Loe raamatut: «Patroclus and Penelope: A Chat in the Saddle», lehekülg 3

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.

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 à 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 manège 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.