Free Eclipse by Nicholas Clee

1.
    72 An amusing rhetorical emphasis. In fact, Eclipse earned £2, 157 that year. Charlotte’s monthly turnover – if not her profit – from her ‘honest industry’ was probably greater than that.
    73 Betting in running is another feature of the eighteenth-century betting market that has made a comeback in the internet era. The same odds with a betting exchange such as Betfair would be 1.01. A winning bet would return a one penny profit on a £1 stake.
    74 Jenison Shafto, overburdened with gambling debts, shot himself in 1771.

11

The Stallion
    F IFTY GUINEAS, THE SUM Lady Loveit paid for her romp with Captain O’Thunder, was also the cost of sending a mare to Eclipse. In 1771, it was the highest stud fee in England. Like the modern champions Nijinsky and Secretariat, Eclipse had achieved fame that transcended his sport, and his transfer to a role as a begetter of future champions generated huge interest. 88 His sexual attention, Dennis O’Kelly could assume, was a privilege for which owners of mares would fork out an expensive premium.
    Eclipse, who had spent most of his racing career in dark stables, now began to enjoy more of the open air. He passed a happy, idle winter in 1770–71, grazing in his paddock at Clay Hill. He put on condition – the equestrian equivalent of a paunch; his neck began to thicken too, slowly transforming him into the imposing, high-crested figure that features in the later portrait by George Garrard (see this book’s colour section).
    His new career probably began in February 1771. There were sixty or more mares to impregnate in time to enable them to give birth, after an eleven-month pregnancy, in the early monthsof the following year. The foals’ official birthdays would be on 1 May. Today, when horses have their birthdays on 1 January, a foal born after 1 May is considered late. Stallions have to pack a lot of virile activity into a short space of time.
    Breeders in the eighteenth century did not know a great deal about when their mares would ovulate. 89 Then, as now, they brought the horses to the stud and left them there, perhaps for a month. Stallion owners advertised in the Racing Calendar that the mares would get ‘good grass’, at a weekly fee of about five shillings. The mare enjoyed this grass for a day or so before her rendezvous.
    One of the first mares to meet Eclipse was not a visitor. Clio, a great-granddaughter of the Godolphin Arabian, was one of several mares bought by Dennis to breed to his stallion; by the time of his death, he had amassed a broodmare band of thirtythree. Clio faced an experience that was little different from what would happen at a contemporary stud farm – the central act is the same, after all. A stable boy led her to the breeding shed, or perhaps to a fenced-off area of a paddock. She would not simply allow the stallion to turn up and ravish her: she required foreplay, a task from which, on a stud farm, the stallion is exempted. In his place, the horse with the unfulfilling job of ‘teaser’ arrived and nuzzled Clio’s hindquarters for a while, until she lifted up her tail and released a small stream of urine. It was a signal that she was in season, although the procedure might go ahead even if she did not give such encouragement. It was also the teaser’s only reward: once Clio had given it, he was led away. Now Dennis’s staff took steps to protect their stallion, binding Clio’s hind legs or tying them to posts, because mares in this circumstance were apt to kick out, and had been known to deal fatal blows to their valuable would-be paramours.
    Eclipse and his stud groom approached. Inexperienced as he was, the stallion knew what was on the menu, and as he got close to Clio he let out an unearthly bellow, a neigh transformed into something deep and resonant and scary. He reared, and the staff moved into panicky action. One tried to soothe the mare; another lifted her