Part 20

“If I were to go upon the road,” says an amateur, “I would be a night coachman through a well-inhabited country. For six months of the year, it is undoubtedly the pleasanter service; and I never found any difference between taking rest by day or by night.” It is, however, calculated only for a man in the prime of his days, as all his energies are required. The night coachman ought to know his line of road well. He must take rest regularly, or he will be sure to become drowsy, if he do not go to sleep. He must also keep himself sober; keep a tight hand on his horses; keep the middle of the road; and be sure to keep time.

The night coachman must cast his eye well forward, and get out of the way of carts and waggons in time. Although, by looking perpendicularly from his box or at the hedges, if there be any, he may always see if he be in the road, yet if he cannot throw his eye some way before his leaders’ heads, he is going at random. He will often get close to things he may meet in the road before he is aware of them; and therefore, as I have already said, it is essential that he should be wide awake, and have his horses well in hand.

Chains and springs on the bars are good things for night-work, as they prevent the leaders’ traces coming off. A narrow road, sufficiently wide, of course, for carriages to pass with convenience--with no ditch on the side--is much the best for night-work. Unless when the moon is very bright, a dark night is in favour of safe travelling. When it is what coachmen term “a clear dark,” the lamps give much better light than when the darkness approaches to grey. In very wide roads, particularly where there are no hedges to confine them, lamplight is both weak and deceiving; and moonlight is often glimmering and doubtful, particularly when clouds are passing rapidly. Lamplight is treacherous, both in fogs and when horses are going at a moderate pace, with the wind just behind them; for then the steam arising from their bodies follows them, and necessarily obstructs the light. Sometimes, from driven rain or snow, a coachman can scarcely open his eyes so as to see the road to the extent of the light given by the lamps, in which case a tight hand on the horses is especially necessary.

A heavy fog is the only thing which baffles the skill and intrepidity of our night coachmen. In this case, lamps are of no avail as to showing light forward; and, in the worst cases, the only use that can be made of them is for the guard to hold one in his hand behind the coach, by which he will be able to see whether the horses are in the road or not. Lamps, however, are always useful in case of accidents; and, except in very clear moonlight, a night coach should never travel without them.

Accidents often occur from coachmen neglecting to light their lamps in going into a town. It often happens that, when a coach comes down the road in the morning, there may be no obstruction in the streets; but rubbish from buildings, stones, or many other things, may be thrown out by the time it comes up again at night. When an accident happens to a coach, presence of mind is much required. Outside passengers should never think of quitting by jumping, from the fore part, at least, until she falls to the ground. From the box, indeed, a man may get over the roof into the guard’s seat, and thence descend.

Among the various contrivances for dragging wheels, we may mention a very ingenious one by Mr. Rapson. The drag is applied to the nave of the wheel, with a chain attached, which is fastened to the breeching, a small pin on each side going into the bar of the drag. If one of these pins be taken out, the wheel will be dragged, and if both are withdrawn, the wheels are both acted upon during the descent, by the breech bearing against the horse.

In the first of these diagrams we have a representation of the break attached to the wheel, but inoperative, the jointed circle separating the chain, _c_, and bolt, _b_, from the nave. In the second figure, the entire frame _a_, _b_, _c_, is seen in direct collision with the nave, and by its friction retarding the locked wheel. This, however, does not occur till the breeching of the harness is drawn tight by the pressure of the carriage upon it.

OBSTRUCTIONS, OFFENCES, AND INJURIES.

By the 1st Geo. I. c. 57, drivers of hackney coaches are to give way to gentlemen’s carriages, under a penalty of 10_s._

If a carriage be obstructed by disorderly persons, the driver should take out his pocket-book, and let the persons guilty of this see that he is taking a note of their number; and he should then coolly tell them that he will summon them if they do not immediately clear the way.

If a carriage be injured by another running against it, the driver should ascertain whose carriage has done the mischief, and let his coachmaker give an estimate of the charge for repairing it; but, before he has it done, he should let the person who injured it see the mischief, and pay the charge; or, as is the custom, let the repair be made by the coachmaker of the party who committed the injury.

THE TURF.

It is singular that no portion of our domestic annals should be so obscure as that which relates to the early history of our first of National Sports. In the remotest ages of civilization (so far at least as any existing records carry us back), a taste for horse-racing was fostered and promoted as a social engine peculiarly adapted to rural and political purposes. The Greeks--the wisest and most polished people that the world has ever seen--carried their estimate of its importance so far, that their chiefs not only took part in the sports of the hippodrome, but acted as officials in the regulation of its details. Philip of Macedon thought it not unbecoming the imperial crown, that he who wore it should discharge the office of judge at the Pythian Games, and his son repaid in gold every line written by Pindar in honour of the chaplet of wild olive.[78] The verse of Pindar, and the prose of Pausanias, have immortalized the names of Olympia and Elis. The latter has left us the minutest particulars of the economy of racing in his day. He describes the Olympian Hippodrome at Elis, and all its gorgeous display of splendid embellishments and ingenious machinery, with a care and prodigality of narrative that give assurance of the importance which attached to the matter delineated. Of the perfection to which, in that era, the science of the course had attained, we need no better proof than the classification observed in the Olympic Games--where horses were matched according to their ages, and prizes instituted for races between mares only (called Calpe). It is needless, however, to encumber our subject with ancient lore, by continuing these classic references. Enough has, perhaps, been already adduced to establish this point--that we possess more knowledge of the condition of racing three thousand years ago, than we do of the state it was in three hundred years since in our native land.

[78] The crown given to the victors in the Olympic games.

But because we are in possession of such scanty materials, it by no means follows that the little we do know should be withheld. The reader will therefore have the courtesy to look back with me to the tenth century, and I promise to bring him again into the nineteenth with all convenient speed. As far back, then, as the reign of Athelstan (925), we read that a present of “running horses” was sent to that monarch from France, the gift of Hugh Capet. As nothing however is known of the character of those animals, we will pass on to the reign of William, which affords better data. At that period a nobleman (the Earl of Shrewsbury) appears to have imported several Spanish horses for his own use. Now, as the Moors had had a footing in Spain for several centuries prior to the Norman conquest, there is little doubt that the blood of the Barb was, in the eleventh century, extensively diffused through that country, and that a highly improved breed of the horse was at the time extant there. Here we have a reasonable era from which to date an amelioration of the indigenous race in our island. A little more than a century later, in the reign of Henry the Second (1154), we come to, as far as I have been able to discover, the earliest mention of racing to be found in our national records. This refers to a barbarous sort of running practised upon the plain now occupied by Smithfield, which does not appear to have been subjected to any regulations of time or method. Smithfield, indeed, was then the great horse-mart, and very probably the contests, exalted by their chronicler (Fitzstephen the monk), to Olympic honours, were nothing more than exhibitions, by rival horse-croupers, of the mettle, speed, and action of their respective “palfreys, hackneys, and charging-steeds.”

Still, that horse-racing was about this time a popular pastime, and one in which the nobles of the land were wont to take pride, is fully established by the allusions to it that abound in the many metrical legends, yet in existence, composed in honour of Richard of the Lion Heart. These preserve the names of the coursers, and speak of them as being valued at sums that, allowing for the difference in the worth of money, quite exceed any prices known in our day. The domestic troubles which marked the reign of John, and the succession of wars in which we were subsequently engaged, probably interrupted the progress of this sport materially--at all events, we do not find any of our sovereigns giving their countenance to it from Richard to the bluff Harry. Henry VIII. was constitutionally disposed for manly occupations and amusements--of his moral tendencies we speak not. We have it on the authority of Challoner that he was much disposed to improve the breed of horses, for which purpose he imported various descriptions from Spain and Turkey. Fortune, too, enabled his daughter Elizabeth to do much for our native breed; the destruction of the Spanish Armada having supplied us with many barbs and Spanish-bred horses, their descendants, found in the vessels of that fleet which fell into the hands of Lord Howard of Effingham.

We now come to her successor, James I.,[79] who must be considered as the founder of legitimate racing in this country. He introduced the first Arab into England of which we have any knowledge--that purchased by Mr. Markham, and known as the Markham Arabian. The training system, which has now reached such perfection, was then practised in its various divisions of physic, work, sweating, and the etcetera of stable economy; and the weight to be carried for public prizes arranged by authority. The Roodee, at Chester, was an established course in this reign, one of the prizes being a silver bell, of the value of ten pounds or thereabouts, run for in five-mile heats. Similar prizes were also given at Theobald’s on Enfield Chase, at Croydon, and Gatherly, in Yorkshire, whence the popular term “bearing the bell,” no doubt, had its origin. His unfortunate son Charles I. had little opportunity of forwarding the social concerns of himself or others. In his reign, however, the first races on record at Newmarket were held, and, by a singular fatality, to Newmarket was he borne a prisoner to the parliamentary forces. The “civil dudgeon” of the Protectorate of course was not friendly to the amusements of the turf, but, though suspended, they were not lost sight of. Mr. Place, the stud-master to Oliver Cromwell, imported the celebrated horse known as the White Turk. He was also the owner of some very capital mares, one of which, during the search after Cromwell’s property at the Restoration, he saved from destruction by hiding in a vault, whence she took the name of the “Coffin Mare.”

[79] The palace at Newmarket was built by this monarch for the purpose of enjoying the diversion of hunting--no races having been held upon the heath till the succeeding reign.

With the Restoration came the palmy days of the Turf. Regular meetings were established at Newmarket, and various other parts of England; silver cups and bowls of the value of one hundred pounds were presented as royal gifts, and, more than all, the light of royal favour shone upon it in shape of Charles the Debonair and Mistress Eleanor Gwynne. William III. had no taste for racing, and died by a fall from his horse. Prince George of Denmark, on the other hand, was warmly attached to the Turf, and promoted its interest by every means in his power. We are indebted for many royal plates to his influence with his consort Queen Anne. George I. was no sportsman; in his reign, however, the alteration in the royal plates took place, by which a sum of one hundred guineas was substituted in their stead. Shortly after George II. ascended the throne, arose a morbid yearning after legislating for the Turf. Some of the acts enacted were mischievous; very many were very silly; one was good:--“That no plate or prize of a less value than £50 should be run for, under a penalty of £200.” It was during this reign that the Darley and Godolphin Arabians were brought into this country,--two horses from whom have descended all the most celebrated racers that adorn the annals of our turf. This is the period at which the genealogy of our unrivalled thorough-bred horse then, was _naturalized_, and it is the date whence I think it most convenient to begin my notice of English racing.

Even a notice so confined as this is beset with obscurities that few would conceive possible. As an instance, I will adduce the case of an old and well-informed inhabitant of Epsom, who some years ago published a very clever history of that place. He starts somewhere about the Conquest, and never halts for want of materials as he goes on, till he comes to the great stumbling-block, concerning which he shall speak for himself:--“When the races on Epsom Downs were first held periodically, _we have not been able to trace_; but we find that from the year 1730 they have been annually held in the months of May or June, and about six weeks previous to which the hunters’ stakes are occasionally run for on the Epsom race course, at one of which, in 1730, the famous horse Madcap won the prize, and proved the best plate-horse in England.”

To return, however, to the reign of George II., though we find little bearing on the business of the Turf to be gleaned from its records, it introduces us to the great forefathers of our thorough blood, and stirs one of the most interesting questions in our domestic natural history--the problem of the seed or origin of the English thorough-bred horse. A brief search through the stud-book will convince the inquirer that, almost without exception, our great racers were and are descendants of the Darley and Godolphin Arabians: I use the latter term merely because its conventionality now identifies those celebrated animals. They were both, as has been stated, imported in this reign: the question that I would here investigate applies equally to each, but, for the sake of simplifying it, I will treat it with reference to the latter only. “That he was a genuine Arabian,” says the stud-book, “his excellence as a sire is deemed sufficient proof;” a little further on we read, “It is remarkable that there is not a _superior_ horse now on the Turf without a cross of the Godolphin Arabian, neither has there been for several years past.” The probable date of his arrival in this country was 1725, or thereabouts. Hundreds of Arabs had preceded him as sires, their introduction for that purpose having been a very general speculation from the time of Charles I. That the indigenous island breed had thereby been rendered good service, there can be no doubt; but that the Turf derived any signal advantages from the importations is more than problematical.

Are our celebrated strains of racing blood derived at all from an Arab source, and, if so descended, are they excellent _consequently_, or of accident? As regards the first moiety of the inquiry, a work has just appeared in Paris, the production of a gentleman of some literary celebrity[80], relating to the genealogy of the horse so long known to us as the Godolphin Arabian. His statements go to show that he was a pure _Barb_, presented, with seven others, by the Bey of Tunis to Louis XV., _about_ the year 1731. All the portraits I have ever seen of him certainly go to strengthen this reading of his descent, and proclaim him not of Asiatic origin. The date is an erroneous one, as he was a sire in England in the year in which he is said to have reached France; but we must be content with very vague data in all that concerns our subject a century ago. As to the second division of the question, after-time must furnish the means of replying to it, if it be ever answered. My bias is to a belief that there exist families of the horse in the East possessed of a perfection infinitely surpassing any generically inherited. This I have attempted to demonstrate in a work upon which I am at present engaged, some portion of which has been already published.[81] The fact (of which I was made conscious by authority beyond question) that the Imaum of Muscat, one of the most powerful sovereign princes of India, expended ten years of active search, backed by the enormous bribe of ten thousand pounds, before he could procure a descendant of a line sufficiently pure to present to King George IV., seems to establish the truth of the theory to which I profess being inclined. All that we learn from our knowledge of the almost religious veneration with which the genealogy of the horse is treated in the East, goes to the like confirmation. “It is remarkable that there is not a _superior_ horse _now_ on the turf without a cross of the Godolphin Arabian,” I leave the reader to interpret as his own reflections may lead him.

[80] M. Eugene Sue.

[81] Annals of the British Turf, from the Introduction of Eastern blood to the present Time. The first century concluded in the Old Sporting Magazine.

Shall I venture, at the hazard of pursuing my theory “ultra fines,” to offer one more example in support of it? That no structural organization available to the eye, no individual excellence in the parents, influence, in our raising stock, the performances of their offspring, are truisms taught by every stud in the kingdom. All that exist among us, descended from the great forefather of the Turf, are capable of producing offspring of equal pretension, as regards the root from which they are sprung. Far different was the result in relation to the importations of Eastern blood contemporary with the Godolphin, and the same it has been with all more recently introduced. Enough, at all events, has been adduced, if not to _prove_ my position, to warrant me, at least, in its assumption, as well as for offering it to the consideration of those who hold the subject to which it relates of sufficient interest to engage their attention.

From such speculations on the origin of the British racehorse, we will turn to the annals of his exploits,--a theme more generally attractive, though intrinsically less important. Here, to begin with the early worthies of the turf, all is as obscure as is the genealogical problem with which we have been already engaged. Of the performances of Childers, detailed, as they are, with all apparent microscopic observations of the seconds’ hand, I am convinced that we know rather worse than nothing. In a recent work of more than an ordinary character on the subject to which it addresses itself (Lawrence’s History of the Horse), Childers--Flying Childers, as he was designated _par excellence_--is stated to have been a chestnut, whereas he was a rich bay with four white legs. The same slovenly style, no doubt, attaches to the records of the early performances, as well as to the more recent attempts of equestrian historians. Again, the only criterion by which we can estimate them is, when we can refer to a timed race, because, knowing little of the principals, we cannot be supposed to have a better knowledge of the pretensions of their contemporaries. Now, even in our day, when all the appliances for chronometrical accuracy are so vastly improved and multiplied, we rarely hear of the time of a race being kept at all, even accidentally: it is never done by authority, or on a principle deserving of confidence.

We know that the taste, in the middle of the last century, inclined to long distances, and repeated exertion--six and eight-mile heats being events of constant recurrence; and yet we are required to believe that there existed at and previous to that time a flight of speed unknown to our degenerate days. Moreover, by far the greater portion of the early racers were undersized, Galloways as the old Calendars have them in every page; and stride is, save in rare exceptions, indispensable to a high degree of swiftness. In the absence of any actual data as to speed, worthy being confided in, it may not be inconvenient to relate a performance of one of the first-class horses of that period; and, by contrasting it with a match against time, done by a contemporary hackney, some deduction may be drawn of the qualities of the racers of that era.

Gimcrack, a grey horse bred in 1760, by Cripple out of Miss Elliot, was considered one of the best of his day. In consequence of his superiority, he was sent to France, where he was matched for a large sum to do a certain distance against time. Whatever it was, he was the winner, having accomplished twenty-three miles in fifty-five minutes. This was probably in 1770. In 1778, a foundered hackney, aged twenty-two, belonging to a Mr. Hanks, did twenty-two miles within the hour, upon the high road in the neighbourhood of London. Gimcrack carried eight stone: the weight on the hackney is not given, but there is no reason for believing it less than eight stone; so that one of the best race-horses of that day could only beat a broken-down hack a mile and five minutes in an hour!

It is a conventional fallacy to attribute to past days virtues superior to those in which were live. Every thing, from the seasons to the flavour of home-brewed, was better, if we credit the popular voice, “in the good old times.” To examine the application of this rule to the matter before us, I may perhaps be permitted to borrow a leaf out of my own book, seeing that I could scarce make my argument stronger in any other form of words.