One of the finest pieces of riding I ever witnessed was in a steeplechase held at Melton, as long ago as the year 1864, when, happening to stand near the brook,eighteen feet of water, I observed my friend Captain Coventry come down at it. Choosing sound groundand a clear place, for it was already beginning to fill with numerous competitors, he set his horse going, at about a hundred yards from the brink; in the most masterly manner, increasing the pace resolutely but gradually, so as not to flurry or cause the animal to change his leg, nearly to full speed before he took off. I could not have believed it possible to make a horse go so fast in so collected a form; but with the rider’s strength in the saddle, and perfectly skilful hands, he accomplished the feat, and got well over, I need hardly say, in his stride.
But, although a fine “bridle-hand,” as it is called, proves of such advantage to the horseman in the hurry-skurry of a steeplechase or a very quick thing with hounds, its niceties come more readily under the notice of an observer on the road than in the field. Perhaps the Ride in Hyde Park is the place of all others where this quality is most appreciated, and, shall we add? most rarely to be found. A perfect Park hack, that can walk or canter five miles an hour, no light criterion of action and balance, should also be so well broke, and so well ridden, as to change its leg, if asked to do so, at every stride. “With woven paces,” if not “with waving arms,” I have seen rider and horse threading in and out the trees that bisect RottenRow, without missingone, for half a mile on end; the animal leading with near or off leg, as it inclined to left or right, guided only by the inflection of the rider’s body, and the touch, too light to be called a pressure, of his knee and leg. How seldom does one see a horse ridden properly round a corner. He is usually allowed to turn on his shoulders, with his hind-legs too far back to be of the slightest assistance if he slips or stumbles, and should the foothold be greasy, as may happen in London streets, down he comes flat on his side. Even at a walk, or slow trot, he should be collected, and his outer flank pressed inwards by his rider’s heel, so that the motive power in hocks and thighs is kept under his own body, and the weight on his back. In the canter it stands to reason that he should lead with the inner leg, otherwise it is very possible he may cross the other over it, and fall like a lump of lead.
I remember seeing the famous Lord Anglesey ride his hack at that pace nineteen times out of Piccadilly into Albemarle Street, before it turned the corner exactly to his mind. The handsome old warrior wholookedno less distinguished than hewas, had, as we know, a cork leg, and its oscillation no doubt interfered with those niceties of horsemanship in which he delighted. Nevertheless at the twentieth trial he succeeded, and a largecrowd, collected to watch him, seemed glad of an opportunity to give their Waterloo hero a hearty cheer as he rode away.
Perhaps the finest pair of hands to be seen amongst the frequenters of the Park in the present day belong to Mr. Mackenzie Greaves, a retired cavalry officer of our own service, who, passionately fond of hunting and everything connected with horses, has lately turned his attention to the subtleties of thehaute école, nowhere better understood, by a select few, than in Paris, where he usually resides. To watch this gentleman on a horse he has broken in himself, gliding through the crowd, as if by mere volition, with the smoothness, ease, and rapidity of a fish arrowing up a stream, makes one quite understand how the myth of the Centaur originated in the sculpture and poetry of Greece.
In common with General Laurenson, whose name I have already mentioned as just such another proficient, his system is very similar to that of Monsieur Baucher, one of the few lovers of the animal either in France or England, who have so studied its character as to reduce equine education to a science. Its details are far too elaborate to enter on here, but one of its first principles, applied in the most elementary tuition, is never to let the horse recoil from his bridle.
“Drop your hands!” say nine good riders out of ten, when the pupil’s head is thrown up to avoid control. “Not so,” replies Baucher. “On the contrary, tighten and increase your pressure more and more, keeping the rebel up to his bit with legs and spurs if necessary, tillheyields, not you; then on the instant, rapidly and dexterously, as you would strike in fly-fishing, give to him, and he will come into your hand!”
I have tried his method myself, in more than one instance, and am inclined to think it is founded on common sense.
But in all our dealings with him, we should remember that the horse’s mouth is naturally delicate and sensitive though we so often find it hardened by violence and ill-usage. The amount of force we apply, therefore, whether small or great, should be measured no less accurately than the drops of laudanum administered to a patient by the nurse. Reins are intended for the guidance of the horse, not the support of his rider, and if you do not feel secure without holding on by something, rather than pluck at his mouth, accept the ridicule of the position with its safety, and grasp the mane!
Seriously, you may do worse in a difficulty when your balance is in danger, and instinct prompts you to restore it, as, if a horse is struggling out of a bog, hasdropped his hind-legs in a brook, or otherwise come on his nose without actually falling, nothing so impedes his endeavours to right himself as a tug of the bridle at an inopportune moment.
That instrument should be used for its legitimate purposes alone, and a strong seat in the saddle is the first essential for a light hand on the rein.
Somepeople tell you they ride by “balance,” others by “grip.” I think a man might as well say he played the fiddle by “finger,” or by ear. Surely in either case a combination of both is required to sustain the performance with harmony and success. The grip preserves the balance, which in turn prevents the grip becoming irksome. To depend on the one alone is to come home very often with a dirty coat, to cling wholly by the other is to court as much fatigue in a day as ought to serve for a week. I have more than once compared riding to swimming, it seems to require the same buoyancy of spirits, the same venture of body, the same happy combination of confidence, strength, and skill.
The seat a man finds easiest to himself, says the inimitable Mr. Jorrocks, “will in all humane probabilitybe the easiest to his ’oss!” and in this, as in every other remark of the humorous grocer, there is no little wisdom and truth. “If he go smooth, I am,”95-1said a Frenchman, to whom a friend of mine offered a mount, “if he go rough, I shall not remain!” and doubtless the primary object of getting into a saddle, is to stay there at our own convenience, so long as circumstances permit.
But what a number of different attitudes do men adopt, in order to insure this permanent settlement. There is no position, from the tongs in the fender, to the tailor on his shop-board, into which the equestrian has not forced his unaccustomed limbs, to avoid involuntary separation from his beast. The dragoon of fifty years ago was drilled to ride with a straight leg, and his foot barely resting on the stirrup, whereas the oriental cavalry soldier, no mean proficient in the management of horse and weapon, tucks his knees up nearly to his chin, so that when he rises in the saddle, he towers above his little Arab as if he were standing rather than sitting on its back. The position, he argues, gives him a longer reach, and a stronger purchase for the use of sword and spear. If we are to judge by illuminated copies of Froissart, and other contemporary chronicles, it would seem that the armour-clad knight of the olden time,trusting in the depth and security of his saddle,rode so longas to derive no assistance whatever from his stirrups, sitting down on his horse as much as possible, in dread, may be, lest the point of an adversary’s lance should hoist him fairly out of his place over a cantle six inches high, and send him clanging to the ground, in mail and plate, surcoat, helmet and plumes, with his lady-love, squires, yeomen, the marshals of the lists, and all his feudal enemies looking on!
Now the length of stirrup with which a man should ride, and in its adjustment consists much of the ease, grace, and security of his position, depends on the conformation of his lower limbs. If his thighs are long in proportion to his frame, flat and somewhat curved inwards, he will sit very comfortably at the exact length that raises him clear of his horse’s withers, when he stands up in his stirrups with his feet home, and the majority of men thus limbed, on the majority of horses, will find this a good general rule. But when the legs are short and muscular, the thighs round and thick, the whole frame square and strong, more like wrestling than dancing, and many very superior riders are of this figure, the leathers must be pulled up a couple of holes, and the foot thrust a little more forward, to obtain the necessary security of seat, at a certain sacrifice of grace and even ease. To look asneat as one can is a compliment to society, to be safe and comfortable is a duty to oneself.
Much also depends on the animal we bestride. Horses low in the withers, and strong behind the saddle, particularly if inclined to “catch hold” a little, require in all cases rather shorter stirrups than their easier and truer-shaped stable-companions, nay, the varying roundness of barrel at different stages of condition affects the attitude of a rider, and most of us must have remarked, as horse and master get finer drawn towards the spring, how we let out the stirrups in proportion as we take in waistbelt, and saddle girths. Men rode well nevertheless, witness the Elgin marbles, before the invention of this invaluable aid to horsemanship; and no equestrian can be considered perfect who is unable in a plunge or leap to stick on his horse bare-backed. Every boy should be taught to ride without stirrups, but not till he is tall and strong enough to grasp his pony firmly between his knees. A child of six or seven might injure itself in the effort, and ten, or eleven, is an early age enough for our young gentleman to be initiated into the subtleties of the art. My own idea is that he should begin without reins, so as to acquire a seat totally independent of his hands, and should never be trusted with a bridle till it is perfectly immaterial to him whether he has holdof it or not. Neither should it be restored, after his stirrups have been taken away, till he has again proved himself independent of its support. When he has learnt to canter round the school, and sit firm over a leaping bar, with his feet swinging loose, and his hands in his pockets, he will have become a better horseman than ninety-nine out of every hundred who go out hunting. Henceforward you may trust him to take care of himself, andswim alone.
In every art it is well to begin from the very first with the best method; and I would instil into a pupil, even of the tenderest years, that although his legs, and especially his knees, are to be applied firmly to his pony’s sides, as affording a security against tumbling off, it isfrom the loinsthat he must really ride, when all is said and done.
I dare say most of us can remember the mechanical horse exhibited in Piccadilly some ten or twelve years ago, a German invention, remarkable for its ingenuity and the wonderful accuracy with which it imitated, in an exaggerated degree, the kicks, plunges, and other outrages practised by the most restive of the species to unseat their riders. Shaped in the truest symmetry, clad in a real horse’s skin, with flowing mane and tail, this automaton represented the live animal in everyparticular, but for the pivot on which it turned, a shaft entering the belly below its girths, and communicating through the floor with the machinery that set in motion and regulated its astonishing vagaries. On mounting, the illusion was complete. Its very neck was so constructed with hinges that, on pulling at the bridle, it gave you its head without changing the direction of its body, exactly like an unbroken colt as yet intractable to the bit. At a word from the inventor, spoken in his own language to his assistants below, this artificial charger committed every kind of wickedness that could be devised by a fiend in equine shape. It reared straight on end; it lunged forward with its nose between its fore-feet, and its tail elevated to a perpendicular, awkward and ungainly as that of a swanin reverse. It lay down on its side; it rose to its legs with a bounce, and finally, if the rider’s strength and dexterity enabled him still to remain in the saddle, it wheeled round and round with a velocity that could not fail at last to shoot him out of his seat on to the floor, humanely spread with mattresses, in anticipation of this inevitable catastrophe. It is needless to say how such an exhibitiondrew, with so horse-loving a public as our own. No gentleman who fancied he could “ride a bit” was satisfied till he had taken his shilling’s worthand the mechanical horse had put him on his back. But for the mattresses, Piccadilly could have counted more broken collar-bones than ever did Leicestershire in the blindest and deepest of its Novembers. Rough-riders from the Life-Guards, Blues, Artillery, and half the cavalry regiments in the service, came to try conclusions with the spectre; and, like antagonists of some automaton chess-player, retired defeated and dismayed.
For this universal failure, one could neither blame the men nor the military system taught in their schools. It stands to reason that human wind and muscle must sooner or later succumb to mechanical force. The inventor himself expressed surprise at the consummate horsemanship displayed by many of his fallen visitors, and admitted that more than one rough-rider would have tired out and subjugated any living creature of real flesh and blood; while the essayists universally declared the imitation so perfect, that at no period of the struggle could they believe they were contending with clock-work, rather than the natural efforts of some wild unbroken colt.
But those who succeeded best, I remarked (and I speak with some little experience, having myself been indebted to the mattresses in my turn), were thehorsemen who, allowing their loins to play freely, yielding more or less to every motion of the figure, did not trust exclusively for firmness of seat to the clasp of their knees and thighs. The mere balance rider had not a chance, the athlete who stuck on by main force found himself hurled into the air, with a violence proportioned to his own stubborn resistance; but the artist who judiciously combined strength with skill, giving a littleherethat he might get a stronger purchasethere, swaying his body loosely to meet and accompany every motion, while he kept his legs pressed hard against the saddle, withstood trick after trick, and shock after shock creditably enough, till a hint muttered in German that it was time to displace him, put such mechanism in motion as settled the matter forthwith.
There was one detail, however, to be observed in the equipment of the mechanical horse that brings us to a question I have heard discussed amongst the best riders with very decided opinions on either side.
Formerly every saddle used to be made with padding about half an inch deep, sewn in the front rim of the flap against which a rider rests his knee, for the purpose, as it would seem, of affording him a stronger seat with its resistance and support.
Thirty or forty years ago a few noted sportsmen,despising such adventitious aid, began to adopt the open, or plain-flapped saddle; and, although not universal, it has now come into general use. It would certainly, of the two, have been the better adapted to the automaton I have described, as an inequality of surface was sadly in the way when the figure in its downward perpendicular, brought the rider’s foot parallel with the point of its shoulders. The man’s calf then necessarily slipped over the padding of his saddle, and it was impossible for him to get his leg back to its right place in time for a fresh outbreak when the model rose again to its proper level.
As I would prefer an open saddle for the artificial, so I do for the natural horse, and I will explain why.
I take it as a general and elementary rule, there is no better position for a rider than that which brings shoulder, hip, knee, and heel into one perpendicular line. A man thus placed on his horse cannot but sit well down with a bend in his back, and in this attitude, the one into which he would naturally fall, if riding at full speed, he has not only security of seat, but great command over the animal he bestrides. He will find, nevertheless, in crossing a country, or otherwise practising feats of horsemanship requiring the exercise of strength, that to get his knee an inch or two in advanceof the correct line will afford such leverage as it were for the rest of his body as gives considerable advantage in any unusual difficulty, such as a drop-leap, for instance, with which he may have to contend. Now in the plain-flapped saddle, he can bend his leg as much as he likes, and put it indeed where he will.
This facility, too, is very useful in smuggling through a gap by a tree, often the most convenient egress, to make use of which, with a little skill and prudence, is a less hazardous experiment than it looks. A horse will take good care not to graze his own skin, and the space that admits of clearing his hips is wide enough for his rider’s leg as well, if he hangs it over the animal’s shoulder just where its neck is set on to the withers. But I would caution him to adopt this attitude carefully and above all, in good time. He should take his foot out of the stirrup and make his preparatory arrangements some three or four strides off at least, so as to accommodate his change of seat to the horse’s canter before rising at the leap, and if he can spare his hand nearest the tree, so as to “fend it off” a little at the same time, he will be surprised to find how safely and pleasantly he accomplished a transit through some awkward and dangerous fence.
But he must beware of delaying this little manœuvretill the last moment, when his horse is about to spring. It is then too late, and he will either find himself so thrown out of his seat as to lose balance and grip too, or will try to save his leg by shifting it back instead offorward, when much confusion, bad language, and perhaps a broken knee-pan will be the result.
Amongst other advantages of the open saddle we must not forget that it is cheaper by twenty shillings, and so sets off the shape of his forehand as to make a hunter look more valuable by twenty pounds.
Nevertheless, it is still repudiated by some of our finest horsemen, who allege the sufficient reason that an inch or so of stuffing adds to their strength and security of seat. This, after all is, thesine quâ non, to which every article of equipment, even the important items of boots and breeches, should be subservient, and I may here remark that ease and freedom of dress are indispensable to a man who wishes to ride across a country not only in comfort, but in safety. I am convinced that tight, ill-fitting leathers may have broken bones to answer for. Many a good fellow comes down to breakfast, stiff of gait, as if he were clothed in buckram, and can we wonder that he is hurt when thus hampered and constrained, he falls stark and rigid, like a paste-board policeman in a pantomime.
I have already protested against the solecism of saving yourself by the bridle. It is better, if youmusthave assistance, to follow the example of two or three notoriously fine riders and grasp the cantle of the saddle at the risk of breaking its tree. But in my humble opinion it is not well to be in the wrong even with Plato, and, notwithstanding these high authorities, we must consider such habits, however convenient on occasion, as errors in horsemanship. To a good rider the saddle ought to be a place of security as easy as an armchair.
I have heard it asserted, usually by persons of lean and wiry frames, that with short legs and round thighs, it is impossible to acquire a firm seat on horseback; but in this, as in most matters of skill, I believe nature can be rendered obedient to education. Few men are so clumsily shaped but that they may learn to become strong and skilful riders if they will adopt a good system, and from the first resolve to sitin the right place; this, I think, should be in the very middle of the saddle, while bending the small of the back inwards, so that the weight of the body rests on that part of a horse’s spine immediately behind his withers, under which his fore feet are placed, and on which, it has been ascertained, he can bear the heaviest load. When the animal stands perfectly still, or when it is extended atfull speed, the most inexperienced horseman seems to fall naturally into the required position; but to preserve it, even through the regulated paces of the riding school demands constant effort and attention. The back-board is here, in my opinion, of great assistance to the beginner, as it forces him into an attitude that causes him to sit on the right part of his own person and his horse’s back. It compels him also to carry his hands at a considerable distance off the horse’s head, and thus entails also the desideratum of long reins.
The shortest and surest way, however, of attaining a firm seat on horseback is, after all, to practise without stirrups on every available opportunity. Many a valuable lesson may be taken while riding to covert and nobody but the student be a bit the wiser. Thus to trot and canter along, for two or three miles on end is no bad training at the beginning of the season, and even an experienced horseman will be surprised to find how it gets him down in his saddle, and makes him feel as much at home there as he did in the previous March.
The late Captain Percy Williams, as brilliant a rider over a country as ever cheered a hound, and to whom few professional jockeys would have cared to give five pounds on a race-course, assured me that he attributed to the above self-denying exercise that strength in thesaddle which used to serve him so well from the distance home. When quartered at Hounslow with his regiment, the 9th Lancers, like other gay young light dragoons, he liked to spend all his available time in London. There were no railroads in those days, and the coaches did not always suit for time; but he owned a sound, speedy, high-trotting hack, and on this “bone setter” he travelled backwards and forwards twelve miles of the great Bath Road, with military regularity, half as many times a week. He made it a rule to cross the stirrups over his horse’s shoulders the moment he was off the stones at either end, only to be replaced when he reached his destination. In three months’ time, he told me, he had gained more practical knowledge of horsemanship, and more muscular power below the waist, than in all the hunting, larking, and riding-school drill of the previous three years.
Grace is, after all, but the result of repressed strength. The loose and easy seat that seems to sway so carelessly with every motion, can tighten itself by instinct to the compression of a vice, and the “prettiest rider,” as they say in Ireland, is probably the one whom a kicker or buck-jumper would find the most difficult to dislodge. No doubt in the field, the ride, the parade, or the polo-ground a strong seat is the first of those many qualitiesthat constitute good horsemanship. The real adept is not to be unseated by any catastrophe less conclusive than complete downfall of man and beast; nay, even then he parts company without confusion, and it may be said of him as of “William of Deloraine,” good at need in a like predicament—
“Still sate the warrior, saddle fast,Till, stumbling in the mortal shock,Down went the steed, the girthing broke,Hurled in a heap lay man and horse.”
But I have a strong idea Sir William did not let his bridle go even then.
95-1J’y suis.
95-1J’y suis.
“Hethat would venture nothing must not get on horseback,” says a Spanish proverb, and the same caution seems applicable to most manly amusements or pursuits. We cannot enter a boat, put on a pair of skates, take a gun in hand for covert shooting, or even run downstairs in a hurry without encountering risk; but the amount of peril to which a horseman subjects himself seems proportioned inversely to the unconsciousness of it he displays.
“Where there is no fear there is no danger,” though a somewhat reckless aphorism, is more applicable, I think, to the exercise of riding than to any other venture of neck and limbs. The horse is an animal of exceedingly nervous temperament, sympathetic too, in the highest degree, with the hand from which he takes his instructions. Its slightest vacillation affects him with electricrapidity, but from its steadiness he derives moral encouragement rather than physical support, and on those rare occasions when his own is insufficient, he seems to borrow daring and resolution from his rider.
If the man’s heart is in the right place, his horse will seldom fail him; and were we asked to name the one essential without which it is impossible to attain thorough proficiency in the saddle, we should not hesitate to say nerve.
Nerve, I repeat, in contradistinction topluck. The latter takes us into a difficulty, the former brings us out of it. Both are comprised in the noble quality we call emphatically valour, but while the one is a brilliant and imposing costume, so is the other an honest wear-and-tear fabric, equally fit for all weathers, fine and foul.
“You shiver, Colonel—you are afraid,” said an insubordinate Major, who ought to have been put under arrest then and there, to his commanding officer on the field of Prestonpans. “Iamafraid, sir,” answered the Colonel; “and if you were as much afraid as I am,you would run away!”
I have often thought this improbable anecdote exemplifies very clearly that most meritorious of all courage which asserts the dominion of our will over our senses. The Colonel’s answer proves he was full of valour. Hehad lots of pluck, but as he was bold enough to admit, a deficiency of nerve.
Now the field of Diana happily requires but a slight per-centage of daring and resolution compared with the field of Mars. I heard the late Sir Francis Head, distinguished as a soldier, a statesman, an author, and a sportsman, put the matter in a few words, very tersely—and exceedingly to the point. “Under fire,” said he, “there is a guinea’s-worth of danger, but it comes to you. In the hunting-field, there is only three-ha’p ’orth, butyou go to it!” In both cases, the courage required is a mere question of degree, and as in war, so in the chase, he is most likely to distinguish himself whose daring, not to be dismayed, is tempered with coolness, whose heart is always stout and hopeful, while he never loses his head.
Now as I understand the terms pluck and nerve, I conceive the first to be a moral quality, the result of education, sentiment, self-respect, and certain high aspirations of the intellect; the second, a gift of nature dependent on the health, the circulation, and the liver. As memory to imagination in the student, so is nerve to pluck in the horseman. Not the more brilliant quality, nor the more captivating, but sound, lasting, available for all emergencies, and sure to conquer in the long run.
We will suppose two sportsmen are crossing a country equally well mounted, and each full of valour to the brim. A, to quote his admiring friends, “has the pluck of the devil!” B, to use a favourite expression of the saddle-room, “has a good nerve.” Both are bound to come to grief over some forbidding rails at a corner, the only way out, in the line hounds are running, and neither has any more idea of declining than had poor Lord Strathmore on a similar occasion when Jem Mason halloaed to him, “Eternal misery on this side my lord, and certain death on the other!” So they harden their hearts, sit down in their saddles, and this is what happens:—
A’s horse, injudiciously sent at the obstacle,becauseit is awkward, a turn too fast, slips in taking off, and strikes the top-rail, which neither bends nor breaks, just below its knees. A flurried snatch at the bridle pulls its head in the air, and throws the animal skilfully to the ground at the moment it most requires perfect freedom for a desperate effort to keep on its legs. Rider and horse roll over in an “imperial crowner,” and rise to their feet looking wildly about them, totally disconnected, and five or six yards apart.
This is not encouraging for B, who is obliged to follow, inasmuch as the place only offers room for oneat a time, but as soon as his leader is out of the way, he comes steadily and quietly at the leap. His horse too, slips in the tracks of its fallen comrade, but as it is going in a more collected form, it contrives to get its fore-legs over the impediment, which catches it, however, inside the hocks, so that, balancing for a moment, it comes heavily on its nose. During these evolutions, B sits motionless in the saddle, giving the animal complete liberty of rein. An instinct of self-preservation and a good pair of shoulders turn the scale at the last moment, and although there is no denying they “had a squeak for it” in the scramble, B and his horse come off without a fall.
Now it was pluck that took both these riders into the difficulty, but nerve that extricated one of them without defeat.
I am not old enough to have seen the famous Mr. Assheton Smith in the hunting-field, but many of my early Leicestershire friends could remember him perfectly at his best, when he hunted that fine and formidable country, with the avowed determination, daily carried out,of going into every field with his hounds!
The expenditure of valour, for it really deserves the name necessary to carry out such a style of riding canonly be appreciated by those who have tried to keep in a good place during thirty or forty minutes, over any part of the Quorn and Cottesmore counties lying within six miles of Billesdon. Where should we be but for the gates? I think I may answer, neither there nor thereabouts! I have reason to believe the many stories told of “Tom Smith’s” skill and daring are little, if at all, exaggerated. He seems admitted by all to have been the boldest, as he was one of the best, horsemen that ever got into a saddle with a hunting-whip in his hand.
Though subsequently a man of enormous wealth, in the prime of life, he lived on the allowance, adequate but not extravagant, made him by his father, and did by no means give those high prices for horses, which, on the principle that “money makes the mare to go,” are believed by many sportsmen to ensure a place in the front rank. He entertained no fancies as to size, action, above all, peculiarities in mouths and tempers. Little or big, sulky, violent, or restive, if a horse could gallop and jump, he was a hunter the moment he found himself between the legs of Tom Smith.
There is a namesake of his hunting at present from Melton, who seems to have taken several leaves out of his book. Captain Arthur Smith, with every advantage of weight, nerve, skill, seat, and hand, is never away fromthe hounds. Moreover, he always likes his horse, and his horse always seems to like him. This gentleman, too, is blessed with an imperturbable temper, which I have been given to understand the squire of Tedworth wasnot.
Instances of Tom Smith’s daring are endless. How characteristic was his request to a farmer near Glengorse, that he would construct such a fence as should effectually prevent the field from getting away in too close proximity to his hounds. “I can make you up a stopper,” said the good-natured yeoman, “and welcome; but what be you to do yourself, Squire, for I know you like well to be with ’em when they run?”
“Never mind me,” was the answer, “you do what I ask you. I never saw a fence in this country I couldn’t get overwith a fall!” and, sure enough, the first day the hounds found a fox in that well-known covert, Tom Smith was seen striding along in the wake of his darlings, having tumbled neck-and-crop over the obstacle he had demanded, in perfect good humour and content.
If valour then, is a combination of pluck and nerve, he may be called the most valorous sportsman that ever got upon a horse, while affording another example of the partiality with which fortune favours the bold, for although he has had between eighty and ninety falls ina season, he was never really hurt, I believe, but once in his life.
“That is abraveman!” I have heard Lord Gardner say in good-humoured derision, pointing to some adventurous sportsman, whose daring so far exceeded his dexterity as to bring horse and rider into trouble; but his lordship’s own nerve was so undeniable, that like many others, he may have undervalued a quality of which he could not comprehend the want.
Most hunting-men, I fancy, will agree with me, that of all obstacles we meet with in crossing a country, timber draws most largely on the reserve fund of courage hoarded away in that part of a hero’s heart which is nearest his mouth. The highest rails I ever saw attempted were ridden at by Lord Gardner some years ago, while out with Mr. Tailby’s hounds near the Ram’s Head. With a fair holding scent, and the pack bustling their fox along over the grass, there was no time for measurement, but I remember perfectly well that being in the same field, some fifty yards behind him, and casting longing looks at the fence, totally impracticable in every part, I felt satisfied the corner he made for was simply an impossibility.
“We had better turn round and go home!” I muttered in my despair.
The leap consisted of four strong rails, higher than a horse’s withers, an approach down hill, a take-off poached by cattle, and a landing into a deep muddy lane. I can recall at this moment, the beautiful style in which my leader brought his horse to its effort. Very strong in the saddle, with the finest hands in the world, leaning far back, and sitting well down, he seemed to rouse as it were, and concentrate the energies of the animal for its last half-stride, when, rearing itself almost perpendicularly, it contrived to get safe over, only breaking the top rail with a hind leg.
This must have lowered the leap by at least a foot, yet when I came to it, thus reduced, and “made easy,” it was still a formidable obstacle, and I felt thankful to be on a good jumper.
Of late years I have seen Mr. Powell, who is usually very well mounted, ride over exceedingly high and forbidding timber so persistently, as to have earned from that material, thenom de chasseby which he is known amongst his friends.
But perhaps the late Lord Cardigan, the last of the Brudenells, afforded in the hunting-field, as in all other scenes of life, the most striking example of that “pluck” which is totally independent of youth, health, strength, or any other physical advantage. The courage that inadvanced middle-age governed the steady manœuvres of Bulganak, and led the death-ride at Balaclava, burned bright and fierce to the end. The graceful seat might be less firm, the tall soldier-like figure less upright, but Mars, one of his last and best hunters, was urged to charge wood and water by the same bold heart at seventy, that tumbled Langar into the Uppingham road over the highest gate in Leicestershire at twenty-six. The foundation of Lord Cardigan’s whole character was valour. He loved it, he prized it, he admired it in others, he was conscious and proud of it in himself.
So jealous was he of this chivalrous quality, that even in such a matter of mere amusement as riding across a country, he seemed to attach some vague sense of disgrace to the avoidance of a leap, however dangerous, if hounds were running at the time, and was notorious for the recklessness with which he would plunge into the deepest rivers though he could not swim a stroke!
This I think is to courtrealdanger for no sufficient object.
Lord Wolverton, than whom no man has ridden straighter and more enthusiastically to hounds, ever since he left Oxford, once crossed the Thames in this most perilous fashion, for he, too, has never learnt to swim, during a run with “the Queen’s.” “But,” said I,protesting subsequently against such hardihood, “you were risking your life at every stroke.”
“I never thought of that,” was the answer, “till I got safe over, and it was no use bothering about it then.”
Lord Cardigan however, seemed well aware of his danger, and, in my own recollection, had two very narrow escapes from drowning in these uncalled-for exploits.
The gallant old cavalry officer’s death was in keeping with his whole career. At threescore years and ten he insisted on mounting a dangerous animal that he would not have permitted any friend to ride. What happened is still a mystery. The horse came home without him, and he never spoke again, though he lived till the following day.
But these are sad reflections for so cheerful a subject as daring in the saddle. Red is our colour, not black, and, happily, in the sport we love, there are few casualties calling forth more valour than is required to sustain a bloody nose, a broken collar-bone, or a sound ducking in a wet ditch. Yet it is extraordinary how many good fellows riding good horses find themselves defeated in a gallop after hounds, from indecision and uncertainty, rather than want of courage, when the emergency actually arises. Though the danger, accordingto Sir Francis Head, is about a hap’orth, it might possibly be valued at a penny, and nobody wants to discover, in his own person, the exact amount. Therefore are the chivalry of the Midland Counties to be seen on occasion panic-stricken at the downfall or disappearance of a leader. And a dozen feet of dirty water will wholly scatter a field of horsemen who would confront an enemy’s fire without the quiver of an eye-lash. Except timber, of which the risk is obvious, at a glance, nothing frightens thehalf-hard, so much as a brook. It is difficult, you see, to please them, the uncertainty of the limpid impediment being little less forbidding than the certainty of the stiff!
But it does require dash and coolness, pluck and nerve, a certain spice of something that may fairly be called valour, to charge cheerfully at a brook when we have no means of ascertaining its width, its depth, or the soundness of its banks. Horses too are apt to share the misgivings of their riders, and water-jumping, like a loan to a poor relation, if not done freely, had better not be done at all.
The fox, and consequently the hounds, as we know, will usually cross at the narrowest place, but even if we can mark the exact spot, fences, or the nature of the ground may prevent our getting there. What are weto do? If we follow a leader, and he drops short, we are irretrievably defeated, if we make our own selection, the gulf may be as wide as the Thames. “Send him at it!” says valour, “and take your chance!” Perhaps it is the best plan after all. There is something in luck, a good deal in the reach of a horse’s stride at a gallop, and if wedoget over, weratherflatter ourselves for the next mile or two that we have “done the trick!”
To enter on the subject of “hard riding,” as it is called, without honourable mention of the habit and the side-saddle, would in these days betray both want of observation and politeness; but ladies, though they seem to court danger no less freely than admiration, possess, I think, as a general rule, more pluck than nerve. I can recall an instance very lately, however, in which I saw displayed by one of the gentlest of her sex, an amount of courage, coolness, and self-possession, that would have done credit to a hero. This lady, who had not quite succeeded in clearing a high post-and-rail with a boggy ditch on the landing side, was down and under her horse. The animal’s whole weight rested on her legs, so as to keep her in such a position, that her head lay between its fore and hind feet, where the least attempt at a struggle, hemmed in by those four shining shoes, must have dashed her brains out. She seemedin no way concerned for her beauty, or her life, but gave judicious directions to those who rescued her as calmly and courteously as if she had been pouring out their tea.
The horse, though in that there is nothing unusual, behaved like an angel, and the fair rider was extricated without very serious injury; but I thought to myself, as I remounted and rode on, that if a legion of Amazons could be rendered amenable to discipline they would conquer the world.
No man, till he has tried the experiment, can conceive how awkward and powerless one feels in a lady’s seat. They themselves affirm that with the crutch, or second pommel on the near side, they are more secure than ourselves; but when I see those delicate, fragile forms flying over wood and water, poised on precipitous banks, above all, crashing through strong bullfinches, I am struck with admiration at the mysteries of nature, among which not the least wonderful seems the feminine desire to excel. And theydoexcel when resolved they will, even in those sports and exercises which seem more naturally belonging to the masculine department. It was but the other day, a boatman in the Channel told me he saw a lady swimming alone more than half a mile off shore. Now thatthe universal rink has brought skating into fashion, the “many-twinkling feet,” that smoothest glide and turn most deftly, are shod with such dainty boots as never could be worn by the clumsier sex. At lawn-tennis the winning service is offered by some seductive hoyden in her teens; and, although in the game of cricket the Graces have as yet been males, at no distant day we may expect to see the best batsman at the Oval bowled out, or perhaps caught by a woman!
Yes, the race is in the ascendant. It takes the heaviest fish,—I meanrealfish—with a rod and line. It kills its grouse right and left—in the moor among the heather. It shoulders a rifle no heavier than a pea-shooter, but levels the toy so straight that, after some cunning stalk, a “stag of ten” goes down before the white hand and taper finger, as becomes his antlers and his sex. Lastly, when it gets upon Bachelor, or Benedict, or Othello, or any other high-flyer with a suggestive name, it sails away close, often too close, to the hounds, leaving brothers, husbands, even admirers hopelessly in the rear.
Now, I hope I am not going to express a sentiment that will offend their prejudices, and cause young women to call me an old one, but I do consider that, in these days, ladies who go out huntingride a turntoo hard. Far be it from me to assert that the Field is no place for the fair; on the contrary, I hold that their presence adds in every respect to its charms. Neither would I protest against their jumping, and relegate them to the bridle-roads or lanes. Nothing of the kind. Let the greatest care be taken in the selection of their horses; let their saddles and bridles be fitted to such a nicety that sore backs and sore mouths are equally impossible, and let trustworthy servants be told off to attend them during the day. Then, with everything in their favour, over a fair country, fairly fenced, why should they not ride on and take their pleasure?
But even if their souls disdain to follow a regular pilot (and I may observe his office requires no little nerve, as they are pretty quick on to a leader if he gets down), I would entreat them not to try “cutting out the work,” as it is called, but rather to wait and see one rider, at least, over a leap before they attempt it themselves. It is frightful to think of a woman landing in a pit, a water-course, or even so deep a ditch as may cause the horse to roll over her when he falls. With her less muscular frame she is more easily injured than a man; with her finer organisation she cannot sustain injury as well. It turns one sick to think of her daintyhead between a horse’s hind-legs, or of those cruel pommels bruising her delicate ribs and bosom. It is at least twenty to one inourfavour every time we fall, whereas with her the odds are all the other way, and it is almost twenty to one she must be hurt.
What said the wisest of kings concerning a fair woman without discretion? We want no Solomon to remind us that with her courage roused, her ambition excited, all the rivalry of her nature called into play, she has nowhere more need of this judicious quality than in the hunting-field.
Ithas been called the better part of valour, and doubtless, when wanting, the latter is as likely to sustain irretrievable reverses as a ship without a rudder, or a horse without a bridle. The two should always travel together; but it appears to me that we meet the cautious brother most frequently on our journey through life.
In the chase, however, they seem to share their presence impartially enough. Valour is very much to the front at the covert side, and shows again with great certainty after dinner; but discretion becomes paramount and almost ubiquitous when the hounds run, being called on indeed to act for us in every field. Sometimes, particularly when countries are blind early in November, we abandon ourselves so entirely to its guidance as little by little to lose all our self-reliance, till at last wefeel comfortable nowhere but in the high road; and most of us, I dare say, can recall occasions on which we have been so utterly discomfited by an early disappointment (in plain English a fence we were afraid to jump) as to give in without an effort, although the slightest dash of valour at the right moment would have carried us triumphantly out of defeat.
Never mind. Like a French friend of mine, who expresses his disinclination to ourchasse au renardby protesting, “Monsieur, je ne cherche pas mes émotions à me casser le cou,” when we are avowedly in pursuit of pleasure we ought to take it exactly as suits us best. There are two ends of the string in every run with hounds. Wisdom pervades each of these, but eschews the various gradations between. In front rides valour with discretion; in rear, discretion without valour; and in the middle a tumultuous throng, amongst whom neither quality is to be recognised. With too little of the one to fly, not enough of the other to creep, they waver at the fences, hurry at the gaps, get in each other’s way at the gates, and altogether make exceedingly slow progress compared to their efforts and their excitement.
Valour without discretion, I had almost forgotten to observe, was down and under his horse at the first difficulty.
We will let the apex of the pyramid alone for the present, taking the safest and broadest end of the hunt first.
If, then, you have achieved so bad a start that it is impossible to make up your lee-way, or if you are on a hack with neither power nor intention to ride in the front rank, be sure you cannot take matters too coolly should you wish to command the line of chase and see as much as possible of the fun.
I am supposing the hounds have found a good fox that knows more than one parish, and are running him with a holding scent. However favourable your start, and fate is sure to arrange a good one for a man too badly mounted to avail himself of it, let nothing induce you to keep near the pack. At a mile off you can survey and anticipate their general direction, at a quarter that distance you must ride every turn. Do not be disordered by the brilliancy of the pace should their fox go straight up wind. If he does not sink it within five minutes he means reaching a drain, and another five will bring the “who-whoop!” that marks him to ground. This is an unfailing deduction, but happily the most discreet of us are apt to forget it. Time after time we are so fooled by the excitement of our gallop that even experience does not make us wise, and we enjoy thescurry, exclaiming, “What a pity!” when it is over, as if we had never been out hunting before. It would be useless to distress your hack for so short a spin, rather keep wide of the line, if possible, on high ground, and calculate by the wind, the coverts, and the general aspect of the country, where a fox is most likely to make his point.
I have known good runs in the Shires seen fairly, from end to end, by a lady in a wagonette.
When business really begins, men are apt to express in various ways their intention of taking part. Some use their eyes, some their heels, and some their flasks. Do you trust your brains, they will stand you in better stead than spurs, or spectacles, or even brandy diluted with curaçoa. Keep your attention fixed on the chase, watch the pack as long as you can, and when those white specks have vanished into space, depend on your own skill in woodcraft and knowledge of country to bring you up with them again. Above all, while they are actually in motion, distrust the bobbing hats and spots of scarlet that you mark in a distant cluster behind the hedge. What are they but the field? and the field, if it isreallya run, are pretty sure to beout of it.
The first flight you will find very difficult to keepin view. At the most it consists of six or seven horsemen riding fifty or a hundred yards apart, and even its followers become so scattered and detached that in anything like an undulating country they are completely hidden from observation. If youdocatch a glimpse of them, how slow they seem to travel! and yet, when you nick in presently, heaving flanks, red faces, and excited voices will tell a very different tale.
Trotting soberly along, then, with ears and eyes wide open, carefully keeping down wind, not only because the hounds are sure to bend in that direction, but also that you can thus hear before you see them, and take measures accordingly, you will have ridden very few miles before you are gladdened by the cheerful music of the pack, or more probably a twang from the horn. The scent is rarely so good as to admit of hounds running for thirty or forty minutes without a check; indeed, on most days they are likely to be at fault more than once during the lapse of half an hour, when the huntsman’s science will be required to cast them, and, in some cases, to assist them in losing their fox. Now is your time to press on with the still undefeated hack. If you are wise you will not leave the lanes to which I give you the credit of having stuck religiously from the start. At least, do not think of entering a field unlessthe track of an obvious bridle-road leads safely into the next.
A man who never jumps at all can by no possibility be “pounded,” whereas the easiest and safest of gaps into an inclosure may mean a bullfinch with two ditches at the other end.
Perhaps you will find yourself ahead of every one as the hounds spread, and stoop and dash forward with a whimper that makes the sweetest of music in your ears. Perhaps, as they swarm across the very lane in which you are standing, discretion may calmly open the gate for valour, who curses him in his heart, wondering what business he has to be there at all.
There is jealousy even in the hunting-field, though we prefer to call it keenness, emulation, a fancy for riding our own line, and I fear that with most of us, in spite of the kindly sympathies and joyous expansion of the chase, “ego et præterea nihil” is the unit about which our aspirations chiefly revolve.
“What is the use?” I once heard a plaintive voice lamenting behind a blackthorn, while the hounds were baying over a drain at the finish of a clipping thirty minutes on the grass. “I’ve spoilt my hat, I’ve torn my coat, I’ve lamed my horse, I’ve had two falls, I went first, I’ll take my oath, from end to end, and there’s thatd—d fellow on the coffee-coloured pony gets here before me after all!”
There are times, no doubt, when valour must needs yield the palm to discretion.
Let us see how this last respectable quality serves us at the other and nobler extremity of the hunt, for it is there, after all, that our ambition points, and our wishes chiefly tend.
“Are you a hard rider?” asked an inquiring lady of Mr. Jorrocks.
“The hardest in England,” answered that facetious worthy, adding to himself, “I may say that, for I never goes off the ’ard road if I can help it.”
Now instead of following so cautious an example, let us rather cast overboard a superfluity of discretion, that would debar us the post of honour we are fain to occupy, retaining only such a leavening of its virtue as will steer us safely between the two extremes. While the hounds are racing before us, with a good scent, in an open country, let our gallant hunter be freely urged by valour to the front, while at the same time, discretion holds him hard by the head, lest a too inconsiderate daring should endanger his rider’s neck.
If a man has the luck to be on a good timber-jumper, now is the time to take advantage freely of itsconfidential resources. If not pulled about, and interfered with, a hunter that understands his business leaps this kind of fence, so long as he is fresh, with ease to himself and security to his rider. He sees exactly what he has to do, and need not rise an inch higher, nor fling himself an inch farther than is absolutely necessary, whereas a hedge induces him to make such exertions as may cover the uncertainty it conceals. But, on the other hand, the binder will usually bear tampering with, which the bar willnot, thereforeifyour own courage and your horse’s skill tempt you to negotiate rails, stiles, or even a gate—and this last isverygood form—sound discretion warns you to select the first ten or fifteen minutes of a run for such exhibitions, but to avoid them religiously, when the deep ground and the pace have begun to tell.
Assheton Smith himself, though he scouted the idea of ever turning from anything, had in so far the instinct of self-preservation, that when he thought his horse likely to fall over such an obstacle, he put him at it somewhata-slant, so that the animal should get at least one fore-leg clear, and tumble on to its side, when this accomplished rider was pretty sure to rise unhurt with the reins in his hand.
Now this diagonal style of jumping, judiciouslypractised, is not without its advantages at less dangerous fences than the uncompromising bit of timber that turns us over. It necessarily increases the width of a bank, affording the horse more room for foothold, as it decreases the height and strength of the growers, by taking them the way they lie, and may, on occasion, save a good hunter from a broken back, the penalty for dropping both hind legs simultaneously and perpendicularly into some steep cut ditch he has failed to cover in his stride.
Discretion, you observe, should accompany the hardest riders, and is not to be laid aside even in the confusion and excitement of a fall.
This must prove a frequent casualty with every man, however well-mounted, if the hounds show sport and he means to be with them while they run. It seems a paradox, but the oftener you are down, the less likely you are to be hurt. Practice soon teaches you to preserve presence of mind, or, as I may be allowed to call it, discretion, and when you know exactly where your horse is, you can get away from him before he crushes you with the weight of his body. A foot or a hand thrust out at the happy moment, is enough to “fend you off,” and your own person seldom comes to the ground with such force as to do you any harm, if there isplenty of dirt. In the absence of that essential to sport, hunters are not distressed, and therefore do not often fall.
If, however, you have undertaken to temper the rashness of a young one with your own discretion, you must expect occasional reverses; but even thus, there are many chances in your favour, not the least of which is your pupil’s elasticity. Lithe and agile, he will make such gallant efforts to save himself as usually obviate the worst consequences of his mistake. The worn-out, the under-bred, or the distressed horse comes down like a lump of lead, and neither valour nor discretion are much help to us then.
From the pace at which hounds cross a country, there is unfortunately no time to practise that most discreet manœuvre called “leading over,” when the fence is of so formidable a nature as to threaten certain discomfiture, yet I have seen a few tall, powerful, active men, spring off and on their horses with such rapidity as to perform this feat successfully in all the hurry of a burst. The late Colonel Wyndham, who, when he commanded the Greys, in which regiment he served at Waterloo, was said by George the Fourth to be the handsomest man in the army, possessed with a giant’s stature the pliant agility of a harlequin. A finer ridernever got into a saddle. Weighing nineteen stone, I have seen him in a burst across Leicestershire, go for twenty minutes with the best of the light-weights, occasionally relieving his horse by throwing himself off, leaping a fence alongside of it, and vaulting on again, without checking the animal sufficiently to break its stride.
The lamented Lord Mayo too, whose tall stalwart frame was in keeping with those intellectual powers that India still recalls in melancholy pride, was accustomed, on occasion, thus to surmount an obstacle, no less successfully among the bullfinches of Northamptonshire than the banks and ditches of Kildare. Perhaps the best rider of his family, and it is a bold assertion, for when five or six of the brothers are out hunting, there will always be that number of tall heavy men, answering to the name of Bourke in the same field with the hounds, Lord Mayo, or rather Lord Naas (for the best of his sporting career closed with his succession to the earldom), was no less distinguished for his daring horsemanship, than his tact in managing a country, and his skill in hunting a pack of hounds. That he showed less forethought in risking a valuable life than in conducting the government of an empire, we must attribute to his personal courage and keen delight in the chase, but thathe humorously deplored the scarcity of discretion amongst its votaries, the following anecdote, as I had it from himself, sufficiently attests.
While he hunted his own hounds in Kildare, his most constant attendant, though on foot, was a nondescript character, such as is called “a tight boy” in Ireland, and nowhere else, belonging to a class that never seem to do a day’s work, nor to eat a plentiful meal, but are always pleasant, obliging, idle, hungry, thirsty, and supremely happy. Running ten miles on foot to covert, Mick, as he was called, would never leave the hounds till they reached their kennels at night. Thus, plodding home one evening by his lordship’s horse, after an unusually long and fatiguing run, the rider could not help expostulating with the walker on such a perverse misapplication of strength, energy, and perseverance. “Why, look at the work you have been doing,” said his lordship; “with a quarter of the labour you might have earned three or four shillings at least. What a fool you must be, Mick, to neglect your business, and lose half your potatoes, that you may come out with my hounds!”
Mick reflected a moment, and looked up, “Ah! me lard,” replied he, with such a glance of fun as twinkles nowhere but in the Irish blue of an Irish eye, “it’struth your lardship’s spakin’ this night;’av there was no fools, there’d be sorra few fox-hunters!”
Let us return to the question of Discretion, and how we are to combine it with an amusement that makes fools of us all.
While valour, then, bids us take our fences as they come, discretion teaches us that each should be accomplished in the manner most suitable to its peculiar requirements. When a bank offers foothold, and we see the possibility of dividing a large leap by two, we should pull back to a trot, and give our horse a hint that he will do well to spring on and off the obstacle in accordance with a motion of our hand. If, on the contrary, his effort must be made at a black and forbidding bullfinch, with the chance of a wide ditch, or even a tough ashen rail, beyond, it is wise, should we mean having it at all, to catch hold of the bridle and increase our pace, for the last two or three strides, with such energy as shall shoot us through the thorns like a harlequin through a trap-door, leaving the orifice to close up behind, with no more traces of our transit than are left by a bird!