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Updated: June 20, 2025
Gorby put his hands in his capacious pockets, and strolled leisurely through the room, examining everything with a curious eye. The walls were covered with pictures of celebrated horses and famous jockeys. Alternating with these were photographs of ladies of the stage, mostly London actresses, Nellie Farren, Kate Vaughan, and other burlesque stars, evidently being the objects of the late Mr.
The Portuguese boy passed the Hawaiian. There was a thunder of hoofs, a rush of the three horses bunched together, the jockeys plying their whips, and every last onlooker bursting his throat, or hers, with shouts and yells. Nearer, nearer, inch by inch, the Portuguese boy crept up, and passed, yes, passed, winning by a head from the Chinese. I came to myself in a group of lepers.
He rides his hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited him from occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto.
The rider starts at a pace which he knows his horse can keep, and the dismounted horse, though he gains on him at first, comes back to him as the jockeys say: for a horse which has been distressed for wind in the first hundred yards, will not arrive at the end of a mile nearly so soon as if he had gone the whole at the best pace he could stay at.
Just at first, as has been seen, a month after his Christmas wine with Mr Petulengro, Borrow saw his life as a drama, perhaps as a melodrama, full of Gypsies, jockeys and horses, wild men of many lands and several murderers. "Capital subject," he repeated. That was when he saw himself as an adventurer and Europe craning its neck to keep him in sight.
What would he say, were he to see and hear in the mean attire of jockeys and mechanics, such orators as Greece and Rome never saw or heard in the days of their most exalted glory; unfolding with the penetration of a subordinate Providence, the machinations of a dark and deep conspiracy, erecting elaborate laws to shelter the good, against the enemies of repose, or hurling the thunder of their eloquence against the common foes of their country.
To our thinking no spy, informer or secret service agent would feel suspicious towards Colgius and his friends, nor towards us in their company, and he presented us to idlers, loafers, louts, betting agents, sellers of tips on the races, friends of jockeys, cousins of hostlers and such like to an amazing number.
Playing at soldiers is bad enough, but playing at jockeys is infinitely worse above all, playing at steeple-chase jockeys, combining, as they generally do, all the worst features of the hunting-field and racecourse unsympathizing boots and breeches, dirty jackets that never fit, and caps that won't keep on.
He and the trainer had been thick, but it was a question whether that thickness would still be there. Garrison, alone in the world since he had run away from his home years ago, had no owner as most jockeys have, and Crimmins had filled the position of mentor. In fact, he had trained him, though Garrison's riding ability was not a foreign graft, but had been bred in the bone.
A trial heat between two jockeys mounted on untrained horses may be interesting, but no one would ever quote the performance as an instance of great racing speed. Who shall ever fathom the depth of Lee's anguish when the bitter end came, and when, beaten down by sheer force of numbers, and by absolutely nothing else, he found himself obliged to surrender!
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