Eclipse (23 page)

It has been an unvarying feature of society that no matter how successful or eminent you are, you always have to know your place. The late Auberon Waugh, son of one of the great novelists of the twentieth century (Evelyn Waugh) and a self-confessed
member of the ‘bourgeois cultural elite', discovered on arrival at Oxford University that he was excluded from the smart set that congregated round the dons Maurice Bowra and Isaiah Berlin. What he lacked, he concluded sourly, was ‘an ancient name, a stately home and a couple of thousand acres'. Friends of the late Princess Margaret took care always to address her, in line with royal protocol, as ‘Ma'am', while very dear friends called her ‘Ma'am darling'. We might conclude, on hearing that Dennis and Charlotte entertained royalty and lords at Clay Hill, that eighteenth-century society was more fluid; but away from Epsom – or from the King's Place brothel – the barriers were up.

Dennis was bitterly uncomprehending that men with no obvious claim to pre-eminence, and who socialized with him and played sport with him, in effect continued to say, ‘You are beneath us.' The key man who held that attitude kept the social contact to a minimum as well. During the Epsom races, Sir Charles Bunbury partied at The Oaks, not at Clay Hill. It seems that he would not send his mares there either, and he owned, throughout his racing career, only one horse sired by Eclipse. Bunbury ran the Jockey Club, he determined its rules, and he did not like the cut of Dennis's jib.

Dennis's feelings came out when he offered a jockey
¹¹³
a huge salary of £400 to be his retained rider, and promised to double the sum if the jockey agreed never to ride for ‘any of the black-legged fraternity'. The jockey asked whom he meant. ‘O, by Jasus, my dear, ' Dennis shouted, ‘and I'll soon make you understand who I mean by the black-legged fraternity! There's the D of G, the Duke of D, Lord A, Lord D, Lord G, Lord C, Lord F, the Right Hon. A, B, C, D, and C, I, F, and all the set of
thaves
that
` and clubs, where they can meet and rob one another without detection!'

One of these ‘thaves', Lord A (Abingdon), offered Dennis a classically patrician put-down one evening at Burford races. The company at dinner were proposing matches for the following year, and Abingdon – owner of Eclipse's sire, Marske – offered to race a horse against one belonging to a Mr Baily, who appealed to Dennis for help over the terms. Giving a succinct precis of the English sportsman's attitude that professionalism is infra dig, Abingdon observed loftily, ‘I, and the gentlemen on this side of the table, run for honour; the Captain [Dennis] and his friends for profit.'

The match was made, and Baily asked Dennis to stand half of the 300-guinea stake. Dennis, who did not approve of the terms, declined, adding fiercely: ‘If the match had been made cross and jostle,
¹¹⁴
as I proposed, I would have stood all the money; and by the powers I'd have brought a spalpeen [young ruffian] from Newmarket, no higher than a two-penny loaf, that should (by Jasus!) have driven his lordship's horse and jockey into the furzes, and have kept them there for three weeks!'

Dennis also made a bid for social cachet through the military. While he happily brandished his bogus rank of ‘Count', bestowed by a fellow inmate in the Fleet, he recognized that a more prestigious title might carry more weight. His opportunity came when a noble, to whom he had given some ‘secret services' in the course of a legal action, secured him a captaincy in the Westminster Regiment of the Middlesex Militia.

The militias, which were the responsibility of lord lieutenants of counties, were raised with the aim of securing England against enemy invaders. They recruited through a form of national service: your name went into a ballot, and if it was drawn, you had to join up; you also had to make yourself available each year for
training. A typical order stated: ‘Every militia man (not labouring under any infirmity incapacitating him) who shall not appear at the time appointed for the annual exercise shall be deemed a deserter and forfeit £20 or six months in gaol, or until he has paid.'

The Genuine Memoirs of Dennis O'Kelly
may have been unreliable, but they offered a plausible portrait of a regiment comprising a motley assortment of officers and soldiers – a Georgian Dad's Army. ‘Lamb, the Major, was a common mechanic, we believe, a watch-maker; and the Captains and Subalterns were, in general, really so low and obscure, as to be beneath the level of contempt or observation.' By the 1770s, the regiment had found roles for further obscure personages, whom the author of the
Memoirs
gleefully caricatured. There was Burbridge, a farmer, who despite his rank of lieutenant colonel responded to every enquiry about regimental business with the words: ‘What do you ask me for? I do not know.' There was Barlow, the major, ‘a superannuated mercer', incapable of marching because of gout, but useless on horseback as well. Dennis's fellow captains included a Dutchman called William Hundeshagen, whose frame held ‘not six ounces of flesh' and whose misshapen hands and feet were evidence, like those of a castrato, of ‘nature diverted from its regular courses'. Our hero, though, ‘bore the most soldierly appearance of any officer in the regiment'.

This was the time of the American War of Independence (1775 to 1783), when Britain's enemies also included the French, Spanish and Dutch. Dennis's regiment travelled round the country on manoeuvres. In 1781 to 1782, for example, there were musters in Kent, Liverpool and Lancaster. Dennis journeyed in style, with accompanying carriages and servants, and Charlotte followed, with her own lavish retinue. He also found time – as no doubt did she – for his ‘more profitable avocations'. But he was present at every important military exercise, and he stood firm whenever there appeared to be a threat, while his fellow soldiers panicked – or so the
Genuine Memoirs
had it. Resorting to crudity, the author
reported that when enemy ships could be seen off the coast, ‘the temple of Cloefina [the lavatory] became the alternate and eternal citadel of [Dennis's fellow officers'] prowess'. Dennis petitioned the Lord Lieutenant to dismiss these officers, without result. There would soon be peace, the Lord Lieutenant observed; and the men were old.

By the beginning of 1781, Dennis had risen to the rank of major, in charge of one of the regiment's nine companies, and had led the regiment before the King in St James's Park. He became Lieutenant Colonel Dennis O'Kelly in 1782. He failed to show gratitude to his supporters for his elevation, though. The
Genuine Memoirs
, switching as they often did from eulogy to censure, reported that Dennis did not invite any of his fellow soldiers to a grand entertainment in Lancashire attended by Lord Derby and various other nobles: ‘A conduct so ungrateful, and so strongly tinged with upstart insolence, could not fail of producing great enmity and ridicule, and it is a fact, to the honour of those who were of that party, that even they joined in the general censure and disgust.'

Although Dennis's overtures to the Jockey Club made no headway, in other respects his Turf affairs were beginning to thrive. In
Eclipse and O'Kelly
, Theodore Cook recorded some of his impressive transactions. One of Dennis's broodmares, the Tartar mare, proved especially valuable, throwing ten chestnut offspring to Eclipse between 1772 and 1785; and Dennis made good money by selling them. The colts Antiochus and Adonis went to Sir John Lade (1, 500 and 1, 000 guineas; at the Cumberland dispersal sale, the renowned Herod had fetched only 500 guineas, and Eclipse only 45), Jupiter to Mr Douglas (1, 000 guineas), and Mercury to Lord Egremont (2, 500 guineas). Mr Graham offered 5, 000 guineas for Volunteer, but was turned down. The fillies were in demand too: Venus went to Lord Egremont (1, 200 guineas), the dam of a racer called Crazy and a Herod mare went to Mr Broadhurst (300 guineas), Lily of the Valley went to the Duke of
Bedford (700 guineas), Boniface and a Herod mare to Mr Bullock (250 guineas), and Queen Mab to the Hon. George Bowes for 650 guineas. The
Annual Register
, the chronicle of events of the year, reported of the Jupiter transaction that it involved a bonus of £500, payable to Dennis if the colt won on his debut.

Amid these transactions, Dennis was never tempted to part with his most valuable asset. Lord Grosvenor, owner of Eclipse's outstanding son Pot8os, offered 11, 000 guineas for Eclipse; Dennis responded to the offer with the impossible demand of 20, 000 guineas, a £500 annuity, and three broodmares. When another interested party (the Duke of Bedford, perhaps) asked about the stallion's selling price, Dennis replied, ‘By the Mass, my lord, and it is not all Bedford level that would purchase him.'

The fame of stallion and owner are apparent in contemporary references. In a heavy-handed satire entitled
Newmarket: Or an Essay on the Turf
(1775), the author wrote, with galumphing jocularity:

I think I never met with a stronger proof of this, nor with any thing that ever pleased me better, than the following important article of intelligence. ‘On Sunday last arrived in town, Count O'Nelly, master of the famous horse Moonshade.' See how honour, coy mistress as she is, yet mounted this gentleman's horse, and announced his arrival in town.

I only urge, that the following titles, given to an excellent horse, would sound very nobly, and be bestowed with admirable justice. Kelly's Eclipse. Creations: Duke of Newmarket; Earl of Epsom and York; General of the Race-grounds; Baron Eclipse of Mellay; Viscount Canterbury; Lord of Lewes, Salisbury, Ipswich, and Northampton; Marquis of Barnet, and Premier Racer of all England.

¹¹⁰
Nephew of the Cumberland who bred Eclipse.

¹¹¹
From
The Genuine Memoirs of Dennis O'Kelly
.

¹¹²
His horse David Junior won the 2006 running.

¹¹³
‘Thormanby' (William Willmott Dixon), writing more than a hundred years later, said that the jockey was Frank Buckle. Born in 1766, Buckle began riding at seventeen, so the story is feasible. He succeeded Sam Chifney as the leading jockey of his era, and was noted, unlike some of his contemporaries, for his unassuming manner and honesty.

¹¹⁴
A race in which contestants have licence to try to impede the other horses.

I
N HER PROFESSIONAL LIFE
, Charlotte remained Charlotte Hayes or Mrs Hayes. But away from the King's Place nunnery, she was Charlotte O'Kelly. Whether there was ever a Mr Hayes, we do not know, and we have no evidence that Charlotte and Dennis ever became wife and husband. It has been suggested that theirs was an unofficial union, like the ‘Savoy Chapel wedding' performed by the impious clergyman John Wilkinson with which the younger Dennis was reported to have duped a young lady of fortune. The
Genuine Memoirs of Dennis O'Kelly
had this to say on the subject: ‘Whether the God of love had … presented [Charlotte] at the altar of Hymen, we do not presume to ascertain. Certain it is, that if reputation, and cohabitation, were sufficient evidences of matrimony, the performance of that ceremony must have been confirmed in the eyes of the world. 'Which is a nice way of saying that no marriage ever took place.

Charlotte was wealthy, successful, extravagant, and careless. An astute and often unscrupulous businesswoman, she was also wayward and nervy, and often landed in trouble. In 1776, the creditors of a bankrupt haberdasher, James Spilsbury, got her imprisoned in the Marshalsea for unpaid debts concerning ‘the use and hire of certain clothes and garments … let to hire
to the said Charlotte at her special interest and request … and also for work and labour before that time done performed and bestowed … in making fitting adorning and trimming diverse clothes, garments and masquerade dresses'; ‘the said Charlotte not regarding her said several promises and undertakings so made as aforesaid but contriving and fraudulently intending craftily and subtly to deceive and defraud … hath not yet paid the said several sums of money or any part thereof …' The creditors sued for £50. Charlotte spent several months in jail before Dennis secured her release. Whether his delay was a symptom of lack of gallantry or lack of funds is not altogether clear.

The author of the
Genuine Memoirs
certainly showed gallantry. ‘No woman could have maintained a better conduct, ' he insisted. ‘[Charlotte's] conversation was delicate and agreeable, and her manners conciliating, from gentleness and modesty. 'This paragon would never have defrauded anyone: her debt was ‘rather neglected than withheld'. Such was the respect due to Charlotte, the
Genuine Memoirs
added, that the arresting officers were inclined to dismiss the claim against her, and they allowed her bail instead so that the true extent of the debt could be revealed and discharged. Dennis was in York at the time, and about to land himself in the ‘unfortunate adventure' with Miss Swinburne. The evidence belies this account, however. Charlotte did indeed go to prison, and Dennis was not in York. His adventure there had taken place six years earlier.