The Horse and His Rider

by Sir Francis Bond Head

As regarded the present tense, this answer was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Had, however, the question been "What has been the matter with him?" with the same grammatical accuracy the reply would have been, "If you please, Ma'am, he has just thrown up a large pin," which, unperceived, he had managed to swallow.

On his reaching the second age of man—that is to say, when he was but seven years old—he was sent "with his satchel and shining morning face" to Eton, where, on his arrival, he found himself the youngest boy in the school.

The busy hive of the United Kingdom, we all know, is divided into cells, in each of which, at this moment, a raw material is being converted by labour into some particular description of manufactured goods. In one cell, a Minister of State is concocting, from crude evidence, a speech, a budget, or a despatch. In another cell, a young woman, with a protuberant cushion on her lap, covered by an intricate pattern, marked by pins with heads of various colours, is as indefatigably labouring for the welfare of her country by twirling, twisting, and twiddling innumerable bobbins of fine thread into Honiton lace. In other cells, workpeople are converting broadcloth into clothes, leather into shoes, horse-hair into wigs, medicine into pills, lead into bullets, brass and tin into cannon, iron into rifles, alkali and grease into soap. Within what is called a "scrap-mill," by the power of steam, controlled by a single man, broken bolts, bars, nuts, nails, screw-pins, &c., are made to revolve, until by rumbling, tumbling, rubbing, scrubbing, bruising, beating, hustling, and jostling each other, all are turned out clean and bright, fit to be welded together for any purpose that may be required.

At Eton, by a similar process, about 600 boys of all sizes and shapes—red-haired, white-haired, black-haired; long-legged, short-legged, bandy-legged; splay-footed, pigeon-toed; proud, humble, noisy, silent, good-humoured, spiteful, brave, timid, pale-faced, sallow-faced, freckled and rosy-cheeked, weak and strong, clever and stupid, pliable and pigheaded—yet all controlled by that unwritten, immutable, imperishable code of honour which, like a halo, has always illuminated their play-ground and their school, are hustled together on water, in water, under water, and out of water, until, when the door of their scrap-mill is opened—although their minds and bodies are as dissimilar as ever—they all turn out polished gentlemen, prepared to encounter those hardships, dangers, vicissitudes, difficulties, and, above all, base temptations in life, which high-bred principles are so especially well adapted to resist.

For eleven years Tom Smith remained at this school, where he acquired a taste for classical literature, which characterised him through life. Pope, Shakespeare, and Horace, from which he used to quote long passages, were his favourite authors; he could also, without pressure, spout out the whole of the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard. But what reigned at the back of his head and in the citadel of his heart was an ardent love for athletic exercises of any description, especially for cricket and boating. He was also, throughout his whole life, affectionately attached to fighting; and Etonians, old and young, to this day, record, as one of the severest contests in the history of youthful pugilism, the desperate battle he fought with Jack Musters, a kindred spirit, of whom it has been said that he could do seven things—namely, ride, fence, fight, swim, shoot, play at cricket and at tennis—as well as any man in Europe. His pugilistic propensity, which appeared so early, was conspicuous throughout his life. While hunting in Leicestershire he was prevailed upon to stand for the borough of Nottingham. On proceeding to the poll, he found not only the town placarded with "No foxhunting M.P.," but a guy in a red coat, tailed by a fox's brush, burning in effigy of him before the hustings. His appearance there elicited tremendous yells and hootings, which apparently no authority could subdue, until, with a stentorian voice, heard above the uproar, Tom Smith exclaimed, "Gentlemen! as you refuse to hear my political principles, be so kind as to listen to these few words: I'll fight any man among ye, little or big, and will have a round with him now for love!" In an instant, as if by magic, yells and groans were converted into rounds of cheers, demonstrating the strange stuff, be it good, bad, or indifferent, that Englishmen are made of.

On another occasion, while riding down the Gallowtree Gate, in Leicester, he struck the horse of a coal-heaver, who, in return, cut him sharply across the face. Smith jumped immediately from his horse, and the driver from his cart, the latter doffing his smock-frock, the former buttoning his coat and turning up his sleeves. The conflict was desperate; and from a fellow weighing fourteen stone, and standing six feet high, he was receiving severe punishment, when, by constables and a crowd of people, the combatants were separated. "You shall hear from me again!" said Smith to his gallant smutty antagonist. True to his word, the next morning the squire's groom was seen inquiring where the coal-heaver lived. On finding the man, whose face, like his master's, had received some heavy bruises, he said to him, "Mr. Smith has sent me to give you this sovereign, and to tell you you're the best man that ever stood before him." "God bless his honour!" replied the man, "and thank him a thousand times."

When Tom Smith was at Eton, fighting had not cropped to the surface of a schoolfellow and friend who in after life, known by the name of Wellington, greatly distinguished himself in this world by seeking and by gaining pitched battles. "I suppose, Smith," said the old silver-haired Duke to him, one day, in London, "you've done now with fighting?" "Oh, yes," replied Smith, then in his sixtieth year, "I've quite given that up; but——" suddenly correcting himself, he added, "I'll fight yet any man of my age."

At Chapmansford, when upwards of seventy, a rough country fellow, before a large field of sportsmen, threw a stone at one of the hounds of the old squire, who instantly struck him with his hunting whip. "You daren't do that if you were off your horse," said the man. The words were hardly out of the clodhopper's mouth when (in the seventh age of man) Smith stood before him, with a pair of fists clenched in his face, in so pugilistic an attitude that the fellow took to his heels, and, amidst the jeers of his comrades, ran away.

In 1794 Tom Smith quitted Eton to become a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, where, with great diligence and assiduity, he hunted regularly in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire,—became a fearless swimmer,—learnt to pull a sturdy oar on the Isis,—was a good shot and billiard-player,—and excelled as a batsman in the cricket-field on Cowley Marsh and Bullingdon. On leaving the University he became a member of the Marylebone Club and a regular attendant at Lord's during the summer; he was also a member of the Royal Yacht Club. Mr. Smith's love for science and shipbuilding induced him to build several sailing and steam yachts. He considered himself to be the practical originator of the wave line, and, by the advice of the Duke of Wellington, he submitted to the First Lord of the Admiralty some important hints for improving the construction of gunboats. In autumn, winter, and spring, he instinctively "went to the dogs," or, as in sporting phraseology it is termed, "took to hunting," so eagerly, that in 1800, when only twenty-four years old, he was signalized in song as a daring rider in that celebrated run from Billesden Coplow, in which but four gentlemen, with Jack Raven the Whip, were able to live with the hounds.