Among this week’s random anniversaries, both on Wednesday, are the 236th of the death of the racehorse Eclipse in 1789 and the 210th of Napoleon’s landing at Golfe-Juan in 1815. The two events are largely unrelated but, like most things, not completely.
Napoleon’s return to France from nearby Elba launched what became known as the Hundred Days, although the count on that didn’t start until he reached Paris three weeks later and, confusingly, didn’t stop at 100. Like the Hundred Years War, which lasted 116 years, the Hundred Days lasted 110 days, ending with the restoration of King Louis XVIII in July.
Touring the south of France last year, I stood on a beachfront corner where the Route Napoleon, now a tourist trail, begins. I would have liked to follow the rest of it, through the foothills of the Alps to Grenoble, but there wasn’t time.
So I settled instead for the more manageable Route WB Yeats, a little farther up the coast, from the hotel where he died in 1939 to the cemetery where his bones spent the following decade (and where some sceptics fear they remain).
‘This wonderful horse seems to have been as remarkable in death as in life’ – Frank McNally on an unbeatable stallion
‘Ireland, more than other countries, ought to be a country of trees’
‘The whole position in Europe is one of uncertainty and of menace’ – John Mulqueen on Éamon de Valera’s foreign policy
The ‘shipyard poet’ – Oliver O’Hanlon on playwright Thomas Carnduff
The racehorse Eclipse is not quite as famous as Napoleon. But he was sufficiently revered during his lifetime that his death created a market for relics not unlike that of saints in medieval times.
Hence the wry summary in An Irishman’s Diary of 1931: “This wonderful horse seems to have been as remarkable in death as in life; for the ‘authentic relics’ of him which are carefully preserved include six complete skeletons, nine [hooves], and sufficient fragments of hide to cover the yard at Tattersall’s”.
Eclipse was bred by an English aristocrat but owned (for most of his career) by an Irishman. This was a reverse of the more traditional arrangement historically whereby, for example, Arkle was bred in Ireland and bought by British royalty.
His lofty origins in part explain why the horse’s birth, on April 1st, 1764, is well recorded too. This is more than can be said for Eclipse’s colourful proprietor of later years, Carlow man Dennis O’Kelly.
The racehorse was named for an actual solar eclipse on the day of his birth, which proved something of a non-event in England because of the weather.
It fell on a Sunday morning, causing the antiquarian and clergyman William Stukeley to postpone his service for an hour so that he and parishioners could witness the phenomenon, but “observations ... in the neighbourhood of London were much interfered with by the state of the sky”.
The racehorse Eclipse soon eclipsed the eclipse he was named after, winning all his 18 races, often by long distances. Hence the expression, supposedly coined by O’Kelly: “Eclipse first, the rest nowhere.” Nowhere was a semi-official designation in racing then, for horses that finished more than 240 yards behind the winner.
O’Kelly is thought to have been born in Tullow in 1725, so for all we know, his 300th birthday could be falling around now. But when he died (of gout) in 1787, he was reportedly in “about his sixty-seventh year”, so the birth date is in doubt.
His breeding is certainly not as well documented as the horse’s. And although great wealth bought him many friends in English racing circles, lack of pedigree was held against him. He was never admitted to the Jockey Club, where the sport’s elite socialised.
Then again, his involvement in racing may have been a form of what we would now call reputation laundering. After his arrival in London, he was at various times a chairman (not of any board, but of actual chairs – sedans – carried for a living), a conman, and a professional gambler.
Whereas Eclipse was painted by the great equestrian artist George Stubbs, O’Kelly might have been of more interest to a later Stubbs (the Gazette one). He spent time in debtors’ prison, which is where he met his future business – and perhaps romantic – partner, Charlotte Hayes.
She was a prostitute and brothel keeper. But once released, they became a power couple, amassing a fortune and investing in property as well as horseflesh. O’Kelly bought Eclipse for 1,100 guineas, winning it back threefold in prize money.
Although a great talker – “blessed with a good memory, and native drollery ... always pleasant, and never offensive”, according to the Edinburgh Magazine, he was also “perfectly illiterate”. In his will, he instructed that all his racehorses be sold off, and that his brother and nephew should forfeit £500 of their inheritance if they continued involvement with the sport.
O’Kelly’s bequests left relatives well off, but Eclipse’s legacy may have been more profound. On retirement from racing, the stallion went to stud, for 50 guineas a time, and thereafter sired 930 offspring over 17 years. Today he is estimated to be an ancestor of “nearly every living thoroughbred”.
But his more immediate descendants included a grandson called Copenhagen, who exceeded him in fame, earning among other things a cameo appearance (under several different names) in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Copenhagen was only a moderate success in racing, from which – ominously for Napoleon – he retired early. His defining moment was as a war-horse, carrying the Duke of Wellington into battle at Waterloo.
