Charles Dickens is Our Mutual Friend

The Victorian novel Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens is all about money and people’s conflicted relationship with it. Words spoken by one of the leading characters, Bella Wilfer, sum up how most of us feel about the dreaded doubloon.

She says: “And yet, Pa, think how terrible the fascination of money is! I see this, and hate this, and dread this, and don’t know but that money might make a much worse change in me. And yet I have money always in my thoughts and my desires; and the whole life I place before myself is money, money, money, and what money can make of life!”

Value-risk equation

As someone once said, money isn’t everything, but everything requires money. We know money can’t buy us love, and we know it erodes childhood innocence, yet most of us pursue it relentlessly.

The world of horse racing is, of course, all about money. And yet, perversely, it is a realm where it is chucked around with some abandon, as if it didn’t have much value.

The value-risk equation is plain to see in the bookmaker odds for Saturday’s R1.5-million SplashOut Cape Derby at Kenilworth – the final instalment of this season’s highly successful Cape Racing Festival.

Star colt Charles Dickens is on offer at 12-10, with the only other runner remotely close in popularity, Rockpool, at 6-1. This makes Charles Dickens “our mutual friend”, beloved by everyone except the bookies, who will take a beating if the Candice Bass-Robinson-trained chestnut lives up to the great expectations.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens won his first six races on the trot, but was then pipped on the post in the King’s Plate seven weeks ago. There have been suggestions that he was not at his best that day and that Bass-Robinson is likely to have him spot on for the Derby.

The big question – which prevents him plunging into the odds-on red – is his capacity to stay the 2000m of this Derby, but that might change in the heat of on-course betting battle.

The big fellow’s merit rating of 132 suggests he should doddle this, which makes that 12-10 good value. Wagering R10 to win R12 might seem like an unnecessary risk to some, but when you think about “what money can make of life” it seems a bit less foolhardy.

BETTING

13-10 Charles Dickens
6-1 Rockpool
9-1 At My Command
25-1 Grinkov, Mucho Dinero, Without Question
33-1 and upwards the others

Selection

2 Charles Dickens, 11 Rockpool, 9 See It Again, 4 At My Command