the following day, Eclipse started at 1-8 for a thirty-guinea City Plate, and won after two heats. He journeyed down to Canterbury on 25 July for the King's Plate there – another walkover. A painting by Francis Sartorius (father of J. N.) commissioned by Dennis a few years later shows the Salisbury or the Canterbury King's
Plate:
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Eclipse and Oakley, in isolation, are walking over a sloping cross-country course marked with white posts.

A new jockey, John Whiting, enters reports of the King's Plate at Lewes in Sussex on 27 July. Whiting was ‘up' (in the saddle) when Eclipse defeated a sole rival, Kingston, over two four-mile heats. (The next day, Kingston won a race worth £50.)

Eclipse had one more race in 1769, meeting another of his several opponents with jocular names. ‘Eclipse' is itself a fine name for a racehorse, suggesting how he overshadowed his contemporaries. ‘Milksop', also one of Cumberland's choices, is less glamorous. We have already met Stiff Dick – it is not clear whether his owner, William III, first called him that. Queen Anne suffered the indignity of seeing her horse Pepper finish behind an opponent called Sturdy Lump. The names of foundation sires and mares were often strikingly descriptive: Old Bald Peg, in reference to white markings; and, indicating reddish tints, the BloodyShouldered Arabian and the Bloody Buttocks Arabian. Some owners and breeders went for irony, choosing names that they hoped their horses would belie in performance. There was Slouch, among the runners-up at Winchester; later, Eclipse would compete against Tortoise. At Lichfield on 19 September, he faced Tardy. The result: Eclipse's fifth King's Plate of the season; odds: 1-7. He was undefeated in nine races, and it was time for his winter break. At last, he was allowed to rest from daily gallops, and to enjoy the freedom of a paddock. He would pick up the routine again the following February.

Some time over the winter, or possibly after Eclipse's first race in the spring of 1770, Dennis O'Kelly fulfilled the ambition he had cherished since first catching sight of the chestnut with a white blaze scorching
across the Epsom Downs: he bought Eclipse outright, taking ownership of the three and a half legs still in Wildman's possession – or whatever Wildman's outstanding share was – for a sum generally agreed to have been 1, 100 guineas; he also appropriated Wildman's racing colours of red with black cap. Eclipse moved the seven miles from Mickleham to Dennis's new Epsom stables in Clay Hill.

Another story, plausible in its portrayal of Dennis but hard to believe in this context, is that Wildman and Dennis gambled over the share. Dennis put two £1, 000 notes in one pocket, and one £1, 000 note in another, and invited Wildman to choose. Wildman plumped for the pocket with the single £1, 000.Would Dennis have risked arousing ill feeling over this important transaction? Perhaps. A less hypothetical question is this: why did Wildman sell a horse who was clearly a superstar? One theory is that there may have been threats to ‘nobble' Eclipse. In fact, Wildman would not have had to receive specific threats to be aware that his champion was at risk: villains were known to break into stables and dose horses with opium; one poor horse died after being fed balls consisting of duck shot. You can see why Wildman may have decided that Dennis and his associates were the men to handle such difficulties.

But there is a pattern to Wildman's bloodstock transactions. His ambition and astuteness led him to acquire fine horses, and his caution prompted him to offload them as soon as they showed their worth. He might have earned a lot more money if he had held on to Gimcrack, his first outstanding racer. He was starting to earn good money from Marske, Eclipse's sire; but a few years later, before Marske's market value had reached its peak, Wildman would sell him too. And he might have earned a small fortune, as well as a more prominent role in racing history, if he had not sold Eclipse to Dennis O'Kelly.

After his legendary debut at the 3 May 1769 Noblemen and Gentlemen's Plate at Epsom, Eclipse never raced again at his home
course. In April 1770, at the beginning of his second season,
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he had more prestigious dates on his schedule. Newmarket, ninety miles to the north-east in East Anglia, hosted a spring meeting that occupied the sporting set, as well as those who visited the town merely for the society, for a week at the end of April. You needed to be there, even if you did not care for racing. Horace Walpole, with magnificently languid insouciance, declared, ‘Though … [I] have been 50 times in my life at Newmarket, and have passed through it at the time of the races, I never before saw a complete one. I once went from Cambridge on purpose, saw the beginning, was tired and went away.'

Eclipse made the five-day journey to the Suffolk town to face his sternest test yet. He was to race in a match against Bucephalus, the finest horse in the stables of Peregrine Wentworth, a Yorkshire MP and landowner with substantial racing interests and a reputation for sartorial elegance. Bucephalus was another five-year-old chestnut, and he came to the match unbeaten; his prizes included the 1769 York Great Subscription, which was among Eclipse's future engagements. He had the same parentage as Spilletta, Eclipse's mother,
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and thus was Eclipse's uncle.
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Wentworth had made the match with William Wildman, contributing 600 guineas to Wildman's 400 – another way of expressing odds about Eclipse of 4–6.

The prelude to this famous race, which took place on 17 April 1770, is the subject of George Stubbs's
Eclipse at Newmarket, with a Groom and Jockey
. Eclipse and his human companions are at the rubbing-house at the start of the Beacon Course, four miles
away from the Newmarket stands. The groom looks apprehensive; the jockey is purposeful and confident; the horse is fit and alert. The scene is quiet, but pregnant with the implication of the superlative performance to come.
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Eclipse and Bucephalus, nephew and uncle, set off from the Beacon Course start, Eclipse assuming the lead as usual. They galloped for more than two miles before taking a dog-leg right turn and heading towards the finish. As they came within sight of the stands, Bucephalus moved up on Eclipse's flank to challenge, goading Eclipse into the most determined gallop of his career. Eclipse surged ahead. Bucephalus strained to keep in touch until, broken, he fell away, leaving Eclipse to arrive at the line well in front. Bucephalus never raced again. Eclipse, by contrast, shrugged off his exertions to race again two days later.

The records of the match in the racing calendars list Eclipse as Mr Wildman's. But Dennis commissioned the Stubbs painting to mark the victory. And the horse was certainly in Dennis's ownership on 19 April, the date of the Newmarket King's Plate. The race was in four-mile heats over the Round Course (a vanished feature of the Newmarket landscape adjoining what is now the July Course), and Eclipse's opponents were a fellow five-year-old, Pensioner, and two six-year-olds, Diana and Chigger. Diana was the winner of previous King's Plates at Newmarket, York and Lincoln. Chigger had already lost once to Eclipse, at the 1769 King's Plate at Winchester. He was owned by the Duke of Grafton, who had resigned recently as Prime Minister and who a few years earlier had scandalized certain sections of society by flaunting his mistress, the courtesan Nancy Parsons. Grafton, later to own three Derby winners, once skipped a Cabinet meeting because it
clashed with a match involving one of his horses. In common with the sport he patronized, he was despised by Horace Walpole (he who had got ‘tired' halfway through watching a race), with the result that his reputation is locked to Walpole's description of him as ‘like an apprentice, thinking the world should be postponed to a whore and a horserace'.

Chigger got no closer to Eclipse at Newmarket than he had at Winchester, and was withdrawn after Eclipse won the first heat. Mr Fenwick, owner of Diana, decided that his mare had no chance of adding another King's Plate to her tally. Only Pensioner maintained a challenge to Dennis's horse. Dennis made his way to the betting post, where he found Eclipse quoted at 7-4 and 6-4 to distance his single rival. This is the moment, in some accounts, when he announced, ‘Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere', or, ‘Eclipse, and nothing else.' But if the Newmarket race is the source of the legendary prediction, the phrasing must have been tampered with, because ‘the rest' was a single horse. So it seems more likely that he uttered the words at Eclipse's Epsom debut. Nevertheless, Dennis, and no doubt his cohorts too, backed Eclipse to distance Pensioner, placing ‘large sums' at 7-4 and 6-4. Eclipse landed the gamble.

As noted earlier, King's Plates were the most valuable races in the Turf calendar, private matches apart. Even so, owners were starting to see little point in challenging for them if it meant racing against Eclipse. He walked over the course for the 100guinea prize at Guildford (5 June); he journeyed north, to Nottingham, and walked over there (3 July); then he headed further north, to York, for the hat-trick (20 August).We can picture him on his journey, perhaps with two grooms by his side. He is a national celebrity, and as he and his companions pass by inns on the route, proprietors and their customers come out to see him. At the inns where they stop each night, the senior groom gets a bed while the junior sleeps with the horse, to keep him safe.