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STRANGE CASE OF BELDAME Brilliant and Superb Filly as a Two and Three -Year-Old. Then, After Winning Suburban Handicap in 1903, Mysteriously Faded From Ticture, 2fcver to Return .to Track. BY SALVATOR. Daily Racing Form in a recent issue, presenting the thoroughbred necrology table for 1923, i. c., the list of thoroughbreds that have been reported as dying during the past year. It included a number of notable names, but of them by far the most so was that of Beldame, the famous daughter of Octagon Bella Donna, by Hermit. She was twenty-two, having been foaled in 1901, and her death terminated a career at once one of the most brilliant and the most disappointing that can be recalled to mind. Beldame was bred at the Nursery stud, never passed out of Major Belmonts possession, and died at what had always been her home. She was of purely imported blood. Her sire, Octagon, was a son of the great French horse Rayon dOr and the English mare Ortegal, by Bend Or. Ortegal was almost a sister of the "horse of the century," Ormonde, being out of Lizzie Agnes, by Macaroni, and, bred to another of the Nursery sires, Hastings, she produced Octoroon, which, in turn, when bred to Rock Sand, produced October, exported first to England and then to Australia, where he has sired Bitalli, the winner of the recent Melbourne Cup race in record breaking time. Bella Donna, the dam of Beldame, also produced, to the cover of Rayon dOr himself, that fine race horse Don de Oro.. She was an English mare, by Hermit, from Bonnie Doon, by Rapid Rhone; the next dam being the immortal matron Queen Mary, by Gladiator. ONLY THREE IX LIST. Beldame ranks as one of the three American thoroughbred race mares which have won 00,000- or over, the other two being Miss Woodford and Firenze. The careers summarize as follows: Mare. Sts. 1st. 2d. 3d. Won. Miss Woodford 4S 37 7 2 18,270 Firenze 82 48 20 9 112,581 Beldame . 31 17 C 4 102,570 As a two and three-year-old Beldame was a superb filly. She closed her three-year-old career veritably in a "blaze of glory." The public acclaimed her with enthusiasm, while the critics were but little behind it in their eulogisms. She was pronounced the greatest race mare, by many, that the metropolitan turf had ever seen, and she finished the year so near the 00,000 mark that it was accepted as a "moral" that early in her four-year-old form she would easily dethrone Miss Woodford and become Americas largest money winning mare. The chorus of praise of Beldame swelled into something almost delirious when she came out in 1903 in dazzling form and, with 123 pounds up, won the Suburban Handicap in magnificent style. The morning after that performance she was hailed as the greatest racer of her sex that America had ever produced. Nay, it was maintained that Sceptre herself, nor Pretty Polly either, could have beaten her that day over the Sheepshead Bay course. COLLAPSE OF RELDAME. What followed was like a "transformation scene" in a theater in which a vision of j glory is suddenly shifted to one of Stygian gloom. There is something almost mysterious in the sudden and virtually complete downfall of Beldame that immediately succeeded her supreme triumph. She appeared to, as it were, collapse. She never won another race of any account, in a few weeks she had become a "fallen idol," and by the seasons end had come almost into contempt. And then she disappeared forever from the turf, saying no gay farewell, gliding silently out of the picture with drooping colors and taking her place among the matrons of the Nursery Stud. But she was not destined to retrieve her reputation by producing sons and daughters to become great racers. Rarely, if ever, has there been a more com- Continued on twelfth page. STRANGE CASE OF BELDAME Continued from first page. plete disappointment as a brood mare. In tho first place Beldame proved a very shy breeder. Though she lived to be twenty-two and went to the stud at five years, she produced but a handful of foals, interspersed between season after season of barrenness. And nothing that she did produce proved in any way worthy of such a dam. It is a strange and baffling case. I saw Beldame repeatedly at the Nursery Stud, and when I enquired for her foals it waa almost invariably to be told, "She didnt have anything this year." And in time I came to refrain from asking the question, for I felt that the subject was one to be avoided, not pursued. When strolling among the brood mares, however, I never failed to search her out, for she had become to me, if anything, a silbject of greater interest than ever. For there was, as I have said, something mysterious about her tho complete eclipse in which the sun of her glory had gone down, never to re-arise. How and why could such a thing be? that was the question I continued to ask myself, and always will, when she may come to my mind. HER FATHERS DAUGHTER. Beldame, in type, was decidedly her fathers and not her mothers daughter. She inherited the color of Octagon, which in turn had inherited that of his sire Rayon dOr chestnut. She also had almost tho same marks as Octagon, he having two white feet and ankles behind and one in front the right and she one behind and one in front. Allowing for the difference in sex she resembled him strongly in build, being high on the leg, short-bodied and running up well on the withers. She had almost no likeness whatever to her dam, Bella Donna, which I was a bay, with inconspicuous markings and of altogether different type and conformation, the daughter of Hermit, as I recall her, having been a rather long, low mare, of heavy bone. Bella Bonna had a fine, somewhat Arab-like head and beautiful long neck. Beldame had a nice, but not so long, neck, and also a fine head, but of different character. The beauty of her head, however, was somewhat spoiled by her lop ears. We cannot say that Beldames failure as a brood mare was due to her affliction with any American stain," for as stated above, her blood was almost aristocratically and utterly "pur sang." We must look elsewhere for the reason, but of course we cannot, in any event, more than guess at it. My personal opinion is that tho cause which led to her so mysterious loss of form as a race mare, following immediately upon her most : brilliant victory, had also something to do with her subsequent failure to produce anything worth while when put to breeding. There must suddenly have happened to Beldame something which vitally affected her physically attacked her vital forces, sapped and undermined them. And did so in such a way that she was not, at the same time, prevented from living to what, for a horse, is a "good old age." The breeder and owner of Beldame is periodically quoted as strongly preferring mares untried upon the turf as brood marcs, holding them far superior as producers to those that have been conspicuous upon it. Considering the case of Beldame, in particular, this is not to be wondered at. But how unfortunate it is that her case must remain just what it is. Could we know the real "reason why," is it not probable that she would be acquitted of reproach and considered rather a victim of fate than, as she will appear in history, a true delinquent?
