How 1867 Derby win sealed the ultimate revenge
Hermit’s victory at Epsom was the final blow in an epic blue-blood feud that shocked society, writes Marcus Armytage
The marquis invented a medium of betting that was ‘beyond parody – spider racing’
Should Enable win a historic third Prix de l’arc de Triomphe at Longchamp on Sunday, get the hankies ready; the bookmakers are already predicting it would be their worst result of the season.
Bookmakers are under a bit of pressure, some of it self-inflicted, and therefore so is horse racing, which is in large part funded by it.
Gambling is becoming the new smoking as far as Parliament is concerned. The problem is, of course, people who become addicted to betting – the people who our rulers have a duty to protect from, essentially, themselves.
Compulsive gambling, however, is not new, as is brilliantly recounted by racing historian Paul Mathieu in his meticulously researched book Duel; How
Lord Hastings stole ‘The Pocket Venus’ and how her fiance was avenged.
Mathieu’s previous books have focused principally on the Victorian era, and, in terms of outrageously eccentric characters, the sport of kings in the 19th century has given him a lot to go at.
Indeed, he has probably barely touched the surface but, of all of them, the fourth and last Marquis of Hastings probably takes the biscuit. If there is, perhaps, a moral in the story of a life which ended in penury after barely a quarter of a century, it is that old chestnut of too much, too soon. Memo to parents: do not let the children at the trust fund too young.
In the 1860s, the wealthy squire Henry Chaplin, a friend of Lord Hastings, was engaged to the prettiest girl in Britain, Lady Florence Paget, who was dubbed “The Pocket Venus”.
But on the eve of the wedding and with invitations printed and congratulations already received from the Prince of Wales, the bride-to-be eloped with Lord Hastings. It was one of the era’s juiciest scandals.
Lord Hastings, who bought horses like he was drunk and bet like he was mad, lived at Donington, in Leicestershire.
He had been a madcap gambler since his days at Eton when he had inherited the family fortune. He dedicated the rest of his short life to dissipating it.
Drinking and betting were a toxic combination for Lord Hastings, who had several horses by the age of 21, and his pals. They bet on which lump of sugar a fly would land on, or which of two raindrops would make it down the window pane first, and invented what Mathieu describes as a “betting medium beyond parody – spider racing”.
The aim was to get a spider to travel from the centre of a table to the edge. The table was warmed to provide a welcoming arena “but spiders were in a different league to racehorses where uncertainty was concerned”, as they would often double back or go round in circles.
The sport was abandoned when the spider equivalent of Enable fell to the floor and was trodden under its master’s feet.
Chaplin proved to be a nemesis, however, for Lord Hastings. To exact revenge, Chaplin started buying costly racehorses with the sole aim of thwarting what Lord Hastings saw as his raison d’etre; to win the Derby.
In 1867, Hastings laid £120,000 (£10 million now) against Chaplin’s Hermit. When it snowed heavily at Epsom, there were 30 runners and 10 false starts, but finally Hermit prevailed by a neck. Hastings was ruined.
Having failed to heed today’s motto of “when the fun stops, stop”, he was dead within the year. Alas, the all-party Parliamentary group on gambling-related harm was 150 years too late to save him.