J. S. Rarey

“ Loosely lounging on your saddle, with half-closed eyes, you almost dream—the gnarled trees grow into giants, cottages into castles, ponds into lakes. The maid of the inn is a lovely princess, and the bread and cheese she brings (while, without dismounting, you let your thirsty horse drink his gruel) , tastes more delicious than the finest supper of champagne, with a pâté of tortured goose’s liver, that ever tempted the appetite of a humane, anti-fox hunting, poet-critic, exhausted by a long night of opera, ballet, and Roman punch. ”

“ Over a score of big fields the pack raced within a dozen yards of pussy’s scent, without gaining a yard, the black-tanned leading hound almost coursing his game; but this was too fast to last, and, just as we were squaring our shoulders and settling down to take a very uncompromising hedge with evident signs of a broad ditch of running water on the other side, the hounds threw up their heads; poor puss had shuffled through the fence into the brook, and sunk like a stone.
There is something painful about the helpless finish with a hare. A fox dies snarling and fighting. ”

“ A series of gentle declivities, plantations, a winding, full-flowing stream, seem only to require a suitable edifice and the hand of an artist gardener to make, at comparatively trifling expense, an abode unequalled in luxuriant and romantic beauty. We crossed the stream—not by the narrow bridge, but by the ford; and, passing through the straggling stone village of Simon’s Bath, arrived in sight of the field where the Tattersall of the West was to sell the wild and tame horse stock bred on the moors. ”

“ The hunting-field is not the place for practising the rudiments of the art. Buy a perfect hunter; no matter how blemished or how ugly, so that he has legs, eyes, and wind to carry him and his rider across the country. It is essential that one of the two should perfectly understand the business in hand. Have nothing to say to a puller, a rusher, or a kicker, even if you fancy you are competent; a colt should only be ridden by a man who is paid to risk his bones. An amateur endangers himself, his neighbours, and the pack, by attempting rough-riding. ”

“ Fox-hunting draws men from towns, promotes a love of country life, fosters skill, courage, temper; for a bad-tempered man can never be a good horseman.
“To the right-minded, as many feelings of thankfulness and praise to the Giver of all good will arise, sitting on a fiery horse, subdued to courageous obedience [209] for the use of man, while surveying a pack of hounds ranging an autumnal thicket with fierce intelligence, or looking down on a late moorland, broken up to fertility by man’s skill and industry, as in a solitary walk by the sea-shore or over a Highland hill.” ”

“ The great cop banks of Essex, Devon, and Cheshire are almost unknown—villages you scarcely see, farmhouses rarely from the roadside, for they mostly stand well back in the midst of their acres. Gradually creeping up the Wold—passing through, here vast turnip-fields, fed over by armies [183] of long-woolled Lincoln sheep; there, stubble yielding before from a dozen to a score of pair-horse ploughs, silent witnesses of the scale of Lincolnshire farming—at length we see descending and winding along a bridle-road before us, the pied pack and the gleam of the huntsman’s scarlet. ”

“ Never go into a pitched battle with your horse, and whip him until he is mad and will fight you; it would be better not to touch him at all, for you will establish, instead of fear and respect, feelings of resentment, hatred, and ill-will. It will do him no good, but harm, to strike him, unless you can frighten him; but if you can succeed in frightening him, you can whip him without making him mad; for fear and anger never exist together in the horse, and as soon as one is visible, you will find that the other has disappeared. ”

“ To your mind the well-cultivated land looks beautiful. In the monotony of ten acres of turnips, you see a hundred pictures of English farming life, well-fed cattle, good wheat crops, and a little barley for beer. Not less beautiful is the wild gorse-covered moor—never to be reclaimed, I hope—where the wiry, white-headed, bright-eyed huntsman sits motionless on his old white horse, surrounded by the pied pack—a study for Landseer. ”

“ The pace becomes tremendous; the pack tails by twos and threes; the valleys grow steeper; the field lingers and halts more and more at each steeper comb; the lads who have hurried straight up the hillsides, instead of creeping up by degrees blow their horses and come to a full stop; while old hands at Devonshire combs and Surrey steeps take their nags by the head, rush down like thunder, and slily zigzag up the opposite face at a trot; and so, for ten minutes, so straight, that a stranger, one of three in front, cried, “By Jove, it must be a fox!” ”

“ But before we attempt to do anything more with the colt, I will give you some of the characteristics of his nature, that you may better understand his motions. Every one that has ever paid any attention to the horse, has noticed his natural inclination to smell everything which to him looks new and frightful. This is their strange mode of examining everything. And when they are frightened at anything, though they look at it sharply, they seem to have no confidence in their eyesight alone, but must touch it with their nose before they are entirely satisfied ”

“ Look at a lot of two-years before starting for a run; observe the agility of their antics: or watch a colt scratching his head with his hind foot, and you will never believe that such animals can require suppling. But it is an easy way of teaching a horse simple acts of obedience—of getting him to go and stop at your orders: but in brutal hands more horses are spoiled and lamed by the longe than any other horse-breaking operation. A stupid fellow drags a horse’s head and shoulders into the circle with the cord, while his hind-quarters are driven out by the whip. ”

“ Horses bred on the moors, if left to themselves, rapidly pick their way through pools and bogs, and canter smoothly over dry flats of natural meadow; creep safely down the precipitous descents, and climb with scarcely a puff of distress these steep ascents; splash through fords in the trout-streams, swelled by rain, without a moment’s hesitation, and trot along sheep-paths, bestrewed with rolling stones, without a stumble: so that you are perfectly at liberty to enjoy the luxury of excitement, and follow out the winding valleys, and study the rich brown and purple herbage. ”

“ We may say the same of a Lincolnshire Wolds pony—his master, farming not less than three hundred and more likely fifteen hundred acres, has no time to lose in crawling about on a punchy half-bred cart-horse, like a smock-frocked tenant—the farm must be visited before hunting, and the market-towns lie too far off for five miles an hour jog-trot to suit. It is the Wold fashion to ride farming at a pretty good pace, and take the fences in a fly where the gate stands at the wrong corner of the field. ”

“ A perfect horseman will make shift with any bit. Sir Tatton Sykes and Sir Charles Knightley, in their prime, could hold any horse with a plain snaffle; but a lady, or a weak-wristed horseman, should be provided with a bit that can stop the horse on an emergency; and many horses, perfectly quiet on the road, pull hard in the field at the beginning of a run. But it should be remembered, that when a horse runs away, it is useless to rely on the curb, as, when once he has fully resisted it, the longer he runs the less he cares for it. ”

“ And should he whip him for that? If so, he should whip him again for not knowing how to talk. A man that wants to act with reason should not fly into a passion, but should always think before he strikes. It takes a steady pressure against the collar to move a load, and you cannot expect him to act with a steady, determined purpose while you are whipping him. There is hardly one baulking horse in five hundred that will pull truly from whipping: it is only adding fuel to fire, and will make him more liable to baulk another time. ”

“ I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterizes the men of rank of most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, of robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, pursuing so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the country. ”

“ At the beginning of the run, my black-coated friend led me—much as a dog in a string leads a blind man—at a great pace, into a farm-yard, thus artfully cutting off a great angle, over a most respectable stone wall into a home paddock, over a stile into a deep lane, and then up a bank as steep as a gothic roof, and almost as long; into a fifty-acre pasture, where, racing at best pace, we got close to the hounds just before they checked, between a broad unjumpable drain and a willow bed—two fine resources for a cunning fox. ”

“ The Guachos on the South American Pampas lasso a wild horse, throw him down, cover his head with one of their ponchos, or cloaks, and, having girthed on him one of their heavy demi-piqued saddles, from which it is almost impossible to be dislodged, thrust a curb-bit, capable of breaking the jaw with one tug, into the poor wretch’s mouth, mount him with a pair of spurs with rowels six inches long, and ride him over the treeless plains until he sinks exhausted in a fainting state. But horses thus broken are almost invariably either vicious or stupid ”

“ When they wish to go to the right, they pull the right rein stronger than the left. If the colt does not obey these indications, at least he understands them, even the first time he is mounted, and the most obstinate will not long resist them. Acting on these plain principles, I saw, in August last, a three-year-old colt which, placed absolutely raw and unbridled in Mr. Rarey’s hands, within seven days answered every indication of the reins like an old horse—turned right or left, brought his nose to the rider’s knee, and backed like an old trooper. ”

“ The better plan is to take lessons on the proportions and anatomy of a horse from some intelligent judge or veterinary surgeon. You must study, and buy, and lose your money on many horses before you can safely, if ever, depend on your own judgment in choosing a horse. And, after all, a natural talent for comparison and eye for proportion are only the gift of a few. Some men have horses all their lives, and yet scarcely know a good animal from a bad one, although they may know what they like to drive, or ride or hunt. ”

“ Thus, under the Rarey system, all indications are so direct, that the horse must understand them. You place him in a position, and under such restraint, that he cannot resist anything that you chose to do to him; and then you proceed to caress him when he assents, to reprove him when he thinks of resisting—resist, with all his legs tied, he cannot—repeated lessons end by persuading the most vicious horse that it is useless to try to resist, and that acquiescence will be followed by the caresses that horses evidently like. ”

“ Every year good sound horses are drafted from the cavalry, or from hunters’ barbs and carriage-horses, into omnibuses and Hansom cabs, because they cannot be made to bear the sound of drums and firearms, or will not submit to be shod, and be safe and steady in crowded cities, or at covert side. Nothing is more common than to hear that such a horse would be invaluable if he would go in harness, or carry a lady, or that a racehorse of great swiftness is almost valueless because his temper is so bad, or his nervousness in a crowd so great that he cannot be depended on to start or to run his best. ”

“ It is true, among the five thousand who follow the hounds daily in the hunting season, there are to be found, as among most medleys of five thousand, a certain number of fools and brutes—mere animals, deaf to the music, blind to the living poetry of nature. To such men hunting is a piece of fashion or vulgar excitement, but bring hunting in comparison with other amusements, and it will stand a severe test. ”

“ In riding, as in most other things, danger is for the timid and the unskilful. The skilful rider, when apparently courting danger in the field, deserves no more credit for courage than for sitting in an arm-chair, and the unskilful no more the imputation of timidity for backwardness than if without practice he declined to perform on the tight-rope. Depend upon it, the bold bad rider is the hero.
There is nothing heroic in good riding, when dissected. ”

“ Besides other more important advantages which will presently be described by commencing with two-handed riding, a lady is more likely to continue to sit squarely, than when holding the reins with one hand, and pretending to guide a horse who really guides himself. A man has the power of turning a horse, to a certain extent, with his legs and spurs; a woman must depend on her reins, whip, and left leg. As only one rein and the whip can be well held in one hand, double reins, except for hunting, are to a lady merely a perplexing puzzle. ”

“ As long as you are calm, and keep down the excitement of the horse, there are ten chances that you will make him understand you, where there would not be one under harsh treatment; and then the little flare up will not carry with it any unfavourable recollections, and he will soon forget all about it, and learn to pull truly. Almost every wrong act the horse commits is from mismanagement, fear, or excitement: one harsh word will so excite a nervous horse as to increase his pulse ten beats in a minute. ”

“ Devonshire is the county of sportsmen; for although there is very little riding to hounds as compared with the midland counties, there is a great deal of hunting. Every village has its little pack; every man, woman, and child, from the highest to the humblest, takes an interest in the sport; and the science of hunting is better understood than in the hard-riding, horse-dealing counties. To produce a finished fox-hunter, I would have him commence his studies in Devonshire, and finish his practice in Northamptonshire. ”

“ The intense pretentious snobbishness of the age has something to do with the mysterious manner in which many men, blushing, own that they have been out with harriers. In the first place, as a rule, harriers are slow; although there are days when, with a stout, well-fed, straight-running hare, the best men will have enough to do to keep their place in the field: over the dinner-table that is always an easy task; but in this fast, competitive age, the man who can contrive to stick on a good horse can show in front without having the least idea of the meaning of hunting. ”

“ 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 ”

“ You cannot take too much pains to acquire this art, for although it is not exercised on an old hack, that you ride with reins held any how, and your legs dangling anywhere, it is called into action and gives additional enjoyment to be striding the finest class of high-couraged delicate-mouthed horses—beautiful creatures that seem to enjoy being ridden by a real horseman or light-handed Amazone, but which become frantic in ignorant or brutal hands. ”

“ A lady’s horse, beside other well-known qualifications of beauty and pace, should be up to the lady’s weight. It is one of the fictions of society that all ladies eat little and weigh little. Now, a saddle and habit weigh nearly three stone, a very slim lady will weigh nine, so there you reach twelve stone, which, considering how fond young girls are of riding fast and long over hard roads, is no mean weight. The best plan is to put the dear creatures into the scales with their saddles, register the result, and choose a horse calculated to be a good stone over the gross weight. ”