like a meteor, he was sure to look as clumsy, and as dirty, and as
much like a cart-horse as all the cunning of his master and the
grooms could make him, and just in this manner he beat some of the
greatest gamesters in the field.
I was so sick of the jockeying part that I left the crowd about the
posts and pleased myself with observing the horses: how the
creatures yielded to all the arts and managements of their masters;
how they took their airings in sport, and played with the daily
heats which they ran over the course before the grand day. But
how, as knowing the difference equally with their riders, would
they exert their utmost strength at the time of the race itself!
And that to such an extremity that one or two of them died in the
stable when they came to be rubbed after the first heat.
Here I fancied myself in the Circus Maximus at Rome seeing the
ancient games and the racings of the chariots and horsemen, and in
this warmth of my imagination I pleased and diverted myself more
and in a more noble manner than I could possibly do in the crowds
of gentlemen at the weighing and starting-posts and at their coming
in, or at their meetings at the coffee-houses and gaming-tables
after the races were over, where there was little or nothing to be
seen but what was the subject of just reproach to them and reproof
from every wise man that looked upon them.
N.B. – Pray take it with you, as you go, you see no ladies at
Newmarket, except a few of the neighbouring gentlemen’s families,
who come in their coaches on any particular day to see a race, and
so go home again directly.
As I was pleasing myself with what was to be seen here, I went in
the intervals of the sport to see the fine seats of the gentlemen
in the neighbouring county, for this part of Suffolk, being an open
champaign country and a healthy air, is formed for pleasure and all
kinds of country diversion, Nature, as it were, inviting the
gentlemen to visit her where she was fully prepared to receive
them, in conformity to which kind summons they came, for the
country is, as it were, covered with fine palaces of the nobility
and pleasant seats of the gentlemen.
The Earl of Orford’s house I have mentioned already; the next is
Euston Hall, the seat of the Duke of Grafton. It lies in the open
country towards the side of Norfolk, not far from Thetford, a place
capable of all that is pleasant and delightful in Nature, and
improved by art to every extreme that Nature is able to produce.
From thence I went to Rushbrook, formerly the seat of the noble
family of Jermyns, lately Lord Dover, and now of the house of
Davers. Here Nature, for the time I was there, drooped and veiled
all the beauties of which she once boasted, the family being in
tears and the house shut up, Sir Robert Davers, the head thereof,
and knight of the shire for the county of Suffolk, and who had
married the eldest daughter of the late Lord Dover, being just
dead, and the corpse lying there in its funeral form of ceremony,
not yet buried. Yet all looked lovely in their sorrow, and a
numerous issue promising and grown up intimated that the family of
Davers would still flourish, and that the beauties of Rushbrook,
the mansion of the family, were not formed with so much art in vain
or to die with the present possessor.
After this we saw Brently, the seat of the Earl of Dysert, and the
ancient palace of my Lord Cornwallis, with several others of
exquisite situation, and adorned with the beauties both of art and
Nature, so that I think any traveller from abroad, who would desire
to see how the English gentry live, and what pleasures they enjoy,
should come into Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and take but a light
circuit among the country seats of the gentlemen on this side only,
and they would be soon convinced that not France, no, not Italy