and manly of occupations, or that the English are preeminent in their
knowledge of the art, so there is likewise no doubt that equally stout
riders sit in foreign saddles. And though each would have to learn the
other's trade, I fancy you could sooner teach a score or a hundred
average cavalry officers of any nation to ride well across country,
than an equal number of clever, fox-hunting Englishmen to do the mere
saddle work of any well-drilled troops. Leaping is uniformly practiced
and well-taught, in all regular cavalry regiments of every army with
which I have been familiar in all parts of the world.
XI.
Well, Patroclus, you have earned your gallop. I loosen in the least my
hold upon the reins, and shaking your head from very delight, off you
go like the wind. Never could charger plunge into a mad gallop more
quickly than you, Patroclus. Your stride is long, your gather quick,
and the reserve power in your well-balanced movements so inspiring,
that I would almost ride you at the Charles River, in the expectation
that you would clear it. But the lane is all too short. Steady, sir,
steady! and down you come in a dozen bounds to a gait from which you
can fall into a walk at word.
But what is that? A rustling in the woods beside us! That sounds
indeed frightsome enough to make you start and falter. You are not
devoid of fear, Patroclus. No high-couraged horse can ever be. But
though you may tremble in every limb, if I speak to you, I may safely
throw the reins upon your neck. So, boy! To face danger oftener
insures safety than to run from it. To the right about, and let us see
what it means. Steady, again! Now stand, and let it come. There,
Patroclus, despite your snort of fear, it is only a couple of stray
calves cutting their ungainly capers as they make their way towards
home. Their bustle, like that of so many of the rest of us, far
exceeds their importance. Was not this much better seen than avoided?
You would have hardly liked this pleasant lane again had we not seen
the matter through.
I have never kept you in condition, Patroclus, to stand heavy bursts
after hounds, or indeed any exceptionally long or sharp run. That
means too much deprivation of your daily company. Nor indeed, be it
confessed, is your master himself often in the condition requisite to
do the sharpest work. It will generally be noticed that the clear eye
and firm muscle of the rider is a factor in the problem of how to be
in at the death, as well as the lungs and courage of the hunter. And
yet, Patroclus, you are, within your limits, a model jumper, and
always seem to have a spare leg. No horse delights more in being
headed at a wall or ditch than you, even in cold blood. For any horse
worthy the name will jump after a fashion in company. At the end of
our lane we can take the short cut towards the great highway, over the
gate and the little brook and hedge. As I talk to you, I can see that
you catch my purpose, for as we draw near the place, the might of
conscious strength seems to course through all your veins. Perhaps I
have unwittingly settled into my seat as I thought of the four-foot
gate. Here we are, and there is just enough bend in the road to ride
at the gate with comfort. Head up, ears erect, eyes starting from out
their sockets, no need to guide you towards it, my Patroclus! No
excitement, no uncertainty, no flurry. You and I know how surely we
are going over. A quiet canter, but full of elastic power, to within
about fifty feet of the jump, and then a short burst, measuring every
stride, till with a "Now boy!" as you approach the proper gather, I
give you your head, and you go into the air like a swallow. Just a
fraction of a second--how much longer it seems!--and we land cleverly,
well together, and in three strides more you have fallen into a jog
again. And now you look back, lest, perchance, the lump of sugar or
Seckel pear which used to reward you when you were learning your
lesson should be forthcoming now. But no, Patroclus, my good word and
a kindly pat for your docility and strength must be your meed to-day.
Canter along on the soft turf till we come to the little brook. We
will call it a brook, and think of it as a big one, though it is
barely eight feet wide. But never mind. We can jump thrice its width
just as well as across it. Remember, Patroclus, water requires speed
and well-set purpose, as height does clean discretion. At it, my boy!
Take your own stride. There's lots of room this side and more on the
other bank.
"Harden your heart, and catch hold of the bridle,
Steady him! Rouse him! Over he goes!"
In the air again; this time it seems like a minute almost. There,
Patroclus, if it had been twenty feet of water, you would not have
known the odds. Now for the road and company.
XII.
The same reasoning may be applied to saddles as to gaits. To pull down
a bull, the Texan must be furnished with a horn-pommel, which would
have been highly dangerous to his rider if Patroclus had happened to
come down over the gate just leaped. Indeed, nothing but the flattest
of saddles is safe to the steeple-chaser. On the contrary, the soldier
rides a trot, or uses his sabre to much better advantage with a cantle
sufficiently high to lean against. And any man is liable to have some
physical conformation requiring a peculiar saddle.
[Illustration: PLATE V.
AN EASY CANTER.]
The present generation of new-fledged riders would fain tie us down to
the English hunting-seat by laws like the Medes and Persians. This is
a good pattern for our Eastern needs, but let us not call it the only
one. It is, of course, well when in Rome to do as the Romans do, or at
least so nearly like them as not to provoke remark. But every one
cannot do this, and the old trooper is not apt to ride this way. And
yet, there are thousands of ancient cavalry soldiers all over this
country, North and South, who, naked weapon in hand, have done such
feats of horsemanship as would shame most of the stoutest of to-day's
fox-hunting, polo-playing riders. I do not refer to the obstacles they
used to ride at,--which meant a vast deal more than merely an ugly
tumble over a three-foot stone wall; I refer to their stout seats in
the saddle, and the rough ground they were wont to cover when they
rode down upon and over a belching wall of fire. For all which,
whenever we see one of these old troopers out for a ride, modestly
(for he is always modest) airing his army saddle, strong curb, and
long and hooded stirrups, we may, perchance, notice the jeer of the
stripling, whose faultless dress and bang-tailed screw are but a sham
which hides his lack of heart. It always gives one's soul a glow of
pride to see the well-known seat, and one is fain tempted to ride up
to the old comrade and grasp him by the hand. A thorough rider will
recognize his equal under any garb. It is pretense alone which merits
a rebuke. You cannot make a poor rider a good one by mounting him in a
fashionable saddle, any more than you can make a worthless brute a
good horse by giving his tail the latest dock.
XIII.
Until within no great time the modified military seat has been the one
which formed the basis of instruction. The riding-master, I presume,
still insists, with civilian and recruit alike, on feet parallel with
the horse, heels down, toes in, knee grip, and a hold of reins utterly
unknown in the hunting-field. And with a certain reason, though indeed
the old whip's rule of "'eels and 'ands down, 'ead and 'eart 'igh," is
the whole of the story, after all. For the man who begins with a knee
grip will never forget what his knees are for, and will not, like the
good little dude we passed a while ago, show daylight between them and
the saddle-flap at every rise. But the knee grip alone will not
suffice for all occasions, despite our military or riding-school
friends. A madly plunging horse or a big leap will instinctively call
out a grip with all the legs a man can spare. Moreover, the closer you
keep your legs to the horse without clasping him, the better. Go into
the hunting-field or over a steeple-chase course, and you will find
that the inside of your boot-tops--and not only yours, but every other
jockey's as well--have been rubbed hard and constantly against the
saddle. There lies the proof. At West Point, and in fact at every
military school, the cadets are sometimes practiced to ride with a
scrap of paper held to the saddle by the knee while they leap a bar,
and at the same time thrust or cut with the sabre at a convenient
dummy foe. I have seen a silver dollar so held between the knee and
saddle. But the bar is not a succession of high stone walls, nor is
the cadet riding a burst of several miles. And with a longer stirrup
it is more natural to keep the foot parallel with the horse's side.
To-day, the best riders do not so hold their feet. Cross-country a man
certainly does not. The proof is forthcoming at the Country Club on
any race-day, or at every meet here or in England, that a man riding
over an obstacle of any size will use all the legs he can without
digging his spurs into his horse's flanks, in a way he could not do
with the feet parallel to the horse's sides.
The modern dispensation differs from the old one in not being tied to
the military seat. The Rev. Sydney Smith objected to clergymen riding,
but modified his disapproval in those cases when they "rode very badly
and turned out their toes." A generation ago, a man was always
thinking of the position of his feet, as he cares not to do to-day, if
he sits firmly in the saddle, and boasts light hands.
XIV.
While on this subject, one cannot refrain from indulging in a friendly
laugh at the attempt to bend our unreasonable Eastern weather to the
conditions of a fox-hunting climate. The hunting season is that time
of the year when the crops are out of the ground. In England, during
the winter months, the weather is open and moist, and the soft ground
makes falling "delightfully easy," as dear old John Leech has it. And
the little hedges and ditches of some of the good hunting counties, or
indeed the ox-fences and grassy fields of Leicestershire, are such as
to make a day out a positive pound of pleasure, with scarce an ounce
of danger to spice it, if you choose to ride with moderation. For the
best rider in the Old Country is not the hare-brained cockney who
risks both his horse's and his own less valuable neck in the field; it
is he who chooses discreetly his course, and makes headway with the
least exertion to his hunter compatible with his keeping a good place
in the field. The man who appreciates how jumping takes strength out
of a horse, or who is any judge of pace, is apt to save, not risk him.
Few men willingly jump an obstacle which they can readily avoid
without too much delay. Read the legends of the famous hunting-men of
England, and you will find discretion always outranking valor. Any
fool can ride at a dangerous obstacle. Courage of that kind is a
common virtue. But it takes a make-up of quite a different nature to
be in, as a rule, at the death. How many five-barred gates will a man
jump when he can open them? How much water will he face when there is
a bridge near by? Does not every one dismount in hilly countries to
ease his horse? A good rider must be ready to throw his heart over any
obstacle possible to himself and his horse, when he cannot get round
it. But a discreet horseman puts his horse only at such leaps as he
must take, or which will win him a distinct advantage.
England is naturally a hunting country. But here, Lord save the mark!
there are no foxes to speak of. Scent won't lie, as a general thing,
with the thermometer below thirty (though scent is one of those
mysterious things which only averages according to rules, and every
now and then shows an unaccountable exception), and the obstacles are
snake fences or stone walls with lumpy, frozen ground to land on, or,
belike, a pile of bowlders or a sheet of ice. A bad fall means
potentially broken bones or a ruined horse, and while you are beating
cover for the fox who won't be found, you are shaking with the cold,
and your clipped or over-heated beast is sowing the seeds of
lung-fever.
You, Patroclus, were once laid up five months by landing on a snag the
further side of a most harmless-looking stone wall, and tearing out
some of the coronal arteries.
There are plenty of good horseback sports without a resort to what is
clearly out of the latitude. If you wait for good hunting weather, the
crops interfere with your sport, and our farmers have not the English
inducement to welcome the hunt across the fields, tilled at the sweat
of their brow. In the South, both weather and much waste land make
fox-hunting more easy to carry on. But even there it does not thrive.
Here in the East it will not be made indigenous.
Not but what, on a bright sunny day, a meet at which equine admirers
can show their neat turn-outs and glossy steeds and discuss horseflesh
in the general and the particular is a delightful experience. And
indeed, wherever crops and covers do not monopolize the country, a
good drag-hunt may often be had before cold weather mars the sport.
Perchance, in time, Reynard may take up his abode with us, when
vulpicide shall be punished by real ostracism. For has not the Ettrick
Shepherd proven conclusively that Reynard loves the chase? But far
from underrating the caged fox or anise-seed bag, hare and hounds
would seem to afford the better sport. For the hares, an they will,
can carry you across a country where each one can choose his own
course, instead of being obliged to follow a leader through
wood-paths, and through second growth which is all but jungle, where,
if one happens to blunder at an obstacle, your follower will come
riding down atop of you, and where you are bound to be "nowhere"
unless you get away with the first half-dozen men.
But spite of all its drawbacks, Patroclus, you and I enjoy in equal
measure a run under fair conditions as much as the best of them. And
let us hope the hunting fever will be kept up in healthy fashion, for
we two can select our weather, and we are not afraid of our reputation
if we drop out before the finish. This kind of work soon shakes our
novices into the saddle, and its many excellencies far outweigh its
few absurdities. Let him who runs it down try rather a run with the
pack some sunny day. If he does not find it manly sport, and stout
hearts in the van of the field, he can tell us why thereafter. The
outcome of to-day's riding mania is well ahead of the young men's
billiard-playing and bar-drinking of twenty years ago.
XV.
There are good riders in every land and in every species of saddle.
Facts are the best arguments. The North American Indian and the
follower of the Prophet each performs his prodigies of horsemanship,
the one bareback with hanging leg, the other in a peaked saddle with
knee all but rubbing his nose. Whoso has laughed over Leech's sketches
of Mossoo, who makes a _promenade a cheval_, or indeed has watched him
in the Bois, is fain to doubt that a Frenchman can ride well. And yet
he does. Was not Baucher the father of fine horsemanship? A rough and
tumble, plucky rider, or one who is experienced and discreet after
hounds as well, is more frequently found in Great Britain; a highly
skilled equestrian (is the author nearing a hornet's nest?) in France,
or elsewhere across the Channel. But we naturally must seek the
Continental rider in the camp, for is not the Continent itself one
vast camp? It is perhaps hard to decide whether the cavalry officer
who is master of the intricacies of the _manege_ or the country
gentleman who has won a reputation with the Pytchley or the Belvoir
may be properly called the more accomplished horseman. Each in his
place is unequaled. But is it not true, that the former can more
quickly adapt himself to the habits of hunting than the latter to
those of the Haute Ecole? And do not the methods of the School give us
more capacity for enjoying our daily horseback exercise, than any
amount of experience with hounds?
XVI.
It is sometimes said in England that a School-rider reining in his
steed never looks as if he were having a thoroughly good time, as does
the man who lets his horse go his own inspiriting gait along the road.
But why not? Is inspiration only found in excess of physical motion? If
so, to use an exaggerated comparison, why does not Paddy at Donnybrook
Fair, trailing his coat and daring some one to tread on the tail of it,
enjoy himself more thoroughly than the man who quietly plays a game of
chess or whist? Or to use a more nearly equal simile, may not a man
find as great enjoyment in a skilled game of tennis, as in the violent
rushes of foot-ball, where two hundred and twenty pounds of mere
blubber will assuredly bear down all the prowess and aptness of his own
say one hundred and forty? It is as certain that the pleasure of riding
a trained horse is greater than that of merely sitting a vigorously
moving untrained one, as that the delight of intellectual study exceeds
the excitement of trashy reading. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_ seems
not to be uniformly true, for riders unfamiliar with the training of
the High School almost as invariably run down its methods, as self-made
business men are apt to discountenance a college education as a
preliminary discipline for the struggles of life.
It is a fact that no man who has once been a School-rider ever
abandons either the knowledge he has gained or its constant practice.
No one can underrate the pleasure of simple motion upon a vigorous
horse. But the School-rider has this in equal degree with the
uneducated horseman, coupled with a feeling of control and power and
ability to perform which the mere man on horseback never attains.
Moreover, all the powers of the School-rider's horse are within the
grasp of his hand; and that the powers of the high-strung steed of the
average equestrian are all too often resident mainly in the animal
itself is shown by the chapter of accidents daily reiterated in the
news-columns. The School-man is apt to ride more moderately, and to
indulge in a bracing gallop less frequently, because to him the
pleasure of slow and rhythmic movement on a fleet and able horse is
far greater than mere rapidity can ever be; the untrained rider
resorts to speed because this is the one exhilaration within the
bounds of his own or his horse's knowledge.
I do not wish to be understood as advocating the School habit of
_always_ keeping a horse collected. However much for some purposes I
admire it, I do not practice it. I often saunter off a half-dozen
miles without lifting the rein, while Patroclus wanders at his own
sweet will. I often trot or gallop at my nag's quite unrestrained
gait. But if I want to collect him, if I want that obedience which the
School teaches him to yield, he must, to be to me a perfect horse, at
my slightest intimation give himself absolutely to my control, and
take all his art from me. I feel that I am a good judge of either
habit of riding, as I have well tried both, and absolutely adhere to
neither. I pretend by no means, in School-riding, to have carried my
art so far as to be even within hail of the great masters of
equitation; but I have not for many years been without one or more
horses educated in all the School airs which are applicable to
road-riding, and I know their value and appreciate it.
Because, then, the cowboy is nowhere in the hunting-field; or because
the hard-riding squire and M. F. H. cannot drop to the further side of
his horse while he shoots at his galloping enemy, or pick up a
kerchief from the ground at a smart gallop; or because the Frenchman
has to learn his racing trade from an English jockey, it will not do
to say that each is not among the best of horsemen, or that either is
better than the other. The style of riding is always the outgrowth of
certain conditions of necessity or pleasure, and invariably fits those
conditions well. With us in the East the English habit is no doubt the
most available; but it can only be made the test of our own needs or
fashions, not of general equestrianism.
XVII.
While all this has been buzzing through your master's brain, you,
Patroclus, knowing full well that the loosely hanging rein has meant
liberty within reason to yourself, have wandered away to the nearest
thicket, and begun to crop the tender leaves and shoots as peacefully
as you please. To look at your quiet demeanor at this moment one would
scarcely think that you were such a bundle of nerves. You can be as
sedate as Rosinante till called upon. But when the bit plays in your
mouth, you are as full of life and action as the steeds of Diomed with
flowing manes. Your eye and ear are an index to your mood, and you
reflect your rider's wish in every step. No man ever bestrode a more
generous beast than you. Do you remember, Patroclus, the days when you
carried your little twelve-year-old mistress, and how her first
lessons in fine equitation were taken in your company? And cleverly
did she learn indeed. Do you remember how we used to put you on your
honor, though you were only a five-year-old and dearly loved to romp
and play? Ay, Patroclus, and fairly did you answer the appeal! With
the gentle burden on your broad, strong back, her golden-red hair
streaming behind her in the breeze from under her jaunty hat, you
would have ridden through fire, my beauty, rather than betray your
trust. However tempted to a bound, or however startled at some
fearsome thing, one word--a "Quiet, Pat!"--from that soft girlish
voice, now hushed for both of us, would never fail to keep you kind
and steady. And you were ever willing, with even more than your
accustomed alacrity, to perform your airs at the slightest
encouragement of the soft hands and gentle voice; and having done so
would lay back your ears and shake your head with very pleasure at the
rippling laughter in which your pretty rider's thanks were wont to be
expressed. I knew, Patroclus, that in your care the little maid was
quite as safe as with her doll at home.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.
A TEN-MILE TROT.]
XVIII.
And now a word about the horse in action, as shown by instantaneous
photography, and about the war waged between artists and
photographers. Some disciples of Muybridge would fain have the artist
depict an animal in an ungainly attitude, because the lens is apt to
catch him at a point in his stride which looks ungainly, there being
many more such points than handsome ones. It is the moving creature
which we admire. The poetry of motion is rarely better seen than in a
proudly stepping horse. But arrest that motion and you are apt to have
that which the human eye can neither recognize nor delight itself
withal. Arrested motion rarely suggests the actual motion we aim to
depict. The lens will show you every spoke of a rapidly revolving
wheel, as if at rest. The eye, or the artist, shows you a blur of
motion. And so with other objects. The lens works in the hundredth
part of a second; the eye is slower far.
To a certain extent photography, _quoad_ art, is wrong and the limner
is right. There are some horses which possess a very elegant carriage.
In their action there are certain periods--generally those at which
one fore and one hind leg are slowing up at the limit of their forward
stride--when the eye catches an agreeable impression which is capable
of being reduced to canvas,--though it is after all the proud motion
itself which pleases, and this can only be suggested. Now, photography
robs you of almost all the suggestiveness of the horse's action,
unless you select only those photographs which approach the action
caught by the human eye. Even after long study of the Muybridge
silhouettes, the artistic lover of the horse feels that he must reject
all but a small percentage of these wonderful anatomical studies. If
there are periods in the horse's stride which are agreeable to the
eye, why should the artist not select these for delineation? Why
indeed does his art not bind him to do so?
* * * * *
You, Patroclus, are peculiarly elegant in motion. It is difficult to
pick a flaw in the symmetry of your gaits. Slow or fast, fresh or
tired, your motion is always proud and graceful. And yet out of many
photographs, few suggest your action at all, fewer still even
passably; none convey to its full extent what all your intimates well
know.
* * * * *