Part 21

"I could nowhere find a more fitting model for the rising generation of sportsmen.... He was an instance of the very rare union of coolness and consummate skill as a huntsman, combined with the impetuosity of a most desperate rider; and not only was he the most determined of all riders, but equally remarkable as a horseman.

"Now I am not going to give merely my own opinion of Mr. Thomas Assheton Smith, as a horseman and rider to hounds, but shall lay before my readers that of all the sporting world, at least all who have seen him in the field; which is, that, taking him from the first day's hunting of the season to the last, place him on the best horse in his stable or on the worst, he is sure to be with his hounds, and close to them too. In fact, he has undoubtedly proved himself the best and hardest rider England ever saw, and it would be vain in any man to dispute his title to that character."

Again, says Mr. Apperley--

"Let us look at him in his saddle. Does he not look like a workman? Observe how lightly he sits! No one could suppose him to be a twelve-stone man. And what a firm hand he has on his horses! How well he puts them at their fences, and what chances he gives them to extricate themselves from any scrape they may have gotten into! He never hurries them then; no man ever saw Tom Smith ride fast at his fences, at least at large ones (brooks excepted), let the pace be what it may; and what a treat it is to see him jump water! His falls, to be sure, have been innumerable; but what very hard-riding man does not get falls? Hundreds of Mr. Smith's falls may be accounted for: he has measured his horses' pluck by his own, and ridden at hundreds of non-feasible places, with the chance of getting over them somehow."

Again: "No man," says Dick Christian, "that ever came into Leicestershire could beat Mr. Smith--I do not care what any of them say;" while "The Druid," in 'Silk and Scarlet,' after giving some very interesting anecdotes of Tom Smith, says of him, "However hasty in temper and action he might be in the field or on the flags, he was the mightiest hunter that ever 'rode across Belvoir's sweet vale' or wore a horn at his saddle-bow."

"His wonderful influence," he adds, "over his hunters was strongly exemplified at another time, but in rather a different manner. He had mounted a friend, who complained of having nothing to ride, on his celebrated horse Cicero. The hounds were running breast-high across the big pasture lands of Leicestershire, and Cicero was carrying his rider like a bird, when a strong flight of rails had almost too ugly an aspect of height, strength, and newness for the liking of our friend on his 'mount.' The keen eye of Assheton Smith, as he rode beside him, at once discerned that he had no relish for the timber, and seeing that he was likely to make the horse refuse, he cried out, 'Come up, Cicero!' His well-known voice had at once the desired effect; but Cicero's rider, by whom the performance was not intended, left his 'seat' vacant, fortunately without any other result than a roll upon the grass."

"I have said," remarks Nimrod, "that Mr. Smith's make and shape, together with a fine bridle-hand, have assisted him in rising to perfection as a horseman."

"I once saw," relates a friend, "a fine specimen of Mr. Smith's hand and nerve in the going off of a frost, when the bone was not quite out of the ground. We were running a fox hard over Salisbury Plain, when all at once his horse came on a treacherous flat, greasy at top, as sportsmen say, but hard and slippery underneath. The horse he rode was a hard puller, and very violent, named Piccadilly; and the least check from the bridle, when the animal began to blunder, would have to a certainty made him slip up. Here the fine riding of the squire shone conspicuously. He left his horse entirely alone, as if he were swimming; and after floundering about and swerving for at least a hundred yards, Piccadilly recovered himself, and went on as if nothing had happened."

"At the end of a desperate run, he once charged the river Welland, which divides the counties of Leicester, Northampton, and Rutland, and is said to be altogether impracticable. The knack he had of getting across water is to be attributed to his resolute way of riding to hounds, by which his horses knew that it was in vain to refuse whatever he might put them at."

One day when Smith was drawing for a fox on his famous horse Fire-King, he came to a precipitous bank at the end of a meadow, with a formidable drop into a hard road. "You can't get out there, Sir," said a civil farmer. "I should like very much to see the place where +we+" (patting Fire-King) "cannot go," was the reply, as down he rode, to the astonishment of the field.

"In falling," says Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "he always contrived to fall clear of his horse. The bridle-rein, which fell as lightly as breeze of zephyr on his horse's neck, was then held as in a vice. In some instances, with horses whom he knew well, he would ride for a fall, where he knew it was not possible for him to clear a fence. With Jack-o'-Lantern he was often known to venture on this experiment, and he frequently said there was not a field in Leicestershire in which he had not had a fall. 'I never see you in the Harborough country,' he observed to a gentleman who occasionally hunted with the Quorn. 'I don't much like your Harborough country,' replied the other, 'the fences are so large.' 'Oh!' observed Mr. Smith, 'there is no place you cannot get over with a fall.' To a young supporter of his pack, who was constantly falling and hurting himself, he said, 'All who profess to ride should know how to fall.'"

The author of 'Silk and Scarlet' says:--

"It was a great speech of Mr. Smith's, if ever he saw a horse refuse with his Whips, 'Throw your +heart+ over, and your horse will follow.' He never rode fast at his fences. I have heard him say scores of times, 'When a man rides at fences a hundred miles an hour, depend upon it he funks.'"

Sir William Miles confirms this statement:--

"Mr. Smith," he remarks, "always said, 'Go slow at all fences, except water. It makes a horse know the use of his legs, and by so riding he can put down a leg wherever it is wanted.'"

Long Wellesley had a horse which he declared no man could see a run on. "He only requires a rider," said the squire. "Will you ride him, then, at Glen Gorse?" "Willingly!" replied Smith, who, after several falls, killing his fox, was presented with the animal, which he accordingly named "Gift."

The history of the education of Smith's favourite horse, Jack-o'-Lantern, is described as follows:--

"We were riding," said Tom Edge, "to covert through a line of bridle-gates, when we came to a new double oaken post and rail fence. 'This is just the place to make my colt a good timber jumper,' said the squire; 'so you shut the gate, and ride away fast.' This was no sooner done than the squire rode at the rails, which Jack taking with his breast, gave both himself and his rider such a fall, that their respective heads were looking towards the fence they had ridden at. Up rose both at the same time, as if nothing very particular had happened. 'Now,' said Tom Smith, 'this will be the making of the horse; just do as you did before, and ride away.' Edge did so, and Jack flew the rails without touching, and from that day was a first-rate timber fencer."

Only on two occasions, while hunting, did Tom Smith succeed in breaking a bone: once at Melton, when he consoled himself by learning arithmetic from the pretty damsel at the post-office; and afterwards, when one of his ribs was fractured, owing, as he said, to his having a knife in his breast-pocket:--

"And yet," says Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "notwithstanding the gallant manner in which he always rode, never turning from any fence that intervened between him and his hounds, he never had a horse drop dead under him, or die from the effects of a severe day's riding. It is also a fact well recorded that he was never known to strike a horse unfairly. 'How is it,' asked a friend, 'that horses and hounds seem never to provoke you?' 'They are brutes, and know no better, but men do,' was the reply."

The most extraordinary hunter in his stable, "Ayston," was pigeon-toed, and so bad a hack, that he had to be led to covert; and yet at no time would his master have taken a thousand guineas for him.

After the famous Billesden Coplow run, in which Tom Smith maintained so prominent a place, he sold the horse he that day rode, called Furze-cutter, for which he had given 26l., to Lord Clonbrock for 400l.

The Rev. Francis Dyson, now rector of Creeklande, on being ordained, was appointed to assist his father, the clergyman at Tedworth:--

"Mr. Smith," says Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "was so pleased with his first sermon, that, on coming out of church, he slapped the young curate on the back, and said, 'Well done, Frank! you shall have a mount on Rory O'More next Thursday.' Young Dyson had many a run afterwards out of the squire's stables, for his performances in the field pleased as much as those in the pulpit.

"Once, when the hounds were running short with a sinking fox, a person clad in a long black coat, and evidently thinking scorn of the fun, inquired of the Whip what the dogs were then doing. 'Why, Sir,' said Dick Burton, throwing a keen glance down the inquirer's person, 'they are preaching his funeral sermon.'"

In 1840 Tom Smith proposed to pay a visit to his old friend Sir Richard Sutton, whose hunting had been stopped by a severe accident. On hearing of this movement, Mr. Greene of Rolleston, who had been one of his best pupils in his Leicestershire days, requested him, in his way to Lincolnshire, to bring his hounds once more into his old country, Mr. Hodgson, who then hunted Leicestershire, having handsomely placed the best meet at his disposal. The veteran, for he was then sixty-four, accepted the challenge, bringing with him eighteen couples of his finest hounds, of great substance, open-chested, and in splendid condition.

"It would be vain," writes Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "to endeavour to commemorate the scene which took place when Tom Smith, surrounded by his hounds, met the field at Shankton Holt on Friday, the 20th of March. More than two thousand horsemen, one-third of whom appeared in pink, were assembled. Men of the highest birth and station, men who had served their country with deeds of most daring gallantry by sea and land, men who in political or social life were the most brilliant in repute, thronged to do honour to the first fox-hunter of the day. They had come from remote counties, and more were pouring in along the grassy slopes and vales, or skirting the well-known gorse covers. As Dick Christian remarked, 'the first lot were at Shankton Holt when the tail end wern't out of Rolleston gates.' Cold must have been the heart of him who could behold without joyous emotion the crowds of grey-headed horsemen hurrying forward to shake hands with their old friend and fellow-sportsman, each calling vividly to memory some scene where he had acted the most conspicuous part. More than twenty years had rolled away since he had resigned the lead in that magnificent country. There had been splendid riders since his day; and while time had thinned the ranks of the veterans, younger men had either achieved or were achieving fame--Frank Holyoake, now Sir Francis Goodricke, well known for his splendid feats on Brilliant; Colonel Lowther, Lord Wilton, Lord Archibald Seymour, George Payne, Little Gilmour, Lord Gardner, George Anson, and a host of sportsmen, well deserving the reputation they had won, yet all strangers to the doings of this hero of the Quorn, except through anecdotes familiar to them as 'household words.' In addition to these were a very goodly display of carriages-and-four filled with ladies, and pedestrians without number. The hounds with Dick Burton were drawn up on the lawn, while the vast group of horsemen formed a circle, with the carriages and assembled crowd outside. After the friendly salutations were over, and their enthusiastic character astonished no one but the Illustrious Stranger present, Mr. Smith took his hounds to Shankton Holt, where he drew only the bottom of the covert; thence to Norton Gorse, Stanton Wood, Glooston Wood, and Fallow Close, all blank. It was an unfavourable day for scent,--a bright sun with north-easterly wind, not a cloud to be seen, and the cold intense. A fox having been found by Mr. Hodgson, in Vowes Covert, as already stated, away went the hounds towards Horringhold, leaving Blaston to the right. Here Mr. Smith took a strong flight of rails into a road, quite like a 'young 'un.' The fox soon afterwards crossed the Welland, and went away for Rockingham Park, where, it being late, they whipped off."

From 1830 to 1856--that is to say, until Tom Smith had reached the age of eighty--with his indomitable energy and undaunted courage he continued to hunt his hounds at Tedworth, spending his summers at Vaenol on board his yacht. His head was as clear and his hand as firm as they had been twenty years ago. If he felt not quite well in a morning, plunging his head into cold water, he used to hold it there as long as he could, which he said always put him to rights. It is true he had curtailed his meets to four only a week, but on these days the farmers were delighted to see "the old Squire" vault on horseback, as usual, blow his horn while his horse was carrying him over a five-barred gate, and, with a loose rein, gallop down the sheep-fed hill-sides with all the alacrity of a boy. But although the hourglass of his existence appeared to be still as bright and clear as ever, the sand within the upper portion of the crystal was now running to its end. In September, 1856, while at his summer residence in North Wales, he was suddenly seized with an alarming attack of asthma, which, by the use of stimulants and by the assiduous attention of Mrs. Smith,--at this period herself in a very weak state of health,--was so far subdued that on one of his horses saddled appearing at the door--although five minutes before he had been gasping for breath on the sofa--he mounted the animal, and broke away, as if instinctively, to seek for himself a stronger stimulant than his physician could prescribe--the sight once again of his hounds.