Tea at Trianon: The First Three-Time Derby Winner

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, June 3, 2019

The First Three-Time Derby Winner

From OZY:

Most jockeys dug into their mounts with a whip and a crouched, bullying stance, but the teen Murphy rode crouched and urged his charge forward with calming words. As others galloped ahead, he conserved his horse’s stamina, only to press forward at the end of races to snatch victory over his competitors’ worn steeds.

The unconventional tactics led to victory. He would win the Kentucky Derby for the first time in 1884, and the Kentucky Oaks and the Clark Handicap that same year — a trifecta he’s still the sole jockey to accomplish. According to his own analysis, Murphy won 628 of his 1,412 starts, an absurd 44 percent victory rate (another calculation, conducted later, had him at 530 of 1,538, a 34 percent rate that still dwarfs the greatest all-time official tallies in horse-racing record books). He became known as “The Colored Archer,” a reference to the English racing great Fred Archer, although, ironically, it was Archer who was taking after Murphy. “Archer picked a lot of his mannerisms in the saddle and spread them throughout England,” says Brien Bouyea, communications director for the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. (Read more.)