excessive amount of action, and with unquestioned grace of curves. The
reason why horses in very rapid motion photograph illy is to be found
in the too extreme curves described by their legs in the powerful
strides of great speed, any position in which, arrested by the lens,
looks exaggerated,--sprawling. The reason why, on the other hand, the
photograph of a daisy-clipper moving slowly looks tame is the lack of
action to suggest the motion which the eye follows in real life. Many
of the best performers are plain in action. Some of the most faultless
movers, so far as results or form are concerned, even when agreeable
to the eye, will show unsightly photographs. Let any one who desires
to test this matter have a half-dozen instantaneous photographs of his
pet saddle beast taken. He will surely be convinced that a horse must
be extremely handsome in motion to give even a passable portrait. If
he gets one picture in four which shows acceptably, he may be sure
that he owns a good-looking nag. Among the silhouettes in the Stanford
Book, scarcely one in twenty shows a handsome outline. This seems to
be owing, as above explained, to the speed exhibited in almost all the
performances; and in the slow gaits, to the want of action in the
subjects. Still, if the pictures had shown the light and shade which
instantaneous photography is now able to give, many of the plates
would have made artistic pictures.
There are certainly many minutiae in which the artist can learn from
the photograph. To give an instance: before reaching the ground, the
leg in every gait must be stiffened, and the bottom of the foot
brought parallel to the surface traveled over, or a stumble will
ensue. This, at first blush, may look awkward; but it is not really
so. The artist often forgets that a horse must sustain his weight on
stiff legs, and that these straighten from their graceful curves to
the supporting position in regular gradation, and reach this position
just before the foot comes down. Some in other respects most
attractive sketches fail in this. Often one sees the picture of an
otherwise handsomely moving horse whose fetlock joint of the foot just
being planted is so bent forward as to make a drop inevitable. This is
certainly without the domain of true art.
The origin of such drawing lies probably in the fact that the eye
catches the bent rather than the straight position of the fetlock,
because the former occurs when the foot is higher above the ground,
while the latter position is not so noticeable as being more out of
the line of sight. But such stumbling pictures are as much a worry to
the horseman's eye as the ugliest of the Muybridge gallopers is to the
artist's; and they are wholly unnecessary.
There are many such minor points of criticism of the usual artistic
work, which the artists should not deem beyond consideration. It is
quite possible to make the truthful and the artistic go hand in hand.
Except, perhaps, in the gallop. This most disheartening gait
_will_ not be reduced to what we have been taught to like. There
is but one of the five "times" of the gallop which suggests even
tolerable speed,--the one when all four feet are in the air and
gathered well under the horse. At the instant when one of the hind
legs is reaching forward to land, there is sometimes a suggestion of
great speed and vigor. But the successive stilted strides when the
straightened legs in turn assume the body's weight oppress the very
soul of the lover of the Racing Plates. It must fain be left to the
wisest heads, and perhaps better to time, to bring daylight from this
darkness.
The late John Leech, as far back as the forties, essayed to draw
running horses as his very keen eye showed him that they really
looked; but he was laughed out of the idea, and thenceforth stuck to
the artist's quadruped, though he had been, in his new departure, much
more nearly approaching anatomy than any one was then aware. And
thirty years ago, on Epsom Downs, it was revealed to the author, as it
has no doubt been to thousands of others, that it is the gathered and
not the spread position of the racer which is impressed upon the eye.
This is most clearly shown by watching the distant horses through a
glass. But still we stick to the anatomically impossible spread-eagle
stride of the turf, and feel that it conveys the idea of speed which
is not compassed by the set _fac-similes_ of photography.
It has been alleged that a horse never does, nor can take the spread
position of the typical racer of the artist. This is true enough, for
he never does extend himself to so great a degree. But at one part of
the leap he may do this very thing, though by no means to the extent
usually depicted (see Plate XI.). It is, however, certain that he
cannot do so at all in the gallop. At the only time when all his feet
are off the ground in this gait, they are all close together under his
girths. At all other times there are one or more feet on the ground,
with legs straight, and at greater or less inclination to the body.
From front to rear the legs move almost like the spokes of a wheel.
What the pictures of the turf in the future may be it is hard indeed
to say.
And yet, the longer one examines the many hundred silhouettes of
running horses, so well grouped for anatomical study in the Stanford
Book, the more reconciled to what there is of truth in them one may
become. Many years ago, I sat during the forenoon in the Turner Room
of the National Gallery in London, in the company of a friend, herself
no mean artist, and of decidedly strong artistic taste and correct
judgment, whose ideas of Turner had been founded solely on what she
had read, or seen and heard in America, and whose prejudice against
his apparently overwrought work was excessive. For a full hour few
words were passed. Then, rising to go: "If I sit here any longer, I
shall end by liking the man!" quoth she.
It seems to me that the power in these Muybridge photographs grows
upon you. It is universally acknowledged that one does not see the
running horse as he is usually drawn; in other words, that the
artist's run is incorrect. Now, if the retina has anything impressed
upon it, it must assuredly be either one of the positions actually
taken by the galloping animal, or else a mere blur of motion. The
artist draws a blurred wheel because he sees it blurred, and it
suggests rapid motion. But he will not draw blurred legs, because such
drawing will not suggest what he desires to convey in his picture. And
yet, if he is true to what his eye has seen, he must draw some of the
positions the horse has been in, and not positions which he cannot by
any possibility have passed through in this gait. I take it for
granted that the eye catches the gathered positions, and these are the
ones in which the horse is entirely in the air, with his legs under
his girths, and with hind feet reaching forward to land. Why should
not the artist draw these positions, in their thousand variations, in
lieu of the one single impossible position now universally in vogue?
Without alleging that he should do so, will the artist tell me why he
should not? For unless it be assumed that the usually drawn position
is a sort of geometrical resultant of the rapid series of positions
passed through, and is hence adopted because the eye mathematically
and unconsciously reduces these positions to the resultant, where is
the truth which the artist aims to produce? For I understand art to be
the reproduction of what the eye can see, or at least its close
suggestion. And though there may be room to doubt what the eye may
see, there is no room to doubt what the horse actually does in the
gallop.
It is probable that the spread-eagle position is a mere outgrowth of
the canter, which in a slight degree approximates to the action of the
artist's run, and that the latter has been exaggerated as a means of
conveying the idea of increased speed. I have yet heard no allegation
that the eye catches any but the gathering positions of the horse's
gallop. Now, given this, given an artist equal to and interested in
the task, and the anatomical results of photography, and it would seem
as if a sincere desire to reconcile the eye with positions which the
retina must certainly catch as the horse bounds by might evoke more
satisfactory results. Here is a life-work worthy of the best of animal
painters. Who will take it up? I plead for "more light."
XIX.
To return to our muttons, it is not too much to aver that any
well-trained horse knows much more than the average good equestrian.
It requires a light and practiced hand to evoke Patroclus' highest
powers. He has never refused an obstacle with his master, or failed to
clear what he fairly went at. But the least uncertainty betrayed in
the hand, and Patroclus knows something is wrong, and acts
accordingly.
I learned a good lesson about spoiling him for my own comfort not long
ago, when asked the privilege of riding him over a few hurdles on my
lawn by a friend who had an excellent seat in the saddle, but liked,
and had been used to a horse who seized hold of the bridle. Patroclus
took the first, but to my own and my friend's surprise quite refused
the second, and could by no means be persuaded to face it. On my
friend's yielding me the saddle, I mounted, and walked Patroclus up to
the hurdle with a firm word of encouragement; and though he wavered,
he took it on a standing jump. The slight reward of a tuft of grass
and a pat made him do better on the second trial, but for weeks
afterwards he was nervous at that particular hurdle, though at
anything else he went with his accustomed nerve. My friend and I were
both unaware of how his hands had erred, but the horse's fine mouth
had felt it.
Patroclus is essentially a one-man horse. He will always serve well
for the wage of kindness, but it would take a hard taskmaster but a
short week to transform him into the semblance of the Biblical wild
ass's colt. He will change his gaits at will from any one to any
other. But his rider's hands must be steady and as skilled as his own
soft mouth, or how can the lesser mind comprehend? He may, at the
bidding of uncertain reins, change from gait to gait and foot to foot,
seeking to satisfy his ignorant rider, who, meanwhile, unable to catch
his meaning, will dub him a stupid, restless brute. A well-trained
horse needs an equally well-trained rider.
XX.
There are two kinds of "perfectly trained" saddle horses. One is the
well-drilled cow of the riding-schools, fit only to give instruction
to class after class of beginners, and who is safe because worked
beyond his courage and endurance. The other is the School-horse, of
perfect vigor and fine manners, who is obedient to the slightest whim
of the clever rider, but who is so entire an enigma to the untrained
one, that he is unable to ride him at even his quiet gaits.
One of my friends in Touraine used in his youth to be a pupil of the
famous Baucher. He once told me how, at the instigation of his
classmates, he begged hard for many days to be allowed to ride the
master's favorite horse, with whom he was apt to join his higher
classes. My friend flattered himself that he could manage any horse,
as he had long ridden under Baucher's instruction. As an example to
the class, the master finally gave way. But the experiment was short.
My friend soon found that he was so much less accomplished than the
high-strung beast that he was utterly unable to manage or control him,
much less to perform any of the School airs, and he was by no means
sorry when his feat of equitation was terminated by so dangerous a
rear that Baucher deemed it wise to come to the rescue. My friend's
hands, though well-drilled, were so much less delicate than the
horse's mouth, that the latter had at first mistaken some peculiar
unsteadiness as the indication for a _pirouette_, to which he had
obediently risen; but then, on feeling some additional unsteadiness of
the reins, he had, in his uncertainty and confusion, reared quite
beyond control. Yet under the master this horse's habit of obedience
was so confirmed that he was apparently as moderate as any courageous
horse should be, though actually of a hyper-nervous character.
Nothing but time will make a thorough horseman; but a few months will
make a tolerable horseman of any man who has strength, courage,
intelligence, and good temper. If a man confines his ambition to a
horse whom he can walk, trot, and canter on the road in an unbalanced
manner, and who will jump an ordinary obstacle, so as to follow the
hounds over easy country, it needs but little time and patience to
break in both man and beast to this simple work. If a man wants what
the High School calls a saddle beast, a full half year's daily
training is essential for the horse, and to give this the man must
have had quite thrice as much himself. Fix the standard at an 'alf and
'alf 'unter and your requirements are soon met. Raise the standard of
education to a horse well-balanced, who is always ready to be
collected and always alert to his rider's wants and moods, and who can
do any work well, and you need much more in both teacher, pupil, and
rider. No horse can be alike perfect in the field and in the park. But
the well-trained road horse can always hunt within the bounds
prescribed by his condition, speed, and jumping ability; the finest
hunter is apt to be either a nuisance on the road or too valuable for
such daily work. It will not do to quote this as an invariable rule.
But it certainly has few exceptions.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.
RISING AT A HURDLE.]
Moreover, a hunter requires many weeks to be got into fine condition,
and can then perform well not exceeding half a dozen days a month, and
needs a long rest after the season. And it is not the average man who
is happy enough to own a stable so full or to boast such ample leisure
as to tax his horseflesh to so very slight an extent.
XXI.
But what is that, Patroclus? Up goes your head, your lively ears
pricked out, with an inquisitive low-voiced whinny. What is it you
sniff upon the softly-moving air? Well, well, I know. That neigh and
again a neigh betrays you. As sure as fate it is one of your
stable-mates coming along the road. Perhaps our young friend Tom, upon
his new purchase, Penelope. We will go and see, at all events. I never
found you wrong, and I never knew your delicate nose to fail to sniff
a friend before the eye could catch him, or your pleasant whinny fail
to speak what you had guessed as well. Sure enough, there he comes and
Nell has heard you too. Both Tom and she are out for the lesson which
either gives the other. Now for a sociable tramp and chat in the
company you like so well. And you and I will try to give Penelope and
Master Tom a few hints which he has often asked, and of which all
young horses and riders are apt to stand in need.
XXII.
Good-morrow, Tom, and how are you, sleek Nelly? A fine day this for a
tramp. Patroclus sniffed you a long way off, and now is happy to rub
his nose on Nelly's neck, while she, forsooth, much as she likes the
delicate attention, lays back her ears with a touch-me-not expression
characteristic of the high-bred of her sex. A lucky dog are you to
throw your leg across such a dainty bit of blood!
You, Tom, are one of numberless young men who want to learn that which
they have not the patience to study out of technical books and will
hardly acquire in a riding-school; who, in other words, rather than
learn on tan-bark, have preferred to purchase a horse and teach
themselves. A man may do well in a school or on a horse hired in a
school, and yet not know how to begin the training of a horse which
has been only broken in to drive, as most of our American colts are,
however eager to improve him for the saddle. Let us compare notes as
we saunter along the road.
Do not understand me to depreciate the value of riding-schools, nor
the training which they inculcate. On the contrary, School-training
carried far enough and properly given is just what I do advocate. But
between the riding-school and School-riding, there is a great gulf
fixed. The capital letter is advisedly used. A horse which has been
given a good mouth, and has been taught as far as the volte and
demi-volte, simple and reversed (though indeed the riding-school volte
and the volte of the Haute Ecole are different things), certainly
knows a fairish amount, and may be able to teach his rider much of
what he knows. But riding in a school is not road-riding, although a
school-horse may have profited well by his education. Leaping a school
hurdle is not riding to hounds. A thoroughly good riding-school horse
may be a very brute when in the park. Perfect manners within four
walls may disappear so soon as the horse gets a clear mile ahead of
him. Assuredly, it is well enough to learn the rudiments at a good
riding-school. But if you ever want to become a thorough horseman and
have equally good horses, study the art for yourself,--there is no
mystery about it,--and learn what a horse should know and how to teach
him. When you have done this, you will have a satisfactory saddle
beast. If you expect a groom or a riding-school master to train your
horses for you, you will not have a perfect mouth or good manners once
in a hundred times. If the master is expert, he will be too busy to do
your horses full justice short of an exorbitant honorarium. The groom
is, as a rule, both ignorant and impatient, if not brutal.
XXIII.
I know of no better foundation for a man to begin upon than the
breaking-in to harness, which an American horse has usually received
at the hands of an intelligent farmer, before he is brought to the
city for sale. Starting with the horse, then, say at five years old,
if you will learn how to give him his saddle education, and do it
yourself, you will have, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a
better saddle beast in six months than any groom can, or any
riding-master is apt to make.
There is somewhat of a tendency among the English, and much more among
their American imitators, to decry as unnecessary the training of
horses beyond a mouth somewhat short of leather and two or three easy
road gaits; or, in hunters, the capacity to do well cross-country. But
there is vastly more to be said on the side of High School training.
By a three months' School course stubborn horses may be made
tractable, dangerous horses rendered comparatively safe, uncomfortable
brutes easy and reliable. Vices may be cured, stumbling may be made
far less dangerous, if the habit cannot be eradicated, physical
defects, unfitting a horse for saddle work, may often be overcome, and
the general utility of the average horse vastly increased. All this,
and much more, may be done, without touching upon the gain in ease to
the rider, the pleasure to be derived when both man and beast are
enabled to work in unison, the ability schooling gives to the weakest
hand to hold the most high-strung horse, and the great variety of
motions, speeds, and paces which may be taught to subserve the comfort
and delight of the rider. Whoso will claim that the reader of the last
French play enjoys as great a privilege and pleasure as the student of
Hamlet, or that the day laborer is the equal of the skilled artisan,
may deny the utility of schooling the horse for saddle work. No
reference is here intended to be made to racing-stock, or to hunters
kept as such. These stand in a class by themselves, requiring
different aptitudes and treatment.
An interesting proof of the general value of training has been
recently developed in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry, stationed in New
Mexico. In some of the troops the horses have been drilled to lie down
and allow the men to fire over them,--a most valuable bit of
discipline, peculiarly suited to Indian warfare. From the course of
training necessary to bring about this end has resulted an unexpected
but very natural docility in the horses, which are Californian
bronchos, and a poor class of animal. Horses formerly considered
dangerous have become quite gentle, and the entire condition of the
command has been changed.
So far as the belief goes that what are called the High School airs
are unessential, it is easy to agree with the English opinion; but it
is clear that the saddle horse should have far more training than he
generally receives in England, and certainly than he receives here. It
would seem that the better position lies midway between the Haute
Ecole of the Continent and the half and half training of Great
Britain.
I do not mean to imply that there are not many beautifully trained
saddle beasts in England. You see in Rotten Row, among a vast lot of
brutes, probably more fine mounts than you will find in any other
known resort of fashion, more than anywhere in the world outside of
cavalry barracks. But the ordinary run of English hacks are taught to
trot and canter, and there their training ceases. And so entirely is
the education of horses left to grooms and riding-masters, that even
the most elaborate English works on equitation, while they say that a
horse should be taught to do thus and so, and give excellent
instructions for riding a trained horse, afford no clue to the means
of training. On the other hand, the High School manuals go far beyond
what most men have patience to follow or a desire to learn, excellent
as such an education may be for both horse and rider.
I should be sorry indeed to be understood to underrate the
horsemanship of England. I do not suppose that the excellence and
universality of the equestrianism of Englishmen has any more sincere
admirer than myself. But it is true that equitation as an art exists
only among the military experts of the Old Country, and that the
training of English horses is not carried beyond bare mediocrity among
civilians for road work. For racing or hunting, the English system is
perfect. The burden of my song is that we Americans shall not too
closely imitate one single English style for all purposes. If we will
truly imitate the best English methods, each in its appropriate place,
and not pattern ourselves solely on the fox-hunting type, we shall do
well enough; though in riding, as in all the arts, it is wisest, as
well as most American, to look for models in every direction, and
select the best to follow. What I wish to protest against is the
dragging of the hunting-field into the park, and what I wish to urge
is the higher education of--horses.
One has only to go back to the thirties in England to find all the
niceties of the Haute Ecole in full bloom. Not only the young swells,
but the old politicians and the celebrated generals, used to go
"titupping" down the Row, passaging, traversing, and piaffing to the
admiration of all beholders. But the age which, in the race for the
greatest good to the greatest number, has brought about simplicity in
men's dress, and has reduced oratory to mere conversation; which has
given the layman the right to abuse the church, and the costermonger
the privilege of running down royalty, has changed all this. And as
we have doubtless gone too far in many directions, in our desire to
make all men free and equal, may we not have also gone too far in
discarding some of the refinements of equestrianism? And is it not
true, and pity, that the old-fashioned outward courtesy to women (for
the courtesy of the heart, _Dieu merci_, always remains to us), whose
decrease is unhappily so apparent to-day, and among the young is being
supplanted by a mere _camaraderie_, is being swept from our midst
by the same revulsion towards the extremely practical, which has
discarded the beruffled formalities of our forebears and the high airs
of equitation?