THE FOUR-IN-HAND CLUB.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2385, 28 August 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE FOUR-IN-HAND CLUB.

No uninitiated Bpeotator of the Meet of the Four-in-Hand Club on the Horae Guards Parade, would have imagined that the manly sport so manly represented there has not yet attained its majority. Twenty-one years,ago the late, lioad Club had not begun its brief career; neither were the existing Four-in-hand and Coaching Clubs ao much as dreamed of. What are now special functions of the " season" had then no existence, even in the thoughts of the fashionable world. Indeed, these Bocial gatherings, with their parade of magnificent specimens of horse-flesh, spick-and-span coaches/ sad harness as bright and

neat.as the accoutrements of an officer

iu a crack cavalry regiment, all belong ! w) to speak, to the day before yester- ' day. Comparatively young men must remember the original publication of the "Roundabout Papers" in the Cornbill Magazine, in one of which charming but desultory essays the late Mr Thackeray asks, "Where aro the guards; where are the jolly teams; where are the coaches, and where the -. youth that climbed inside and out of : : i of them 1" Some such question

our greatest. novelist of. manners was [mi'ticularly fond of to bis readers. He harps upon the same string in the early chapters of " Vanity 'Fair," and while Becky Sharp is being' whirled along from the house in Great Gaunt-street to th'econntry residence of Sit 1 Pitt Crawley Again in the " Four Georges, 1 ! on the subject of ..''The First Gentleman in Europe," he writes," -' Where my Prince did actually distinguish himself was in driving. He drove.once in four and a half-hours from Brighton to Charlton House. All the young men of that day were fond of the sport. But the fashion of rapid driving deserted England and I believe, trotted off to America." And . he continues, still adopting tho Socr'atic method," Whore aro the amusements of our youth t One solitary four-in-hand drove" round the parks it} Loniddh last; year, that charioteer must soon disappear," He was very old,. Ho was attired 'after the fashion; of 1825. ■ . He must drive to the banks of the Styx ore long, where the ferryboat waits to carry hiro over to the defunct revellers who boxed and gambled and drank and drove with King George," Who among.those present at the parade yesterday, with all its bqfiuty and bustle-its intense reality suggestive of a sport long established and brought to its existing perfection by slow progress would, were they not aware of the fait, infer that, when William Makepeace Thackeray was in the heyday of successful authorship, coaching seemed as if it wore, indeed, in extremis, In like manner genial lovers of the .past, pen in.hand, have sorrowed for the last pig-tail and tho last pair of Hessian boots, foi; the last' gentleman who wore hair-powder, and a blue cloth coat with a high collar and brass buttons, a frilled shirt and nankeen trousers. And why may not the whirligig of time resuscitate the pig tail and Hessians, as we perceive' it has brought back, in all their splendour copies of the coaches and a new generation like unto "theyouth that climbed iosido and out of them?"' In reality coaching never was in quite such a moribund condition as Thackeray deemed it to be. The "swells" of John Leech's early period had, indwd. left off .keeping their four-in-hand, and driving them in the London parks, after the fashion of their sires, the •' bucks" and " bloods" of the Regency. Stage-cuaehing, however, alwavs inseparable from tho sport proper of the splinter-bar and the " bench," was not killed outright; it was only driven further afield, beyond tho reach of railways, Practically there has buan no hiatus. Alfred Tedder, who died in 1872, may bo called the last of tho old coachmen, In his youth there were no Bteam locomotives, and he lived to drive the Brighton coach in conjunction with Cracknell, as seryant to the Duke of Beaufort and Mr Cherry Angell. In the year 186G Mr Chandos Pole, of Radbourne Hall, revived the Derby and Brighton coach, and thereby popularised the art of driving four inhand. For it should be understood that, of the many teams which daily start from the White Horse Cellars in in Piccadilly, on the route out of London, not one can be said to work only with ft view to profit, apart from an eye to sport. Prior to the date mentioned Mr Pole had been carrying her Majesty's mails hetween Plymouth and Falmouth; and it was on tho discontinuance of thai contract that he and Mr joining with the Duk;e of JBeaufou, once more awoke the echoes of the Brighton road, with Pratt and Tedder in the capacity of professional whips, About a year later the Duke and Mr Angell retired, and thencefoi ward we find the ' names of Mr Pole-Uell, Colonel Trywhitt, Major Meek, Mr Challoner Smith, Captain Cooper, Colonel Clitherow, Mr Stewart Fieeman, and others connected with the enterprise, Thackeray writes of the art of driving as having in his lifetime " trotted off to America," The fact is, however, that the New York Coaching Club owes its origin directly as well as indirectly to a couple of American gontleman—Mr Tiffany, sometime master of fox-hounds at Pau, and Colonel Kane, both of whom perfected themselves in handling the ribbons here in England, Mr Tiffany was a pupil of Charles Ward, and a fairly good whip. He also, by tho way, worked the Brighton coach, with Tom Timms as guard, Tom acting as driver during his roaster's absence. And among the cheeriest of modern coaching pictures are the three which Mr Sturgiss painted, for Mr Tiffany, the ' first representing that never-to-be-for gotten skewbald team; the second the master tooling the " galloppers," at twenty miles an hour; and the third displaying the last stage into the Sussex water-house, and the moment of the changing horses at Friars' Oak, withTimmson the box. Mr Kane, the other American poineer of amateur four-in-hour driving, come over to this country from the States in the autumn of 1884, with tho object of enjoying a hunting seasons in Leicestershire, and, staying in England until the following , spring, took over tho Virginia Water coach on the road, previously horsed by Lord Macduff, Captain Dickenson, : and Mr Williamson. Mr Kane spent his money with.great liberality, his ; stud consisting of a horse a mile with several kept in reserve, On his, i return home he was instrumental tn : introducing the sport—so brilliantly , represented at the Magazine in Hyde

Park and on ithe H ofse Guards Parade during the season -to the admiring' study of his fellow countrymen. Noxt after the revival of tho glories of the Brighton" roat], in -order of precedence: by time comes the coaoh started by Mr '' Charles Hoare—of the famous hanking firm of thr,t name—and appointed to'run between Beckenham and Seyenouks thres times a week.That, was in 1867, and in the following summer tho journey was extended daily between the capital and the town last named. In 1869 a coaoh first ran between London and Tunbridge Wells—through the garden of England. Lord Bective, Colonel' Hathovno, and Colonel Chaplin were more or less engaged in these affairs. Tho Tunbridge. Wells journey of eighty miles used to be done in eight hours, or teav miles an hour, inclusive of stoppages of all kinds. With the Dorking coach the name of the .lamented Colonel Withington will ever-fee associated. Lord ;Macdiiff, the Marquis of Blandford, Sir Henry de Bathe, and Mr i.Praed—another banker—were likewise early connected, with the Epsom aud Dorking turn-out, It was: during the winter of 1873-4 that Lord Bective and Colonel Hathorne put the St Albans coach on the road. v Soon, however, it fell into the hands of Mr Bailey, of "shorthorn" celebrity. During the same year the Maidenhead route was taken in hand by Captain Ramsay and Mr Hobson. Of the few Who were preßent on the occasion of the revival of the coach botwoen Oxford and the Cellars none is lively to forget the excitement of the young men at that seat of ancient learning; nor that crisp morning when .Mr Mjinsel-Mansel took his seat upon the •' bench"; nor how the people came out of doors at every village along the way to Reading to cheer and greet the jolly venture; nor how Mr Carleton Blythe look tho ribbons Rt the town by the Thames; nor how a well-known noveUs't and bis wife, both since deceased, made afternoon - tea for the coachload on their lawn abutting upon the public rood. Meanwhile," and for the past ten years at least, - the plentiful delights of the toad will be fresh in the memory of amateurs, and of all who take an active interest in. the Bport. Of course the concerns of the Coaching Club and of its friendly Hval the Fotir-in.Hand are private matters not suitable for public discussion.' There is, however, no harm in saying; that their members have from time, to time taken a. lively and personal interest in promoting and supporting the road coaches which, though ostensibly plying for hire, are, almost without exception, put on for the recreation of their proprietors, Uuder the fosterint; care of the coaching clubs, the difficult art of driving, four-in-hand particularly through the crowded street of the has-been greatly extended in its sphere, and there nre now probably fifty gentlemen "whips" for every one in practico when Mr Chandoß Pole came from Devonshire to Sussex twenty years igo. Moreover, the cratfc of carriage-building has been taxed to its utmost ingenuity to provide the lightest, the strongest, and the best of ooac'bes for club- and stage service, and a great impetus has been given to the breeding of cattle suitable for the work. Horses unaccustomed to the pole or to act as leaders are easily taught to run in a. coach, and will generally sell at the ond of the season for use in the hunting-field, Altogether such a display as that witnessed by a large crowd of gratified sightseers in St James' Park before sunset yesterday is to the credit of the most sporting nation in Europe—alike to the wealthy owners and whips, and the horse-breeders, coachbuilders, and saddlers,; and to the. intelligent and delighted spectator, who is permitted to enjoy a fair share of the fun without being expected to contribute a l ' single farthing of the. expense.—London Daily Telegraph.,