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CHAPTER XVII. 



DRIVING. 



Driving the English Style— French Picture of — The Seat — Neither too High nor too Low — Driver should be Measured for it — 

 The Hands and Reins^The Proper Position of Hands and Arms — Woodcut of — Number of Awkward Drivers — Vile Tricks 

 — The Rationale ol Driving — Impossible to Control with One Hand— Way of Using Right Hand Described — Easier to Guide 

 a Pair than One Horse — Starting (woodcut) — Begin by Stopping — Start with the Voice— Driver's Hands must Feel Horses' 

 Mouths — Be Able to Stop Instantaneously — Start Slowly — Drive an Average Pace — To Drive in a Crowd — Style and Even 

 Action Essential in Town — Perfection — To Stop and Go Together — The Whip — When to be Used — A Lady's Whip to be 

 Long^How Horses should Work — Importance of Coupling — Drive with Brains as well as Hands — Four-in-H?nd — Picture 

 of — Early Four-in-Hands — Description of Prince of Wales at Brighton by Tom Raikes — Decline, Fall, and Revival of 

 Four-in-Hand — Elementary Hints on — Pupil must Drive a Pair and Heavy Coach — Exertion Required to Hold Four Horses — 

 Practice of Left Arm and Side Required — Importance of Four-in-Hand Whip — Pupil must Learn to Use it Correctly — The 

 Impatience of Rich Young Men — How to Start Four Horses — The Leaders out of the Collars and clear of the Splinter-bars — 

 Woodcut of Going Straight — The First Lessons — Stopping — Woodcut of — Turning to the Left — Woodcut of — Turning to the 

 Right — Woodcut of— American Trotters — Vera's Description — Hiram Woodruff's Book — The Mambrino Root of Trotting 

 Pedigrees — Russian Three Horses Abreast. 



The style of calm indifference which particularly distinguishes English coachmen, whether 

 gentlemen or servants, has been very happily sketched by a French author, describing the court 

 carriages at a Drawing Room in 1836, before the glories of dress coaches and chariots had 

 been spoiled by such economical expedients as landaus and broughams, with their coach-boxes 

 instead of hammer-cloths : — 



" It is truly delightful to mark the fiery, almost fierce action of the horses, restrained 

 without an apparent effort by an impassible coachman, seated on his hammer-cloth, like a 

 throne ; his left hand controlling the long white reins, with his whip, almost upright, resting on 

 his right thigh. 



"Napoleon, in giving instructions to David for his equestrian portrait, ordered that he 

 should be represented calm, on a fiery horse — thus to characterise ' the power of mind over 

 brute force.' On this principle every English coachman, seated on his box, has the air of a 

 conqueror." 



This calmness is as much the result of the national temperament (which has been 

 described by another Frenchman as "the calmness of ferocity") as of the confidence of 

 practised skill. 



THE SEAT. 



Every one who orders a carriage which he intends to drive himself should be measured 

 for his seat, if he means to drive horses that require any driving at all. It must be of a 

 height proportioned to the length of his legs, not too low, not too high, but easy and comfort- 

 able, just high enough to give the fullest power of hands and leverage of back and legs. 



The upright position, almost standing against the sloping cushion of a four-in-hand drag 

 V V 



