But, with the tremendous importance of the end in view, the improvement of the thoroughbred horse, is our sport sufficiently fulfilling that end? That is a question which is indeed a hard one to determine, and one great camp may give its voices to the “Ayes,” and one may roar in unison for “No.”
There is one thing, and perhaps only one thing, quite certain. Our horse has increased in size. The fifteen-hands-two of the great winners of a hundred years ago have swollen in their average dimensions somewhere in the neighbourhood of sixteen-two. This may not, however, indicate allround improvement. A good big one, we know, is better than a good little one on the course, but I question if the rule holds good, either in the battle or the hunting-field. Ormonde beat The Bard because he outstrode him down the Epsom hill, but The Bard might have carried his master, with his twelve stone ten, had he had the opportunity, more safely and more speedily to the end of a forty minutes run, than his great conqueror on the race course over the mile and a half of Epsom Downs.
And we have gained in speed. There can be little doubt of that. If the inexorable test of the “Winning Post” has not compelled us to breed from our best, and if, in the course of the flying centuries, the result has not been a march upwards, then Heaven help us and our methods. But do you think that stamina and soundness have improved along with our size and our speed? That, too, is hard to tell. And yet it is probable that it is so. Races now are real tests of the stayer. In the days of Fisherman, and Voltigeur, The Flying Dutchman, Plenipotentiary, Bay Middleton, and before their time, races were not run in a manner to prove stamina. More frequently there was much loitering on the way in the two, three, and four mile bouts between the steeds of our ancestors. To-day we run the two miles all the way from pillar to post, and Archer’s three minutes and fifty-two seconds for the Melbourne Cup has dwindled to the three twenty-four and a half claimed by Artilleryman. Twenty-seven seconds difference means at least two furlongs, and that takes catching. Well, admitting that we have marched forwards in the matter of both speed and stamina, surely there is much more unsoundness to-day than there was one hundred years ago, or even fifty years since. At the first blush one would say “Yes.” But on second thoughts one does not feel quite so sure. Herod was “a bleeder,” and bleeding has been not uncommon in his descendants. It is one hundred and sixty-four years ago since Herod was foaled. We rear regiments of racers now, where our forebears bred squadrons. And yet “bleeding” is not so very rife after all. But we hear more about it, with an active press focussing its microscope on every individual racer in the land. And roaring, you ask? Well, Pocahontas roared, and Prince Charlie made a fearful noise, and Belladrum was indistinguishable from a fog-horn, and Ormonde did more than whistle, but in Australia, at least, this is a defect, an actual unsoundness, which we do not so very often see—or hear. But we are breeding bad knees, bad feet, and round joints, and with the extra weight of the enlarged frames, ligaments and muscles cannot bear the strain. Yet this was always so. Bay Middleton had a mysterious foot and leg, Whalebone’s near fore-foot was contracted, and all were “pumiced”—whatever that might mean. He was “the most double-jointed horse I ever saw in my life,” was the verdict of that celebrity’s groom. Whitelock was “a naggish horse with a big, coarse head and plumb forelegs.” Flat, thin-soled feet were the “bane of lazy Lanercost,” Rataplan “always went proppy on his long fore pasterns,” and “Dundee’s suspensory ligament went so badly in the Derby that after that race his fetlock nearly touched the ground.” Partisan had a “clubby foot.” Touchstone had “very fleshy legs,” and his “near fore ankle was never very good.” And so on we could go, from the Adam of horses to our own most rapid, modern times, which these grandchildren of ours will shortly call “the old times.” But I cannot say if the “Sport” is improving; I fancy not. I was talking to Walter Hickenbotham the other day, the doyen of the profession of trainers, or at least one running in double harness in that capacity with old Harry Rayner, of Randwick. Walter was recalling the “old days” of his youth. Meetings were fewer then, and railways were a comparative rarity where his paths led him. Mr. C. M. Lloyd was his “boss.” Riding a mare and leading Swiveller, Walter would leave the station on one of those beautiful, bright, health-giving mornings of the late summer or early autumn, with just a touch of frost in the clear air. The boy, with the buggy and the gear, the feed, and all the other necessaries, had gone on before. From station to station, ’twixt sunrise and sundown, the little cavalcade would press steadily on. Mr. Lloyd, no doubt, would follow in a few days with his tandem or the four-in-hand. And so from meeting to meeting they would go. Round Wagga, Hay, Bathurst, Deniliquin, Gundagai, Goulburn, a great circuit, would they wander, taking with them the romance and glamour of the Turf in their train. You can imagine the stir and enthusiasm at the stations as they came. Nothing was too good for them, either for man or beast. Everyone welcomed them, and the old greybeards, in the evenings, beneath the big gum tree, while the boxes were being done out, and the horses meanwhile were held in the shade, would talk horse, and nothing but horse, by the yard. Some might even remember having seen Rous’ Emigrant or Manto, and another might have come from Yorkshire, and had known all about Sledmere and Sir Tatton Sykes. And the racing was more for the fun of the thing then, and the owners betted more like gentlemen between themselves. And ere the country circuit was completed, horse and man had travelled almost a thousand miles, and had won many a Cup, and much fine gold. And then, calling in at the station to drop their burdens, they would be off to the Metropolis to take down the numbers of the swells which trained there, ere settling down for the short, dark winter days at home. Good days those, jolly days, grand days! And is it not so good now? No? Alas! I fear that it is not in the sport, not in the horses, not in the world at large, that we find changes for the worse. All things are developing, evolving, marching upwards. It is in us, the individual men, to whom we must look to find “the weary change.” And yet even we must take comfort.
“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth; that which we are we are.”
PAINTINGS OF RACEHORSES
BY MARTIN STAINFORTH
The figures in brackets are the Bruce Lowe family numbers of each horse. (†) signifies no family number.
