Riding Recollections, 5th ed. Part 7

The Irishman, like the Arab, seems to possess a natural insight into the character of a horse; with many shortcomings as grooms, not the least of which are want of neatness in stable-management, and rooted dislike to hard work, except by fits and starts, they cherish extraordinary affection for their charges, and certainly in their dealings with them obviously prefer kindness to coercion. I do not think they always understand feeding judiciously, and many of them have much to learn about getting horses into condition; but they are unrivalled in teaching them to jump.

Though seldom practised, there is no better system in all undertakings than "to begin with the beginning," and an Irish horse-breaker is so persuaded of this great elementary truth that he never asks the colt to attempt three feet till it has become thoroughly master of two. With a cavesson rein, a handful of oats, and a few yards of waste ground behind the potato-ground or the pig-styes, he will, by dint of skill and patience, turn the most blundering neophyte into an expert and stylish fencer in about six weeks. As he widens the ditch of his earthwork, he necessarily heightens its bank, which his simple tools, the spade and the pipe, soon raise to six or seven feet. When the young one has learned to surmount this temperately, but with courage, to change on the top, and deliver itself handsomely, with the requisite fling and freedom, on the far side, he considers it sufficiently advanced to take into the fields, where he leads it forthwith, leaving behind him the spade, but holding fast to the corn, the cavesson, and the pipe. Here he soon teaches his colt to wait, quietly grazing, or staring about, while he climbs the fence he intends it to jump, and almost before the long rein can be tightened it follows like a dog, to poke its nose in his hand for the few grains of oats it expects as a reward.

Some breakers drive their pupils from behind, with reins, pulling them up when they have accomplished the leap; but this is not so good a plan as necessitating the use of the whip, and having, moreover, a further disadvantage in accustoming the colt to stop dead short on landing, a habit productive hereafter of inconvenience to a loose rider taken unawares!

When he has taught his horse thus to _walk_ over a country, for two or three miles on end, the breaker considers it, with reason, thoroughly trained for leaping, and has no hesitation however low its condition, in riding it out with the hounds. Who that has hunted in Ireland but can recall the interest, and indeed amus.e.m.e.nt, with which he has watched some mere baby, strangely tackled and uncouthly equipped, sailing along in the front rank, steered with consummate skill and temper by a venerable rider who looks sixty on horseback, and at least eighty on foot. The man's dress is of the shabbiest and most incongruous, his boots are outrageous, his spurs ill put on, and his hat shows symptoms of ill-usage in warfare or the chase; but he sits in the saddle like a workman, and age has no more quenched the courage in his bright Irish eye, than it has soured the mirth of his temperament, or saddened the music of his brogue. You know instinctively that he must be a good fellow and a good sportsman; you cannot follow him for half a mile without being satisfied that he is a good rider, and you forget, in your admiration of his beast's performance, your surprise at its obvious youth, its excessive leanness, and the unusual shabbiness of its accoutrements. Inspecting these more narrowly, if you can get near enough, you begin to grudge the sums you have paid Bartley, or Wilkinson and Kidd, for the neat turn-out you have been taught to consider indispensable to success. You see that a horse may cross a dangerous country speedily and in safety, though its saddle be pulpy and weather-stained, with unequal stirrup-leathers, and only one girth; though its bridle be a Pelham, _with_ a noseband, and _without_ a curb-chain, while one rein seems most untrustworthy, and the other, for want of a buckle, has its ends tied in a knot. And yet, wherever the hounds go, thither follow this strangely-equipped pair. They arrive at a seven-foot bank, defended by a wide and, more forbidding still, an enormously deep ditch on this side and with nothing apparently but blue sky on the other. While the man utters an exclamation that seems a threat, a war-cry, and a shout of triumph combined, the horse springs to the summit, perches like a bird, and disappears buoyantly into s.p.a.ce as if furnished, indeed, with wings, that it need only spread to fly away.

They come to a stone-gap, as it is termed; neither more nor less than a disused egress, made up with blocks of granite into a wall about five feet high, and the young one, getting close under it, clears the whole out of a trot, with the elasticity and the very action of a deer.

Presently some frightful chasm has to be encountered, wide enough for a brook, deep enough for a ravine, boggy of approach, faced with stone, and offering about as awkward an appearance as ever defeated a good man on his best hunter and bade him go to look for a better place.

Our friend in the bad hat, who knows what he is about, rides at this "yawner" a turn slower than would most Englishmen, and with a lighter hand on his horse's mouth, though his legs and knees are keeping the pupil well into its bridle, and, should the latter want to refuse, or "renage," as they say in Ireland, a disgrace of which it has not the remotest idea, there is a slip of ground-ash in the man's fingers ready to administer "a refresher" on its flank. "Did ye draw now?" asks an Irishman when his friend is describing how he accomplished some extraordinary feat in leaping, and the expression, derived from an obsolete custom of sticking the cutting-whip upright in the boot, so that it has come to mean punishment from that instrument, is nearly always answered--"I did _not_!" Light as a fairy, our young, but experienced hunter dances down to the gulf, and leaves it behind with scarce an effort, while an unwashed hand bestows its caress on the reeking neck that will hereafter thicken prodigiously in some Saxon stable on a proper allowance of corn. If you are riding an Irish horse, you cannot do better than imitate closely every motion of the pair in front. If not, you will be wise, I think, to turn round and go home.

Presently we will hope, for the sake of the neophyte, whose condition is by no means on a par with his natural powers, the hounds either kill their fox, or run him to ground, or lose, or otherwise account for him, thus affording a few minutes' repose for breathing and conversation.

"It's an intrickate country," observes some brother-sportsman with just such another mount to the veteran I have endeavoured to describe; "and will that be the colt by Chitchat out of Donovan's mare? Does he 'lep'

well now?" he adds with much interest. "The beautifullest ever ye see!"

answers his friend, and n.o.body who has witnessed the young horse's performances can dispute the justice of such a reply. It is not difficult to understand that hunters so educated and so ridden in a country where every leap requires power, courage, and the exercise of much sagacity, should find little difficulty in surmounting such obstacles as confront them on this side of the Channel. It is child's play to fly a Leicestershire fence, even with an additional rail, for a horse that has been taught his business amongst the precipitous banks and fathomless ditches of Meath or Kildare. If the ground were always sound and the hills somewhat levelled, these Irish hunters would find little to stop them in Leicestershire from going as straight as their owners dared ride. Practice at walls renders them clever timber-jumpers, they have usually the spring and confidence that make nothing of a brook, and their careful habit of preparing for something treacherous on the landing side of every leap prevents their being taken unawares by the "oxers" and doubles that form such unwelcome exceptions to the usual run of impediments throughout the shires. There is something in the expression of their very ears while we put them at their fences, that seems to say, "It's a good trick enough, and would take in most horses, but my mother taught me a thing or two in Connemara, and you don't come over me!" Unfortunately the Shires, as they are called _par excellence_, the Vale of Aylesbury, a perfect wilderness of gra.s.s, and indeed all the best hunting districts, ride very deep nine seasons out of ten, so that the Irish horse, accustomed to a sound lime-stone soil and an unfurrowed surface in his own green island, being moreover usually much wanting in condition, feels the added labour, and difference of action required, severely enough. It is proverbial that a horse equal to fourteen stone in Ireland is only up to thirteen in Leicestershire, and English purchasers must calculate accordingly.

But if some prize-taker at the Dublin Horse Show, or other ornament of that land which her natives call the "first flower of the earth and first gem of the sea," should disappoint you a little when you ride him in November from Ranksborough, the Coplow, Crick, Melton-Spinney, Christmas-Gorse, Great-Wood, or any other favourite covert in one of our many good hunting countries, do not therefore despond. If he fail in deep ground, or labour on ridge and furrow, remember he possesses this inestimable merit that _he can go the shortest way_! Because the fence in front is large, black, and forbidding, you need not therefore send him at it a turn faster than usual; he is accustomed to spring _from his back_, and cover large places out of a trot. If you ride your own line to hounds, it is no slight advantage thus to have the power of negotiating awkward corners, without being "committed to them" fifty yards off, unable to pull up should they prove impracticable; and the faculty of "jumping at short notice," on this consideration alone, I conceive to be one of the choicest qualities a hunter can possess. Also, even in the most favoured and flying of the "gra.s.s countries," many fences require unusual steadiness and circ.u.mspection. If they are to be done at all, they can only be accomplished by creeping, sometimes even _climbing_ to the wished-for side. The front rank itself will probably shirk these unaccustomed obstacles with cordial unanimity, leaving them to be triumphantly disposed of by your new purchase from Kildare. He pokes out his nose, as if to inspect the depth of a possible interment, and it is wise to let him manage it all his own way. You give him his head, and the slightest possible kick in the ribs. With a cringe of his powerful back and quarters, a vigorous lift that seems to reach two-thirds of the required distance, a second spring, apparently taken from a twig weak enough to bend under a bird, that covers the remainder, a scramble for foothold, a half stride and a snort of satisfaction, the whole is disposed of, and you are alone with the hounds.

Though, under such circ.u.mstances, these seem pretty sure to run to ground or otherwise disappoint you within half-a-mile, none the less credit is due to your horse's capabilities, and you vow next season to have nothing but Irish nags in your stable, resolving for the future to ride straighter than you have ever done before.

But if you are so well pleased now with your promising Patlander, what shall you think of him this time next year, when he has had twelve months of your stud-groom's stable-management, and consumed ten or a dozen quarters of good English oats? Though you may have bought him as a six-year old, he will have grown in size and substance, even in height, and will not only look, but feel up to a stone more weight than you ever gave him credit for. He can jump when he is blown _now_, but he will never be blown _then_. Condition will teach him to laugh at the deep ground, while his fine shoulders and true shape will enable him, after the necessary practice, to travel across ridge and furrow without a lurch. He will have turned out a rattling good horse, and you will never grudge the cheque you wrote, nor the punch you were obliged to drink, before his late proprietor would let you make him your own.

Gold and whisky, in large quant.i.ties and judiciously applied, may no doubt buy the best horses in Ireland. But a man must know where to look for them, and even in remote districts, will sometimes be disappointed to find that the English dealers have forestalled him. Happily, there are so many good horses, perhaps I should say, so few _rank bad ones_, bred in the country, that from the very sweepings and leavings of the market, one need not despair of turning up a trump. A hunter is in so far like a wife, that experience alone will prove whether he is or is not good for nothing. Make and shape, in either case, may be perfect, pedigree unimpeachable, and manners blameless, but who is to answer for temper, reflection, docility, and the generous staying power that accepts rough and smooth, ups and downs, good and evil, without a struggle or a sob? When we have tried them, we find them out, and can only make the best of our disappointment, if they do not fully come up to our expectations.

There is many a good hunter, particularly in a rich man's stable, that never has a chance of proving its value. With three or four, we know their form to a pound; with a dozen, season after season goes by without furnishing occasion for the use of all, till some fine scenting day, after mounting a friend, we are surprised to learn that the flower of the whole stud has. .h.i.therto been esteemed but a moderate animal, only fit to carry the sandwiches, and bring us home.

I imagine, notwithstanding all we have heard and read concerning the difficulty of buying Irish horses in their own country, that there are still scores of them in Cork, Limerick, and other breeding districts, as yet unpromised and unsold. The scarcity of weight-carriers is indisputable, but can we find them here? The "light man's horse," to fly under sixteen stone, is a "black swan" everywhere, and if _not_ "a light man's horse," that is to say, free, flippant, fast, and well-bred, he will never give his stalwart rider thorough satisfaction; but in Ireland, far more plentifully than in England, are still to be found handsome, clever, hunting-like animals fit to carry thirteen stone, and capital jumpers at reasonable prices, varying from one to two hundred pounds. The latter sum, particularly if you had it with you in _sovereigns_, would in most localities insure the "pick of the basket,"

and ten or twenty of the coins thrown back for luck.

I have heard it objected to Irish hunters, that they are so accustomed to "double" all their places, as to practise this accomplishment even at those flying fences of the grazing districts which ought to be taken in the stride, and that they require fresh tuition before they can be trusted at the staked-and-bound or the bullfinch, lest, catching their feet in the growers as in a net, they should be tumbled headlong to the ground. I can only say that I have been well and safely carried by many of them on their first appearance in Leicestershire, as in other English countries, that they seemed intuitively to apprehend the character of the fences they had to deal with, and that, although being mortal, they could not always keep on their legs, I cannot remember one of them giving me a fall _because_ he was an Irish horse!

How many their nationality has saved me, I forbear to count, but I am persuaded that the careful tuition undergone in youth, and their varied experience when sufficiently advanced to follow hounds over their native country, imparts that facility of powerful and safe jumping, which is one of the most important qualities among the many that const.i.tute a hunter.

They possess also the merit of being universally well-bred. This is an advantage no sportsman will overlook who likes to be near hounds while they run, but objects to leading, driving, or perhaps _pushing_ his horse home. Till within a few years, there was literally _no_ cart-horse blood in Ireland. The "black-drop" of the ponderous Clydesdale remained positively unknown, and although the Suffolk Punch has been recently introduced, he cannot yet have sufficiently tainted the pedigrees of the country, to render us mistrustful of a golden-coated chestnut, with a round barrel and a strong back.

No, their horses if not quite "clean-bred," as the Irish themselves call it, are at least of ill.u.s.trious parentage on both sides a few generations back, and this high descent cannot but avail them, when called on for long-continued exertion, particularly at the end of the day.

Juvenal, hurling his scathing satire against the patricians of his time, drew from the equine race a metaphor to ill.u.s.trate the superiority of merit over birth. However unanswerable in argument, he was, I think, wrong in his facts. Men and women are to be found of every parentage, good, bad, and indifferent; but with horses, there is more in race than in culture, and for the selection of these n.o.ble animals at least, I can imagine no safer guide than the aristocratic maxim, "Blood will tell!"

CHAPTER X.

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 ill.u.s.trate at their worst, the disadvantages of riding a thorough-bred horse.

It is often our own fault, when we buy one of these ill.u.s.trious 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 gla.s.s 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.

Shuttlec.o.c.k too, immortalized in the famous Billesdon-Coplow poem, when

"Villiers esteemed it a serious bore, That no longer could Shuttlec.o.c.k 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.