Mr. Darley's Arabian by Christopher McGrath

Author:Christopher McGrath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

No racecourse in Ireland, except Punchestown and Fairyhouse, ever had more people on it. Old men and women who had never before seen a race came 50 miles. The city was as deserted as if plaguestricken. Away they went, boot to boot. The pace was a cracker from the start, all three girth to girth most of the journey, and at no time did two lengths divide the first and last till just before the finish . . . Fence after fence was charged and cleared by them locked together, and it was not till [Charlie] was beaten, just before the last, they separated. A determined struggle between Woodlark and The Weasel then ensued; and, after a desperate finish, old Judge Hunter gave the verdict to the former [William] ‘by a short head’.

William would add to his laurels a Victoria Cross in the Zulu Wars; Charlie, for his part, became a national celebrity for audaciously slipping the gunship Condor beneath fixed artillery fire when bombarding the fort at Alexandria in 1882; and then redeemed the disastrous attempt to rescue Gordon from Khartoum three years later by sharing an immortal resolution with Lieutenant Dawson of the Coldstream Guards: it would be too hard to die, they famously agreed, ‘without knowing who had won the Derby’.

But ‘Charlie B’ was also a barefaced bounder. Nothing pleased him better than to make a woman cry; ‘such fun to hear their stays creak’. A seasoned corridor-creeper at country houses, he once sidled into a dark room and leapt onto the bed, shouting ‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’ When the light was turned on, he found himself between the Bishop of Chester and his wife. In 1889 Charlie found himself in a still more excruciating situation when his wife, Mina, opened a letter from the delectable Daisy Brooke, bizarrely accusing him of betraying her with his own wife. Daisy had been nauseated to learn that Mina, though older and less attractive, was pregnant. Mina placed the letter in the hands of a lawyer and Daisy, panicking prettily, implored Bertie to intervene. That he did so – arriving on the lawyer’s doorstep at 2 a.m., forcing him to show the letter; and then ordering Mina to return it, ostracising her when she declined to do so – was an abuse of his position that plainly anticipated Daisy’s readiness not to confine herself to the fluttering of eyelashes at her royal benefactor.

Daisy had once been favoured as a suitable bride for Bertie’s brother, Leopold, but instead opted for Lord Brooke, heir to the Earl of Warwick. The queen seemed grateful for the reprieve when observing from behind a curtain Daisy’s departure from Windsor, before breakfast, already in a scarlet hunting coat. ‘How fast!’ she muttered of this double solecism. ‘How very fast!’

Charlie B, deprived of both his dignity and his mistress, had a blazing row with Bertie. Daisy claimed that the future king concluded the interview by throwing an inkstand at his old friend’s head, but fortunately hit the wall instead. Soon

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