Part 3 (2/2)
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 pa.s.sed. 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 a.s.suredly 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed that the usually drawn position is a sort of geometrical resultant of the rapid series of positions pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 a.s.s'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 cla.s.s after cla.s.s 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 cla.s.smates, 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 cla.s.ses. My friend flattered himself that he could manage any horse, as he had long ridden under Baucher's instruction. As an example to the cla.s.s, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VII.
RISING AT A HURDLE.]
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 p.r.i.c.ked 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.
<script>