Patroclus and Penelope: A Chat in the Saddle

by Theodore Ayrault Dodge

The late John Leech, as far back as the forties, essayed to draw running horses as his very keen eye showed him that they really looked; but he was laughed out of the idea, and thenceforth stuck to the artist's quadruped, though he had been, in his new departure, much more nearly approaching anatomy than any one was then aware. And thirty years ago, on Epsom Downs, it was revealed to the author, as it has no doubt been to thousands of others, that it is the gathered and not the spread position of the racer which is impressed upon the eye. This is most clearly shown by watching the distant horses through a glass. But still we stick to the anatomically impossible spread-eagle stride of the turf, and feel that it conveys the idea of speed which is not compassed by the set fac-similes of photography.

It has been alleged that a horse never does, nor can take the spread position of the typical racer of the artist. This is true enough, for he never does extend himself to so great a degree. But at one part of the leap he may do this very thing, though by no means to the extent usually depicted (see Plate XI.). It is, however, certain that he cannot do so at all in the gallop. At the only time when all his feet are off the ground in this gait, they are all close together under his girths. At all other times there are one or more feet on the ground, with legs straight, and at greater or less inclination to the body. From front to rear the legs move almost like the spokes of a wheel. What the pictures of the turf in the future may be it is hard indeed to say.

And yet, the longer one examines the many hundred silhouettes of running horses, so well grouped for anatomical study in the Stanford Book, the more reconciled to what there is of truth in them one may become. Many years ago, I sat during the forenoon in the Turner Room of the National Gallery in London, in the company of a friend, herself no mean artist, and of decidedly strong artistic taste and correct judgment, whose ideas of Turner had been founded solely on what she had read, or seen and heard in America, and whose prejudice against his apparently overwrought work was excessive. For a full hour few words were passed. Then, rising to go: "If I sit here any longer, I shall end by liking the man!" quoth she.

It seems to me that the power in these Muybridge photographs grows upon you. It is universally acknowledged that one does not see the running horse as he is usually drawn; in other words, that the artist's run is incorrect. Now, if the retina has anything impressed upon it, it must assuredly be either one of the positions actually taken by the galloping animal, or else a mere blur of motion. The artist draws a blurred wheel because he sees it blurred, and it suggests rapid motion. But he will not draw blurred legs, because such drawing will not suggest what he desires to convey in his picture. And yet, if he is true to what his eye has seen, he must draw some of the positions the horse has been in, and not positions which he cannot by any possibility have passed through in this gait. I take it for granted that the eye catches the gathered positions, and these are the ones in which the horse is entirely in the air, with his legs under his girths, and with hind feet reaching forward to land. Why should not the artist draw these positions, in their thousand variations, in lieu of the one single impossible position now universally in vogue? Without alleging that he should do so, will the artist tell me why he should not? For unless it be assumed that the usually drawn position is a sort of geometrical resultant of the rapid series of positions passed through, and is hence adopted because the eye mathematically and unconsciously reduces these positions to the resultant, where is the truth which the artist aims to produce? For I understand art to be the reproduction of what the eye can see, or at least its close suggestion. And though there may be room to doubt what the eye may see, there is no room to doubt what the horse actually does in the gallop.

It is probable that the spread-eagle position is a mere outgrowth of the canter, which in a slight degree approximates to the action of the artist's run, and that the latter has been exaggerated as a means of conveying the idea of increased speed. I have yet heard no allegation that the eye catches any but the gathering positions of the horse's gallop. Now, given this, given an artist equal to and interested in the task, and the anatomical results of photography, and it would seem as if a sincere desire to reconcile the eye with positions which the retina must certainly catch as the horse bounds by might evoke more satisfactory results. Here is a life-work worthy of the best of animal painters. Who will take it up? I plead for "more light."

XIX.

To return to our muttons, it is not too much to aver that any well-trained horse knows much more than the average good equestrian. It requires a light and practiced hand to evoke Patroclus' highest powers. He has never refused an obstacle with his master, or failed to clear what he fairly went at. But the least uncertainty betrayed in the hand, and Patroclus knows something is wrong, and acts accordingly.

I learned a good lesson about spoiling him for my own comfort not long ago, when asked the privilege of riding him over a few hurdles on my lawn by a friend who had an excellent seat in the saddle, but liked, and had been used to a horse who seized hold of the bridle. Patroclus took the first, but to my own and my friend's surprise quite refused the second, and could by no means be persuaded to face it. On my friend's yielding me the saddle, I mounted, and walked Patroclus up to the hurdle with a firm word of encouragement; and though he wavered, he took it on a standing jump. The slight reward of a tuft of grass and a pat made him do better on the second trial, but for weeks afterwards he was nervous at that particular hurdle, though at anything else he went with his accustomed nerve. My friend and I were both unaware of how his hands had erred, but the horse's fine mouth had felt it.

Patroclus is essentially a one-man horse. He will always serve well for the wage of kindness, but it would take a hard taskmaster but a short week to transform him into the semblance of the Biblical wild ass's colt. He will change his gaits at will from any one to any other. But his rider's hands must be steady and as skilled as his own soft mouth, or how can the lesser mind comprehend? He may, at the bidding of uncertain reins, change from gait to gait and foot to foot, seeking to satisfy his ignorant rider, who, meanwhile, unable to catch his meaning, will dub him a stupid, restless brute. A well-trained horse needs an equally well-trained rider.