Newmarket's old brigade
Simon Blow
'rleneral Accident welcome you to the
Newmarket Spring meeting,' flutters the cloth billboard on the approach to Newmarket's ancient Rowley Mile course. On the second day of this new Guineas commercial festival it is British Sugar welcoming us in conjunction with General Accident. On the third day we are back with General Accident. Both companies added significantly to prize money: in return, in- evitably, the advertising. Within the members' enclosure the above companies had erected marquees, where drinking, socialising, and business — if necessary could be done. So these are among the new patrons of the turf, I reflected. And I wondered, as one who now goes rarely to Newmarket, what had become of racing's traditional brigade.
I was 16 when I first raced at Newmarket. I had dismissed myself from school and gone there as an apprentice trainer with the idea that one day I would train. Newmarket Racecourse was a very different place then. The members' enclosure was an exclusive terrain, and there was no chance of buying a badge on the spot. You had to be signed in. Racing had no Levy Board, no commer- cial sponsorship, and apart from the odd maharajah or American heiress, the in- fluential owners were still the English land- ed — owners like the Earl of Rosebery, the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Howard de Walden, who ran racing in an imperial style from the Jockey Club's headquarters in the town. I remember the awe with which I would watch the late Lord Rosebery pro- gress from the Jockey Club's stand in the members' to take up his place outside the weighing room after each race. The grey bowler hat, Edwardian suiting, and the per- manently puffed cigar centred in a face that looked out with disdain at the public.
Today the Jockey Club still maintains a landed image, but it has shed most of its former distance. There are several members who are under 30, a divorce will not dis- qualify you, and those who are high up the scale are far more approachable than their predecessors. On Newmarket's race days representatives of this stalwart and undying body are to be found either taking refresh- ment in the course's Jockey Club Rooms or grouped on the lower deck of the members' stand, binoculars at the ready. But the Jockey Club Room is racing's equivalent to a St James's club. Membership is by elec- tion, with women now also admitted, and it is a separate entity from the Jockey Club proper. The link, however, is that the hun- dred members of the Jockey Club are automatically members of the Rooms. A thorough Englishness continues to pervade their sociable racecourse lunching quarters; it is here that racing's traditional core may still be observed flourishing.
Either on that lower deck or in the Rooms, I saw again many faces familiar to me through- the years. Some are faces known from childhood and seen first in the houses of numerous hunting relations. For most hunting people go flat-racing, and it was after all the landed hunting families who were the original patrons of the English turf. Leading the hunting fraternity this week was the tall and amiable figure of Tony Murray Smith. This former Blues officer, once well-known in the 400 and other London cabaret haunts, has recently retired after 23 years as Master of the Fer- nie. Talking to Colonel Murray Smith is to be carried back to that hunting, soldiering and social spirit that sustained a generation. 'I used to dance with his mother,' the Col- onel said, wagging a finger at me. And this led me on to ask him whether it was true that, on principle, an Hussar never danced. Drawing himself up to his full height, and ever-mindful of the Blues, the Colonel shook his head, 'But I simply didn't know that an Hussar could dance.'
Fondling a drink between races in the Rooms, I was greeted by another face known from long ago. Miss Monica Sheriffe was a frequent visitor to the house of my hunting great-aunt in the Shires. Before the war, a keen hunting lady, she was the organiser of much of the fun in- dulged in by the Prince of Wales and his set at Melton. Of late she has become known to younger racegoers as the owner of that brilliant sprinter, Sharpo. But in fact Miss Monica's erect and forthright gait swinging into the paddock has been a feature of English racing for nearly half a century. In- variably wearing a suit, Miss Mon upholds the smart racing fashions of her era. There was the recent occasion when Miss Sheriffe and the Duke of Devonshire strode into the paddock wearing identical pin-stripes.
Saddened by seeing so many of England's racing establishment growing older, and feeling a kinship with Proust on entering the Guermantes' party, memory struck me. In the enclosure I glimpsed Lord Belper, now quite aged, but in his day, as the Honourable Ronnie Strutt, a noted amateur rider. He had given me what I took to be a military riding lesson when I was seven. Among the vital lessons to be learned by a budding horseman is to grip with the knees. He had placed a coin between the in- side of each knee and the saddle, and the in- structions were to keep it there. Not an inch of daylight did he want to see. As I trotted round and then broke into a canter a fierce boom pursued me. 'Grip! Grip! . . . Keep those legs still, you idiot! . . . You fool,
The Spectator 12 May 1984 they're moving! . . . No! No! No! . • ! can see daylight!!' The voice of Lord Belper ringing across those rolling shires at my aunt's stayed with me until I bumped into Hugh Sidebottom at the rails. I had worked for three trainers during my time at Newmarket. The first was a swashbuckling ex-Inniskillin Dragoons officer named Fergie Sutherland now, I gather, horse-coping in Ireland. The second was Hugh Sidebottom, and the third was Lester Piggott's father-in-law, Sam Armstrong. But it is Hugh who has remain- ed the contact with my racing past. He i5 large man, with a large oval face, arld noticeable by the brim of his trilby 011ie down at all sides. He gave up the rigours 01 modern training some years ago, but he at- tends every meeting as a not too disPas. sionate outsider. Hugh is one es. Newmarket's most glamorous characters' although for the present-day racing irria agination he might be considered .lus fraction too eccentric. He can hold siot.rronthgebipanscres-,barnedd oAnnegisloassataxtoecl n.ppreafyeirnegnenat compliment once to the head of an ancie,. `fYainesi,lyi knowH Hugh oldlooked y . a But umt el, I'm cafraid o nv i n ct etta st nose is awfully Norman.' In pre-war divot. and after, Hugh trained for a numbertd, light-hearted Grenadiers and ,°the streamers; he has long since viewed fresh intake to racing with alarm. He °len. ed me. 'In the old days you saw these sP did colonels with patches over one eye ing to one another, "What do you knc" Now all you hear round Newmarket "Have you go an Arab?" So had I sett up as a trainer I would 7:: be relying on the munificence of oil PUviag tates from Arabia. No hope of survl with a few modestly bought yearlings ed by the affluent remnants of England' landed landed classes. With the price of a hors_ a 'n training at £7,000 a year, not eveend moderately landed gentleman can aff°11,,h, on any scale, they tell me. True erg),,f,.ee Checking down the racecards for the 1114 a days that type of owner was clearlY; or premium. You either train for comPaulthing Arab princes. Yet is there not soul, estate quite romantic about these Gull ever_ theirn cotes? sheikhs and Arab princes with accummulating treasure hordes of iry They have brought the touch of the fafore story to English racing. And them a Christmas the Jockey Club gave bdllah, distinct nod of approval. Prince A_ saudi brother-in-law to King Fand of bet.. Arabia, was voted an honorary men.' s the te. But back in the racecourse Riciocummina English gentry and nobility Pre , the Two northern peers — and stewards 'Lord meeting — Lord Westbury 0_, is in Halifax sit in conclave; conversation with that game different peer, Lord Grimthorpe; and a_ eel>, tables crisp young men mingle 111,1,_ °MY
Jones' white-haired hunting ladies. '1'
alone trainer present is Harry Thom sitsMiss Sheltr■ottrevotre And Mr Thomson Jones, I notice, st
at his table entertaining an Arab.
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