Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

This latter proprietor, the most celebrated of all—in the sense of being the most widely known and the most talked about—I have reserved for the end of my catalogue. Comte de Lagrange made his début upon the turf in the year 1857, now more than twenty years ago, by buying outright the great stable of M. Alexander Aumont, which boasted at that time amongst its distinguished ornaments the famous Monarque, who had, before passing into the hands of his new owner, gained eight races in eight run, and who, under the colors of the comte, almost repeated the feat by winning eight in nine; and of these two were the Goodwood Cup and the Newmarket Handicap. Afterward, at the Dangu stud, he achieved a fame of another sort, but in the eyes of horsemen perhaps still more important. Never has sire transmitted to his colts his own best qualities with such certainty and regularity. Hospodar, Le Mandarin, Trocadéro were amongst his invaluable gifts to the comte, but his crowning glory is the paternity of the illustrious Gladiateur, the Eclipse of modern times. Gladiateur, said the baron d'Étreilly, recalls Monarque as one hundred recalls ten. There were the very same lines, the same length of clean muscular neck well set on the same deep and grandly-placed shoulders, the same arching of the loins, the same contour of hips and quarters, but all in proportions so colossal that every one who saw him, no matter how indifferent to horseflesh in general, remained transfixed in admiration of a living machine of such gigantic power.

The first appearance of Gladiateur upon the race-course was at the Newmarket autumn meeting of 1864, where he won the Clearwell Stakes, beating a field of twelve horses. He was kept sufficiently "shady," however, during the winter to enable his owner to make some advantageous bets upon him, though it required careful management to conceal his extraordinary powers. His training remains a legend in the annals of the stables of Royal-Lieu, where the jockeys will tell you how he completely knocked all the other horses out of time, and how two or three of the very best put in relay to wait upon him were not enough to cover the distance. Fille-de-l'Air herself had to be sacrificed, and it was in one of these terrible gallops that she finished her career as a runner. Mandarin alone stood out, but even he, they say, showed such mortal terror of the trial that when he was led out to accompany his redoubtable brother he trembled from head to foot, bathed in sweat. In 1865, Gladiateur gained the two thousand guineas and the Derby at Epsom, and for the first time the blue ribbon was borne away from the English. "When Gladiateur runs," said the English papers at this time, "the other horses hardly seem to move." The next month he ran for the Grand Prix de Paris. His jockey, Harry Grimshaw, had the coquetry to keep him in the rear of the field almost to the end, as if he were taking a gallop for exercise, and when Vertugadin reached the last turn the favorite, some eight lengths behind, seemed to have forgotten that he was in the race at all. The public had made up its mind that it had been cheated, when all at once the great horse, coming up with a rush, passed all his rivals at a bound, to resume at their head his former easy and tranquil pace. There had not been even a contest: Gladiateur had merely put himself on his legs, and all had been said. These three victories brought in to Comte de Lagrange the sum of four hundred and forty-one thousand seven hundred and twenty-five francs, to say nothing of the bets. Gladiateur afterward won the race of six thousand mètres (two miles fourteen furlongs) which now bears his name, and also the Great St. Leger at Doncaster. He was beaten but once—in the Cambridgeshire, where he was weighted at a positively absurd figure, and when, moreover, the track was excessively heavy. After his retirement from the turf he was sold in 1871 for breeding purposes in England for two hundred thousand francs, and died in 1876.

Like M. Fould and several other brethren of the turf, Comte de Lagrange felt the discouragements of the Franco-German war, and sold all his horses to M. Lefèvre. Fortunately, however, he had retained in his stud at Dangu a splendid lot of breeding-mares, and with these he has since been able to reconstruct a stable of the first order, though the effort has cost him a very considerable sum. Indeed, he himself admits that to cover expenses he would have to make as much as thirty thousand pounds every year. Four times victorious in the French Derby before 1870, he has since repeated this success for two successive years—in 1878 with Insulaire, and in 1879 with Zut. His colors (blue jacket with red sleeves and a red cap) are as well known in England as in his own country. Within the last six years he has three times won the Oaks at Epsom with Regalia, Reine and Camelia, the Goodwood Cup with Flageolet, the two thousand guineas and the Middlepark and Dewhurst Plates with Chamant. On the 12th of June, last year, at Ascot, he gained two races out of three, and in the third one of his horses came in second.

But the count is by no means always a winner, nor does he always win with the horse that, by all signs, ought to be the victor. He has somehow acquired, whether justly or not, the reputation of being a "knowing hand" upon the turf, and all turfmen will understand what is implied in the term, whether of good or of evil. His stable has been called a "surprise-box," which simply means that the "horse carrying the first colors does not always carry the money;" that people who think they know the merits of his horses frequently lose a good deal by the unexpected turn of affairs upon the track; and that the count, in short, manages to take care of himself in exercising the undoubted right of an owner, as by rule established, to win if he can with any one of the horses that he may have running together for any given event. Nothing dishonorable, according to the laws of the turf, has ever been proved, nor perhaps even been charged, against him; but as one of his countrymen, from whom I have just now quoted, remarks, "He is fond of showing to demonstration that a man does not keep two hundred horses in training just to amuse the gallery."

These repeated triumphs, as well as the not less frequent ones of MM. Lefèvre, Lupin and de Juigné, have naturally set the English a-thinking. They have to admit that the time has passed when their handicappers could contemptuously give a French horse weights in his favor, and a party headed by Lords Falmouth, Hardwicke and Vivian and Sir John Astley of the London Jockey Club has been formed with the object of bringing about some modifications of the international code.

A war of words has ensued between Admiral Rous and Viscount Daru, the respective presidents of the two societies, in the course of which the admiral has urged that as English horses are admitted to only two races in France, the Grand Prix de Paris and the D[/e]auville Cup, while French horses are at liberty to enter upon any course in England, it is quite time that a reciprocity of privileges were recognized, and that racers be put upon an equal footing in the two countries. Not at all, replies M. Daru; and for this reason: there are three times as many race-horses in England as in France, and the small number of the latter would bring down the value of the French prizes to next to nothing if the stakes are based, as they are in England, upon the sum-total of the entries. In France the government, the encouragement societies, the towns, the railway companies, all have to help to make up the purses, and often with very considerable sums. Would it be fair to let in English horses in the proportion of, say, three to one—supposing the value of the horses to be equal—to carry off two-thirds of these subscriptions? To this the Englishman answers, not without a show of reason, that if the foreign horses should come into France in any great numbers this very circumstance would make the entrance-moneys a sufficient remuneration to the winner, and that the government, the Jockey Club and the rest would be relieved from a continuance of their subventions. The discussion is still kept up, and it is not unlikely that the successors of MM. Rous and Daru will keep on exchanging notes for some years without coming nearer to a solution than the diplomats have come to a settlement of the Eastern Question.

I have said that the Jockey Club of Paris grants subventions to the racing societies of the provinces, which it takes under its patronage to the number of about forty-five, but it undertakes the actual direction of the races at only three places—namely, Chantilly, Fontainebleau and Déauville-sur-Mer—besides those of Paris. Up to 1856, the Paris races were run on the Champ de Mars, where the track was too hard and the turns were very sharp and awkward. In the last-mentioned year the city ceded to the Société d'Encouragement the open field at Longchamps, lying between the western limit of the Bois de Boulogne and the river Seine. The ground measures about sixty-six hectares in superficial area, and this ample space has permitted the laying out of several tracks of different lengths and of varying form, and has avoided any necessity for sharp turns. The whole race-course is well sodded, and the ground is as good as artificially-made ground can be. It is kept up and improved by yearly outlays, and these very considerable expenses are confided to Mr. J. Mackenzie-Grieves, so well known for his horsemanship to all the promenaders of the Bois.

The race-course at Longchamps enjoys advantages of situation and surroundings superior, beyond all question, to those of any other in the world. The approaches to it from Paris are by an uninterrupted succession of the most charming drives—the Champs Élysées, the grand avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, and finally through the lovely shaded alleys of the Bois. Arrived at the Cascade, made famous by the attempt of Berezowski upon the life of the czar in 1867, the eye takes in at a glance the whole of the vast space devoted to the race-course, overlooked to the right by a picturesque windmill and an ancient ivy-mantled tower, and at the farther extremity by the stands for spectators. To the left the view stretches over the rich undulating hills of S[\e]vres and of Meudon, strewn with pretty villas and towers and steeples, and rests in the dim distance upon the blue horizon of Les Verriéres.

The elegant central stand or tribune, of brick and stone, is reserved for the chief of the state. In the time of the last presidency it was almost always occupied by the marshal, a great lover of horses, and by his little court; but his successor, M. Grévy, whose sporting propensities are satisfied by a game of billiards or a day's shooting with his pointers, generally waives his privilege in favor of the members of the diplomatic corps.

The stand to the left of the track is the official tribune, very gay and attractive in the days of the Empire, when it was filled by the members of the municipal council of Paris and their families, but to-day rather a blot upon the picture, the wives of the Republican ædiles belonging to a lower—though, in this case, a newer—stratum of society than did their imperial predecessors. The Jockey Club reserves for itself the first stand to the right, from which all women are rigorously excluded. The female element, however, is represented upon the lower ranges of benches, though the ladies belonging to the more exclusive circles of fashion prefer a simple chair upon the gravel of the paddock. It is there, at the foot of the club-stand, that may be seen any Sunday in spring, expanding under the rays of the vernal sun, the fresh toilettes that have bloomed but yesterday, or it may be this very morning, in the conservatories of Worth and Laferrière. The butterflies of this garden of sweets are the jaunty hats whose tender wings of azure or of rose have but just unfolded themselves to the light of day. My figure of "butterfly hats" has been ventured upon in the hope that it may be found somewhat newer than that of the "gentlemen butterflies" which the reporters of the press have chased so often and so long that the down is quite rubbed from its wings, to say nothing of the superior fitness of the comparison in the present case. In fact, the gentlemen do but very rarely flutter from flower to flower within the sacred confines of the paddock, but are much more apt to betake themselves in crowds to the less showy parterre of the betting-ground, where, under the shadow of the famous chestnut tree, such enormous wagers are laid, and especially do they congregate in the neighborhood of the tall narrow slates set up by such well-known bookmakers as Wright, Valentine and Saffery.

Each successive year sees an increase in the number of betters, who contribute indirectly, by means of subscriptions to the races, a very important proportion of the budget of the Jockey Club. But if any one should imagine from this constant growth of receipts that the taste for racing is extending in France, and is likely to become national, he would be making a great mistake: what is growing, and with alarming rapidity, is the passion for gambling, for the indulgence of which the "improvement of the breed of horses" is but a convenient and sufficiently transparent veil. Whether the money of the player rolls around the green carpet of the race-course or upon that of M. Blanc at Monte Carlo, the impulse that keeps it in motion is the same, and the book-maker's slate is as dangerous as the roulette-table. The manager of the one piles up a fortune as surely as the director of the other, and in both cases the money seems to be made with an almost mathematical certainty and regularity. They tell of one day—that of the Grand Prix of 1877—when Saffery, the Steel of the French turf and the leviathan of bookmakers, cleared as much as fifty thousand dollars. Wright, Valentine, Morris and many more make in proportion to their outlay. Four or five years ago these worthies had open offices on the Rue de Choiseul and the Boulevard des Italiens, where betting on the English and French races went on night and day; but the police, following the lead of that of London, stepped in to put an end to this traffic in contraband goods, and the shops for the sale of this sort of merchandise are now shut up. But if all this has been done, and if even those great voitures de poules which once made the most picturesque ornament of the turf, have been banished out of sight, it has been impossible to uproot the practice of betting, which has more devotees to-day than ever before. It has been discovered in other countries than France that the only way to deal with an ineradicable evil is to check its growth, and an attempt to prohibit pool-selling a year or two ago in one of the States of this Union only resulted in the adoption of an ingenious evasion whereby the pictures of the horses entered were sold at auction—a practice which is, if I am not misinformed, still kept up. The same fiction, under another form, is to be seen to-day in France. In order to bet openly one has to buy an entrance—ticket to the paddock, which costs him twenty francs, whereas the general entry to the grounds is but one franc, and any one found betting outside the enclosure or enceinte of the stables is liable to arrest. The police, no doubt, are willing to accept the theory that a man who can afford to pay twenty francs for a little square of rose- or yellow-tinted paper is rich enough to be allowed to indulge in any other extravagant freaks that he pleases.

But with all the numerous bets that are made, and the excitement and interest, that must necessarily be aroused, there is nothing of the turbulent and uproarious demonstration so characteristic of the English race-course. The "rough" element is kept away from the French turf, partly because it would find its surroundings there uncongenial with its tastes, and partly by the small entrance-fee required; and one is thus spared at Longchamps the sight of those specimens of the various forms of human misery and degradation that offend the eye at Epsom and infest even the more aristocratic meetings of Ascot and Goodwood. At the French races, too, one never hears the shrieks and howls of an English crowd, save perhaps when in some very important contest the favorite is beaten, and even then the yells come from English throats: it is the bookmakers' song of victory. A stranger at Longchamps would perceive at once that racing has no hold upon the popular heart, and that, so far as it is an amusement at all apart from the gambling spirit evoked, it is merely the hobby and pastime of a certain number of idle gentlemen. As to the great mass of spectators, who are not interested in the betting, they go to Longchamps as they would go to any place where uniforms and pretty toilettes and fine carriages are to be seen; for the Parisian, as one of them has well said, "never misses a review, and he goes to the races, although he understands nothing about them: the horses scarcely interest him at all. But there he is because he must do as 'all Paris' does: he even tries to master a few words of the barbarous jargon which it is considered bon-ton to speak at these places, for it seems that the French language, so rich, so flexible, so accurate, is insufficient to express the relations and affinities between man and the horse."

The enceinte du pesage, often called in vulgar English "the betting-ring," or the enclosure mentioned above to which holders of twenty-franc tickets are admitted, at Longchamps is scrupulously guarded by the stewards of the Jockey Club from the invasion of the demi-monde—a term that I employ in the sense in which it is understood to-day, and not in that which it bore twenty years ago. A woman of this demi-monde, which the younger Dumas has defined as that "community of married women of whom one never sees the husbands," may enter the paddock if she appears upon the arm of a gentleman, but the really objectionable element is obliged to confine itself to the five-franc stands or to wander over the public lawns. Some of the fashionable actresses of the day and the best-known belles-petites may be seen sunning themselves in their victorias or their "eight-springs" by the side of the track in front of the stands, but this is not from any interest that they feel in the performances of Zut or of Rayon d'Or, but simply because to make the "return from the races" it is necessary to have been to them, and every woman of any pretension to fashion, no matter what "world" she may belong to, must be seen in the gay procession that wends its way through the splendid avenue on the return from Longchamps.

The great day at Longchamps, that crowns the Parisian season like the "bouquet" at the end of a long series of fire-works, is the international fête of the Grand Prix de Paris, run for the first time in 1863. It is open to entire horses and to fillies of all breeds and of all countries, three-year-olds, and of the prize, one hundred thousand francs, half is given by the city of Paris and half by the five great railway companies. It was the late duc de Morny who first persuaded the municipal council and the administrations of the railways to make this annual appropriation; ail of which, together with the entries, a thousand francs each, goes to the winner, after deducting ten thousand francs given to the second horse and five thousand to the third. Last year the amount won by Nubienne, carrying fifty-three and a half kilogrammes, was one hundred and forty-one thousand nine hundred and seventy-five francs, and the time made was three minutes thirty-three seconds on a track of three thousand mètres—one mile seven furlongs, or three furlongs longer than that of the Derby at Epsom.

The fixing of Sunday for this international contest has aroused the prejudices of the English, and has been the occasion of a long correspondence between Admiral Rous and Viscount Daru, but the committee on races has refused to change the day, contending, with reason, that the French people cannot be expected to exchange their usages for those of a foreign country. Although it is understood that Queen Victoria has formally forbidden the prince of Wales to assist at these profane solemnities, this interdict has not prevented the appearance there of some of the principal personages of England, and we have several times noticed the presence of the dukes of St. Albans, Argyll, Beaufort and Hamilton, the marquis of Westminster and Lords Powlett, Howard and Falmouth; though the last, be it said, is believed to be influenced by his respect for the day in his refusal to run his horses in France.

Those who remember the foundation of the Grand Prix will recall the extraordinary excitement of the occasion, when the whole population of Paris, as one of the enemies of the new system of racing said, turned out as they would to a capital execution or the drawing of a grand lottery or the ascension of a monster balloon: the next day the name of the winner was in everybody's mouth, and there was but one great man in the universe for that day at least—he who had conceived the idea of the Grand Prix de Paris. The receipts on this occasion amounted to eighty-one thousand francs: last year they were two hundred and forty thousand. I subjoin a list of the winners from 1863 to 1879, inclusive:

Years. Horses. Owners. Nationality.

1863 The Ranger H. Savile English.

1864 Vermont H. Delamarre French.

1865 Gladiateur Comte F. de Lagrange French.

1866 Ceylon Duke of Beaufort English.

1867 Feryacques A. de Montgomery French.

1868 The Earl Marquis of Hastings English.

1869 Glaneur A. Lupin French.

1870 Sornette Major Fridolin (Ch. French. Lafitte)

1871 (Not run).

1872 Cremorne H. Savile English.

1873 Boïard H. Delamarre French.

1874 Trent W.R. Marshall English.

1875 Salvator A. Lupin French.

1876 Kisber Baltazzi Hungarian.

1877 St. Christophe Comte F. de Lagrange French.

1878 Thurio Prince Soltikoff Russian.

1879 Nubienne Edmond Blanc French.

It will be seen by this list that the superiority of the English-bred horse over the French is far from being established. Of sixteen races, the English have gained but five, [Since this article was written the Grand Prix has again been won (June, 1880) by an English horse, Robert the Devil.] while they have been three times second and four times third, and in 1875 their three representatives came in last. The winner of the Epsom Derby has been beaten several times, as in the case, amongst others, of Blair Athol by Vermont and Doncaster by Boïard. The winners of the two chief prizes of last year were a French, an English and an Hungarian horse—Gladiateur, Cremorne and Kisber. It may be remarked also that the winner of the French Derby, as it is called, which is run at Chantilly a fortnight earlier, is almost never the gainer of the Grand Prix, the only exceptions having been Boïard and Salvator. This result is no doubt the consequence of the system of training too long in vogue in France, and upheld by Tom Jennings and the Carters, which consists in bringing a horse to the post in the maximum of his condition upon a given day and for a given event. The animal can never be in better state, and if he does not win the race for which he has been specially prepared, it is because he is not good enough: he cannot be made to do any better than he has done. But if it is hard to bring a horse to this culminating point of training, it is still more difficult to keep him there, even for a period of a few days. Training has been compared to the sides of a triangle: when one has reached the apex one must perforce begin to descend. It being, then, impossible that the animal should support for any length of time the extreme tension of his whole organism that perfect training supposes, it but very rarely happens that the horse prepared according to this system—for the French Derby, for example—can be maintained in such a condition as to enable him to win the Epsom Derby or the Grand Prix de Paris. We have heretofore referred to the reaction against this practice of excessive training, and to the efforts of Henry Jennings in the direction of a reform—efforts which within the last few years have been crowned with great success.

But we must now return to the Grand Prix. An invalid who had been forbidden by his doctor to read the newspapers for several months, and who should chance to make his first promenade on the Boulevards on the eve of the Grand Prix, would know at a glance that something extraordinary was about to happen. At every step he would meet the unmistakable garb that announces the Englishman on his travels—at every turn he would hear the language of Shakespeare and of Mr. Labouchere adorned with a good deal of horse-talk. Coney's Cosmopolitan Bar, Rue Scribe, is full on this day of betters and bookmakers, and possibly of Englishmen of a higher rank, whilst its silver gril—which is not of silver, however, but polished so bright as almost to look like it—smokes with the broiling steak, and the gin cocktails and brandy-and-soda flow unceasingly. Toward midnight, especially—after the Salon des Courses has closed its doors—is Coney's to be seen in its glory. The circus of the Champs Élysées, where Saturday is the favorite day, makes on this particular Saturday its largest receipts in the year; the Jardin Mabille is packed; the very hackney-coachmen wear the independent, half-insolent look that they have had since morning and will have till the evening of the next day—unfailing sign in Paris that some great spectacle is impending; milliners and dressmakers are out of their wits; the world has gone mad. The restaurant-waiters and the barbers of the Boulevard may condescend, if you happen to be a regular customer and given to tipping, to enlighten you on the chances of the respective horses. The most knowing in these matters are supposed to be Pierre, the host of the Grand Café, right under the rooms of the Jockey Club, and the rotund Henry, keeper of the Restaurant Bignon, Avenue de l'Opéra, the confidant of certain turfmen, who may favor him with invaluable hints if their salmis of woodcocks should have been a success or their cotelette double be done to a turn. Charles, of the Café Durand, Place de la Madeleine, and Henry, the barber of the Boulevard des Italiens, are also posted in the quotations and keep themselves well informed.

On Sunday morning by ten o'clock the Bois de Boulogne is filled with pedestrians, who take their breakfast on the grass to while away the time of waiting. The restaurants Madrid and the Cascade, where the tables are spread amidst flowers and shaded by trees—a feature that is duly remembered in the bills, like an hors d'oeuvre—are turning visitors away. Toward half-past two the enclosure of the paddock is absolutely full: not a vacant chair is to be found, and a fearful consumption of iced champagne begins at the buffet. For, strange to say, the weather is always fine on this day, and the Encouragement Society is as notorious for its good-luck in this respect as the Skating Club and the Steeple-chase Society are for quite the opposite. By degrees—and perhaps helped by the champagne—the vast throng will be observed, as the supreme moment approaches, to depart from its habitually staid and calm demeanor, and finally to show some signs of enthusiasm, though without growing in the least noisy and turbulent, like that at Epsom on the Derby Day. Once in a year, however, I as the French say, doesn't make a custom, and the Parisian crowd, to quote its own expression, "croit que c'est arrivé." The applause, in case the winner is a French horse, comes from patriotic motives: if he happens to be English it is given from a feeling of courtesy; and the crowd having done its duty in either case, the famous "return," that has often furnished a subject for the painter, begins. And a wondrous sight it is. Up to six o'clock the innumerable carriages continue to defile upon the several routes that lead to the city, forming a procession of which the head touches the Place de la Concorde, whilst the extremity still reaches to the tribunes of Longchamps. And when evening comes on, and bets are settled, and heated brains seek to prolong the day's excitement far into the night, such haunts as the Mabille grow so noisy that the police is generally obliged to interfere. There was a time when, on these occasions, that jolly nobleman, the duke of Hamilton, then a prominent figure on the French turf, did not disdain to lead his followers to the battle in person, and to practise the noble art of boxing upon all comers, whether policemen or bookmakers. But these deeds of former days are now but traditions: His Grace has married, which is said to have taught him wisdom, and the bookmakers have grown into millionaires, with a sense of the gravity becoming their position.—L. LEJEUNE.