The Slower Road

A couple of weeks ago, I started sharing, in small weekly morsels, the chapter on tandem driving in the first volume of  The Sports Library (by Mr. T. F. Dale), published in 1899.

You can read part of the book’s introduction (and the introduction to our look back at this nineteenth-century book) here. The first part of our “reading” of Chapter 10 is here, and the second part is here.

Today, the third part:

… Now for a few practical hints as to driving tandem. First of all let us clear the way by removing some fallacies which are current on the subject. I have heard it said often enough that to drive tandem is harder than to drive a team, and people have even gone further and deduced from this the conclusion that if you can do one, you can do the other. There never was a greater piece of self-deception. Assuming for a moment that your leader will go straight, tandem is by far the easiest form of coachmanship, and if fairly well done, the safest. Two horses driven as a pair are far more likely to make up their minds together to run away, than two horses tandem fashion. I have three times been run away with in a tandem, and have each time been able to stop the horses by playing them off one against the other, as it were.

But let us begin at the beginning and consider what sort of cart is best for a tandem. In the first place it should not be too light, for horses go better if they have something to draw, and a tandem cart should be able to balance well and carry four people, and if necessary some luggage. No better measurements for a tandem cart can be found than those given by Lady Georgiana Curzon in her most excellent article on the subject in the Badminton volume on Driving. I speak with confidence, for I have had two carts built to the measurements there laid down and found them to answer admirably. With regard to the harness, I like it as light as possible, but I prefer, in the country certainly, on a tour, to have breeching on the wheeler.

It is on the whole more convenient to pass the leader’s reins through the ear-rings of the wheeler than to have them through the terrets often affixed to the sides of the wheeler’s heads. Lead reins so arranged have a greater tendency to worry the wheelers, the objection to them being precisely the same as to head-terrets for the wheelers in a team. I prefer to attach the leader by a bar, but if long traces are preferred there is no objection to them, always bearing in mind, however, that the lead traces should not be one inch longer than is necessary. The shorter a tandem is the better it looks, and the easier it is to drive. Collars look smarter and are a better method of draught than breast harness. The only advantage that I can see in the latter is that it fits any pony. This is no doubt a gain, for tandem is a very useful way of driving in a polo stable. There is no better way of exercising the choicest animals of the stud than putting them in the lead of a tandem. Trotting out with no weight on their backs is capital exercise, and exercise is just the one thing of which there is seldom enough in a polo stable. And here I may say that tandem-driving is more suited for small than large animals, and it certainly looks much better.

Polo playing and tandem-driving go well together. I remember well when living at some distance from a polo ground in India, I often put two ponies in a tandem cart and drove the five or six miles, with my groom up behind with sticks and saddles. I then took the ponies out, played polo, and drove home again, finding both ponies as fresh as possible the next day. In fact I look on a tandem cart and harness from all points of view as a most useful adjunct to a polo stable. It is very convenient in the country, it saves labor in the stable, and is an excellent method of keeping ponies in condition. I am also of the opinion that being driven in a tandem tends to make ponies handy, and I have found it an excellent plan with shy or nervous ponies wanted for polo. In the country one is always having to drive into the town for something, and nothing is better for young ponies than to go to the station, stand outside a shop, or turn in and out of gates. But for young ponies intended for polo I should certainly not recommend harness work in a cart, carrying three people, whereas as leader in a tandem no possible harm can be done, and a great deal of useful work is put in and some excellent lessons are taught. …

Last Saturday, we started with a “reading” of the chapter on tandem driving in the first volume of  The Sports Library (by Mr. T. F. Dale), published in 1899. You can read part of the book’s introduction (and the introduction to our look back at this nineteenth-century book) here.

Today, we have the second part:

… But it may be gathered that during the three years I drove up and down the frontier, I learned something of tandem-driving from a practical point of view.

For example, I learned that breast harness is not nearly so good as collars on rough roads, and that horses that will draw well in a collar will hang back and sometimes take to jibbing altogether in breast harness. In very rough and stiff ground where I wanted all the draft power I could get, I used to unhook the leader’s traces from the usual place and put them on to rings put for that purpose at the end of the shafts. This gave a more direct pull on the load, and certainly made more effectual use of the horse power.

As a rule, however, I drove with the ordinary long traces. This works well enough with a fairly good or willing horse, but with an awkward leader they add greatly to the difficulties of driving, for if the leader hangs back obstinately the wheeler may get its leg over the traces. Of course, when driving fresh-caught Indian country-breds of various sorts, an awkward leader was not uncommon, and many very good travelers were a bit nasty at starting, especially until they got used to it. I may say truly that I have had my leader in every possible and impossible position in relation to the cart. I have had him riding on the step, of course, but that is a commonplace of tandem-driving. I have had him with his head under the shafts behind the wheeler’s tail. I have had him on his back under the cart. I have had him rolled up into a kind of tangle so that he had to be cut out of his harness. But I always got to my journey’s end.

Yet much of my trouble might have been saved me if I had begun as I ended, by driving with bars. To my mind these have simplified tandem-driving immensely, have reduced the danger, if there ever was any, and added greatly to the pleasure. With long traces a certain space was always required to turn in, but with bars a tandem can easily be turned in its own length, and the leader is much more easily put to or detached. …

We’ll continue with Mr. Dale’s tandem-driving tales next Saturday!

In case you’re wondering about our Mr. T. F. Dale, here’s a photo of him:

.

from Riding, Driving, and Kindred Sports, Volume 1 in The Sports Library (1899)

Today we begin with the first part of Mr. Dale’s chapter on tandem driving, published in 1899:

The tandem is the poor man’s team, and is somewhat neglected by many who might obtain a great deal of amusement from it. But driving tandem is not only an amusement, for it is an excellent and economical method of traversing bad roads for long distances. On this point I may claim to speak with some certainty, having driven a tandem for something like eighteen hundred to two thousand miles in a year, for three consecutive years, over some of the worst roads on our Indian frontier. In fact, for the whole of the cold weather and a considerable portion of the hot season too, I was always driving. It is needless to say that this was excellent practice. In fact it is in my opinion impossible to learn to drive well until you have had some experience of driving journeys.

In the old days, the coaching books tell us, those who had a taste for coaching, qualified in the art by driving the stage-coaches, and no doubt this was an incomparable school for coachmen. Roads of all sorts, horses of all kinds and seldom of the best, with loads of varying weight, and time to keep, taught them to be thorough coachmen, judges of pace, strong with a weak team, and gentle with a strong one, so as to get the most work with the least expenditure of the horses’ strength.

When in 1881 I was appointed to the frontier, I found that part of my duties would consist in driving from one end of the frontier to the other, from Bannu to Rajanpore. My immediate predecessor had done the journey on a camel, but I have no taste for camel riding. The ordinary riding-camel is dull work, and the trotting-camels from Bhowalpur are expensive, and carry little or nothing besides the rider. The journey might be ridden on horseback, but there was the question of baggage. Why not drive tandem? “Oh,” said everybody, “that is impossible. The roads are so bad, no cart would stand them, and you would not get twenty miles.”

I am afraid I am not very good at taking advice, and experience has told me that not one man in a hundred knows anything about a road over which he may have traveled often enough. So I took my own course, bought four ponies, and had a bamboo cart built for me. I had the seat placed rather high and on it a box, literally a box—which I found most useful, for it carried my books and pipes—from which to drive. The net underneath carried the baggage, and the whole was drawn by two ponies tandem fashion. The road was rough and in places very heavy, but it was nowhere impracticable, and I drove over the whole of it for three years without a serious accident. The low center of gravity of a bamboo cart makes the danger of upsetting small…

We’ll continue with Mr. Dale’s tandem-driving tales next Saturday!