The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan. Stables Gordon
himself. I should have liked to have seen that man’s face as he quietly observed, suiting action to his words, —
“It is usual, gentlemen, to turn the collar upside down when slippin’ it hover the ’orse’s ’ead.”
But what must the horse himself have thought of those philosophers?
Now I do not mind confessing that riding is not one of my strong points. When on horseback there ever prevails in my mind an uncertainty as regards my immediate future. And I have been told that I do not sit elegantly, that I do not appear to be part and parcel of the horse I bestride. My want of confidence may in some measure be attributed to the fact that, when a boy of tender age, I saw a gentleman thrown from his horse and killed on the spot. It was a terrible sight, and at the time it struck me that this must be a very common method of landing from one’s steed. It seems to me the umbra of that sad event has never quite left my soul.
It is due to myself, however, to add that there are many worse whips than I in single harness. Driving in double harness is harder work, and too engrossing, while “tandem” is just one step beyond my present capabilities. The only time ever I attempted this sort of thing I miserably failed. My animals went well enough for a time, till all at once it occurred to my leader to turn right round and have a look at me. My team was thus “heads and tails,” and as nothing I could think of was equal to the occasion, I gave it up.
Notwithstanding all this, as far as stable duties are concerned, I can reef, steer, and box the compass, so to speak. I know all a horse needs when well, and might probably treat a sick horse as correctly as some country vets. No, I cannot shoe a horse, but I know when it is well done.
It is probably the want of technicality about my language when talking to real professed knights of the stable, which causes them to imagine “I don’t know nuffin about an ’orse.” This is precisely what one rough old farmer, with whom I was urging a deal, told me.
“Been at sea all your life, hain’t you?” he added.
“Figuratively speaking,” I replied, “I may have been at sea all my life, but not in reality. Is not,” I continued, parodying Shylock’s speech – “Is not a horse an animal? Hath not a horse feet, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with good oats, oftentimes hurt by the whip? Subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?”
The man scratched his head, looked puzzled, and we did not deal.
But, dear reader, were I to tell one-tenth part of the woes I endured before I got horsed and while still tossed on the ocean of uncertainty and buffeted by the adverse winds of friendly advice, your kindly heart would bleed for me.
I believe my great mistake lay in listening to every body. One-half of the inhabitants of our village had horses to sell, the other half knew where to find them.
“You’ll want two, you know,” one would say.
I believed that I would need two.
“One large cart-horse will be ample,” said another.
I believed him implicitly.
“I’d have a pole and two nags,” said one.
“I’d have two nags and two pair of shafts,” said another.
“I’d have two nags,” said another; “one in the shafts and the other to trace.”
And so on ad nauseam till my brains were all in a whirl, and at night I dreamt I was a teetotum, and people were playing with me. Perhaps they were.
A friend to whom I appealed one day in my anguish cut the Gordian knot.
“You’ve got a nut on you?” he remarked (he meant my head). “Well,” he said, “make use of that.”
I took his advice.
Chapter Three.
First Experiences of Gipsy Life – The Trial Trip – A ThunderStorm on Maidenhead Thicket
“Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown’d in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
“Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail,
On winding stream or distant sea.”
It was to be our first outing – our trial trip, “by the measured mile,” as navy sailors call it. Not so much a trial, however, for the caravan itself, as for a certain horse that was to be attached thereto; and, considering the weight of our house upon wheels, I thought it at least doubtful if any one horse would be sufficient to do the work.
The horse in this instance was – a mare. A splendid powerful dark bay draught mare, with small head, strong, shapely, arching neck, good shoulders, and long enough in body not to look cloddy. Her tail, about two yards long, had been specially plaited and got up for the occasion.
Matilda, as she was named, had never done anything except ploughing before, unless it were an occasional visit to the railway station with a load of wheat or hay. But she appeared quiet, and took the situation in at a glance, including the caravan and its master. We put-to, and after as much manoeuvring as would have sufficed to bring a P. and O. steamer away from a Southampton pier, we cleared the gate and got fairly under way.
In the matter of provisions the Wanderer was amply furnished. We had edibles for the day, and enough for a week, my wife having been steward and caterer for the occasion.
My companion voyageurs were the two eldest members of my family – Inez (aetat 7), Lovat (aetat 10), their summer dresses and young beauty making them look quite gay. Besides these, I had Hurricane Bob, my champion Newfoundland, who looked as though he could not quite understand any part of the business.
Very slowly at first walked that mare, and very solemnly too – at a plough-pace, in fact, – and the farmer’s man walked soberly on at her neck. A rousing touch or two of the light gig whip mended matters considerably, and there was far less of the “Dead March in Saul” about the progress after this. Matilda warmed to her work; she neighed merrily, and even got into a kind of swinging trot, which, properly speaking, was neither trot nor tramp, only it took us over the ground at four knots an hour, and in pity I made the farmer’s man – who, by the way, had his Sunday clothes all on – get up and sit down.
The morning was very bright and sunny, the road hard and good, but dusty. This latter was certainly a derivative from our pleasure, but then gipsies do not have it all their own way in this world any more than other people. The wind was with us, and was somewhat uncertain, both in force and direction, veering a little every now and then, and soon coming round again. But a select assortment of juvenile whirlwinds had been let loose from their cave, and these did not add to our delight.
Matilda had plenty of pluck, only she must have thought it an exceedingly long furrow, and at the end of two miles suddenly made up her mind to go about of her own accord. This determination on Matilda’s part resulted in a deviation from the straight line, which nearly landed our fore wheels in the ditch; it also resulted in admonitory flagellation for Matilda.
Before we had gone three miles the perspiration was streaming down the mare’s legs and meandering over her hoofs, so we pulled up to let her breathe. The day was young, it was all before us, and it is or ought to be in the very nature of every gipsy – amateur or professional – to take no note of time, to possess all the apathy of a Dutchman, all the drowsy independence of a garden tortoise.
The children begged for a cake, and Inez wanted to know what made the horse laugh so.
She might well put this question, for Matilda neighed nearly all the way.
“Why, pa,” said Inie, “the horse laughs at everything; he laughs at the trees, he laughs at the flowers, and at the ponds. He laughs at every