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DISTINCTIVE FEATURES AT GOODWOOD. If, as has been said, every great town is the embodiment of some commanding idea, and thus distinguished from all other eltles,the first Goodwood meeting of the present reign may remind one that most, if not all, English race courses possess a physiognomy of their own, Investing each with Us unmistakable features. Newmarket, which differs from other sporting centers in always having some season of its own, has acquired of recent years, in some of its phases, a likeness to Hyde Park during the early forenoon that gives the historic heath at times a character and appearance found on no other enclosure of the kind. The mornings gallop in the Ladles Mile may be well enough for those leaders of the "Liver Brigade" who think only of health, nnd are indifferent to associations of sport. Charles Groville, the diarist, found it too tame for the quickening of his circulation and, when at regular work, never went many weeks, or even days together, without inhaling Newmarkets salubrious air, as he called it, on one of the cobs he kept by him, hear his Jockey Club rooms, for the purpose. Since then his example has been faithfully followed by many engaged in graver professional pursuits than Greville. Two Lord Chief Justices in succession, Sir Alexander Cockburn and Lord Russell of Killowen were, in their day, equestrian figures as familiar to the little Cambridgeshire town as the jockeys themselves. As for Epsom, Lord Roseberys hospitable occupancy of The Durdans, and the late Mr. Frederick Lcveson-Gowers house parties, sometimes containing Mr. Gladstone of Holmbury, have Invested with associations memorable, as well, as picturesque by the force of contrast that point of the Surrey Downs which shows the race course from its most democratic point of view, and whose best description, perennially true, was given long since by the artist, W. P. Frith, in his picture of "Derby Day." In comparison with that canvass pale and feeble seem all literary efforts to represent the idiosyncrasies of the Epsom course. The best of these, indeed, is beyond doubt Disraelis description in "Sybil." while that which least fires the imagination is Thackerays Derby scene In "Pendennls." Except the qualities inseparable for geographical reasons from Epsom, the last great event in societys racing year reproduces much that gives Ascot, as well as many other meetings in the home counties, their distinctive and most picturesque charm. The drags, regimental and other, massed two or three deep under the magnificent trees at the Berkshire meetings, are to be seen also, if less numerously, at Goodwood. Before, however, describing in detail the festival which, in the Duke of Richmonds park, has always been traditionally regarded as visibly indicating the London seasons close, something must be said about not only the surroundings of the scene Itself, but the men who have made an institution, as well as the personages and incidents with which the Goodwood week naturally connects itself. All who have ever been at Goodwood have brought away with them a memory quite as clear of Goodwoods earliest possessor, seen in Knellers famous portrait, as of the cedar trees in the" park themselves. The dark, olive complexion, the long oval face with the fullness at the bottom of the right cheek, never died out of the Stuart race, and in somo degree have descended to their latest and indirect posterity. Each of the features just mentioned is conspicuous in the first Duke of Richmond as the artist has enabled us to know him, wearing the easy, half undress court suit of the eighteenth century. This founder of the Goodwood family, born in 1G72, startled the society of his time from the resemblance to his royal father, shown In Charles II. s distinctive attributes the easy, Indolent good nature, the perfect breeding, the constitutional dislike of method and punctuality, the well-moulded features and figure, the graceful versatility of manner, and an adroit adaptability to the circumstances of the moment, whatever they might be. The exile of the illegitimist princes with whom his kinship was so close did not prevent the ducal personage just described, after active preparations abroad for these offices, from becoming William III.s aide-de-camp first, and a lord of the bedchamber afterwards to George I. His presence, the Jacobites used to say, was the one redeming feature of the court of the monarch in whom loyalty to the king over the water constrained them to see only a usurper. Till some time after George III.s accession, the Northumberland familys property included much of the southern counties. In Sussex, however, the Percys had rivals In the Comptons. The eighteenth century predecessor of King Georges present host had already made acquaintance with the shooting in the Sussex woods; in 1720 he bought from the Comptons an old. dilapidated and partly Gothic building near Charlton Forest, a royal grant of which had been confirmed to him by George II. The building was soon put in some sort of order; it thus became the germ of the existing Goodwood House. The ground on which it stood and some adjoining fields contained all the potentialities of Goodwood Park and race course, as they are known today. For the race-going public the. Goodwood chronicle opens with the third Duke of Richmond, born in 1735, and, as a result of a long minority, coming in 175G to be a property far larger and more valuable than had fallen to any of his predecessors. He himself made such large additions to his domain on every side that Goodwood House, with its outlying buildings and the homes of its dependents became a sort of village metropolis for the district. Having beautified Its cork trees and cedars, the third duke developed some way toward completeness the germs of the race course lie had found in his kingdom. Before his time, indeed. Sussex was iu its primitive way a racing county. The South Downs indeed, and the Thames valley in the Staines ncigh-lwrhood may claim to have formed the cradle of English horse racing. Goodwoods third ducal owner not only completed his new course in that portion of his grounds known as the Harroway; he built a wooden stand for spectators near the point where the half-mile starting post is placed today. With the nineteenth centurys opening there came also the hospitalities which have ever since associated the Goodwood week not only with English princes and sovereigns, but with foreign potentates, including Russian Tsars and German Kaisers. The Goodwood meeting of 1S02 was held in the month of May; it was marked by an open air banquet, at which all comers had a place. If the third duke created the actual course, the fifth secured for his lino some of its greatest turf successes. He had begun in ISIS with some famous sweepstakes victories. After several Newmarket triumphs, he first carried off the Goodwood Gold Cup with Linkboy in 1S27. Founded in 1750. the Jockey Club a hundred years later had for one of its most useful members, and eventually its "father," the sixth Duke of Richmond, so long Lord Bcaconsfields cabinet colleague. His turf record opened, during the earliest years of the Victorian Age, with the Victories of Wimple and Guava. The Jockey Club meetings, generally held at his house in Belgrave Square, had Goodwood for their venue at a memorable gathering in 18S4, when, at the Dukes Instance, a resolution was carried against horse-owning by jockeys. Meanwhile. Goodwood House and race course" had enriched themselves with fresh and memorable connections. Charles Greville had acquired a voice in their management. The Duke of Portland had been invited by the kindly owner of the place to transfer thither the training of his horses. Grevilles authority on racing matters was long felt in all Goodwood sporting relationship, nis was considered to lc the counsel which had some part in securing the Gold Cup in 1S27 for the yellow and crimson, the traditional Richmond colors. But throughout its existence the chronicle of Goodwood House has been one of politics as well as sport. From its infancy Charles James Foxs close kinship with its possessors had given it a Whig llavor; that, indeed, communicated itself to most of the chief social centers in Sussex. More than half a century ago Goodwoods Whig or Liberal sympathies were extinguished by events. His gallant Grace of Richmond, as in his memoirs Lord Malmesbury calls the fifth duke, joined Stanley, afterwards the fourteenth Lord Derby, in breaking witlr"Peel over free tcade. From that time forward Goodwood has always been a conservative house. Throughout the earlier forties it was the political rccruitiug ground of Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli. Goodwoods chief feature as a social and sporting center combined with their patrician antecedents something of the democratic environment detested by Charles Greville, to whom sport and politics alike was the upper as far as possible the titled class exclusive pastime. But the country house parties throughout the neighborhood, which have gradually become institutions as. orthodox and conspicuous as the hospitalities of Goodwood House itself, have so far been, and seem likely to continue, too well regulated iti heir eclectic smartness to become instruments in Goodwoods democratisation. T. U. S. Escott iu Vancouver, B. C, Province.
