“I went on slowly, through Staffordshire and Cheshire, to Manchester. In this journey, as well as in many others, I observed a mistake that almost universally prevails; and I desire all travellers to take good notice of it, which may save them both from trouble and danger. Near thirty years ago I was thinking, ‘How is it that no horse ever stumbles while I am reading?’ (History, poetry, and philosophy, I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at other times.) No account can possibly be given but this—because when I throw the reins on his neck, I set myself to observe: and I aver that in riding above a hundred thousand miles, I scarce ever remember any horse, except two, (that would fall head over heels any way,) to fall, or make a considerable stumble, while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy, therefore, that a tight rein prevents stumbling is a capital blunder. I have repeated the trial more frequently than most men in the kingdom can do. A slack rein will prevent stumbling, if anything will, but in some horses nothing can.”
Dr. Johnson’s is a figure more often associated with coach and chaise travelling than with horsemanship, but in his younger days he could ride horseback with the best. He only lacked the money to afford it. His wedding-day—when he took the first opportunity of teaching his Tetty marital discipline—was passed in a journey from Derby. His wife rode one horse and he another. “Sir,” he said, a few years later, “she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her husband like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower she passed me and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice, and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears.”
It has already been noted that judges and barristers formerly rode circuit on horseback. As Fielding says, “a grave serjeant-at-law condescended to amble to Westminster on an easy pad, with his clerk kicking his heels behind him.” In such cases, and when a lady rode pillion behind her squire, clutching him by the waistbelt, the “double horse” was used. This, which was by no means a zoological freak, was the type of horse asked for and supplied by postmasters to two riders going in this fashion on one animal. Like the brewers’ double stout, the “double horse” was specially strong, and possessed more the physique of the cart-horse than the park hack. It was chiefly for the use of the ladies thus riding that the “upping blocks,” or stone steps, still occasionally seen outside old rustic inns, were placed beside the road. They enabled them to get comfortably seated.
Travellers from Scotland to London about the middle of the eighteenth century were accustomed to advertise for a companion. Thus, in the Edinburgh Courant for January 1st, 1753, we find:—
“A Gentleman sets off for London Tomorrow Morning, and will either post it on horses or a Post-Chaise, so wants a Companion. He is to be found at the Shop of Mr. Sands, Bookseller.”
It was then generally found cheap, and sometimes profitable as well, to buy a horse when starting from Edinburgh, and to sell him on arrival in London. Prices being higher in the Metropolis, the canny travellers who adopted this plan often got more for the horse than they had given. This method had, however, the defect of not working in reverse, and so those Scots who returned would have had to hire at some considerable expense, or buy dear to sell cheap, a thing peculiarly abhorrent to the Scottish mind. Dr. Johnson would have characteristically brushed this argument away by declaring that the Scot never did return.
During many long years Scots travelling in their own country followed an equally economical plan. “The Scotch gentry,” said Thomas Kirke in 1679, “generally travel from one friend’s house to another; so seldom require a change-house. Their way is to hire a horse and a man for twopence a mile; they ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a day, and the man who is his guide foots it beside him, and carries his luggage to boot.” The “change-house” was, of course, an inn; and from this custom, when every man’s house was an hotel, the Scottish inns long remained very inferior places.
Fielding throws a very instructive light upon the device hit upon by any two travellers who wished to go together and yet had only one horse between them. This was called “Ride and Tie.” He says: “The two travellers set out together, one on horseback, the other on foot. Now, as it generally happens that he on horseback outgoes him on foot, the custom is, that when he arrives at the distance agreed on, he is to dismount, tie the horse to some gate, tree, post, or other thing, and then proceed on foot; when the other comes up to the horse, he unties him, mounts, and gallops on, till, having passed by his fellow-traveller, he likewise arrives at the place of tying. And this is that method of travelling so much in use among our prudent ancestors, who knew that horses had mouths as well as legs, and that they could not use the latter without being at the expense of suffering the beasts themselves to use the former.”
Not until the first decade of the nineteenth century had gone by did the horseman wholly disappear from the road into or on to the coaches. Let us attempt to fix the date, and put it at 1820, when the fast coaches began to go at a pace equal or superior to that of the saddle-horse. The curious may even yet see the combined upping-blocks and milestones placed for the use of horsemen on the road across Dunsmore Heath.
In thus giving 1820 as the date of the horseman’s final disappearance, it need not be supposed that Cobbett and his Rural Rides are forgotten. He covered England on horseback some years later, but his journeys are not on all fours with those of the horsemen whose only desire was quickly to get from start to finish of their journeys. He halted by the way, and from the vantage-point of the saddle cast a keenly scrutinising eye upon the agricultural methods of the various districts, as seen across the tops of hedgerows, or delayed his travels to harangue the farmers on market-days. Nor is the existence forgotten of those country gentlemen and City merchants who, seventy years ago, rode to and from the City on horseback; but they also formed an exception. Already, by some ten years or so, the commercial travellers, as a body, had left the saddle and taken to what was, in its first inception, essentially the vehicle of the commercial representative. This was the “gig.” The gig at once became a favourite middle-class conveyance. Thurtell, the flashy betting-man, vulgar roué, and murderer, was thought by a witness “a respectable man: he kept a gig.” This aroused the scorn of Carlyle, who coined the word “gigmanity.”