TANDEM DRIVING 



when so much travelling was done in the saddle : there are 

 innumerable records of trotters doing their fifteen and sixteen 

 miles on the road within the hour, sometimes under very heavy 

 weights. Mr. Charles Herbert's horse, in 1791, trotted 17 

 miles in 58 minutes 40 seconds on the Highgate Road, start- 

 ing from St. Giles' Church. The road is by no means a 

 level one, and the only advantage the horse had was the 

 hour selected — between six and seven in the mornins, 

 when the traffic was not heavy. 



A famous whip of the 'thirties was Mr. Burke of Hereford — 

 he was also an amateur pugilist of renown, but that does not 

 concern us here. In June 1839 he made his thirty-fifth trot- 

 ting match, whereby he undertook to drive tandem forty-five 

 miles in three hours. The course was from the Staines end of 

 Sinebury Common to the fifth milestone towards Hampton : 

 he did it with four and a half minutes to spare. The horses 

 used in this match were both extraordinary trotters : the 

 wheeler, Tommy, had covered 20 miles in 1 hour 18 

 minutes two months earlier, and the leader, Gustavus, twenty- 

 four years old, had done his 20 miles in 1 hour 14 minutes. 



Though not a tandem performance in the strict sense of 

 the term, Mr. Thanes' feat on 12th July 1819 is worth 

 mention. He undertook ' to drive three horses in a gig, 

 tandem fashion, eleven miles within the hour on the trot, and 

 to turn if either horse broke.' Fortunately none of the three 

 did break, and he did the eleven miles, on the road near 

 Maidenhead, with three minutes to spare. 



Tandem driving seems to have gone out of fashion to a 

 certain extent about 1840, though some young men ' still 

 delighted in it.' The re- establishment of the Tandem Club, 

 soon after the close of the Crimean War, marked a revival 

 which made itself felt at Cambridge ; for on 22nd February 

 1866 the Senate passed another edict, this time forbidding 

 livery-stable-keepers to let out on hire tandems or four-in- 

 hands to undergraduates. This was confirmed in 1870. 



151 



