Eclipse (28 page)

Andrew Dennis O'Kelly died, suddenly, in 1820. He left a mystery surrounding his personal life: did he ever marry? In notes about the family left in the O'Kelly archive, Mary O'Kelly Harvey stated that he did, while Theodore Cook, author of
Eclipse and O'Kelly
, disagreed. Cook found references to a son, Charles, and to a daughter, Eliza, and he quoted a letter from Charles to Andrew dealing with the usual O'Kelly themes of bust-ups over rents and mortgages. (‘Mr Michell went down to Grosvenor Place and discovered that Walton the broker was in the act of taking away all the furniture and yours with the rest …W Stacpoole says he will bring an action against you and he has no doubt but that he will be able to saddle you with all the taxes and rent of the house since Mr Stacpoole left England.') But Cook did not spot any references to this family in Andrew's will (dated 1820), and assumed that they had all died.

It seems that Eliza had. However, Cook disregarded a bequest to one Charles Andrews, a student in Aberdeen to whom Andrew gave an annuity of £200, with the provision that he must pursue his studies satisfactorily and observe morality in his
conduct. In the National Archives, there is a will dated 1826 by one Charles Andrew O'Kelly. The brief document states that the author was described as Charles Andrews ‘in the will of my late father Lt Colonel Andrew Dennis O'Kelly', and leaves everything to Charles's mother, named Susanna and with an illegible surname, about which one can be sure only that it is not O'Kelly.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this will and from Andrew's, which makes no mention of Charles's status as a member of the family, is that Andrew was unmarried, and that Charles was illegitimate. Andrew's will contains no reference, either, to a wife.

One of Andrew's principal legatees was his cousin, Philip Whitfield Harvey. The two were close: they had been in the Middlesex Militia together, and Andrew introduced Philip to the Prince of Wales and his circle. What is not clear is whether Andrew and Philip were involved in more clandestine activities. Philip's wife, Frances, inherited an Irish newspaper called the
Freeman's Journal
from a man called Francis Higgins, who had risen to newspaper proprietorship from an unpromising early career doing odd jobs for a felon in Newgate prison. In his will, Higgins also left Andrew £300, declaring that ‘if I did not know that he, my friend, was in great affluence, I would have freely bequeathed him any property I might be possessed of'. Andrew's connection with Higgins, alleged W. J. Fitzpatrick in
Secret Service Under Pitt
(1892), was shady, and Andrew's role was as a conduit between the British government and various secret agents, among them Higgins (the ‘Sham Squire'), who used his position at the
Freeman's Journal
to undermine the cause of Catholic emancipation.
¹³⁷
If that was the case, Andrew may have approached Philip on behalf of the government too. In the family papers, Mary O'Kelly Harvey – daughter of Philip and Frances – is at pains to emphasize her
father's distance from the government, and says that he turned down money to write anti-Catholic propaganda, suffering discrimination as a result.
¹³⁸

Andrew certainly did make himself politically useful. In 1813, we find him investigating the conduct of the Prince's – now the Prince Regent's – estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick. George Augustus had married Caroline, his cousin, under pressure from his father. His first meeting with her, just a few days before the wedding in 1795, was a shock: he found her revolting, and later described her as ‘the vilest wretch this world was ever cursed with'. The Prince, seriously overweight, was far from gorgeous himself; but the unfailing willingness of glamorous women to become his mistresses may have blinded him to that realization. He sought refuge in alcohol on the happy day, and by the evening was so drunk that he collapsed into the fireplace of the bridal chamber, remaining there insensible until the morning. Nevertheless, the union was at some point consummated, and a daughter produced, before the couple separated. The Prince conducted further affairs. Caroline, it was rumoured, took lovers too – a treasonable offence, and one, if proved, that would have given a convenient justification for dispatching her and any descendants to outer darkness. As part of what was known as the ‘delicate investigation', Andrew went to Caroline's house and interviewed her servants, but found no incriminating evidence. In 1821, when George Augustus succeeded to the throne, Caroline arrived at Westminster Abbey for the coronation, but was turned away at the doors.

Andrew was also an ally of the Prince in his racing interests. In that role, he got involved in the Escape Affair.

A target for caricaturists when he was Prince of Wales, George IV is portrayed more respectfully here, in an Ascot scene by John Doyle.

¹³¹
The son of Dennis and Philip's sister, Mary O'Kelly, from her marriage to Whitfield Harvey.

¹³²
Which, just over thirty years earlier, Dennis O'Kelly had also enjoyed.

¹³³
I.e., he was uncontrollable.

¹³⁴
Donegall remained deep in the red until his death in 1844.

¹³⁵
There is no record of what happened to the horses in the end. Perhaps Donegall bought them – and never paid for them.

¹³⁶
She had been in the Fleet from 1758 to 1761, and in the Marshalsea in 1776.

¹³⁷
Though as Fitzpatrick thought that Andrew and ‘Count' O'Kelly (Dennis) were the same person, he may not be the most reliable guide.

¹³⁸
The Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland came into effect in 1801.

G
EORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK
, the Prince of Wales, was clever and – before he expanded to seventeen and a half stone in weight – handsome. He was also vain, extravagant and self-indulgent. His secret marriage to the Catholic widow Mrs Fitzherbert, his numerous affairs, his Whig sympathies, and his girth all made him a target for satirists. ‘Let us enquire who are the chosen companions and confidential intimates of the Prince of Wales. They are the very lees of society: creatures, with whom a person of morality, or even common decency could not associate, ' wrote Charles Pigott in his widely circulated lampoon
The Jockey Club: Or a Sketch of the Manners of the Age
.
¹³⁹
‘[George Augustus] was, however, genuinely fond of racing, ' says the
Biographical Encyclopaedia of British Flat Racing
, as if pointing out the one trait that excuses everything.
¹⁴⁰
One might point also in mitigation to the architectural splendours – among them the streets, terraces and other buildings of John Nash
¹⁴¹
– that are the legacy of the Prince's extravagant patronage.

George Augustus (‘Prinny') had his first runners on the racecourse – the jockeys wearing the royal colours of purple jacket with gold lace, scarlet sleeves and black cap – in 1784. By 1785, he already had eighteen horses in training, the winners including Eclipse's son (and former Derby winner) Saltram, Rockingham (later to be a rival to Dennis O'Kelly's Dungannon), and Rosaletta, who in one race finished second to Dennis's Soldier. The two owners – from absolutely contrasting backgrounds, but each frowned upon by certain sections of the establishment – were social acquaintances, and Dennis, had he still been alive when Pigott wrote
The Jockey Club
, would no doubt have got a mention alongside other representatives of the ‘lees of society'. Prinny was a regular among the guests at Clay Hill when Dennis entertained during the Epsom spring meeting, and they appear together among the crowd of gesticulating and shouting gamblers in Rowlandson's caricature
The Betting Post
.
¹⁴²

By 1786, Prinny had twenty-six horses in training. Naturally, he also had huge debts, and because he got no help in clearing them from his father, he was forced to offload the entire stable. Not going to market from a position of strength, he could not command premium prices. The stud, reported the
St James's Chronicle
, ‘was not sold but given away', to purchasers who in some cases sold on their horses immediately, for double what they had paid. Two of the fillies, Annette and Augusta, were to finish first and second in the 1787 Oaks – Augusta in the ownership of Dennis O'Kelly. Another lot, a Highflyer yearling, went to a Mr Franco. Later, the yearling kicked out in his box and got his foot stuck between the wooden boards, until the grooms managed to free him uninjured. He got the name Escape.

A year later, Parliament cleared Prinny's debts. Immediately,
he splashed out on racehorses again, buying back some of those he had sold, Escape among them. As the disapproving Charles Pigott wrote, ‘No sooner had parliament voted this money, than decency was set at defiance, public opinion scorned, the turf establishment revived in a more ruinous style than ever, the wide field of dissipation and extravagance enlarged, fresh debts contracted to an enormous amount, which it is neither in his own, or the nation's power to discharge, and strong doubts entertained that the money voted by parliament was not applied to the purpose for which it was granted.'

In 1788, Prinny became the first royal winner of the Derby, with his colt Sir Thomas. He had thirty-five horses in training in 1789, and the following year he hired the leading jockey of the day, Sam Chifney, famous for the ‘Chifney rush': a perfectly timed finishing burst after a quiet ride at the back of the field.

A portrait of Chifney gives him the roughened features of a minor member of Britain's gangland. But he was a dandy. His jockey's attire featured ruffs and frills, and he cultivated ‘love locks' that hung down below his jockey's cap. He was also conceited. In his autobiography, to which he gave the frank title
Genius Genuine
, he claimed that ‘In 1773 [when he was 18], I could ride horses in a better manner in a race to beat others, than any person I ever knew in my time; and in 1775, I could train horses for running better than any person I yet saw.' He was, in short, an upstart. Riding grooms then were merely promoted stable lads, and were considered to be, essentially, servants. Here was one assuming the trappings of celebrity. Moreover, Chifney did not appear to be honest. Those waiting tactics: were they not a ploy to lose races that he should be winning? Chifney was the kind of person that authorities are only too delighted to punish.

On 20 October 1791, at Newmarket, Prinny's horse Escape started as the hot, 1-2 favourite for a two-mile race worth sixty guineas. He finished last of four. The next day, he turned out again, for a four-mile race over the Beacon Course. Chifney, who had not
backed him
¹⁴³
in the first race, did so this time, at odds of 5-1; so did the Prince. Escape romped home, ahead of a field including two of the horses who had finished in front of him the day before.

As soon as he passed the post, the rumblings of suspicion and discontent started up. Here, surely, was a blatant scam, not only on the part of Chifney, but of the Prince as well, to get better odds in the second race. A Rowlandson caricature,
How to Escape Winning
, shows Chifney pulling Escape's reins and holding his whip in his mouth, while in the foreground Prinny, with a sly look at the viewer, taps his nose. Agitated, Prinny wrote to Sir Charles Bunbury:

Dear Bunbury, I found on my arrival in London so many infamous and rascally lies fabricated relative to the affair that happened at Newmarket by republican scribblers and studiously circulating the country that I now find it absolutely necessary that these calumnies should be contradicted in the most authentic manner. After having consulted with many of my friends I leave what happened and the manner of contradiction to be discussed between you and my friend Sheridan
¹⁴⁴
who has been so good as to undertake the management of this matter. P.s. If you think that any enquiries are necessary respecting Chifney I only beg you will see such steps taken as you think proper – I am very sincerely yours, G.R.