Takin’ in the races at Monmouth Park some time ago, I got talkin’ over some horse reminiscences with friends of mine and, among other interestin’ events, the famous race between Honest Dutchman and Prospero was alluded to. This race became famous, not for what it was, but for what it was not; not for the expectations it fulfilled, but for those it disappointed.
Everybody calculated upon an excitin’ contest, and came from all parts of the country to see it. The knowin’ ones expected a very close and well contested struggle between the two horses, whereas the only excitement was the fuss made in gettin’ the start, while the race itself was a walk over almost, a one-horse affair.
Six attempts were made at gettin’ a start, but, when once started. the favorite. Honest Dutchman, was nowhere and Prospero won easily. When he got to the wire, Honest Dutchman was just entering the homestretch. It was a complete fizzle, and everybody, except those who had put their money on Prospero, went away mad.
Various other races have passed into the history of the turf as famous chiefly for the disappointments they caused.
There was the great race that was to be between Bashaw, Jr., and Jay Gould. This made at the time a tremendous stir among racin’ men for this reason. Jay Gould was a Hambletonian stallion, while Bashaw, Jr. was a pure representative of the Bashaw strain of blood, which many considered even finer than the Hambletonian, so this race was by common consent gotten up to decide by practical test which of these two strains would produce the best stock. Both the Hambletonians and the Bashaws had their adherents who backed up their belief by bets. So there was a big pile of money as well as a lot of chin music on the race, which was attended by racin’ men from all over the country. But the big race amounted to little more than a big fizzle after all. It certainly couldn’t be taken as a test, for Bashaw, Jr., bein’ amiss in one of his forelegs at the time of the race, broke down in the very first heat. So Jay Gould won in an easy jog, without decidin’ anythin’ for anybody.
A third famous race which ended in disappointment to the public was that in which the celebrated racin’ mare, American Girl, to which all eyes and pocketbooks had been directed, fell dead at the quarter pole in the first heat. There was of course a great stir made over this almost public calamity, as it was then considered, and a postmortem examination was made of the mare, to see if she hadn’t been poisoned. But it was found that she had died from natural causes, congestion of the lungs bein’ the chief ailment. The mare had been sufferin’ from the epizootic, and had been run before she had completely recovered.
A long list of races similar in results to these, the public bein’ disappointed in ‘em, although it had every reason to expect havin’ a good time, could be cited, but these three will served to show what a friend of mine once remarked: “You can’t calculate any more on a horse race than you can on a flirtation.”
This stallion, Jay Gould, made a rather curious start in life as a racer. He wasn’t thought much of in the way of speed, till one afternoon he took fright at a locomotive whistle, and dashed off in such first-class style as to convince the his owne, who was then on his back, that he was a first-class trotter. He was originally called Judge Brigham, and the way he got to be named Jay Gould is rather interestin’. One day H. N. Smith, the broker, then the partner of Jay Gould in the famous firm of Smith, Gould and Martin, happened to be in Buffalo on business, along with Jay Gould, and the two made a visit to the race ground at Buffalo, where they met George Hall, the turf man. The three sat together durin’ the race between Judge Fullerton and several other horses, among which was this Judge Brigham, who, bein’ very little known just then, had very few backers.
To everybody’s unbounded surprise, even to his backers, Judge Brigham won the race in magnificent style. It was his first race, and was the fastest first race time ever made.
Everybody went wild with enthusiasm over this new horse, and Smith at once proposed to his friends Hall and Gould that they three should buy the successful stallion, on the spot. They did so, and as Gould owned the principal part of him, he was named Jay Gould.
As a trottin’ stallion the four-legged Gould was almost as successful on the turf as the two-legged Gould has been on the street.
In two years he won six races out of seven, or eighteen heats out of twenty-one. In his last race year he won twelve heats out of twelve. He couldn’t well win any more.
American Girl, to whom I have alluded, was a conspicuous example of how speed in a horse, like brains in a man or beauty in a woman, is independent of “blood.” American Girl had at no “blood” at all, in the turf sense of the term. Her descent on the side of her dam was utterly unknown (the dam served in a brick yard), and yet her foal “beat the world” at one time.
Probably she would have made even a better showin’ than she did, if her owner, Mr. Lovell, hadn’t been a believer in the old fashioned notion of “rotation in office.”
Lovell believed in changin’ his trainers and drivers all the time, just as the Methodists change their preachers, and with by no means as good results. In seven years American Girl had seven different drivers, the list embracin’ some of the best names in the country: Dan Mace, Dan Pfifer, John Lovett, Peter Manee, Hiram Howe, Ben Daniels, and Borst. No wonder, then, the mare died in her prime.
I have alluded to Prospero’s race with Honest Dutchman. Prospero made a hit all of a sudden, which shows how quickly the value of a horse can go up if he has speed and luck.
Before his race with Highland King he was valued at less than two thousand dollars. His precise money price to his owner at two o’clock before his race was $1,850. At three o’clock that day, William M. Parks, of Brooklyn, offered $20,000 for him, and gettin’ him, believed he had a bargain, aye, and believed right, as he was offered $25,000 for him two days afterwards. The horse multiplied his own value ten times in less than an hour.
And, writin’ about money values of race horses, the career of a popular horse, Vagrant, will illustrate how valuable a successful race horse is in proportion to the capital invested.
Vagrant (who, by the by, on several occasions met and defeated a racehorse named after myself, “Harry Hill”) was purchased for $250. In his very first race he won for his owner $750, thus paying for himself three times over. In his second race he won $600. Altogether, in two years he won $3,800, or over fifteen times his original cost.
Mr. William Astor then bought him and one over a thousand dollars by him they very first day. Shortly after that Vagrant won $3,000 for Astor; after that, again, $6,350, and so on, provin’ himself a very valuable tramp, or “Vagrant.” No wonder, then, that racehorses are in demand. Olitipa, one of Belmont’s horses, won $10,000 in one year for her millionaire owner. These are comparatively small figures, too, for the turf, but they will serve to illustrate the point.
Bein’ so valuable in a pecuniary point of view to their owners, and bein’ so much more valuable from a bettin’ point of view to the sportin’ public, it is really a matter of wonder, and speaks well for average sportin’ human nature that so few attempts have been made to unlawfully and unfairly interfere with or injure race horses.
The great stallion, Mambrino Gift, was once poisoned or drugged, so it has been claimed. This was in the great stallion race in Boston, when Smuggler won. Mambrino Gift certainly was out of condition at the time and didn’t do himself justice, allowin’ Smuggler to beat him in less time than he himself ran at another race. Right after the race a celebrated veterinary surgeon examined Manbrino Gift and pronounced him poisoned by a heavy dose of aconite, and it was shown afterwards that he had been tampered with by people havin’ bets against him. There was a tremendous deal of money staked on this race, and yet a few cents’ worth of aonite did the business.
Attempts were made to poison other race horses; Flora Temple and Goldsmith Maid were tampered with, as well as “hippodromed,” but perhaps the best known case of attempted poisonin’ of a famous horse was that of Harry Bassett.
The facts of this case were not known at the time, but have transpired later.
Twelve years ago the racin’ world was agitated as it has not been since. The two great horses of the day (horses as great in their period as American Eclipse, Fashion, Henry or Boston were in their periods), Longfellow and Harry Bassett, were to meet at Monmouth Park. All the world and his wife went to the Long Branch races that day.
The bettin’ was strongly in favor of Harry Bassett; his owner, McDonald, and his friends were jubilant. Yet Bassett behaved badly, and was almost shamefully defeated. Longfellow went clear away from him and beat him out in a common canter by about sixty yards. It was equivalent to the death of a race horse; it was the instant downfall of a popular favorite. It was the dethronin’ of a world’s idol in a very few minutes.
People thought it very strange at the time, but an explanation of the apparent mystery came later, when it was of no use. All the important posts around Harry Bassett, all his grooms, trainers, feeders, stable help, etc., were true and tried, but no fortress or stable can be stronger than its weakest point, and there was accidentally one very weak point about the Bassett stable the mornin’ of the race.
A little boy had been left to watch Harry Bassett durin’ the mornin’ in the stable, and although only left in charge about fifteen minutes in a case of absolute necessity, the mischief was done. The boy didn’t do anythin’ himself, but he let others do it. He allowed a strange man to come up to the horse privately in his stall and to give the animal a bunch of grass. For allowing this the boy got a five-dollar bill, and this five-dollar bill changed the ultimate destination of over five hundred thousand, which went into the pockets of the Longfellow crowd. On this bunch of grass given by this strange man to Harry Bassett was sprinkled a lot of morphine in powder, and it was this morphine that gave Longfellow his victory.
There was some premonitory symptoms of his poisonin’ given before the race. Bassett for the first time in his life refused his feed. The stable people wondered at it and told Col. McDaniel about it, but somehow McDaniel didn’t heed the warnin’; he attributed it to the extreme heat of the day, which was one of the hottest ever known in this or any other country.
Then for the first time in his life, too, the dulled, drugged horse refused to notice things, and let anybody approach him without givin’ any heed. Just the very opposite of his usual lively way. This, too, was called to McDaniel’s notice, but he attributed it to the annoyance of the flies. So, spite of these two warnin’s, the race was run and lost.
What a world of difference in a horse’s fame and man’s money a little bunch of grass and a few minutes can make.
[Editor’s notes: Harry Bassett was sired by Lexington, the famous race horse that was the subject of the recent Horse: a Novel by Geraldine Brooks.]
