Horses Past and Present

by Sir Walter Gilbey

What little evidence was accepted in regard to harness horses showed the existence of a growing demand for the best Roadster stock in continental countries. French, Italian, German and Austrian breeders were fully alive to the value of Hackney blood, and their agents coming every year to England for the purpose since about 1840 had purchased all the good stallions they could find to foster and promote the breeding of horses eminently suitable for carriage artillery and transport work.

Mr. J. East, of the firm of Phillips and East, said that the French agents “buy the very best mares they can get; you cannot get them to buy a bad mare.” The late Mr. H. R. Phillips stated in course of his evidence that his firm sent “from thirty to forty of these roadster stallions every year to France and Italy and different countries; they sent as many as they could procure.” When asked how the number of Hackney stallions exported at that date compared with the number exported ten or fifteen years previously (say about the year 1858), Mr. Phillips replied that the foreigners had always taken as many as they could get.

Horses of roadster stamp are not less necessary to the efficiency of the British army than to Continental armies; but while the Committee displayed the greatest care and assiduity in their investigations concerning the causes of dearth in saddle horses, they passed over the not less important question of harness horse supply, as though holding that a matter of no account.

It is to be regretted that the Committee did not ask questions as to the enormous number of mares purchased for France, Germany, Russia and Austria, and also enquire concerning the use to which the mares are put in those countries. The answers would have been instructive, for it is now well known that fifteen out of every twenty of them were medium and heavy weight hunter mares—many of them stale for riding to hounds, but in every other respect suitable for breeding. These foreign buyers had no prejudices: they bought the mares with the view of breeding stock of the type most suitable for the requirements of their respective countries: the mares had plenty of thoroughbred blood in their veins, and it remained for breeders to select stallions of the right stamp. Hence the demand from all continental countries for Hackney sires which began sixty years ago and which has continued ever since.

How urgent was the necessity for attention to this department of horse-breeding was very fully demonstrated by Earl Cathcart in a paper[17] which was published in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England about ten years afterwards. Lord Cathcart adopted the practical method of obtaining from friends who had long experience, their opinions on the condition of the breeding of horses other than thoroughbreds; and the communications sent by these gentlemen make up the bulk of the paper referred to.

There was but one opinion among Lord Cathcart’s correspondents who, it must be noted, wrote quite independently of one another. To briefly summarise their statements, they deplored the disappearance of the old-fashioned thoroughbred with bone and stamina, and the disappearance of the Cleveland breed and the Hackney of the ’thirties. Many influences had been at work to bring about the regrettable change in the stock of the country.

The spread of railways had put an end to the demand for coach horses and roadsters, and the men who used to ride everywhere in the old days had given up their hardy and enduring saddle horses for the more luxurious seat in the train. At the same time buyers from France, Germany, and other Continental countries, having discovered the willingness of English breeders to part with their breeding stock if sufficiently tempted, purchased every good mare money could command.

Again, the craze for height had done something to impair the merits of what roadsters the foreigners left us. The Clevelands were ruined by crossing with leggy inferior thoroughbreds, whose sole recommendation consisted in their height at the shoulder and which were wanting in every useful quality.

The value of the half-bred hunter was also insisted on by Lord Cathcart’s correspondents—all of them men who had right to form an opinion. Mr. Sax Maynard, who for fifteen years was Master of the North Durham Hounds, laid stress on the “wear and tear” qualities of the hunter got by the old stamp of thoroughbred out of the Cleveland mare, and conversely of hunters got by Cleveland sires out of thoroughbred mares. The superior speed of the thoroughbred was admitted; but the greater endurance of the half-bred hunter in hilly country was a quality which gave him a value which did not attach to the pure thoroughbred.

Nothing more convincing could have been compiled than this essay from several horse-breeding correspondents. It shows clearly how very great is the change which has come over the principal breeding grounds of England during the present reign.