LETTER NUMBER TWO
London, England, August 1, 1912.
Dear A——:
I have just returned from a day in Epping Forest, whither I was drawn by a rumor of primeval beeches to be seen there. And I found them—groves of the great trees, each as large as the largest oak of my memory. But my interest was soon divided, for our pony was there too—very lovely and very Welsh—tripping along the forest roads and drawing the mind away from a reverie of the old Saxon days, for it was in these very woods that the pious Confessor impartially exercised his two passions for praying and hunting, and here that his devotions were so disturbed by the multitudinous nightingales that he besought God to banish them; and history records that the birds had to go. But I suspect that the arrows of Edward's obedient henchmen assisted a too complaisant deity in the work of banishment. This, too, is the forest through which the mourning Githa brought the body of "Haroldus infelix" to be interred in the abbey founded by him in the woods he had loved. But such faded memories yielded to the modern picture as soon as I saw that my little gallant from the Welsh hills formed a lively part of it. He was there in numbers, attached to carts full of children, to ladies' traps, and sometimes to a more ambitious vehicle. I saw one noble fellow, barely eleven hands high, drawing two fat men, each weighing, to my indignant eyes, at least seventeen stone. In my first rashness I should have protested, but the men were lolling back in such a haze of bliss, pipes in their mouths, and beaming with contentment, that I felt it would be irreverent to disturb a happiness so rare in this rough world. I also saw that the little Welsher was in good fettle and would probably be the first to resent a protest involving an impeachment of his powers.
LONGMYND CASTOR
Imported Welsh Pony
The carts that pleased me most were those that overflowed with chirruppy, glowing children. They usually took the by-ways denied to the motors, and as they bubbled out of sight into a leafy world, I felt renewedly grateful to the gentle servitor that makes such intimacy between childhood and woodland possible. Little feet cannot get far unassisted, but give them such a helper as the pony and their explorations need hardly be limited. The ideal creature for this purpose is the mountain pony of about eleven hands. Sagacious and docile, he is the safest of companions, and is just as happy under saddle as in harness. The Welsh-Pony- and Cob-Society recognizes two classes of the pony, one this smaller animal of the mountains, not exceeding twelve hands in height, and the larger pony, usually lowland bred, which may be as high as thirteen hands. But the mountain pony is held to be the foundation stock of all the ponies of Wales; furnishing the indestructible material from which is bred the little hunter, saddler and harness pony, or the dear, obliging factotum who will equably plough your garden in the morning and high-step in the park in the afternoon. Whatever his family leanings, toward the Arab, thoroughbred, or more cobby-built type, you will find his "pony character" unaffected. I have already alluded to this attribute, so evident in the pony and so elusive in definition. It is a quality made up of so many others that a full description would be mere endless analysis. Even the all-charitable word, "temperament," will not shelter inadequacy here. To know it one must know the pony. A hint of it is found in his warm, quick sympathy. The horse, however faithful, can at times be cold and judicial in friendship. The pony accepts you without reserving his judgment. He must love wholly, by virtue of the romance that is in him—a tinge of imagination that enables him to idealize rather than criticise, and not an inferior mentality as some students of horse psychology would mistakenly have it. But, though the latchstring of welcome is always out, he will never toss it in your face, for he, too, has a dignity that awaits approach. He serves you, but he is not your underling. If you are so cruel as to be simply the master, ignoring the higher calls of companionship, he does not retreat into indifference, as the horse will, but remains hopeful, expectant, until he wins an understanding or breaks his heart. I do not exaggerate. Wait till you know him; and then you will not more than feebly doubt the story of the pony who came to his aged master, Saint Columba, on the day he was to die, and foremourned their parting.
LONGMYND ECLIPSE AND MY LORD PEMBROKE
"Character" is also found in the way the pony uses his eye—the manner of his outlook on the world. In the horse's eye one may sometimes read a slight suggestion of boredom. He is disillusioned. But the pony does not confess to a finished experience; there may be surprises ahead. He is blithely ready for the unusual; and this brings us to another element of "character" which is peculiarly the pony's; that is, a shrewd understanding which gets him out of a difficulty while the horse is still pondering. The latter has had his nose in the mangers of civilization so long that he has lost the mental independence which his pre-domestic life fostered. Unstimulating, derivative knowledge he has in plenty from his association with man; but the Welsh pony of the hilltops, to this day pressed by the necessity of looking out for himself, has a capable initiative which the horse does not possess. Through ages on his sequestered peaks he fought for life against an enemy armed with sleet and snows and dearth, and the record of his struggle is writ in his fibre. He knows where he may climb and where he may not, the slopes that will let him live and the steeps where starvation waits. The colt, though he has never been in a bog, will avoid its treachery, and needs no warning where the gully is ugly, the pool deep, or the ice too thin to bear him. And there has been much hiding and flying, for the sheep-dogs of Wales have been merciless to the pony. Some call here, you see, for a usable mind!
BRECON
I must mention one more ingredient of this composite "character"—his indomitable spirit. Match him against a horse of equal strength and the latter will be out of heart while the pony is confidently forging on. At Forest Lodge, the home of a gentleman who owns the largest herd in Wales, I saw a mare of less than twelve hands just after she had taken four men down the long hills to Brecon and up again—fourteen miles—and she was not drooping apart waiting to be washed and rubbed down, but frisking over the yard as if she were quite ready to be off again. This spirit that unconsciously believes in itself is an unfailing mark of the mountain ponies. If ever they are guilty of jibbing, or like "poor jades
Lob down their heads,"
investigation is sure to reveal an injudicious cross too recent to be obliterated by the persistent pony strain.
Of this blitheness of spirit I will give another instance. So far as I am involved I do not look back upon the incident with pride, but the pony in the case shall have his due. At Beddgelert I slept late, and was not fully dressed when informed that the coach was at the door. Being anxious to get to Port Madoc in time for the Dolgelly train, I rushed down and out, leapt to a seat, and was off before I realized that the "coach" was a sort of trap drawn by a single pony. There was a cross seat for the driver, and behind it two lengthwise seats arranged so that the occupants must sit facing, with frequent personal collision. We started six in all, and a snug fit we were. I would have descended and tried to secure a private conveyance, in the hope of saving the pony my own weight at least, but we were fairly out of the village before I was fully awake—and there was my train to be caught! However, I soon found that the pony would not have profited by any tenderness on my part, for all along the road there were would-be passengers waiting to be "taken on." The first we met was helped up and made a third in the driver's seat, and the second pinned himself somehow into the seat opposite me. I was congratulating myself on the Welsh courtesy that had left me, a stranger, unmolested, when we rounded a curve and I saw that the gentle consideration had been unavailing. A man stood by the way signaling—a man of unqualified depth and breadth. I thought that he alone might fill the cart. As that astounding driver halted and the man approached my instinct for self-preservation came basely uppermost. I had observed the middle passenger on the other seat to be quiet, elderly and lean. I coveted a seat beside him, and hastily, on the pretext of being a stranger, desiring a better view of the landscape, asked an exchange of seats with the opposite end, which was courteously granted—all to no purpose. My lean neighbor, all at once, took on alarming latitude. I had reckoned without disestablishment. It seemed the man was a bitter opponent of Lloyd George. If some one dropped a word of advocacy he was straightway a tempest of opposition. His shoulders threatened, his elbows flung dissent, his fingers snapped, his arms, compassing the visible area, were not dodgeable, as he defied the world, the bill and the devil in the shape of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—ah well, there was nothing left for me but resignation and nine in a donkey cart.
Thus it was I journeyed through the wonderful Pass of Aberglaslyn with its dripping cliffs, walls of crysoprase, and bowlders of shattered dawn—beauty of which I wrote you, with care at the time not to trench upon circumstances here disclosed. And thus I passed by beautiful Tanyrallt, once the home of Shelley, but I did not lift my eyes to the slope where the house stood. I kept them on the roots of the mighty trees that border the foot of the hill, for I felt that if I looked up I should see my poet's passionate apparition confronting me. Such an angel as he was to the poor beasts! How I came back afterwards to make my apology to his spirit need be no part of this letter. When we reached Port Madoc, dissevered, and dropped ourselves out, I crept around to the pony with commiserating intent, and found him to be the only unwilted member of the party. He had lost neither breath nor dignity, and his happy air and the tilt of his lovely head seemed almost an affront to one in my humbled state. He was under thirteen hands, and he had drawn nine of us eight miles over an uneven road at an unflagging trot; and here he was almost laughing in my face, and barely moist under his harness.
LONGMYND POLLOX
Imported Welsh Pony. Twelve hands
It is his sureness of himself that keeps him cool, being neither anxious nor fearful of failure. Of course this confident spirit has its source in his physical hardiness. In mere bodily endurance he is the equal of the pony of Northern Russia, while much his superior in conformation. But I should never use the phrase I so often heard, "You can't tire him out." It is wrong to suppose that he can be pushed without limit, or kept constantly at the edge of his capacity, and be none the worse for it. Too often the pony that might have lived usefully for thirty or forty years is brought to his death at twenty. He will give man his best for little enough. On half the food that a horse must have, he will do that horse's work; and when not in service, all he asks is a nibbling place, barren as may be—no housing, blanketing, coddling. I know of a pony mare who has spent every winter of her life unsheltered on the hills of Radnorshire, and has not missed foaling a single year since she was four years old. The last account I have reports her as forty-one and with her thirty-seventh foal. And I have come across other instances of longevity that make me believe that the pony that dies at twenty dies young and has not been wisely used.
Formerly the ponies on the hills had no help from man, however long the snows lay or the winds lashed; but now, if severe weather persists, they are brought down to the valleys, or rough fodder is taken to them. At Forest Lodge I saw four hundred ponies freshly home from a winter sojourn on the hills near Aberystwyth. They still wore the shaggy hair put on against a pinching February and stinging March under open skies. A little later they would shed these protective coats and be trim and sleek for the summer. I had been repeatedly told that the Welsh pony was remarkably free from unsoundness, but among so many that had not been sorted for the year, and were at the worn end of their hardest season, I expected to find some of the lesser blemishes, if not defects of the more serious kind. But if I did, it was with a rarity that effectually argued against them. And I found this true all through Wales. Occasionally I would see low withers, a water-shoot tail, or drooping quarters. But predominantly the quarters were good, not with the roundness that denies speed, burying the muscles in puffy obscurity, but displaying the strong outline which is a plump suggestion of the gnarled and bossy hip-bone beneath. As for the high withers that are always to be desired, the Welsh pony is better off in this respect than the other breeds of Britain, unless it be the pure Highland type. You who remember Belmont days full of equine significances, need not be told how much the horse is affected in anatomical free play by the withers. If they are high the interlacing fibres attaching the shoulder-bone to the trunk may rise freely, and the shoulder arm be long and sloping—a position which gives easy movement and power to the forearm and the structures below it—the pony moves gracefully, without strain, with good action and sure speed. But low withers limit propulsion from the shoulder, and while there may be good knee action the pony must pay out strength to get it. There is, besides, a strain on the cervical muscles which makes natural grace impossible. Dealers can often persuade buyers that the upright shoulder is stronger for harness work, and here in London parks I have seen horses of this type dash strainingly along, expending their strength in fashionable action, and with the unavoidable pull on the neck "corrected" by the bearing-rein; the average owner not guessing the difficulty of his creatures, or the torture that in years too few will bring them to a coster's cart or the dump-heap. Having seen and mourned such things, I was happy to find high withers the rule in Wales, and to learn that wise breeders were laying stress on this point and breeding for it.
FOREST LODGE PASTURES
Brecon
Although, as I have said, there has been some imprudent crossing with heavier breeds, these unsuccessful types are being weeded out, and methods of improving the Welsh pony are now, for the most part, confined to individual selection within his own breed, or to the careful introduction of thoroughbred and Arab blood. Of course the door is not entirely closed to other comers, and I talked with one breeder of thirty years' experience who believed in mating his ponies with any sire of fine type that had the points he was trying for. But this gentleman possesses a sixth sense in regard to horses, and can safely indulge in latitude that might prove disastrous in the case of an equally conscientious but less intelligent breeder. Such a method heightens interest and is an open invitation to adventurous possibilities; but it is just as well, I think, that there are others who go to the opposite extreme and are ready to preach on all occasions against bringing alien blood into the mountains. From the shades of Ephraim a poser was once flung to the world—"Can two walk together unless they be agreed?" In this instance, one might surprise hoary Amos with an affirmative, for these two classes of breeders do walk and work together for the good of the Welsh pony; one a barrier to harmful laxity, the other a protest against overcautious restriction. But while guarding him from invasion on his mountains, the most rigid of the "shut-the-door" advocates will permit him to go forth and conquer where he may. It is partly to strengthen him for these expeditions that they insist on keeping the mountain stock unmixed; and it is true that in recent years he has grown much in favor as a factor in the improvement and modification of other pony breeds.
MY LORD PEMBROKE
The Polo pony is profiting much by his blood. It seems that the mountain habits practiced by the Welsh pony, in family seclusion and without applause, such as climbing ledges like a fly, turning and twisting himself out of physio-graphical difficulties, not to speak of his leaping powers (his tribe has furnished a champion jumper of the world) and his quick mental reaction upon the unexpected, have produced just the virtues which figure most brilliantly on the polo field. As the game has grown in complexity, the ponies of the plains, Argentine, Arabian, American, have given place to those of hill-bred ancestry. To get the requisite height and weight-bearing power, yet keep the pony qualities, the hardihood, the astuteness, the thought-like instancy of motion—a wit that can almost prophesy—is a problem that is being patiently worked out. I cannot follow the mystical ways which lead to the production of the unparagoned Polo pony; but it is not until the third or fourth generation that the breeder arrives at the nonpareil, the heart's desire of the polo player. In the first generation a thoroughbred cross with the mountain stock is more satisfactory than the Arab, but the advantage is soon lost, as a type with a pedigree covering something over two hundred years cannot compete in persistence with one that has been established for five times that period.
KNIGHTON SENSATION, LONGMYND ECLIPSE AND MY LORD PEMBROKE
Three well-bred and well-behaved Ponies
But to get back to the pony on his hill-tops. Careful breeding from the finest of the native stock is now doing more for him than any crossing. While close in-breeding tends to bring out latent defects in any strain, the mountain families are so numerous, and the points to be kept down are so few, that this gives little trouble to breeders. I have spoken of the low withers, which are being eliminated, and sometimes there is a badly set-on head—a more serious matter that, if beauty only were involved—but an angular junction is not often seen, and the head in every case is finely formed, with the large, wide brow of the Arab, tapering face-bones, small, sensitive ears, delicate, silken mouth that needs only a touch in guidance, and roomy underchannel between the branches of the lower jaw. There is never a fiddle-head, heavy jaw, leathered nose, or anything suggestive of the coarse-bred animal in these little creatures that may proudly trample on parchment pedigrees. But now they are to have their parchments too.
I have heard it said that the arching crest is not easy to secure in conjunction with high withers, but the combination is often found in the Welsh pony. As I mentioned in my previous letter, in all points of grace he has more to be thankful for than his neighbors to the north and south of him. Lord Arthur Cecil suggests as an explanation of the ungainliness of Fell ponies, that by long huddling against winter storms on treeless slopes, they have become hunched and heavy, both fore and aft, while their middle shows only a discouraged development. But, though the winds of the Welsh peaks may be less keen, they are keen enough to furnish ample incentive to the huddling spirit; yet the Welsh pony has the head I have described, fine, well-placed shoulders, a deep, round barrel, and quarters that, in general, break no rule of proportion. Therefore, I think the difference is one of origin. The Fell pony is probably a descendant of dwarf horses that escaped to the Pennines during seasons of persecution, and being unestablished as to type was more easily modified by environment. I should like to think this because it supports me in the belief that I have taken the right track in pursuing the Welsh pony's ancestry.
KNIGHTON SENSATION
Imported Welsh Cob
I have not spoken of his adaptiveness to other climates, but he is little affected by transplantation. A breed formed of the two oldest races known, and having in its own type a genealogical history of a thousand years, is apt to persist under any sky, and this is probably why he thrives so well apart from his native heath. I am told that even in Canada he does not object to wintering out; but I should like to interview a pony that has tried it before proffering the information as fact. However, if any ill reports have come back from the numbers shipped to Australia and America, they have been successfully concealed from me. I want you to know that the mountain pony's hocks are a feature not to be passed lightly by. They never fail to bring him commendation from the horseman who knows. The curby hocks sometimes found in the larger type of South Wales are unknown to him. His own are always of the right shape, having plenty of compact bone showing every curve and denture under thin, shining skin, and with clean-cut, powerful back sinews at an unhampered distance from the suspensory tendons. "His hocks do send him along," as one admirer said.
The limbs themselves, whether fore or hind, are handsomely dropped and clear of all blemish—no bubbly knees, soufflets about the ankles, puffy fetlocks, or contracted heels. The pasterns are of the approved gentle obliquity—neither short and upright, betraying stubborn flexors, nor long enough to weaken the elasticity of the support that must here guard the whole body from concussion. The pastern is a debatable point, but I refer all advocates of the "long" and "short" schools to the golden mean which the Welsh pony has evolved for himself in those much-mentioned disciplinary years on his problematic hills.
The hoof is always round, never the suspicious bell shape, and blue, deep and dense. One need not look there for symptoms of sand-crack, seedy-toe, pumice-foot, or any of the pedal ills that too often beset the lowland horse. The centuries of unshod freedom among his crags have given the hoof a resisting density coupled with the diminutive form that agility demands; and this happy union the smithies of man have not yet been able to sever or vitiate. Even the thoroughbred must sometimes find a downward gaze as fatal to vanity as did the peacock of our venerated spelling-book; but not the Welsh pony. He may look to earth as to Heaven with unchastened pride.
MY LORD PEMBROKE IN HARNESS
And now that the hoof has brought me to the ground I will not mount again. If I have ridden my pony too hard, bethink you who it was that set me upon him. You remember Isaac Walton's caution when instructing an angler how to bait a hook with a live frog:—"And handle the frog as if you loved him." However infelicitously I may have impaled the pony on my pen, I hope you will own that I have done it as if I loved him. Though I am not ready to say that the "earth sings when he touches it," be assured that he will gallantly carry more praise than I have laid upon him.
I have no quarrel with the motor, though it has made me eat dust more than once. As a means of transporting the body when the object is to arrive, I grant it superlative place. But as a medium between man and Nature it is a failure. It will never bring them together. The motor is restricted to the highway, and from the highway one can never get more from Nature than a nod of half recognition. She remains a stranger undivined.
But on a ramble with a pony, adaptive, unobtrusive, all the leisurely ways are open—the deepwood path, or the trail up the exhilarating steep. As self-effacing as you wish, he saves you from weariness and frees the mind for its own adventure. There will be pause for question, and if Nature ever answers at all, you will hear her. There will be the placid hour that is healing-time with her woods, her skies and waters; and that communion with her divinity which means rest and—haply—peace.
O. T. D.
Transcriber's Note: The photo titled "The Beacons" in the list of illustrations is consistently absent in all available copies from multiple sources. Presumably this is the result of a publisher's error where the illustration was omitted from the final version, but not removed from the listings.