In the first place, when the hounds have settled to their fox and people have shaken themselves into their places, the fair rider in her early essays in the field should bestow her principal attention upon the animal, upon which depends much of her sport. With a good man by her side, she will run no risk from thrusting neighbours, and although she cannot too soon begin to have "one eye for the hounds and another for the horse," it is the latter which demands all her energies. The whole business is exciting. The genuine dash, the vigour, the reality, that is so striking to a novice when hounds come crashing out of covert, through an old wattle, or bounding over a strong fence; the up-ending and plunging of impatient young horses, the brilliant throng of fashionable equestrians, the rattle of the turf under the horses' feet as they stride away—all these, or any of them, are quite sufficient to warm up even old blood, and are certain to send that of the young going at such a pace that all rule and method in riding is very apt to be forgotten, or thrust aside in the eager desire "to be first."
It is just at this critical moment that I would advise my fair readers to lay to heart the necessity of controlling their excitement, because it is at such a time that a horse, especially at the beginning of the season (if allowed), will "take out of himself" just what he will want hereafter, assuming a stout fox that means business to be to the front. A soothing word or two, and "making much" of the excited steed, will generally cause him to settle in his stride and cease romping; whereas, if the rider is excited as well as the horse, we have oil upon fire at once. Again, it cannot be too forcibly impressed upon ladies riding with hounds that the latter require plenty of room to work.
"Place aux dames" is a rule rigidly observed by gentlemen in the hunting field. Room for the hounds should form an equally inviolable law with ladies in the same place. And it is the more necessary to impress this upon beginners, because many a first-rate man who pilots ladies, although bold as a lion over a country, and cautious to a degree as to the line he takes for his fair compagnon de chasse, is oftentimes far too modest to check her exuberant riding, and the consequence is, many an anathema—not loud, but deep—is bestowed upon both by exasperated masters and huntsmen.
Unlike the professional riding master, a first-rate pilot—such, I mean, as is paid for his services—though well behaved and respectful, is likely enough to lack much education, except such as he has received in the saddle or on practical farming matters; and his awe of a lady, properly so called, is so considerable as to preclude his exercise of the fortiter in re altogether, no matter how much his charge is unwittingly infringing the rules of sport.
I saw an amusing instance of this not long ago. A lady, the widow of a wealthy civil servant in India, having returned to her native land laden with the riches of the East, being still young and excessively fond of riding, purchased a stud of first-class hunters, took a nice little hunting box in Leicestershire for the season, and engaged the services of a very good man to pilot her. As a rule every lady rides in India—some of them ride very well; but a rattling gallop at gun fire, in the morning, over the racecourse at Ghindee or Bangalore, is quite a different matter to a gallop with the Pytchley hounds. The "Bebe sahib" (great lady) had no idea, mounted as she was, of anybody or anything (bar the fox) being in front of her. And be it known to those who have never been in India that "great ladies" there are "bad to talk to," being in the habit pretty much of paying very little attention to anything in the way of counsel coming from their subordinates. Our Indian widow was no exception. So she did all sorts of outrageous things in the field in riding in among the hounds—and, indeed, before them—to the disgust of the master and everybody else, including her pilot, who in her case was certainly no mentor—but the latter was too well paid to risk offending the peccant lady; he ventured a gentle hint or two, and, being snubbed, gave it up for a bad job.
He was so severely rated, however, by the masters of hounds in the district—one of whom declared he would take them home directly he saw the lady and her pilot with them—that the latter was fairly at his wits' end to know how to keep the too dashing widow within bounds. Sorely puzzled, he sat in his spacious chimney nook one night smoking his pipe in moody silence, his wife knitting opposite him.
"What's the matter, John?" began his spouse. "Matter!" he replied; "it's enough to drive a man mad; Mrs. Chutnee's going again to-morrow, and, as sure as fate, she'll ride over the hounds or do something, and get one into trouble."
"What makes her go on so, John?" again inquired the cara sposa.—"Go on! it is go on: I think that the name for it. Go on over everything! no fence is too big for her. I like her for that, but she never knows when to stop. Last week she knocked an old gentleman over, and he lost a spick span new set of teeth as cost, I dare say, a matter of twenty guineas; and the day before yesterday she lamed a hound as was worth a lot of money, to say nothing of hurting the poor brute. I don't know what to be at with her, and that's a fact, because, barring her going so fast, she is the best-hearted lady ever I see."
And John relapsed into silence, blowing mighty clouds of smoke, while his wife plied her knitting-needles. But a woman's wit, in difficult cases, is proverbial; and in the watches of the night a bright notion, based upon knowledge of her own sex, flashed upon the anxious mind of the snoring John's wife. The result was as follows. Next morning, true to time, John was in attendance to accompany the fair widow to the field. They had some distance to ride to covert, and after a smart spurt of a mile or two on the sward, the lady pulled her horse up to walk up a hill.
"John," said the lady (who was in high spirits), "what do people here think of my riding?"—"Well, some thinks one thing, and some thinks another," was the reply.