Patroclus and Penelope: A Chat in the Saddle

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.

XX

There are two kinds of "perfectly trained" saddle horses. One is the well-drilled cow of the riding-schools, fit only to give instruction to class after class of beginners, and who is safe because worked beyond his courage and endurance. The other is the School-horse, of perfect vigor and fine manners, who is obedient to the slightest whim of the clever rider, but who is so entire an enigma to the untrained one, that he is unable to ride him at even his quiet gaits.

One of my friends in Touraine used in his youth to be a pupil of the famous Baucher. He once told me how, at the instigation of his classmates, he begged hard for many days to be allowed to ride the master's favorite horse, with whom he was apt to join his higher classes. My friend flattered himself that he could manage any horse, as he had long ridden under Baucher's instruction. As an example to the class, the master finally gave way. But the experiment was short. My friend soon found that he was so much less accomplished than the high-strung beast that he was utterly unable to manage or control him, much less to perform any of the School airs, and he was by no means sorry when his feat of equitation was terminated by so dangerous a rear that Baucher deemed it wise to come to the rescue. My friend's hands, though well-drilled, were so much less delicate than the horse's mouth, that the latter had at first mistaken some peculiar unsteadiness as the indication for a pirouette, to which he had obediently risen; but then, on feeling some additional unsteadiness of the reins, he had, in his uncertainty and confusion, reared quite beyond control. Yet under the master this horse's habit of obedience was so confirmed that he was apparently as moderate as any courageous horse should be, though actually of a hyper-nervous character.

Nothing but time will make a thorough horseman; but a few months will make a tolerable horseman of any man who has strength, courage, intelligence, and good temper. If a man confines his ambition to a horse whom he can walk, trot, and canter on the road in an unbalanced manner, and who will jump an ordinary obstacle, so as to follow the hounds over easy country, it needs but little time and patience to break in both man and beast to this simple work. If a man wants what the High School calls a saddle beast, a full half year's daily training is essential for the horse, and to give this the man must have had quite thrice as much himself. Fix the standard at an 'alf and 'alf 'unter and your requirements are soon met. Raise the standard of education to a horse well-balanced, who is always ready to be collected and always alert to his rider's wants and moods, and who can do any work well, and you need much more in both teacher, pupil, and rider. No horse can be alike perfect in the field and in the park. But the well-trained road horse can always hunt within the bounds prescribed by his condition, speed, and jumping ability; the finest hunter is apt to be either a nuisance on the road or too valuable for such daily work. It will not do to quote this as an invariable rule. But it certainly has few exceptions.

Moreover, a hunter requires many weeks to be got into fine condition, and can then perform well not exceeding half a dozen days a month, and needs a long rest after the season. And it is not the average man who is happy enough to own a stable so full or to boast such ample leisure as to tax his horseflesh to so very slight an extent.

XXI

But what is that, Patroclus? Up goes your head, your lively ears pricked out, with an inquisitive low-voiced whinny. What is it you sniff upon the softly-moving air? Well, well, I know. That neigh and again a neigh betrays you. As sure as fate it is one of your stable-mates coming along the road. Perhaps our young friend Tom, upon his new purchase, Penelope. We will go and see, at all events. I never found you wrong, and I never knew your delicate nose to fail to sniff a friend before the eye could catch him, or your pleasant whinny fail to speak what you had guessed as well. Sure enough, there he comes and Nell has heard you too. Both Tom and she are out for the lesson which either gives the other. Now for a sociable tramp and chat in the company you like so well. And you and I will try to give Penelope and Master Tom a few hints which he has often asked, and of which all young horses and riders are apt to stand in need.

XXII

Good-morrow, Tom, and how are you, sleek Nelly? A fine day this for a tramp. Patroclus sniffed you a long way off, and now is happy to rub his nose on Nelly's neck, while she, forsooth, much as she likes the delicate attention, lays back her ears with a touch-me-not expression characteristic of the high-bred of her sex. A lucky dog are you to throw your leg across such a dainty bit of blood!

You, Tom, are one of numberless young men who want to learn that which they have not the patience to study out of technical books and will hardly acquire in a riding-school; who, in other words, rather than learn on tan-bark, have preferred to purchase a horse and teach themselves. A man may do well in a school or on a horse hired in a school, and yet not know how to begin the training of a horse which has been only broken in to drive, as most of our American colts are, however eager to improve him for the saddle. Let us compare notes as we saunter along the road.

Do not understand me to depreciate the value of riding-schools, nor the training which they inculcate. On the contrary, School-training carried far enough and properly given is just what I do advocate. But between the riding-school and School-riding, there is a great gulf fixed. The capital letter is advisedly used. A horse which has been given a good mouth, and has been taught as far as the volte and demi-volte, simple and reversed (though indeed the riding-school volte and the volte of the Haute Ecole are different things), certainly knows a fairish amount, and may be able to teach his rider much of what he knows. But riding in a school is not road-riding, although a school-horse may have profited well by his education. Leaping a school hurdle is not riding to hounds. A thoroughly good riding-school horse may be a very brute when in the park. Perfect manners within four walls may disappear so soon as the horse gets a clear mile ahead of him. Assuredly, it is well enough to learn the rudiments at a good riding-school. But if you ever want to become a thorough horseman and have equally good horses, study the art for yourself, – there is no mystery about it, – and learn what a horse should know and how to teach him. When you have done this, you will have a satisfactory saddle beast. If you expect a groom or a riding-school master to train your horses for you, you will not have a perfect mouth or good manners once in a hundred times. If the master is expert, he will be too busy to do your horses full justice short of an exorbitant honorarium. The groom is, as a rule, both ignorant and impatient, if not brutal.

XXIII

I know of no better foundation for a man to begin upon than the breaking-in to harness, which an American horse has usually received at the hands of an intelligent farmer, before he is brought to the city for sale. Starting with the horse, then, say at five years old, if you will learn how to give him his saddle education, and do it yourself, you will have, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a better saddle beast in six months than any groom can, or any riding-master is apt to make.

There is somewhat of a tendency among the English, and much more among their American imitators, to decry as unnecessary the training of horses beyond a mouth somewhat short of leather and two or three easy road gaits; or, in hunters, the capacity to do well cross-country. But there is vastly more to be said on the side of High School training. By a three months' School course stubborn horses may be made tractable, dangerous horses rendered comparatively safe, uncomfortable brutes easy and reliable. Vices may be cured, stumbling may be made far less dangerous, if the habit cannot be eradicated, physical defects, unfitting a horse for saddle work, may often be overcome, and the general utility of the average horse vastly increased. All this, and much more, may be done, without touching upon the gain in ease to the rider, the pleasure to be derived when both man and beast are enabled to work in unison, the ability schooling gives to the weakest hand to hold the most high-strung horse, and the great variety of motions, speeds, and paces which may be taught to subserve the comfort and delight of the rider. Whoso will claim that the reader of the last French play enjoys as great a privilege and pleasure as the student of Hamlet, or that the day laborer is the equal of the skilled artisan, may deny the utility of schooling the horse for saddle work. No reference is here intended to be made to racing-stock, or to hunters kept as such. These stand in a class by themselves, requiring different aptitudes and treatment.

An interesting proof of the general value of training has been recently developed in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry, stationed in New Mexico. In some of the troops the horses have been drilled to lie down and allow the men to fire over them, – a most valuable bit of discipline, peculiarly suited to Indian warfare. From the course of training necessary to bring about this end has resulted an unexpected but very natural docility in the horses, which are Californian bronchos, and a poor class of animal. Horses formerly considered dangerous have become quite gentle, and the entire condition of the command has been changed.

So far as the belief goes that what are called the High School airs are unessential, it is easy to agree with the English opinion; but it is clear that the saddle horse should have far more training than he generally receives in England, and certainly than he receives here. It would seem that the better position lies midway between the Haute Ecole of the Continent and the half and half training of Great Britain.

I do not mean to imply that there are not many beautifully trained saddle beasts in England. You see in Rotten Row, among a vast lot of brutes, probably more fine mounts than you will find in any other known resort of fashion, more than anywhere in the world outside of cavalry barracks. But the ordinary run of English hacks are taught to trot and canter, and there their training ceases. And so entirely is the education of horses left to grooms and riding-masters, that even the most elaborate English works on equitation, while they say that a horse should be taught to do thus and so, and give excellent instructions for riding a trained horse, afford no clue to the means of training. On the other hand, the High School manuals go far beyond what most men have patience to follow or a desire to learn, excellent as such an education may be for both horse and rider.

I should be sorry indeed to be understood to underrate the horsemanship of England. I do not suppose that the excellence and universality of the equestrianism of Englishmen has any more sincere admirer than myself. But it is true that equitation as an art exists only among the military experts of the Old Country, and that the training of English horses is not carried beyond bare mediocrity among civilians for road work. For racing or hunting, the English system is perfect. The burden of my song is that we Americans shall not too closely imitate one single English style for all purposes. If we will truly imitate the best English methods, each in its appropriate place, and not pattern ourselves solely on the fox-hunting type, we shall do well enough; though in riding, as in all the arts, it is wisest, as well as most American, to look for models in every direction, and select the best to follow. What I wish to protest against is the dragging of the hunting-field into the park, and what I wish to urge is the higher education of – horses.

One has only to go back to the thirties in England to find all the niceties of the Haute Ecole in full bloom. Not only the young swells, but the old politicians and the celebrated generals, used to go "titupping" down the Row, passaging, traversing, and piaffing to the admiration of all beholders. But the age which, in the race for the greatest good to the greatest number, has brought about simplicity in men's dress, and has reduced oratory to mere conversation; which has given the layman the right to abuse the church, and the costermonger the privilege of running down royalty, has changed all this. And as we have doubtless gone too far in many directions, in our desire to make all men free and equal, may we not have also gone too far in discarding some of the refinements of equestrianism? And is it not true, and pity, that the old-fashioned outward courtesy to women (for the courtesy of the heart, Dieu merci, always remains to us), whose decrease is unhappily so apparent to-day, and among the young is being supplanted by a mere camaraderie, is being swept from our midst by the same revulsion towards the extremely practical, which has discarded the beruffled formalities of our forebears and the high airs of equitation?

We have, in the East, been so imbued with an imitative mania of the hunting style of England, that if one rides a horse on any other than an open, or indeed an all but disjointed walk, trot, or canter, he is thought to be putting on airs, in much the same measure as if he should dress in an unwarranted extreme of fashion upon the street. But if we are to ape the English, why not permit on Commonwealth Avenue – or by and by, we trust, the Park – what is daily seen in Rotten Row? No one who has tasted it can deny the exhilarating pleasure given you by a horse who is fresh enough to bound out of the road at any instant, who conveys to you in every stride that glorious sense of power which only a generous heart as well as supple muscles ever yield, and who is yet well enough schooled to rein down to a five-mile canter, with his haunches well under him; while, though he is burning with eagerness to plunge into a gallop, he curbs his ambition to your mood, and rocks you in the saddle with that gentle combination of strength and ease to which an uneducated gait is no more to be compared than Pierce's cider (good as it is in its place) to Mumm's Cordon Rouge. When one is riding for the pleasure of riding, why not use all the art which will add zest to your pleasure, rather than aim to give the impression that you are sauntering to cover, well ahead of time, and don't want to tire your horse, because you expect to tax him severely during the day with the Myopia beagles across the pretty country near Weld Farm?

A celebrated English horseman says: "The park-hack should have, with perfection of graceful form, graceful action, an exquisite mouth, and perfect manners." "He must be intelligent, for without intelligence even with fine form and action he can never be pleasant to ride." "The head should be of the finest Oriental type; the neck well arched, but not too long." "The head should be carried in its right place, the neck gracefully arched. From the walk he should be able to bound into any pace, in perfectly balanced action, that the rider may require." And yet such a horse, though esteemed a prize in Rotten Row, would be all but tabooed on the streets of Boston, because he is not the type of a fine performer to hounds.

XXIV

There are so many manuals of the equestrian art from which any aspiring and patient student of equitation may derive the information requisite to become an expert horseman, that beyond a few hints for the benefit of those who, like you, Tom, know nothing and want to learn a little about the niceties of horseback work, it would be presumptuous to go. If a man desires to learn how to train a horse thoroughly, he must go back to Baucher, or to some of Baucher's pupils. All the larger works which cover training contain the elements of the Baucher system. The recent work of Colonel E. L. Anderson, late of General George H. Thomas' staff, written in England and published by David Douglas of Edinburgh, is a most excellent work.

I have found as a rule that abstruse written explanations are very difficult to understand. In a recent excellent book on riding-school training (not School-riding mind you), though I know perfectly well what the riding-school volte and demi-volte are, as well as the School-volte and demi-volte, simple and reversed, I have read certain paragraphs dozens of times, without being able to make the words mean what the movement really is. Colonel Anderson's book is very clear, though it goes fully into the refinements of the art, except the quasi-circus tricks and airs, and from it, with time and patience, a man can make himself an accomplished rider and his steed equal to any work – outside the sawdust ring.

But you, Tom, do not aspire to go so far in the training of Penelope.

XXV

You must not suppose that a man who teaches his horse all the airs of the Haute Ecole constantly uses them, any more than an eminent divine is always in the act of preaching, or a prima donna assoluta is at all times warbling or practicing chromatic scales, when each ought to be engaged in the necessary but prosaic details of life. The best results of School-training lie in the ability of the horse and rider to do plain and simple work in the best manner. Because a horse can traverse or perform the Spanish trot, his rider need not necessarily make him traverse or passage past the window of his inamorata, while he himself salutes her with the air of a grandee of Aragon. For this would no doubt be bad style for a modern horseman in front of a Beacon Street mansion; though truly it might be eminently proper, as well as an interesting display of horsemanship, for the same rider to traverse past his commanding general while saluting at a review on Boston Common. Nor because a horse can perform the reversed pirouette with perfect exactness will a School-rider stop in the middle of a park road and parade the accomplishment. But this same reversed pirouette is for all that the foundation of everything that a well-trained horse should be able to do, and if he knows it, he is ready to make use of it at all times for the greater ease, safety, and pleasure of his master.

You may ask of what use it can ever be. Suppose you were riding with a lady, on her left, – which is the safe and proper, if not the fashionable side, – and her saddle should begin to turn, say toward you, as it is most apt to do. If your horse minds the indication of your leg, you can keep him so close to your companion's as to afford her suitable assistance, even to the extent of bodily lifting her clear of her saddle. If your horse is only half trained, you cannot, perhaps, bring him to the position where you want him in season to be of any service at all. Have you never seen a man who was trying to open a gate at which a score of impatient, not to say objurgatory, riders were waiting, while the field was disappearing over the hills and far away, and who could neither get at it nor out of the way, because his crack hunter didn't know what the pressure of his master's legs meant, and fought shy of the gate, while keeping others from coming near it? Have you never stood watching a race at the Country Club, with a rider beside you whose horse took up five times the space he was entitled to, because he could not be made to move sidewise? Has not every one seen occasions when even a little training would have been a boon both to himself and his neighbors?

Talking of opening gates, one of the best bits of practice is to unlock, open, and ride through a common door and close and lock it after you without dismounting. Let it be a door opening towards you. If your horse will quickly get into and stand steady in the positions necessary to enable you to lean over and do all this handily at any door, gates will cease to have any terrors for you.