But it would be endless to enumerate the many examples I can recall of the thorough-bred’s superiority in the hunting-field. Those I have mentioned belong to a by-gone time, but a man need not look very narrowly into any knot of sportsmen at the present day, particularly after a sharpish scurry in deep ground, before his eye rests on the thin tail, and smoothly turned quarters, that need no gaudier blazon to attest the nobility of their descent.
If you mean, however, to ride a thorough-bred one, and choose to make him yourself, do not feel disappointed that he seems to require more time and tuition than his lower-born cousins, once and twice removed.
In the first place you will begin by thinking him wanting in courage! Where the half-bred one, eager, flurried, and excited, rushes wildly at an unaccustomed difficulty, your calmer gentleman proceeds deliberately to examine its nature, and consider how he can best accomplish his task. It is not that he has less valour, but more discretion! In the monotonous process of training, he has acquired, with other tiresome tricks, the habit of doing as little as he can, in the different paces, walk, canter, and gallop, of which he has become so weary. Even the excitement of hunting till hounds really run, hardly dissipates his aristocratic lethargy, but only get him in front for one of those scurries that, perhaps twice in a season turn up a fox in twenty minutes, and if you dare trust him, you will be surprised at the brilliant performance of your idle, negligent, wayward young friend. He bends kindly to the bridle he objected to all the morning, he tucks his quarters in, and scours through the deep ground like a hare, he slides over rather than jumps his fences, with the easy swoop of a bird on the wing, and when everything of meaner race has been disposed of a field or two behind, he trots up to some high bit of timber, and leaps it gallantly without a pause, though only yesterday he would have turned round to kick at it for an hour!
Still, there are many chances against your having such an opportunity as this. Most days the hounds do not run hard. When they do, you are perhaps so unfortunate as to lose your start, and finally, should everything else be in your favour, it is twenty to one you are riding the wrong horse!
Therefore, the process of educating your young one, must be conducted on quieter principles, and in a less haphazard way. If you can find a pack of harriers, and their master does not object, there is no better school for the troublesome or unwilling pupil. But remember, I entreat, that horsebreaking is prejudicial to sport, and most unwelcome. You are there on sufferance, take care to interfere with nobody, and above all, keep wide of the hounds! The great advantage you will find in harehunting over the wilder pursuit of the fox, is in the circles described by your game. There is plenty of time to “have it out” with a refuser, and indeed to turn him backwards and forwards if you please, over the same leap, without fear of being left behind. The “merry harriers” are pretty sure to return in a few minutes, and you can begin again, with as much enthusiasm of man and horse as if you had never been out of the hunt at all! Whip and spur, I need hardly insist, cannot be used too sparingly, and anything in the shape of haste or over-anxiety is prejudicial, but if it induces him to jump in his stride, you may ride this kind of horse a turn faster at his fences, than any other. You can trust him not to be in too great a hurry, and it is his nature to take care of himself. Till he has become thoroughly accustomed to his new profession, it is well to avoid such places as seem particularly distasteful and likely to make him rebel. His fine skin will cause him to be a little shy of thick bullfinches, and his sagacity mistrusts deep or blind ditches, such as less intelligent animals would run into without a thought. Rather select rails, or clean upright fences, that he can compass and understand. Try to imbue him with love for the sport and confidence in his rider. After a few weeks, he will turn his head from nothing, and go straighter, as well as faster, and longer than anything in your stable.
An old Meltonian used to affirm that the first two articles of his creed for the hunting season were, “a perfectly pure claret, and thorough-bred horses.” Of the former he was unsparing to his friends, the latter he used freely enough for himself. Certainly no man gave pleasanter dinners, or was better carried, and one might do worse than go to Melton with implicit reliance on these twin accessories of the chase. All opinions must be agreed, I fancy, about the one, but there are still many prejudices against the other. Heavy men especially declare they cannot find thorough-bred horses to carry them, forgetting, it would seem, that size is no more a criterion of strength than haste is of speed. The bone of a thorough-bred horse is of the closest and toughest fibre, his muscles are well developed, and his joints elastic. Do not these advantages infer power, no less than stamina, and in our own experience have we not all reason to corroborate the old-fashioned maxim, “It is action that carries weight”? Nimrod, who understood the subject thoroughly, observes with great truth, that “‘Wind’ is strength; when a horse is blown a mountain or a mole-hill are much the same to him,” and no sportsman who has ever scaled a Highland hill to circumvent a red-deer, or walk up to “a point,” will dispute the argument. What a game animal it is, that without touch of spur, at the mere pleasure and caprice of a rider, struggles gallantly on till it drops!
There used to be a saying in the Prize Ring, that “Seven pounds will lick the best man in England.” This is but a technical mode of stating that, cæteris paribus, weight means strength. Thirty years ago, it was a common practice at Melton to weigh hunters after they were put in condition, and sportsmen often wondered to find how the eye had deceived them, in the comparative tonnage, so to speak, and consequently, the horse-power of these different conveyances; the thorough-bred, without exception, proving far heavier than was supposed.
An athlete, we all know, whether boxer, wrestler, pedestrian, cricketer or gymnast, looks smaller in his clothes, and larger when he is stripped. Similarly, on examining in the stable, “the nice little horse” we admired in the field, it surprises us to find nearly sixteen hands of height, and six feet of girth, with power to correspond in an animal of which we thought the only defect was want of size. A thorough-bred one is invariably a little bigger, and a great deal stronger than he looks. Of his power to carry weight, those tall, fine men who usually ride so judiciously and so straight, are not yet sufficiently convinced, although if you ask any celebrated “welter” to name the best horse he ever had, he is sure to answer, “Oh! little So-and-so. He wasn’t up to my weight, but he carried me better than anything else in the stable!” Surely no criterion could be more satisfactory than this!
It may not be out of place to observe here, as an illustration of the well-known maxim, “Horses can go in all shapes,” that of the three heaviest men I can call to mind who rode perfectly straight to hounds, the best hunter owned by each was too long in the back. “Sober Robin,” an extraordinary animal that could carry Mr. Richard Gurney, riding twenty stone, ahead of all the light-weights, was thus shaped. A famous bay-horse, nearly as good, belonging to the late Mr. Wood of Brixworth Hall, an equally heavy man, who when thus mounted, never stopped to open a gate! had, his owner used to declare, as many vertebræ as a crocodile, and Colonel Wyndham whose size and superiority in the saddle I have already mentioned, hesitated a week before he bought his famous black mare, the most brilliant hunter he ever possessed, because she was at least three inches too long behind the saddle!
I remember also seeing the late Lord Mayo ride fairly away from a Pytchley field, no easy task, between Lilbourne and Cold Ashby, on a horse that except for its enormous depth of girth, arguing unfailing wind, seemed to have no good points whatever to catch the eye. It was tall, narrow, plain-headed, with very bad shoulders, and very long legs, all this to carry at least eighteen stone; but it was nearly, if not quite, thorough-bred.