A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses Part 11

Ladies' trousers should be of the same material and colour as the habit, and if full flowing like a Turk's, and fastened with an elastic band round the ankle, they will not be distinguished from the skirt. In this costume, which may be made amply warm by the folds of the trousers, plaited like a Highlander's kilt (fastened with an elastic band at the waist), a lady can sit down in a manner impossible for one enc.u.mbered by two or three short petticoats. It is the chest and back which require double folds of protection during, and after, strong exercise.

There is a prejudice against ladies wearing long Wellington boots; but it is quite absurd, for they need never be seen, and are a great comfort and protection in riding long distances, when worn with the trousers tucked inside. They should, for obvious reasons, be large enough for warm woollen stockings, and easy to get on and off. It would not look well to see a lady struggling out of a pair of wet boots with the help of a bootjack and a couple of chambermaids. The heels of riding-boots, whether for ladies or gentlemen, should be low, but _long_, to keep the stirrup in its place.

The yellow patent leather recently introduced seems a suitable thing for the "Napoleons" of hunting ladies. And I have often thought that the long leather gaiters of the Zouave would suit them.

Whips require consideration. By gentlemen on the road or in the park they are rather for ornament than use. A jockey whip is the most punis.h.i.+ng, but on the Rarey system it is seldom necessary to use the whip except to a slug, and then spurs are more effective.

A lady's whip is intended to supply the place of a man's right leg and spur; it should therefore, however ornamental and thin, be stiff and real. Messrs. Callow, of Park Lane, make some very pretty ones, pink, green and amber, from the skin of the hippopotamus, light but severe. A loop to hang it from the wrist may be made ornamental in colours and gold, and is useful, for a lady may require all the power of her little hand to grasp the right rein without the enc.u.mbrance of the whip, which on this plan will still be ready if required at a moment's notice.

Hunting-whips must vary according to the country. In some districts the formidable metal hammers are still required to break intractable horses, but such whips and jobs should be left to the servants and hard-riding farmers.

As a general rule the hunting-whip of a man who has nothing to do with the hounds may be light, but it should have a good crook and be stiff enough to stop a gate. A small steel stud outside the crook prevents the gate from slipping; flat lashes of a brown colour have recently come into fas.h.i.+on, but they are mere matters of fas.h.i.+on like the colour of top boots, points to which only sn.o.bs pay any attention--that is, those a.s.ses who pin their faith in externals, and who, in the days of pigtails, were ready to die in defence of those absurd excrescences.

The stock of a whip made by Callow for a hunting n.o.bleman to present to a steeple-chasing and fox-hunting professional, was of oak, a yard long, with a buck-horn crook, and a steel stud; but then the presentee is six feet high.

Every hunting-whip should have a lash, but it need not be long. The lash may be required to rouse a hound under your horse's feet, or turn the pack; as for whipping off the pack from the fox in the absence of the huntsman, the whips and the master, that is an event that happens to one per cent of the field once in a lifetime, although it is a common and favourite anecdote after dinner. But then Saint Munchausen presides over the mahogany where fox-hunting feats are discussed. One use of a lash is to lead a horse by putting it through the rings of the snaffle, and to flip him up as you stand on the bank when he gets stuck fast, or dead beat in a ditch or brook. I once owed the extrication of my horse from a brook with a deep clay bottom entirely to having a long lash to my whip; for when he had plumped in close enough to the opposite bank for me to escape over his head, I was able first to guide him to a shelving spot, and then make him try one effort more by adroit flicks on his rump at a moment when he seemed prepared to give in and be drowned. In leading a horse, always pa.s.s the reins through the ring of the snaffle, so that if he pulls he is held by the mouth, not by the top of his head.

The riding costume of a gentleman should be suitable without being groomish. It is a fact that does not seem universally known, that a man does not ride any better for dressing like a groom.

It has lately been the fas.h.i.+on to discard straps. This is all very well if the horse and the rider can keep the trousers down, which can only be done by keeping the legs away from the horse's sides; but when the trousers rise to the top of the boot, and the stocking or bare leg appears, the sooner straps or knee-breeches are adopted the better.

For hunting, nothing will do but boots and breeches, unless you condescend to gaiters--for trousers wet, draggled and torn, are uncomfortable and expensive wear. Leathers are pleasant, except in wet weather, and economical wear if you have a man who can clean them; but if they have to go weekly to the breeches-maker they become expensive, and are not to be had when wanted; besides, wet leather breeches are troublesome things to travel with. White cord breeches have one great convenience; they wash well, although not so elastic, warm, and comfortable as woollen cords. It is essential for comfort that hunting-breeches should be built by a tailor who knows that particular branch of business, _and tried on sitting down_ if not on horseback, for half your comfort depends on their fit. Many schneiders who are first-rate at ordinary garments, have no idea of riding clothes. Poole, of Saville Row, makes hunting-dress a special study, and supplies more hunting-men and masters of hounds than any tailor in London, but his customers must be prepared to pay for perfection.

In the coats, since the modern shooting jacket fas.h.i.+on came in, there is great scope for variety. The fas.h.i.+on does not much matter so long as it is fit for riding--ample enough to cover the chest and stomach in wet weather, easy enough to allow full play for the arms and shoulders, and not so long as to catch in hedgerows and brambles. Our forefathers in some counties rode in coats like scarlet dressing-gowns. There is one still to be seen in Surrey. For appearance, for wear, and as a universal pa.s.sport to civility in a strange country, there is nothing like scarlet, provided the horseman can afford to wear it without offending the prejudices of valuable patrons, friends or landlords. In Lincolns.h.i.+re, farmers are expected to appear in pink. In Northamptons.h.i.+re a yeoman farming his own 400 acres would be thought presumptuous if he followed the Lincolns.h.i.+re example. Near London you may see the "pals" of fighting men and h.e.l.l-keepers in pink and velvet.

A scarlet coat should never be a.s.sumed until the rider's experience in the field is such that he is in no danger of becoming at once conspicuous and ridiculous.

A cap is to be preferred to a hat because it fits closer, is less in the way when riding through cover, protects the head better from a bough or a fall, and will wear out two or three hats. It should be ventilated by a good hole at the top.

Top-boots are very pretty wear for men of the right height and right sort of leg when they fit perfectly--that is difficult on fat calves--and are cleaned to perfection, which is also difficult unless you have a more than ordinarily clever groom.

For men of moderate means, the patent black leather Napoleon, which costs from 3_l._ 10_s._ to 4_l._ 4_s._, and can be cleaned with a wet sponge in five minutes, is the neatest and most economical boot--one in which travelling does not put you under any obligation to your host's servants.

I have often found the convenience of patent leather boots when staying with a party at the house of a master of hounds, while others, as the hounds were coming out of the kennel, were in an agony for tops entrusted two or three days previously to a not-to-be-found servant. In this point of the boots I differ from the author of "A Word ere we Start;" but then, squires of ten thousand a-year are not supposed to understand the s.h.i.+fts of those who on a twentieth part of that income manage to enjoy a good deal of sport with all sorts of hounds and all sorts of horses.

There is a certain cla.s.s of sporting sn.o.bs who endeavour to enhance their own consequence or indulge their cynical humour by talking with the utmost contempt of any variation from the kind of hunting-dress in use, in their own particular district. The best commentary on the supercilious tailoring criticism of these gents is to be found in the fact that within a century every variety of hunting clothes has been in and out of fas.h.i.+on, and that the dress in fas.h.i.+on with the Quorn hunt in its most palmy days was not only the exact reverse of the present fas.h.i.+on in that flying country, but, if comfort and convenience are to be regarded, as ridiculous as bra.s.s helmets, tight stocks, and b.u.t.toned-up red jackets for Indian warfare. It consisted, as may be seen in old Alken's and Sir John Dean Paul's hunting sketches, of a high-crowned hat, a high tight stock, a tight dress coat, with narrow skirts that could protect neither the chest, stomach, or thighs, long tight white cord breeches, and pale top-boots thrust low down the leg, the tops being supposed to be cleaned with champagne. Leather breeches, caps, and brown top-boots were voted slow in those days. But the men went well as they do in every dress.

"Old wiseheads, complacently smoothing the brim, May jeer at my velvet, and call it a whim; They may think in a cap little wisdom there dwells; They may say he who wears it should wear it with bells; But when Broadbrim lies flat, I will answer him pat, Oh! who but a crackskull would ride in a hat!"

SQUIRE WARBURTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rails and Double Ditch.]

FOOTNOTES:

[147-*] At an inquest on a young lady killed at Totnes in September last, it appeared that she lost her seat and hung by a _crinoline petticoat_ from the right hand _pommel_!

CHAPTER X.

ON HUNTING.

"The sailor who rides on the ocean, Delights when the stormy winds blow: Wind and steam, what are they to horse motion?

Sea cheers to a land Tally-ho?

The canvas, the screw, and the paddle, The stride of the thorough-bred hack, When, fastened like glue to the saddle, We gallop astern of the pack."

TARPORLEY HUNT SONG, 1855.

Advantage of hunting.--Libels on.--Great men who have hunted.--Popular notion unlike reality.--d.i.c.k Christian and the Marquis of Hastings.--Fallacy of "lifting" a horse refuted.--Hints on riding at fences.--Harriers discussed.--Stag-hunting a necessity and use where time an object.--Hints for novices.--Tally-ho!

expounded.--To feed a horse after a hard ride.--Expenses of horse keep.--Song by Squire Warburton, "A word ere we start."

Every man who can ride, and, living within a couple of hours' distance of a pack of hounds, can spare a day now and then, should hunt. It will improve his horsemans.h.i.+p, enlarge his circle of acquaintance, as well as his tastes and sympathies, and make, as Shakspeare hath it--

"Good digestion wait on appet.i.te, and health on both."

Not that I mean that every horseman should attempt to follow the hounds in the first flight, or even the second; because age, nerves, weight, or other good reasons may forbid: but every man who keeps a good hack may meet his friends at cover side, enjoy the morning air, with a little pleasant chat, and follow the hounds, if not in the front, in the rear, galloping across pastures, trotting through bridle gates, creeping through gaps, and cantering along the green rides of a wood, thus causing a healthy excitement, with no painful reaction: and if, unhappily, soured or overpressed by work and anxious thoughts, drinking in such draughts of Lethe as can no otherwise be drained.

Hunting has suffered as much from overpraise as from the traditionary libels of the fribbles and fops of the time of the first Georges, when a fool, a sot, and a fox-hunter were considered synonymous terms. Of late years it has pleased a sportsman, with a wonderful talent for picturesquely describing the events of a fox-hunt, to write two sporting novels, in which all the leading characters are either fools or rogues.

"In England all conditions of men, except bishops, from ratcatchers to Royalty, are to be found in the hunting-field--equalised by horsemans.h.i.+p, and fraternising under the influence of a genial sport.

Among fox-hunters we can trace a long line of statesmen, from William of Orange to Pitt and Fox. Lord Althorp was a master of hounds; and Lord Palmerston we have seen, within the last few years, going--as he goes everywhere--in the first flight." This was before the French fall of the late Premier. Cromwell's Ironsides were hunting men; Pope, the poet, writes in raptures of a gallop with the Wilts.h.i.+re Harriers; and Gladstone, theologian, politician, and editor of Homer, bestrides his celebrated white mare in Nottinghams.h.i.+re, and scurries along by the side of the ex-War Minister, the Duke of Newcastle.

"The progress of agriculture is indelibly a.s.sociated with fox-hunting; for the three great landlords, who did more to turn sand and heath into corn and wool, and make popular the best breeds of stock and best course of cultivation--Francis, Duke of Bedford; c.o.ke, Earl of Leicester; and the first Lord Yarborough--were all masters of hounds.

"When indecency formed the staple of our plays, and a drunken debauch formed the inevitable sequence of every dinner-party, a fool and a fox-hunter were synonymous. Squire Western was the representative of a cla.s.s, which, however, was not more ridiculous than the patched, perfumed Sir Plumes, whom Hogarth painted, and Pope satirised.

Fox-hunters are not a cla.s.s now--roads, newspapers, and manufacturing emigration have equalised the condition of the whole kingdom; and fox-hunters are just like any other people, who wear clean s.h.i.+rts, and can afford to keep one or more horses.

"It is safe to a.s.sert that hunting-men, as a cla.s.s, are temperate. No man can ride well across a difficult country who is not. We must, however, admit that the birds who have most fouled their own nest have been broken-down sportsmen, chiefly racing men, who have turned writers to turn a penny. These unfortunate people, with the fatal example of 'Noctes Ambrosianae' before them, fill up a page, whenever their memory or their industry fails them, in describing in detail a breakfast, a luncheon, a dinner, and a supper. And this has been repeated so often, that the uninitiated are led to believe that every fox-hunter must, as a matter of course, keep a French cook, and consume an immense cellar of port, sherry, madeira, hock, champagne, with gallons of strong ale, and all manner of liqueurs.

"The popular notion of a fox-hunt is as unlike the reality as a girl's notion of war--a grand charge and a splendid victory.

"Pictures always represent exciting scenes--hounds flying away with a burning scent; horses taking at a bound, or tumbling neck and crop over, frightful fences. Such lucky days, such bruising hors.e.m.e.n, such burning scents and flying foxes are the exception.

"At least two-thirds of those who go out, even in the most fas.h.i.+onable counties, never attempt brooks or five-barred gates, or anything difficult or dangerous; but, by help of open gates and bridle-roads, which are plentiful, parallel lanes, and gaps, which are conveniently made by the first rush of the straight riders and the dealers with horses to sell, helped by the curves that hounds generally make, and a fair knowledge of the country, manage to be as near the hounds as the most thrusting horseman. Among this crowd of skirters and road-riders are to be found some very good sportsmen, who, from some cause or other, have lost their nerve; others, who live in the county, like the excitement and society, but never took a jump in their lives; young ladies with their papas; boys on ponies; farmers educating four-year-olds; surgeons and lawyers, who are looking for professional practice as well as sport. On cold scenting days, with a ringing fox, this crowd keeps on until nearly dark, and heads many a fox. Many a beginner, in his first season, has been cheated by a succession of these easy days over an easy part of the county into the idea that there was no difficulty in riding to hounds. But a straight fox and a burning scent over a gra.s.s country has undeceived him, and left him in the third or fourth field with his horse half on a hedge and half in a ditch, or pounded before a 'bulfinch,' feeling very ridiculous. There are men who cut a very respectable figure in the hunting-field who never saw a pack of hounds until they were past thirty. The city of London turns out many such; so does every great town where money is made by men of pluck, bred, perhaps, as ploughboys in the country. We could name three--one an M.P.--under these conditions, who would pa.s.s muster in Leicesters.h.i.+re, if necessary. But a good seat on horseback, pluck, and a love of the sport, are essential. A few years ago a scientific manufacturer, a very moderate horseman, was ordered horse exercise as a remedy for mind and body prostrated by over-anxiety. He found that, riding along the road, his mind was as busy and wretched as ever. A friend prescribed hunting, purchased for him a couple of made hunters, and gave him the needful elementary instruction. The first result was, that he obtained such sound, refres.h.i.+ng sleep as he had not enjoyed since boyhood; the next, that in less than two seasons he made himself quite at home with a provincial pack, and now rides so as to enjoy himself without attracting any more notice than one who had been a fox-hunter from his youth upwards."

The ill.u.s.tration at the commencement of this chapter gives a very fair idea of the seat of good hors.e.m.e.n going at a fence and broad ditch, where pace is essential. A novice may advantageously study the seats of the riders in Herring's "Steeplechase Cracks," painted by an artist who was a sportsman in his day.

A few invaluable hints on riding to hounds are to be found in the Druid's account of d.i.c.k Christian.

The late Marquis of Hastings, father of the present Marquis, was one of the best and keenest fox-hunters of his day; he died young, and here is d.i.c.k's account of his "first fence," for which all fox-hunters are under deep obligations to the Druid.

"The Marquis of Hastings was one of my pupils. I was two months at his place before he came of age. He sent for me to Donnington, and I broke all his horses. I had never seen him before. He had seven rare nice horses, and very handy I got them. The first meet I went out with him was Wartnaby Stone Pits. I rode by his side, and I says, 'My lord, we'll save a bit of distance if we take this fence.' So he looked at me and he laughed, and says, 'Why, Christian, I was never over a fence in my life.' 'G.o.d bless me, my lord! you don't say so?' And I seemed quite took aback at hearing him say it. 'Its true enough, Christian, I really mean it.' 'Well, my lord,' says I, 'you're on a beautiful fencer, he'll walk up to it and jump it. Now I'll go over the fence first. _Put your hands well down on his withers and let him come._' It was a bit of a low-staked hedge and a ditch; he got over as nice as possible, and he gave quite a hurrah like. He says, 'There, I'm over my first fence--that's a blessing!' Then I got him over a great many little places, and he quite took to it and went on uncommonly well. _He was a nice gentleman to teach--he'd just do anything you told him. That's the way to get on!_"

In another place d.i.c.k says, "A quick and safe jumper always goes from hind-legs to fore-legs. I never rode a steeple-chase yet but I steadied my horse on to his hind-legs twenty yards from his fence, and I was always over and away before the rushers. Lots of the young riders think horses can jump anything if they can only drive them at it fast enough.

They force them too much at their fences. If you don't feel your horse's mouth, you can tell nothing about him. You hold him, he can make a second effort; if you drop him, he won't."

Now, d.i.c.k does not mean by this that you are to go slowly at every kind of fence. He tells you that he "sent him with some powder at a bullfinch;" but whatever the pace, you so hold your horse in the last fifty yards up to the taking-off point, that instead of spreading himself out all abroad at every stroke, he feels the bit and gets his hind-legs well under him. If you stand to see Jim Mason or Tom Oliver in the hunting-field going at water, even at what they call "forty miles an hour," you will find the stride of their horses a measured beat, and while they spur and urge them they collect them. This is the art no book can teach; _but it can teach that it ought to be learned_. Thousands of falls have been caused by a common and most absurd phrase, which is constantly repeated in every description of the leaps of a great race or run. "_He took his horse by the head and lifted him_," &c.