“What is the use?” I once heard a plaintive voice lamenting behind a blackthorn, while the hounds were baying over a drain at the finish of a clipping thirty minutes on the grass. “I’ve spoilt my hat, I’ve torn my coat, I’ve lamed my horse, I’ve had two falls, I went first, I’ll take my oath, from end to end, and there’s that d—d fellow on the coffee-coloured pony gets here before me after all!”
There are times, no doubt, when valour must needs yield the palm to discretion.
Let us see how this last respectable quality serves us at the other and nobler extremity of the hunt, for it is there, after all, that our ambition points, and our wishes chiefly tend.
“Are you a hard rider?” asked an inquiring lady of Mr. Jorrocks.
“The hardest in England,” answered that facetious worthy, adding to himself, “I may say that, for I never goes off the ’ard road if I can help it.”
Now instead of following so cautious an example, let us rather cast overboard a superfluity of discretion, that would debar us the post of honour we are fain to occupy, retaining only such a leavening of its virtue as will steer us safely between the two extremes. While the hounds are racing before us, with a good scent, in an open country, let our gallant hunter be freely urged by valour to the front, while at the same time, discretion holds him hard by the head, lest a too inconsiderate daring should endanger his rider’s neck.
If a man has the luck to be on a good timber-jumper, now is the time to take advantage freely of its confidential resources. If not pulled about, and interfered with, a hunter that understands his business leaps this kind of fence, so long as he is fresh, with ease to himself and security to his rider. He sees exactly what he has to do, and need not rise an inch higher, nor fling himself an inch farther than is absolutely necessary, whereas a hedge induces him to make such exertions as may cover the uncertainty it conceals. But, on the other hand, the binder will usually bear tampering with, which the bar will not, therefore if your own courage and your horse’s skill tempt you to negotiate rails, stiles, or even a gate—and this last is very good form—sound discretion warns you to select the first ten or fifteen minutes of a run for such exhibitions, but to avoid them religiously, when the deep ground and the pace have begun to tell.
Assheton Smith himself, though he scouted the idea of ever turning from anything, had in so far the instinct of self-preservation, that when he thought his horse likely to fall over such an obstacle, he put him at it somewhat a-slant, so that the animal should get at least one fore-leg clear, and tumble on to its side, when this accomplished rider was pretty sure to rise unhurt with the reins in his hand.
Now this diagonal style of jumping, judiciously practised, is not without its advantages at less dangerous fences than the uncompromising bit of timber that turns us over. It necessarily increases the width of a bank, affording the horse more room for foothold, as it decreases the height and strength of the growers, by taking them the way they lie, and may, on occasion, save a good hunter from a broken back, the penalty for dropping both hind legs simultaneously and perpendicularly into some steep cut ditch he has failed to cover in his stride.
Discretion, you observe, should accompany the hardest riders, and is not to be laid aside even in the confusion and excitement of a fall.