“A team well put together is half driven,” was an old and true adage, and of more certain application than many of the same character, as for example: “A bird well marked is half bagged.” Not a bit of it. The bird is awake, and, expecting to be flushed again, gets up much sooner than he is expected and flies awkwardly. “A bottle of physic well shaken is half taken.” I trust my readers have discovered this way of diminishing the dose.
In illustration of the first adage, I may mention that I had an innate love for driving, dating from so early a period as my keeping in my desk at school a well-matched team of cockchafers, until, finding them too slow for my work, I established in their place a very fashionable team of white mice, all bred on the premises. These when harnessed to a “Gradus” as a break were very safe and steady. With a Greek grammar or “Delectus” they could fly.
I inherited the love of driving from my father, who was a very good coachman; and in early days would frequently hang on a single leader to his carriage, making a “pickaxe” team, merely for the sake of initiating me in the manipulation of four reins. The promotion from donkies to ponies rather interrupted my practice; as, though we could always borrow mokes to make up a four-in-hand, it was not so easy to do so with ponies.
A real stage-coach passed our gates twice each day; and for the convenience of the contractor who horsed it, a stable was built upon my father’s premises. The incentive given to me by the desire to get my dismissal from my tutor in time to see the coach change horses conduced more to my classical acquirements than any other circumstance.
The regularity of coach work is one of its greatest merits, and operates more upon the well-conditioning of the men, horses, and all concerned, than is usually supposed.
It is a pretty sight to see a team of coach horses at a roadside change prepared and turned round, each one listening anxiously for the horn which proclaims the arrival of the coach, and the commencement for them of a ten-mile stage, which may have to be done perhaps in fifty-two minutes, with a heavy load, woolly roads, and the wind behind.
This does not sound like attraction to create much pleasurable impatience; but such is the fascination of coaching work that all horses, except, of course, those underbred vulgar screws which can take delight in nothing, whatever their antecedents may have been, become so moulded into their work and places (for this is a most important feature in my text) that it perfects them for the work expected of them in every particular. Bad tempers are subdued and become amiable; bad feeders become after a time so ravenous as to be able to entertain a “duck in their mess;” nervous fretful horses become bold and settled. Old Crab, who persistently refused to drink out of a bucket when he came here, or even to allow a stable bucket to be brought near him, has overcome all his scruples, and, to use the horsekeeper’s own words: “He wun’t wait for his turn, but when the bucket is ’ung on to the nose of the pump he’ll go and stick his old nose in it, and begin to neigh and ’oller like anything.”
A coach horse, although he has apparently few opportunities of employing his intelligence to his own advantage, whose life is spent in the stable, except when taken to the forge, or to the horsepond, will evince to his employers, in spite of this monotony, some habits and tastes which, if he is indulged in them, will nearly double his value. For instance, every coach horse has a favourite place in a team, and will go well and do well in that place; and by careful watching it will soon become evident to the coachman and to the horsekeeper which is the place selected by his taste.