Part 3

I do not think women are good judges of pace, and although they are seldom afraid of jumping, they hardly ever gallop. Men will say it is because they sit on one side and have not the power to make a horse gallop. This is obviously true in the case of many horses, but there are some who, roused by the nervous force in their riders, will gallop without being squeezed, and who want nothing more than to be held together and left alone.

There is a great deal of nonsense talked about "lifting" and "recovering" a horse. More horses have recovered themselves by being left alone in moments of difficulty than by all the theories ever propounded. When a horse pecks with a man he is thrown forward; a woman, if she is sitting properly and not hanging her toe in a short stirrup, is, if anything, thrown back, and, from the security of her seat, is able to recover her horse with more natural advantage than a man. A woman's seat is strong, but never balanced; a horse refusing suddenly to the left may upset her balance without moving her in her seat. When a horse bucks, from the very fact that to keep on, she must sit tight, it is so tiring that the chances are she will be bucked off sooner than a man. If she gets the least out of her saddle she cannot, by reason of the pommels, get back, whereas a horse may play cup and ball with a man for a long time without missing him.

There are two classes of hunters that a woman should not be mounted on; the two that Whyte Melville says want coercion.

"The one that must be steered, and the other smuggled over a country." A nervous, fractious brute will go as well, if not better, with a woman than with a man on him.

It is, I suppose, a want of independence in the feminine character that makes most women follow some particular man. They are nearly always beautifully mounted, and have keen enough observation to measure the height of a fence, and see the weak place. You will hear a man say to his wife,--"I must give Favourite a turn, dear, she is getting sticky," and he will take his wife's mare, an accomplished hunter, wise as a chaperon, and ride her with a cutting whip. It is probably the result of always following another horse, which has taken the spirit of emulation out of the mare, robbing her of a sense of responsibility and a chance of being among the first few in a fine run.

A man seldom rides as hard if he is followed by a lady. He loses his dash.

At one time no woman could fall without a certainty of being dragged by her habit skirt, or her stirrup; but now, at anyrate, that danger has been removed, by Scott's[1] apron skirt, and Mayhew's[1] patent side saddle.

[1] Scott in South Molton Street; and Mayhew in Seymour Street, Edgeware Road.

I saw a narrow escape once, some years ago. A young lady of indifferent nerve, mounted by a male relative on an uncongenial horse, trotted slowly down hill to a high fence to see what was on the other side. The horse, supposing he was meant to jump the fence, not unnaturally proceeded to do so, much against the lady's will. Her weak resistance succeeded in landing him on his head, in a deep ditch on the other side. She fell off, and was hung up by her habit skirt. The horse recovered himself, and, feeling a heavy weight on one side of him, was seized with a panic of fear, and, laying back his ears, thundered along in the ditch which had a gravelly bottom. A gentleman, unconscious of what had happened, rode down to the fence from the other side, and cannoned upon landing against the loose horse and prostrate lady; they all rolled over together. As the lady's head had apparently been bumping the grass bank for some twenty yards, we supposed she was killed; but, on extrication, she was discovered to be unhurt. The man had broken his collar-bone. Her habit was of the old-fashioned kind, and did not give way.

Everyone has seen similar casualties, and men, as well as women, dragged on their heads; it is the most alarming part of hunting.

I am told that there is a great art in falling, and certainly it requires judgment to know when to hold on and when to let go of the reins. There can be nothing more exasperating to a man than to loose his horse in a trifling accident, when he has a first-rate place at the beginning of a run. A friend of mine looking over a dealer's yard stopped before a flea-bitten mare. He said he would like to see her run out, as she looked like suiting him. The dealer replied,--"I could not honestly recommend her to you, sir, she would run away with you." "But," said my friend, "she is the very animal I want! The last one I had ran away without me."

Loose horses are trials that go far to proving your character; you may make a friend for life by catching his horse. There are, of course, occasions when it would be mere waste of time attempting anything of the sort, when a stupid animal careers wildly away in the opposite direction of hounds; but I am often struck by the way self-centred people let the easiest opportunities pass of serving their neighbours. I have been delighted by seeing men, purposely looking the other way, punished by the confiding animal going straight up to them, making it impossible, with the best show of clumsiness, to avoid bringing him back to his grateful owner, who perspiring, runs across the ridge and furrow, in breeches and boots of the most approved fashion.

There is one other and last side of fox-hunting with which I will conclude.

R. L. Stevenson says, "Drama is the poetry of conduct, and Romance the poetry of circumstances." There is only one sport that combines drama and romance; the sport for kings. There are days when your very soul would seem to penetrate the grass, when, with the smell of damp earth in your nostrils, and the rhythm of blood-stirring stride underneath you, you forget everything, yourself included. These days live with you. They console you for the monotony of Swiss scenery. They translate you out of fierce Indian sunshine; they rise up between you and the gaslight, and shut out the grey grinding streets. You wake up to ask the housemaid half unconsciously whether it is freezing; the answer leaves you uncertain, and you jump out of bed. There is a damp fog on the window, which you hastily wipe away, to see the paths are brown, and the slates wet; there is no sun and no wind. You hear the tramp of the stable boy's feet below your room, and snatches of a song whistled in the yard, you can see the clothes line hung with stable breeches, and a very old dog poking about the court. You tie your tie, left over right, with the precision of habit, and, seizing your letters, run down to breakfast. You are independent of your host; he has a hack. You ask your hostess what she is going to do with herself, while she walks across the yard to see you start in the buggy. You let the boy drive while you read your letters. You thrust them into your pocket and bow faintly over a high coat collar as you swing past the different riders and second horsemen. You see your horses at a corner of the road, and are told you cannot ride Molly Bawn, as she "'it 'erself" in the night--an unsatisfactory way horses valuable have of incapacitating themselves. You get on your horse and ride through a line of bridle gates till you find yourself in a bewildering throng of people and horses, just outside the village. Ladies leaning over their splash boards, talking to fine young gentlemen, unconscious of their shaft, which is tickling a horse of great value, the groom leading it, too anxious about his own mount to observe the danger. Children backing into bystanders, with their habits in festoons over the crupper; ladies standing up in their carriages divesting themselves of their wraps, and husbands unfastening their hat boxes; dealers discreetly and conspicuously taking their horses out of the crowd and cantering them round the field to show their slow paces, looking down at the ground and sitting motionless, as if unconscious of any onlookers. Hard, weather-beaten men in low crowned hats, with double snaffles in their horses' mouths, are feeling their girths, and ladies in long loose coats explaining to their pilots that they wear their strap on their heels, not on their toes. Your host comes up now, and you wonder, to look at his hack, that he ever arrived at all. You ask as delicately as you can what he is riding. "Old S----n," he replies, and you find yourself criticising the winner of a former Grand National. In all this fret and fuss Tom Firr sits like a philosopher, surrounded by the questioning pack; vouchsafing an occasional remark to a farmer or a patron of the hunt. At last the vast field is set in motion, and, with an eye on Firr, you jog down the road to draw. Instead of following the knowing ones, and standing outside the covert at an advantageous point down-wind, you go inside and watch the hounds dancing through the little copse, shaking the dewdrops on the undergrowth, and scattering with indifference the startled rabbit. In perfect stillness you thread your way slowly through the tangled tracks, your horse arching his neck and pointing his toes as if he were stepping to the drum and fife. There is a spring in the grass path, and a thrill in the air which makes you lift your face to the open sky as if to receive the essence of the day, and a blessing from the unseen sun. Suddenly, without warning, a silver halloa rings through the air, driving the blood to your heart, and you find yourself wheeling your horse round and crashing through the undergrowth to a gap you had noticed as you came along. The whole field is thundering round the cover as you jump out of it with the last hound, and the pack makes hard for a fence of impassable thickness. Luckily for you they turn up it, and a lagging hound joins his friends half-way up the fence, where the growers are thinner. The gate is locked, but the rail at the side is jumpable, and your horse takes off accurately and lands you in the same field as hounds. You find yourself with Firr and five or six others, who have galloped twice your distance, to catch them. You avoid a boggy gap, which the two riders ahead of you are making for, and catch hold of your horse for a clean "stake-and-bound." It is down hill, and you feel as if you never would land. You jump into a road, and nearly fall off as your horse turns suddenly down it, following the other horses. The hounds cross, and you are carried down the road past the few places where you could jump out, and the people behind profit by their position and get over where hounds crossed. You hammer along the road with twenty people shouting "Go on!" whenever you want to stop, till an open gate takes you into the field, where you see five or six men a good way ahead of you. Nothing but pace serves you then, and all the warnings in the world that there is wire, or a brook, will not turn you from your intention to catch them again.

By luck, which you hardly deserve, the wire is loose upon the ground, and you only twing-twang it with one shoe as you land, and are off again before it curls like a shaving round your horse's leg.

You have put wire between you and the field, and are now free to go as you please for the next twenty minutes. Firr and five others are your only rivals, and they are ready to whistle a warning where the country gets complicated.

The pack check for a moment outside a small cover, but the fox is too tired and too hard pressed to go into it, and Firr gets their heads down with a sound, quite impossible to spell, and five minutes after, the hounds are tumbling over each other like a scramble at a school-feast, and Firr holds up the fox with an expression in his face as if he could eat him.

* * * * *

You tuck the rug round you, with your mouth full of buttered toast. Your lamps are lit, and the sky is aglow.

"Let 'em go please. _Come!_" and with a bound and a clatter you leave the sun behind you, and, shaving the gate-post, swing down the turnpike home.

HORSES AND THEIR RIDERS.

BY THE DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE.

Why are ladies sometimes considered nuisances out hunting? Because the generality of riders are unfortunately in the way of their neighbours, and have not the remotest idea of what they ought to do.

Before they inflict themselves on the hunting field, they should learn to manage their horses, to keep out of the way, and should they wish to jump, to ride straight at their fences, not landing too near their pilots, and not taking anyone else's place. When once they can accomplish so much, they will no longer be considered troublesome. In fact, few things are more dangerous than riding in Rotten Row, simply because the greater part of the riders have not the faintest idea of the risks they incur. You will see both young men and young women galloping recklessly along with a perfectly loose rein, sometimes knocking down the unfortunate ones who happen to be in their way, and followed by grooms who have usually even less idea of riding and finish the mischief their owners have begun.

Then the untidy, slipshod way the riders are often turned out is a disgrace to a country which is considered to have the best horses and riders in the world. What must foreigners--Hungarians, for instance, who know something of riding, of horses, and of horsemen--think of the doubtful spectacle two-thirds of the riders present. Poor old screws, who have usually to pull the family coach of an afternoon, broken-down hunters, an apology for hacks, are to be seen carrying their fair burdens, who look anything but at home in their saddles, with hair piled up in latest but most unworkmanlike fashion, flapping blouses, and habits that look as though night-gowns, still worn, were beneath. Of course many people cannot afford expensive hacks, but I would sooner any day have a broken-winded or broken-kneed screw that was well-bred and well-shaped, than a sound one who looked an underbred, lazy, three-cornered beast. Besides, there is no reason why anyone who can afford a horse at all, should not have it well groomed, with neat saddle, and brightly-burnished bit, and be at the same time smartly turned out herself. It is as cheap to be clean as to be dirty; and a little extra trouble will go a long way in the desired direction.

For the safety of the multitude, it would be a good thing if all people who are going to ride or drive on the public highway were made to pass an examination as to their capabilities, and I do not believe, if that were so, that half of the present riders in the road would be admitted.

Children are taught to ride quite on the wrong principle. How can a child of three understand or appreciate a ride in a pannier on some fat Shetland's back? The age of eight years is quite soon enough for any child to begin; before that time it is impossible for them to control the smallest pony, and this very experience often destroys their nerve.

In buying a pony, be very sure that it is sound, with a nice light mouth; twelve hands is quite small enough. Most children's hands are spoilt by letting them learn to ride on a pony destitute of any mouth, the result is they learn to hold on by the poor thing's bridle, and anyone who does that can never ride well. Let girls first learn to stick on a cross saddle before putting them on a side saddle, it teaches them to sit straight, and is much better for them in every way.

Anyone with bad hands can never be a really good rider. You can go hard, be able to ride a horse that has bad manners, such as kicking, bucking, rearing, running away, for that is simply a matter of nerve; but a good rider means someone whose horse always goes nicely and kindly, who does not hang on his mouth, who knows how to make him gallop, and can ride really well at a fence. Half the falls out hunting come from putting your horse crookedly at the fence, and from losing your head when he has made a mistake.

Always endeavour--should your horse come down with you, and you have not parted company--to keep your presence of mind. Do not try to get off, as that will probably lead to a worse accident. Leave the reins alone, for nothing frightens a horse more when he is down than touching his mouth with the bit. Sit quite still, and it is more than likely that you will be able to continue your ride without the smallest mishap, or even a dirty back.

A great deal has been said on the subject of ladies' horses. One thing is quite certain--they cannot be too good, and for a side saddle a fine shoulder is indispensable; for, if you ride a horse without it, the sensation is most unpleasant. You feel as though you were sitting on his ears. Before mounting, always see that the saddle is not put on the top of the withers, but just behind them, so that the weight does not fall on the top of the shoulders. Besides being less likely to give a sore back, the rider is much more comfortable. The reason why ladies give a sore back so often is that they ride with too long a stirrup, and do not sit straight. Sit well to the off side, and, should you think your saddle is not quite straight, either get someone to alter it for you or go home, for anything is better than to have your horse laid up for a month with a bad back. I think a well-bred horse about 15·2, with a nice light mouth, is the nicest mount for a woman. For if one gets a really good fencer and galloper this size, he is far better than a big underbred horse that tires one out immediately. But, of course, everyone has to be mounted according to her weight. A nice light weight can see a great deal of sport on the back of a really good pony about fourteen-hands. It is wonderful the big fences many such ponies will contrive to get over, if they really mean business. The first pony I ever had was a little twelve-hand Welsh mare, and there was nothing that pony wouldn't jump or scramble over somehow. What was too high for her she would get under. She could crawl and climb like a cat, and gallop faster than most horses; and, when she was twenty years of age, was as fresh as a three-year-old. In fact, my brother won three races of five furlongs on the flat with her, against much bigger ponies. The best thing I can wish any of our readers is to have another, whether horse or pony, as good and as game as she was.

K. NEWCASTLE.

THE WIFE OF THE M. F. H.

BY MRS CHAWORTH MUSTERS.

If there is one calling in which a real helpmate can be of more use to a man than any other, it is in that many-sided and arduous undertaking called "hunting a country."

Not that it is to be desired that a lady should take an active part in the field management, like the well-meaning dame who is reported to have said to an offender, "If I were a gentleman I would swear at you." But without letting zeal outrun discretion, how much may a "mistress of hounds" (as we will call her for brevity's sake) do to promote sport and good feeling, besides deciding on the cut of a habit, and on who is to be invited to wear the hunt colours.

"I have been a foxhunter myself, and I know how selfish they are," was the remark once made to the writer by an old gentleman in Leicestershire, and it must, in candour, be admitted that there was some truth in his agreeable frankness.

Now, the mistress of the hounds should do all in her power to make hunting acceptable, by trying to counteract the overbearing egotism which no doubt is apt to be the effect of an absorbing pursuit on men's characters.

She should bear in mind that hunting was, after all, made for man, and not man for hunting, and that because some people are fortunate enough to be born with a taste for that amusement, combined (which is important) with the means of gratifying it, there is no reason why others less happily gifted should be despised and sent to the wall.

The cause of fox-hunting was never yet furthered by votaries, who appear to think everything else in the way of sport unworthy of thought or notice. "Give and take," should be their motto, as well as that of all conditions of men, in fact, "more so" considering that, in the present day, most followers of hounds are indebted to others for their fun, and do not own a yard of the land they ride over.

Many a man is "put wrong" for life, and hastily designated as a "beastly vulpecide," who would have been pleased to find a fox for his neighbours now and then, though not caring for the sport himself, if he had been treated with the consideration generally shown in other matters. Therefore, the lady we have in our mind will do all she can to sympathise with the pursuits and amusements of others besides hunting people, and will do her best to destroy the idea that a fine horsewoman must necessarily be "horsey," or a lover of fox-hounds "doggy."

Since the extraordinary popularity of Whyte Melville's and Surtee's novels and songs, a generation has grown up, who have flattered themselves into the belief that the fact of riding after hounds at once makes heroes and heroines of them, and that they are almost conferring a benefit on their fellow-creatures by emulating Kate Coventry or the Honourable Crasher.

Formerly people went hunting because they liked it, now with many it is a means to an end, a passport to good society, a fashion rather than a taste.

In the true interests of fox-hunting this is to be deplored, but as it is impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff, a mistress must content herself with smoothing over difficulties, with trying to avoid collisions between those who _live_ in a country, and those who _hunt_ in it; and it will be her aim to make up for any roughness or seeming neglect on the part of those who follow her husband's hounds.

As Jorrocks told James Pigg, "There must be unanimity and concord, or we sha'n't kill no foxes."

A lady should herself set an example of courtesy when meeting at a country house by dismounting and paying her respects to the hostess, especially if the owner is not a habitual follower of the chase. She may also sometimes make an opportunity to call on her way home for a few minutes, not obviously with the desire of snatching a few mouthfuls, like a hungry dog, and then tearing out again, but in a neighbourly, pleasant fashion, for no one likes to be unmistakably made a convenience of.

These little amenities go a long way towards what is called "keeping a country together," and, when the lady at the head of affairs sets her face against rudeness and "cliqueishness" there is likely to be less friction between those whom a Melton sportsman once designated as the "cursed locals," and the sporting gentry who are only birds of passage.

Politeness in the field is, of course, part of our ideal lady's nature, and she could no more omit to thank the sportsman, farmer, or labouring man, who showed her an act of civility, than if he were her partner at a ball; though a story _is_ told of a gentleman in a crack country, who said to a fair follower of the chase, that she was the forty-second lady he had held a gate for, and the first who had said "Thank you."