The hasty departure of Mr. Naggett seemed to produce a corresponding effect of drowsiness on Miss Lushington—an unusual weakness, to which I am bound to admit she was by no means subject. Like the Roman vestals, she never seemed tempted to quit her post, nor desirous of flinching from the duty of keeping alive the sacred fire, represented in her sanctuary by a blazing heap of coals through the day, and a jet of gas continually flaring from a pipe above the tap during the small hours towards morning. Now, however, she yawned most unreservedly, and hinted freely on the propriety of “shutting up for the night.” Perhaps, after the departure of the flash butcher, everything seemed by comparison tame and insipid. As I shall not have occasion to refer to Mr. Naggett again, I may here mention that as soon as I was able to move about, I did go to inspect the famous horse by Ratcatcher, out of Sly Puss by Mousetrap, and found him a good-looking animal enough,—large, strong, well-bred, and a fine goer, with many hunting-like qualities about him; but, on the other hand, by no means likely to emerge blameless from the ordeal of a veterinary surgeon’s examination, being indeed a little suspicious in one eye, very queer about the hocks, and with a curious catch in his windpipe, which Mr. Naggett triumphantly quoted as a proof of the excellence of his lungs, but which to my fancy seemed uncommonly like the respiration of a prospective whistler.
I need hardly observe that I declined the proprietorship of this high-bred animal upon any terms whatever, although I was offered him as a swap, as a contingent reversion, and as a temporary investment: nay, so anxious was Mr. Naggett to accommodate me, and so liberal in his professions, that I was compelled to decline very strenuously the purchase of him at a considerable reduction on his original price, with half the money down, and my bill at three months for the remainder.
Though I have often seen Mr. Naggett in the hunting-field, and have partaken of many excellent joints, both prime beef and Southdown mutton, of his purveying, this was the conclusion of my dealings with him in horseflesh, and the termination of our somewhat unexpected intimacy.
“Drat it!” exclaimed Miss Lushington, as I lit a bedroom candle, and she herself prepared to collect her different effects, such as keys, scissors, workbox, and thimble, preparatory to retiring for the night, “it’s never over here, it isn’t! One down, t’other come on! I did think I’d have had my hair in curl-papers to-night before one o’clock,” she added coquettishly, smoothing down the glossy bands that encircled her fair forehead; “but goodness gracious me! Old friends is welcome in season and out of season! If it isn’t Mr. Turnbull!”
So warm a greeting, from a lady of Miss Lushington’s self-control, impelled me to put down my chamber-candlestick and study with some curiosity the manners and appearance of the new arrival. On his first entrance he was so completely enshrouded and enveloped in a top-coat, a shawl-handkerchief, and a round low-crowned hat, that I could perceive nothing of him but his boots. These, however, were sufficiently characteristic. Strong, round-toed, and with deep mahogany tops, fastened up round the knee with the old-fashioned string, they harmonised well with the double-Bedford-cord breeches, of which they formed the appropriate termination. As their owner, unwinding himself gradually from the coils of his shawl, and emerging from his drab top-coat, stood at last conspicuous in the full glare of the gas-light, I could not help thinking that a man might travel through a long summer’s day, without meeting so fine a specimen of the real British yeoman as Mr. Turnbull.
I like the round-cropped bullet-head that you never see out of our own little island. I like the fresh healthy colour, that deepens, instead of fading, with age, and the burly thick-set form, square and substantial as a tower, deriving its solid proportions from a good English ancestry, “men of mould,” since the days of Robin Hood, and its vigour from good English beef and floods of nut-brown ale. These are the sort of men that kept the green wood in merry Nottinghamshire, and bore back the chivalry of Europe at Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers. These are the sort of men that would turn the tide of an invasion to-day, shoulder to shoulder in their dim grey ranks, handling the rifle as deftly as their fathers did the bow, yet impatient somewhat of long-bowls at five or six hundred yards, and longing withal to get to close quarters and try conclusions with the bayonet. When it comes to clash of steel, depend upon it “the weakest will go to the wall.”
Five foot ten in his stockings; fourteen stone, without an ounce of superfluous flesh upon his ribs; built in the mould of a Hercules, with a ruddy-brown complexion and dark crisp hair, short, close curling and grizzled about the temples, for our friend is nearer fifty than forty, Tom Turnbull, as he is called at every fair, market, and cattle-show in three counties, nods good-humouredly to Miss Lushington, and gives a backward scrape of his foot in deference to myself.
“Glass of strong ale, if you please, Miss,” says he, in cordial cheery tones, and holding it up to the light, tosses off the clear sparkling beverage, with a sigh of intense satisfaction. No wonder. Since a market dinner at one o’clock, Tom Turnbull has ridden the best part of thirty miles. He has nine more to go before he reaches Apple-tree Farm, where he has succeeded Mr. Naggett (what a contrast!), and he will be out to-morrow morning at daybreak, looking after the ploughs, and taking perhaps a vigorous spell between the stilts himself. There is a good animal, however, waiting for him at the door, submitting impatiently to the caresses of the admiring ostler, and having had her own suck of gruel, looking wistfully round for her master, who she knows is never very long having a suck of his.
If you want to be thoroughly acquainted with your horse to inspire him with that unreserved confidence which the animal is certainly capable of feeling in his master, ride him at night. An hour in the dark draws the bond of partnership tighter than a day in the sunshine. When you have made a journey or two together over bad roads, without a moon, you learn to depend upon each other thoroughly, and the animal will answer your hand and bend to your caresses with a willing promptitude he would never acquire by daylight. Tom Turnbull spends many an hour of darkness in the saddle, and except on one occasion when he took a short cut over some low fences, and tumbled neck-and-crop into an open culvert, breaking his own head and his horse’s neck, has never met with what he calls an accident.
I fancy the old-fashioned highwaymen knew more about the sagacity and powers of their horses than any more respectable sportsmen of the modern times. They rode, as their business obliged them, continually by night; and the distances they accomplished were so marvellous as to be incredible, had they not been attested by the most unimpeachable of evidence in the witness-box. Horses can see wonderfully well in the dark, and no doubt a man who was riding against time for an alibi, with so heavy a stake as his own life depending on his success, would be tolerably venturesome in his efforts to “get forward;” but yet, under the most favourable circumstances, it cannot but have proved haphazard work, jumping fences by moonlight; and what a good mare must poor Black Bess have been, when she started fresh on the North road for her journey to York!
In this one respect Tom Turnbull resembles Dick Turpin; the former, too, has a mare he rides long journeys by night, and for whose merits and reputation he entertains the profoundest respect. She is a lengthy, low, wiry, bay mare, with short flat legs, clean and hard as iron. She rejoices in a lean, game head, with a curl not unlike a sneer above her nostrils, and a wild eye; also, the long, fine, and rather lop ears, which belong to her high-born family. In the breeding of all stock Mr. Turnbull knows what he is about. If he wants a promising foal that shall grow into a couple of hundred pounds at five years old, he does not put an old worn-out mare, whose constitution and physical qualities are exhausted by hard work, to a fashionable stallion, and calmly expect the produce to excel the united excellencies of sire and dam in the best days of both. On the contrary, he begins, as we humbly opine, at the right end. He gets a foal or two out of the young fresh mare before she commences work, instead of after she is incapable of it. The dam’s functions are then in their highest state of vigour and redundance; nor is it possible but that this must materially enhance the value of her offspring. The infant is all the better, and the mother none the worse.
The Arabs, who are by no means behindhand in their knowledge of horses, and whose everyday wants necessitate their bringing the animal to its highest state of perfection, at least as regards their own purposes, have established, as an incontestable maxim, that while the colt inherits “make and shape” from his sire, his inner qualities—if we may so call them—his mettle, speed, temper, and powers of endurance come from his dam. None of us who have taken an interest in the rearing of young horses can have failed to observe the strong outward resemblance they usually bear to their sires. “How like the old horse!” is a remark one hears every day when looking at some dark-brown flyer by The Dutchman, or some commanding animal with extraordinary power and substance by Cotherstone; but we seldom see any striking resemblance to the dam, although, when some veteran sportsman is relating the feats of the “best he ever had in his life,” whether hunter, hack, or trotter, he generally winds up with the observation, “He was as good as the old mare!” Now, the Arab ought to be a capital judge, and though by no means despising speed, endurance is the quality which he most values in his horse, and puts most frequently to the test. It is no unusual feat for an Arab to ride a hundred miles a day for four days together, through the desert, carrying with him (no trifling addition to his own weight) the water that is to last him throughout his journeys, also the forage that must supply his steed, and the handful or two of pressed dates that shall serve to keep the rider alive till he reaches his destination. Now we have nothing of this sort in England, and, since the introduction of railroads, have indeed small occasion to prove the lasting qualities of our horses. The covert-hack of the present day is the animal that is required to prove his superiority to his stable companions, for he may be asked, by a master who likes to get his beauty-sleep after eight A.M., to do his fifteen miles, with as many stone on his back, in five minutes over the hour; and this is exceedingly good going. Still, a summer’s day’s journey of eighty or ninety miles, with only one stoppage to bait for an hour or two, such as used to be frequently accomplished by jockeys and other locomotive individuals on the old-fashioned hackney of the last century, was a very different matter, and required in the performer not only perfect soundness of limbs and constitution, but a very true and even style of going, that gave every point and articulation fair play, and no excess of work above its due share. Such a fault in a horse as hitting his legs of course would have rendered him utterly useless before two-thirds of his task was accomplished.
It is feared that we shall lose altogether the breed of animal that is capable of such performances. For many years we have been studying to acquire increased power, and consequently pace, to the disregard of stamina. It stands to reason that the larger a horse is, c?teris paribus, the faster he can go; but it does not the least follow that his size should enable him to go on. Doubtless the object for which we get into the saddle is dispatch, and “the slows” is the worst disease our horse can be troubled with; nevertheless, there is a good old rule in mechanics which affirms “nil violentum est perpetuum;” and if your engine is to go with the weight and momentum of an express train, you must calculate on a considerable expenditure of fuel, and great wear and tear on the nuts, screws, and fittings of the whole. Now, Nature, although the neatest and most finished of workers, will not submit herself to the laws of commensuration. She will not make you a model in inches, and supply you with a work on a corresponding scale in feet. It would seem as if she only issued a certain amount of stores in the aggregate, and if you are to get more iron, she gives you less steel; you shall have plenty of coke, but in return she stints you in oil. So, if the living creature she turns out for you on your estimate is to be very magnificent in its proportions, the chances are that it will either fail in activity, or be deficient in endurance.
We have now established half-mile races for our two-year-olds, as, with some few exceptions, the most important events of our English turf—our very Derbys and St. Legers—are but a scramble of a dozen furlongs, with little more than the weight of a child on a very young horse’s back. With all the forcing by which art strives to expel nature, it returns, in this instance, as Horace says, literally with a stablefork,[3] we cannot get an animal to its prime at three years old, who ought not to arrive at maturity till twice that age. Still we continue to breed more and more for a “turn of speed,” utterly regardless of endurance, till our famous English racehorses have degenerated into such galloping “weeds,” that I myself heard an excellent sportsman and high authority on such matters affirm, in discussing the hounds-and-horses match, which was to have come off last October, that “he did not believe there was a horse at Newmarket that could get four miles at all; no, not if you trotted him every yard of the way!”
3. “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.”
This, of course, was a jest; but, like many a random shaft pointed with a sarcasm and winged with a laugh, it struck not very far off the centre of the target. Even our hunters, too (and surely, if you want endurance in any animal alive, it is in a hunter), we are improving, year by year, into a sort of jumping camelopard. Where are the strong, deep-girthed horses on short legs of thirty years ago? horses that stood just under sixteen hands, and could carry sixteen stone. Look at what people call a first-class hunter now! (and it must be admitted that, for the high price he commands in the market, he ought to be as near perfection as possible.) Look at him, as you may see him in fifty different specimens with the Pytchley or Quorn hounds, any hunting-day throughout the winter! He is a bay or a brown—if the latter, more of a chocolate than a mottled, with white about his legs and nose. He stands sixteen two at least, with much daylight underneath him. He has either a very long weak neck, with a neat head; or more often a good deal of front and throat, with a general bull-headed appearance, that conveys the idea of what sailors term “by the bows,” and argues a tendency to hard pulling, which, to do him justice, he generally possesses. He has fine sloping shoulders, and can stride away in excellent form over a grass-field, reaching out famously with his fore legs, which, though long, are flat, clean, and good. Somehow you are rather disappointed with him when you get on his back. With no positive fault to find, you have yet an uncomfortable conviction that he does not feel like it; and, for all his commanding height, you are subjected to no irresistible temptation to “lark” him. When Mr. Coper asks you three hundred and takes “two fifty,” as he calls it, alleging the scarcity of horses, the excellence of this particular specimen, his own unbounded liberality, intense respect for yourself, and every other inducement that can mitigate the painful process of affixing your name to a cheque, you seem to give him your money without exactly knowing why; but when the new purchase stops with you in deep ground the first good scenting day, after you have bustled him along honestly for two-and-twenty minutes, you think you do know why exactly; and, although you may be, and probably are disgusted, you cannot conscientiously admit that you are surprised.
I have not seen these sort of nags, though, in the Soakington country; I presume they all go to “The Shires;” and this brings me back, after a long digression, to Tom Turnbull and Apple-tree Farm.
There never was such a farm for coziness and comfort as that. Surrounded by an ugly though sporting-looking country, it possesses the only undulating fields for many miles round, and consequently boasts a view from a certain eminence called Ripley Rise, that commands half-a-dozen of the Earl’s best fox-coverts, the distant towers of Castle-Cropper itself, and no less than seventeen church-steeples. There are stately old elms close to the dwelling-house, and a rich and plentiful orchard, from which it takes its name, adjoins a snug little walled garden, celebrated for the earliest summer fruit, and the best plums in the district—thanks to the late Mr. Naggett, a far-seeing, shrewd old agriculturist. Apple-tree Farm is a good deal better drained than most of the adjoining lands; consequently its acres of arable return a heavier produce, and its upland fields are more calculated for rearing young horses than any in the country.
Nothing gives a colt such a chance as a fine high and dry pasture, on a slope, where he can exercise himself in the practice of going up and downhill, unconsciously strengthening his hocks and acquiring liberty in his shoulders whilst he is at play.
Horses bred on uplands, too, have a far harder and sounder description of hoof than those that have been accustomed in youth to splash about in rank, marshy meadows; and, strange to say, their very coats are finer, and their whole appearance denotes higher blood than can be boasted by their own brothers, reared on lower grounds. Those who profess to be acquainted with the physiology of the horse, affirm that the produce of Arab stallions and mares, if suffered to breed in the rich wet marshes of Flanders, would, in half-a-dozen generations, without any sort of cross, and from the sheer influence of keep and climate, lose every trace of their noble origin. The Prophet himself would not recognise the dull-eyed, coarse-shaped, heavy-actioned progeny, for the lithe and fiery children of the Desert.
Here, then, Tom Turnbull breeds and rears many a good nag, taking care never to have above one or two at a time, so that sufficient attention may be devoted to the yearling, and, above all, that it may have plenty of keep.
The Arabs, to go eastward once more for our proverbs on this subject, have a saying, that “the goodness of a horse goes in at his mouth,” and it is incredible by those who have not watched the result, what improvement may be made in the animal by the very simple recipe of old oats and exercise, plenty of both; indeed, of the latter, in contradistinction to work, a young horse can hardly have too much. It is exercise that forms his shape, strengthens his joints, hardens his limbs, produces action, and clears his wind. All the time a young one is out, he is acquiring something—either how to use his legs, or to obey his bit, or to conform his inclinations to those of his master; whilst, even should he be standing still and unemployed, he is at least learning to see and hear, accustoming himself to sights and sounds with which it is of the greatest advantage both to himself and his rider that he should be familiar. Also, it is far better for him to be breathing the cold outward air than the more luxurious atmosphere of his stable; and it is not too much to say, that a horse of three or four years old cannot be brought out too often, so long as you take care that he shall never go home the least bit fatigued.
Tom Turnbull begins handling the foals as soon as they are born. By the time they are weaned, he has accustomed them thoroughly to the halter; and although he never backs them till three years old, they have been bridled and saddled long before that period, and are so accustomed to the human form and face, and so confident no evil is intended them, that you may do almost anything you please with such willing and good-tempered pupils.
Consequently, there is none of that rearing, and plunging, and buck-jumping, which usually make the mounting of an unbroken colt such an affair of discomfort, not to say danger, to the two parties immediately concerned. By the time Tom Turnbull has hoisted his fourteen stone of manhood on to his colt’s back, the pupil is quite satisfied of the bona fide nature of the whole performance, and walks away with him as quietly as any elderly gentleman’s cob who comes round to the door regularly every afternoon, for the sober and digestive exercise which elderly gentlemen are apt to affect.
Tom Turnbull, though he puts a strong bridle in his mouth, then takes his young friend lightly by the head, and proceeds to ride him leisurely about, as he overlooks his farm. There are, of course, many gates to open, and the horse in learning this very essential accomplishment, receives at the same time a valuable lesson in the moral virtues of patience and obedience. If he see anything to alarm him, a scarecrow, an old man pulling turnips, or a sheep-trough on its beam ends (the latter, like all inverted objects, being much dreaded by the animal), he is not whipped, and spurred, and hurried by it in a matter that agitates his nerves for the rest of the day, but is coaxed and reassured, and persuaded gently and by degrees to examine it for himself, and so discover its innocuous nature. The next time he observes the same bugbear, he probably shies for fun, but that is a very different thing from shying for fear; and the same practice repeated will make him pass it the third or fourth time with no more notice than he would take of his own currycomb. He is by this time getting accustomed to his rider’s hand, has learned to put his head down, and toss the bit about his mouth, and is beginning to feel some confidence in his own activity, and a certain pleasure in doing what he is bid.
There are short cuts on Apple-tree Farm, like every other, which lead from field to field without going round by the gate. These entail the necessity of crossing certain gaps, which are periodically made up, and gradually destroyed again as the year goes round. Here the colt takes his first lesson in fencing. He is permitted to do the job exactly in his own way, without interference from his rider, except so far as a continual pressure of his legs warns the young one that it must be done somehow. Generally, after poking his nose all over it, and smelling every twig of the adjoining hedge, he walks solemnly into the very bottom of the ditch, and emerges somewhat precipitately on the farther side; then his rider pats and makes much of him, as if he had done his work in the most scientific form possible. Thus encouraged, he tried next time to improve for himself, and soon jumps it standing, without an effort. Ere he has been ridden half-a-dozen times he will trot up to any ditch about the farm, and, breaking into a canter the last stride, bound over it like a deer, perhaps giving his head a shake and his hind-quarters a hoist on landing, in sheer exuberance of spirits at the fun. In this manner he soon learns to do the fences equally well; Tom Trumbull’s plan being, in his own words, as follows:—“First, little places at a walk, then at a trot, then at a canter, and then bustling of them off their legs to make them quick. After that, fair hunting fences the same way. To my mind, a hunter ought to jump upright places, such as walls and timber, at a slow trot; but he ought to be able to do them if required, at speed, not that I, for one, would ask him for that, except as a lesson. All fair fences he should do with a loose rein, at an easy canter.”
But he is no theorist, my friend Mr. Turnbull. It is a treat to see him get away with the Castle-Cropper hounds on a good scenting day and in a stiff country, say for instance the Soakington Lordship. Though there is hard upon fifteen stone on his back, his horse seems to make no extra exertion, and though the rider keeps very close to the hounds, and follows no man, not even the Earl himself, he never appears to be out of a canter. How well he brings his horse (probably a five-year-old, who has done very little hunting, but has had plenty of practice, “shepherding,” and consequently jumping over the farm) up to his leaps! How he screws him through the thick place under the tree, and hands him in and out of the blind double, as you would hand a lady into an outside car! When you come to the rails in the corner, which he trotted up to so quietly, and seemed to rise at with such deliberate ease, you are surprised to find a dip in front of them, a bad take-off, a ditch beyond, and a general uncompromising appearance about the timber, that makes you wish that you were halfway across the next field, and “all were well.”
If you mean to see the run to your own satisfaction, and belong to that numerous and respectable class of sportsmen who are unable to ride for themselves, you cannot do better than follow Tom Turnbull; and should you cross the Sludge, which in that district you will probably do more than once, you will acknowledge that it is a treat to see him get triumphantly over that obstacle where its sluggish waters are deepest, and its banks most treacherous and rotten.
But it is not for a man with a broken collar-bone and his arm in a sling, to call up such dreams of enjoyment as a quick thing across the Vale with the Castle-Cropper hounds; so I took my chamber-candlestick once more, and wishing Miss Lushington a courteous “good-night,” which she returned with a gracious politeness, that would drive sleep for many an hour from the pillow of a younger and more inflammable swain, I shook Mr. Turnbull by the hand, and paused on my way to my dormitory to see him get into the saddle for his homeward ride.
“It’s a very dark night,” I remarked, as I watched him stuffing a well-filled note-case, the produce of his sale at to-day’s market, into his breast-pocket. “I wonder you like to travel these bye-roads with all that money about you, and such a lot of ‘roughs’ hereabouts, always on the tramp.”
Turnbull grinned, and taking me by the sound arm, pointed to the mare’s head—“They’ve tried that on, once before, sir,” said he; “and within half-a-mile of the Haycock. Look ye here, sir! that’s the way I done ’em that time: that’s the way I’ll do ’em again.”
Following the direction of his glance, I saw that he had run his bridle (a single snaffle) through his throat-lash, so that no part of it when he mounted would hang below the mare’s neck.
“There, sir,” said he; “that’s the way to keep ’em at out-fighting. When they tried it on, last winter, there was a pair on ’em. One chap he run out o’ the hedge on the near side, and makes a grab at the reins. He didn’t catch ’em though, but he caught something else, I expect, as he wasn’t looking for, right across his wrist, fit to break his arm. He sung out, I can tell you, and bolted right off without waiting for his mate. T’other had gripped my right ankle at the same time, to give me a hoist out of the saddle; but you see, sir, I knowed the trick of it, and just let my leg double up at the knee quite easy, and came down upon his head with a back-hander, from a bit of stick I had in my fist, that felled him like a bullock in the road. So I took him easy, and by that means we got the other one in a day or two, and they were both transported. So that’s the reason, whenever I travel this way, I always run my reins through my throat-lash. I wish you good-night, sir, and pleasant dreams, if so be as your arm will let you sleep!”
With these words Mr. Turnbull trotted off, and I betook myself leisurely to the privacy of my own room, and the tedium of a somewhat restless couch.