Lastly, do you want to gallop and jump, defeat your dearest friends, and get to the end of your best horse? That is but a moderate scenting-day, on which the Belvoir will not afford opportunity to do both. If you can live with them while they run, and see them race into their fox at the finish, I congratulate you on having science, nerve, all the qualities of horsemanship, a good hunter, and, above all, a good groom.
These remarks as to pace, stoutness, and sporting qualities, apply also to the Quorn, the Cottesmore, and the Pytchley. This last, indeed, with its extensive range of woodlands in Rockingham Forest, possesses the finest hunting country in England, spacious enough to stand six days a week in the mildest of winters all the season through. Under the rule of Lord Spencer, who has brought to bear on his favourite amusement the talent, energy, and administrative powers that, while they remained in office, were so serviceable to his party, the Pytchley seems to have recovered its ancient renown, and the sport provided for the white collars during the last year or two has been much above the average. His lordship thoroughly understands the whole management of hounds, in the kennel and the field, is enthusiastically fond of the pursuit, and, being a very determined rider as well as an excellent judge of a horse, is always present in an emergency to observe the cause and take measures for the remedy. Will Goodall has but little to learn as a huntsman, and, like his father, the unrivalled Will Goodall of Belvoir celebrity, places implicit confidence in his hounds. “They can put me right,” seems his maxim, “oftener than I can put them!” If a man wanted to see “a gallop in the shires” at its best, he should meet the Pytchley some Saturday in February at Waterloo Gorse, but I am bound to caution him that he ought to ride a brilliant hunter, and, as young Rapid would say, “harden his heart” to make strong use of him.
Large grass fields, from fifty to a hundred acres in extent, carrying a rare scent, are indeed tempting; but to my own taste, though perhaps in this my reader may not agree with me, they would be more inviting were they not separated by such forbidding fences. A high black-thorn hedge, strong enough to hold an elephant, with one, and sometimes two ditches, fortified, moreover, in many cases, by a rail placed half a horse’s length off to keep out cattle from the thorns, offers, indeed, scope for all the nobler qualities of man and beast, but while sufficiently perilous for glory, seems to my mind rather too stiff for pleasure!
And yet I have seen half-a-dozen good men well-mounted live with hounds over this country for two or three miles on end without a fall, nor do I believe that in these stiffly fenced grazing grounds the average of dirty coats is greater than in less difficult-looking districts. It may be that those who compete are on the best of hunters, and that a horse finds all his energies roused by the formidable nature of such obstacles, if he means to face them at all!
And now a word about those casualties which perhaps rather enhance than damp our ardour in the chase. Mr. Assheton Smith used to say that no man could be called a good rider who did not know how to fall.
Founded on his own exhaustive experience there is much sound wisdom in this remark. The oftener a man is down, the less likely is he to be hurt, and although, as the old joke tells us, absence of body as regards danger seems even preferable to presence of mind, the latter quality is not without its advantage in the crisis that can no longer be deferred.
I have seen men so flurried when their horses’ noses touched the ground as to fling themselves wildly from the saddle, and meet their own apprehensions half-way, converting an uncertain scramble into a certain downfall. Now it should never be forgotten that a horse in difficulties has the best chance of recovery if the rider sits quiet in the middle of his saddle and lets the animal’s head alone. It is always time enough to part company when his own knee touches the ground, and as he then knows exactly where his horse is, he can get out of the way of its impending body, ere it comes heavily to the earth. If his seat is not strong enough to admit of such desirable tenacity, let him at least keep a firm hold of the bridle; that connecting link will, so to speak, “preserve his communications,” and a kick with one foot, or timely roll of his own person, will take him out of harm’s way.
The worst fall a man can get is to be thrown over his horse’s head, with such violence as to lay him senseless till the animal, turning a somersault, crushes his prostrate body with all the weight of its own. Such accidents must sometimes happen, of course, but they are not necessarily of every-day occurrence. By riding with moderate speed at his fences, and preserving, on all occasions, coolness, good-humour, and confidence in his partner, a sportsman, even when past his prime, may cross the severest parts of the Harborough country itself with an infinitesimal amount of danger to life and limb. Kindness, coercion, hand, seat, valour, and discretion should be combined in due proportion, and the mixture, as far as the hunting-field is concerned, will come out a real elixir vitæ such as the pale Rosicrucian poring over crucible and alembic sought to compound in vain.
I cannot forbear quoting once more from the gallant soul-stirring lines of Mr. Bromley Davenport, himself an enthusiast who, to this day, never seems to remember he has a neck to break!
“What is time? the effusion of life zoophytic,
In dreary pursuit of position or gain.
What is life? the absorption of vapours mephitic,
The bursting of sunlight on senses and brain.
Such a life has been mine, though so speedily over,
Condensing the joys of a century’s course,
From the find, till they ate him near Woodwell-Head Covert,
In thirty bright minutes from Banksborough Gorse!”