For this reason young sportsmen should commence their studies with harriers, where the runs are usually circling and a good deal of hunting is done slowly. If a young fellow can ride well in a close, enclosed hedge, bank, and ditch country, with occasional practice at stiles and gates, pluck will carry him through a flying country, if properly mounted.
Young sportsmen generally err by being too bold and too fast. Instead of studying the art in the way the best men out perform, they are hiding their nervousness by going full speed at everything, or trying to rival the whips in daring. Any hard-headed fool can ride boldly. To go well when hounds are running hard to save your horse as much as possible while keeping well forward, for the end, the difficult part of a long run these are the acts a good sportsman seeks to acquire by observation and experience.
No man in the world ever lifted a horse over anything it is a mechanical impossibility but a horseman of the first order can at a critical moment so rouse a horse, and so accurately place his head and hind-legs in the right position, that he can make an extraordinary effort and achieve a miraculous leap. This in metaphorical language is called lifting a horse, because, to a bye-stander, it looks like it. But when a novice, or even an average horseman, attempts this sort of tour de force, he only worries his horse, and, ten to one, throws him into the fence. Those who are wise will content themselves with keeping a horse well in hand until he is about to rise for his effort, and to collecting him the moment he lands. The right hold brings his hind legs under him; too hard a pull brings him into the ditch, if there is one. By holding your hands with the reins in each rather wide apart as you come towards your fence, and closing them and dropping them near his withers as he rises, you give him room to extend himself; and if you stretch your arms as he descends, you have him in hand. But the perfect hunter, as long as he is fresh, does his work perfectly, so the less you meddle with him when he is rising the better.
Now, Dick does not mean by this that you are to go slowly at every kind of fence. 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; but it can teach that it ought to be learned. Thousands of falls have been caused by a common and most absurd phrase, which is constantly repeated in every description of the leaps of a great race or run. He took his horse by the head and lifted him, &c.
In another place Dick says, A quick and safe jumper always goes from hind-legs to fore-legs. I never rode a steeple-chase yet but I steadied my horse on to his hind-legs twenty yards from his fence, and I was always over and away before the rushers. Lots of the young riders think horses can jump anything if they can only drive them at it fast enough. They force them too much at their fences. If you don’t feel your horse’s mouth, you can tell nothing about him. You hold him, he can make a second effort; if you drop him, he won’t.
The late Marquis of Hastings, father of the present Marquis, was one of the best and keenest fox-hunters of his day; he died young, and here is Dick’s account of his first fence, for which all fox-hunters are under deep obligations to the Druid.
The Marquis of Hastings was one of my pupils. I was two months at his place before he came of age. He sent for me to Donnington, and I broke all his horses. I had never seen him before. He had seven rare nice horses, and very handy I got them. The first meet I went out with him was Wartnaby Stone Pits. I rode by his side, and I says, ‘My lord, we’ll save a bit of distance if we take this fence.’ So he looked at me and he laughed, and says, ‘Why, Christian, I was never over a fence in my life.’ ‘God bless me, my lord! you don’t say so?’ And I seemed quite took aback at hearing him say it. ‘Its true enough, Christian, I really mean it.’ ‘Well, my lord,’ says I, ‘you’re on a beautiful fencer, he’ll walk up to it and jump it. Now I’ll go over the fence first. Put your hands well down on his withers and let him come.’ It was a bit of a low-staked hedge and a ditch; he got over as nice as possible, and he gave quite a hurrah like. He says, ‘There, I’m over my first fence that’s a blessing!’ Then I got him over a great many little places, and he quite took to it and went on uncommonly well. He was a nice gentleman to teach he’d just do anything you told him. That’s the way to get on!
The illustration at the commencement of this chapter gives a very fair idea of the seat of good horsemen going at a fence and broad ditch, where pace is essential. A novice may advantageously study the seats of the riders in Herring’s Steeplechase Cracks, painted by an artist who was a sportsman in his day.
A few invaluable hints on riding to hounds are to be found in the Druid’s account of Dick Christian.
