Lot 59: Liberio Prosperi 'Lib' (fl.1886-1903)

Sir John Dugdale Astley, Bart., 'The Mate'
Politician, Racehorse Trainer and Steward
signed 'Lib Prosperi' (lower right) and inscribed and dated 'Sir John Astley/the 'Mate'/1886' (lower left)
pencil and watercolour heightened with white
14 1/2 x 9 1/4 in. (36.8 x 23.5 cm.)

Hendon, Church Farm House Museum, Vanity Fair 1869-1914, 10 September - 18 December, 1983.
Newmarket, Museum of Racing.

Thomas Gibson Bowles.

S P O R T S M E N

Sir John Dugdale Astley, 3rd Baronet, 'The Mate' (1828-1894), Sportsman, was born in Rome, and educated at Eton then Christ Church, Oxford. In 1847, he was sent down from Oxford - 'possibly connected with incidents such as blocking the route to chapel with a wall of snow' - and went to study French in Switzerland. In 1848, Astley joined the Scots Guards. He fought in the Crimean War and took part in the battle of Alma, before being sent to Balaklava in 1855 where he became a celebrated promoter of sport amongst the three armies - The French, British and Italian (which he called the 'Sardines'). On his return home, he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and was awarded the Turkish Order of the Mejidiye. He married Eleanor Blanche Mary Corbet (c.1838-1897) in 1858 and, on the couple's honeymoon in Paris, he won £1,500 on the Liverpool Cup. From this moment, he devoted himself to racing and began training in Richard Drewitt's stables in Lewes. In 1869, he was made a member of the Jockey Club and in 1874 was elected as Conservative M.P. for North Lincolnshire. In 1875, he became a Steward at the Jockey Club supervising the new stand at the end of the Rowley Mile. A few months before he died, Astley published Fifty Years of my Life in the World of Sport at Home and Abroad (1894), which he dedicated to another great racing enthusiast, the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII (see lot 22). His death was mourned by the whole sporting community in England and his book became famous as 'the sporting memoir of the century'. The Astley Club at Newmarket is for the welfare of stable lads and apprentices.

The wagon is capacious, but it has not room for 'The Mate', who has just lighted his tenth cigar, and has begun to chaff Prince Soltykoff about sending the Duke of Parma to Yarmouth to be trained for the Cesarewitch; but he will be called to order presently, for Lord Falmouth is coming up behind him, and divert the conversation into more serious channels. But 'The Mate' is not likely to waste time over the expensive lots, and will have plenty of opportunity to get a rise out of somebody before the morning is over.

Vanity Fair, Tattersall's, Newmarket, 'The Sale Paddock' and 'The Winning Post', 1887.

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