THOROUGH-BRED HORSES.
I have heard it affirmed, though I know not on what authority, that if
we are to believe the hunting records of the last hundred years, in all
runs so severe and protracted as to admit of only one man getting to the
finish, this exceptional person was in _every_ instance, riding an old
horse, a thorough-bred horse, and a horse under fifteen-two!
Perhaps on consideration, this is a less remarkable statement than it
appears. That the survivor was an old horse, means that he had many
years of corn and condition to pull him through; that he was a little
horse, infers he carried a light weight, but that he was a thorough-bred
horse seems to me a reasonable explanation of the whole.
"The thorough-bred ones never stop," is a common saying among
sportsmen, and there are daily instances of some high-born steed who can
boast
"His sire from the desert, his dam from the north,"
galloping steadily on, calm and vigorous, when the country behind him is
dotted for miles with hunters standing still in every field.
It is obvious that a breed, reared expressly for racing purposes, must
be the fastest of its kind. A colt considered good enough to be "put
through the mill" on Newmarket Heath, or Middleham Moor, whatever may be
his shortcomings in the select company he finds at school, cannot but
seem "a flyer," when in after-life he meets horses, however good, that
have neither been bred nor trained for the purpose of galloping a single
mile at the rate of an express train. While these are at speed he is
only cantering, and we need not therefore be surprised that he can keep
cantering on after they are reduced to a walk.
In the hunting-field, "what kills is the pace." When hounds can make it
good enough they kill their fox, when horses _cannot_ it kills _them_,
and for this reason alone, if for no other, I would always prefer that
my hunters should be quite thorough-bred.
Though undoubtedly the best, I cannot affirm, however, that they are
always the _pleasantest_ mounts; far from it, indeed, just at first,
though subsequent superiority makes amends for the little eccentricities
of gait and temper peculiar to pupils from the racing-stable in their
early youth.
An idle, lurching mover, rather narrow before the saddle, with great
power of back and loins, a habit of bearing on its rider's hand, one
side to its mouth, and a loose neck, hardly inspires a careful man with
the confidence necessary for enjoyment; coming away from Ranksborough,
for instance, down-hill, with the first fence leaning towards him, very
little room, his horse too much extended, going on its shoulders, and
getting the better of him at every stride!
But this is an extreme case, purposely chosen to illustrate at their
worst, the disadvantages of riding a thorough-bred horse.
It is often our own fault, when we buy one of these illustrious
cast-offs, that our purchase so disappoints us after we have got it
home. Many men believe that to carry them through an exhausting run,
such staying powers are required as win under high weights and at long
distances on the turf.
Their selection, therefore, from the racing-stable, is some young one
of undeniably stout blood, that when "asked the question" for the first
time, has been found too slow to put in training. They argue with
considerable show of reason, that it will prove quite speedy enough for
a hunter, but they forget that though a fast horse is by no means
indispensable to the chase, a _quick_ one is most conducive to enjoyment
when we are compelled to jump all sorts of fences out of all sorts of
ground.
Now a yearling, quick enough on its legs to promise a turn of speed, is
pretty sure to be esteemed worth training, nor will it be condemned as
useless, till its distance is found to be just short of half-a-mile. In
plain English, when it fails under the strain on wind and frame, of
galloping at its very best, eight hundred and seventy yards, and "fades
to nothing" in the next ten.
Now this collapse is really more a question of speed than stamina. There
is a want of reach or leverage somewhere, that makes its rapid action
too laborious to be lasting, but there is no reason why the animal that
comes short of five furlongs on the trial-ground, should not hold its
own in front, for five miles of a steeple-chase, or fifteen of a run
with hounds.
These, in fact, are the so-called "weeds" that win our cross-country
races, and when we reflect on the pace and distance of the Liverpool,
four miles and three-quarters run in something under eleven minutes, at
anything but feather-weights, and over all sorts of fences, we cannot
but admire the speed, gallantry, and endurance, the essentially _game_
qualities of our English horse. And here I may observe that a good
steeple-chaser, properly sobered and brought into his bridle, is one of
the pleasantest hunters a man can ride, particularly in a flying
country. He is sure to be able to "make haste" in all sorts of ground,
while the smooth, easy stride that wins between the flags is invaluable
through dirt. He does not lose his head and turn foolish, as do many
good useful hunters, when bustled along for a mile or two at something
like racing pace. Very quick over his fences, his style of jumping is no
less conducive to safety than despatch, while his courage is sure to be
undeniable, because the slightest tendency to refuse would have
disqualified him for success in his late profession, wherein also, he
must necessarily have learnt to be a free and brilliant water-jumper.
Indeed you may always take _two_ liberties with a steeple-chase horse
during a run (not more). The first time you squeeze him, he thinks, "Oh!
this is the brook!" and putting on plenty of steam, flings himself as
far as ever he can. The second, he accepts your warning with equal good
will. "All right!" he seems to answer, "This is the brook, coming home!"
but if you try the same game a third time, I cannot undertake to say
what may happen, you will probably puzzle him exceedingly, upset his
temper, and throw him out of gear for the day.
We have travelled a long way, however, from our original subject,
tuition of the thorough-bred for the field, or perhaps I should call it
the task of turning a bad race-horse into a good hunter.
Like every other process of education this requires exceeding
perseverance, and a patience not to be overcome. The irritation of a
moment may undo the lessons of a week, and if the master forgets
himself, you may be sure the pupil will long remember which of the two
was in fault. Never begin a quarrel if it can possibly be avoided,
because, when war is actually declared, you must fight it out to the
bitter end, and if you are beaten, you had better send your horse to
Tattersall's, for you will never be master again.
Stick to him till he does what you require, trusting, nevertheless,
rather to time than violence, and if you can get him at last to obey you
of his own free will, without knowing why, I cannot repeat too often,
you will have won the most conclusive of victories.
When the late Sir Charles Knightley took Sir Marinel out of training,
and brought him down to Pytchley, to teach him the way he should go (and
the way of Sir Charles over a country was that of a bird in the air), he
found the horse restive, ignorant, wilful, and unusually averse to
learning the business of a hunter. The animal, was, however, well worth
a little painstaking, and his owner, a perfect centaur in the saddle,
rode him out for a lesson in jumping the first day the hounds remained
in the kennel. At two o'clock, as his old friend and contemporary, Mr.
John Cooke informed me, he came back, having failed to get the rebel
over a single fence. "But I have told them not to take his saddle off,"
said Sir Charles, sitting down to a cutlet and a glass of Madeira,
"after luncheon I mean to have a turn at him again!"
So the baronet remounted and took the lesson up where he had left off.
Nerve, temper, patience, the strongest seat, and the finest hands in
England, could not but triumph at last, and this thorough-bred pair came
home at dinner-time, having larked over all the stiffest fences in the
country, with perfect unanimity and good will. Sir Marinel, and
Benvolio, also a thorough-bred horse, were by many degrees, Sir Charles
has often told me, the best hunters he ever had.
Shuttlecock too, immortalized in the famous Billesdon-Coplow poem, when
"Villiers esteemed it a serious bore,
That no longer could Shuttlecock fly as before,"
was a clean thorough-bred horse, fast enough to have made a good figure
on the race-course, but with a rooted disinclination to jump.
That king of horsemen, the grandfather of the present Lord Jersey, whom
I am proud to remember having seen ride fairly away from a whole
Leicestershire field, over a rough country not far from Melton, at
seventy-three, told me that this horse, though it turned out eventually
one of his safest and boldest fencers, at the end of six weeks' tuition
would not jump the leaping-bar the height of its own knees! His
lordship, however, who was blessed in perfection, with the sweet temper,
as with the personal beauty and gallant bearing of his race, neither
hurried nor ill-used it, and the time spent on the animal's education,
though somewhat wearisome, was not thrown away.
Mr. Gilmour's famous _Vingt-et-un_, the best hunter, he protests, by a
great deal that gentleman ever possessed, was quite thorough-bred.
Seventeen hands high, but formed all over in perfect proportion to this
commanding frame, it may easily be imagined that the power and stride of
so large an animal made light of ordinary obstacles, and I do not
believe, though it may sound an extravagant assertion, there was a fence
in the whole of Leicestershire that could have stopped _Vingt-et-un_ and
his rider, on a good scenting day some few years ago. Such men and such
horses ought never to grow old.
Mr. William Cooke, too, owned a celebrated hunter called Advance, of
stainless pedigree, as was December, so named from being foaled on the
last day of that month, a premature arrival that lost him his year for
racing purposes by twenty-four hours, and transferred the colt to the
hunting-stables. Mr. Cooke rode nothing but this class, nor indeed could
any animal less speedy than a race-horse, sustain the pace he liked to
go.
Whitenose, a beautiful animal that the late Sir Richard Sutton affirmed
was not only the best hunter he ever owned, but that he ever saw or
heard of, and on whose back he is painted in Sir F. Grant's spirited
picture of the Cottesmore Meet, was also quite thorough-bred. When Sir
Richard hunted the Burton country, Whitenose carried him through a run
so severe in pace and of such long duration, that not another horse got
to the end, galloping, his master assured me, steadily on without a
falter, to the last. By the way, he was then of no great age, and nearer
sixteen hands than fifteen-two! This was a very easy horse to ride, and
could literally jump anything he got his nose over. A picture to look
at, with a coat like satin, the eyes of a deer, and the truest action in
his slow as in his fast paces, he has always been my ideal of perfection
in a hunter.
But it would be endless to enumerate the many examples I can recall of
the thorough-bred's superiority in the hunting-field. Those I have
mentioned belong to a by-gone time, but a man need not look very
narrowly into any knot of sportsmen at the present day, particularly
_after_ a sharpish scurry in deep ground, before his eye rests on the
thin tail, and smoothly turned quarters, that need no gaudier blazon to
attest the nobility of their descent.
If you mean, however, to ride a thorough-bred one, and choose to _make_
him yourself, do not feel disappointed that he seems to require more
time and tuition than his lower-born cousins, once and twice removed.
In the first place you will begin by thinking him wanting in courage!
Where the half-bred one, eager, flurried, and excited, rushes wildly at
an unaccustomed difficulty, your calmer gentleman proceeds deliberately
to examine its nature, and consider how he can best accomplish his task.
It is not that he has less valour, but more discretion! In the
monotonous process of training, he has acquired, with other tiresome
tricks, the habit of doing as little as he can, in the different paces,
walk, canter, and gallop, of which he has become so weary. Even the
excitement of hunting till hounds _really_ run, hardly dissipates his
aristocratic lethargy, but only get him in front for one of those
scurries that, perhaps twice in a season turn up a fox in twenty
minutes, and if you _dare_ trust him, you will be surprised at the
brilliant performance of your idle, negligent, wayward young friend. He
bends kindly to the bridle he objected to all the morning, he tucks his
quarters in, and _scours_ through the deep ground like a hare, he slides
over rather than jumps his fences, with the easy swoop of a bird on the
wing, and when everything of meaner race has been disposed of a field or
two behind, he trots up to some high bit of timber, and leaps it
gallantly without a pause, though only yesterday he would have turned
round to kick at it for an hour!
Still, there are many chances against your having such an opportunity
as this. Most days the hounds do _not_ run hard. When they do, you are
perhaps so unfortunate as to lose your start, and finally, should
everything else be in your favour, it is twenty to one you are riding
the wrong horse!
Therefore, the process of educating your young one, must be conducted
on quieter principles, and in a less haphazard way. If you can find a
pack of harriers, and _their master does not object_, there is no better
school for the troublesome or unwilling pupil. But remember, I entreat,
that horsebreaking is prejudicial to sport, and most unwelcome. You are
there on sufferance, take care to interfere with nobody, and above all,
keep wide of the hounds! The great advantage you will find in
harehunting over the wilder pursuit of the fox, is in the circles
described by your game. There is plenty of time to "have it out" with a
refuser, and indeed to turn him backwards and forwards if you please,
over the same leap, without fear of being left behind. The "merry
harriers" are pretty sure to return in a few minutes, and you can begin
again, with as much enthusiasm of man and horse as if you had never been
out of the hunt at all! Whip and spur, I need hardly insist, cannot be
used too sparingly, and anything in the shape of haste or over-anxiety
is prejudicial, but if it induces him to jump in his stride, you may
ride this kind of horse a turn faster at his fences, than any other. You
can trust him not to be in too great a hurry, and it is his nature to
take care of himself. Till he has become thoroughly accustomed to his
new profession, it is well to avoid such places as seem particularly
distasteful and likely to make him rebel. His fine skin will cause him
to be a little shy of thick bullfinches, and his sagacity mistrusts deep
or blind ditches, such as less intelligent animals would run into
without a thought. Rather select rails, or clean upright fences, that he
can compass and understand. Try to imbue him with love for the sport and
confidence in his rider. After a few weeks, he will turn his head from
nothing, and go straighter, as well as faster, and longer than anything
in your stable.
An old Meltonian used to affirm that the first two articles of his
creed for the hunting season were, "a perfectly pure claret, and
thorough-bred horses." Of the former he was unsparing to his friends,
the latter he used freely enough for himself. Certainly no man gave
pleasanter dinners, or was better carried, and one might do worse than
go to Melton with implicit reliance on these twin accessories of the
chase. All opinions must be agreed, I fancy, about the one, but there
are still many prejudices against the other. Heavy men especially
declare they cannot find thorough-bred horses to carry them, forgetting,
it would seem, that size is no more a criterion of strength than haste
is of speed. The bone of a thorough-bred horse is of the closest and
toughest fibre, his muscles are well developed, and his joints elastic.
Do not these advantages infer power, no less than stamina, and in our
own experience have we not all reason to corroborate the old-fashioned
maxim, "It is action that carries weight"? Nimrod, who understood the
subject thoroughly, observes with great truth, that "'Wind' is strength;
when a horse is blown a mountain or a mole-hill are much the same to
him," and no sportsman who has ever scaled a Highland hill to circumvent
a red-deer, or walk up to "a point," will dispute the argument. What a
game animal it is, that without touch of spur, at the mere pleasure and
caprice of a rider, struggles gallantly on till it drops!
There used to be a saying in the Prize Ring, that "Seven pounds will
lick the best man in England." This is but a technical mode of stating
that, _caeteris paribus_, weight means strength. Thirty years ago, it was
a common practice at Melton to weigh hunters after they were put in
condition, and sportsmen often wondered to find how the eye had deceived
them, in the comparative tonnage, so to speak, and consequently, the
horse-power of these different conveyances; the thorough-bred, without
exception, proving far heavier than was supposed.
An athlete, we all know, whether boxer, wrestler, pedestrian, cricketer
or gymnast, looks smaller in his clothes, and larger when he is
stripped. Similarly, on examining in the stable, "the nice little horse"
we admired in the field, it surprises us to find nearly sixteen hands of
height, and six feet of girth, with power to correspond in an animal of
which we thought the only defect was want of size. A thorough-bred one
is invariably a little bigger, and a great deal stronger than he looks.
Of his power to carry weight, those tall, fine men who usually ride so
judiciously and so straight, are not yet sufficiently convinced,
although if you ask any celebrated "welter" to name the best horse he
ever had, he is sure to answer, "Oh! little So-and-so. He wasn't up to
my weight, but he carried me better than anything else in the stable!"
Surely no criterion could be more satisfactory than this!
It may not be out of place to observe here, as an illustration of the
well-known maxim, "Horses can go in all shapes," that of the three
heaviest men I can call to mind who rode perfectly straight to hounds,
the best hunter owned by each was too long in the back. "Sober Robin,"
an extraordinary animal that could carry Mr. Richard Gurney, riding
twenty stone, ahead of all the light-weights, was thus shaped. A famous
bay-horse, nearly as good, belonging to the late Mr. Wood of Brixworth
Hall, an equally heavy man, who when thus mounted, never stopped to open
a gate! had, his owner used to declare, as many vertebrae as a crocodile,
and Colonel Wyndham whose size and superiority in the saddle I have
already mentioned, hesitated a week before he bought his famous black
mare, the most brilliant hunter he ever possessed, because she was at
least three inches too long behind the saddle!
I remember also seeing the late Lord Mayo ride fairly away from a
Pytchley field, no easy task, between Lilbourne and Cold Ashby, on a
horse that except for its enormous depth of girth, arguing unfailing
wind, seemed to have no good points whatever to catch the eye. It was
tall, narrow, plain-headed, with very bad shoulders, and very long legs,
all this to carry at least eighteen stone; but it was nearly, if not
quite, thorough-bred.
We need hardly dwell on the advantages of speed and endurance,
inherited from the Arab, and improved, as we fondly hope, almost to
perfection, through the culture of many generations, while even the fine
temper of the "desert-born" has not been so warped by the tricks of
stable-boys, and the severity of turf-discipline, but that a little
forbearance and kind usage soon restores its natural docility.
In all the qualities of a hunter, the thorough-bred horse, is, I think,
superior to the rest of his kind. You can hardly do better than buy one,
and "make him to your hand," should you be blessed with good nerves, a
fine temper, and a delicate touch, or, wanting these qualities, confide
him to some one so gifted, if you wish to be carried well and
pleasantly, in your love for hunting, perhaps I should rather say, for
the keen and stirring excitement we call "riding to hounds."