Dublin for the Horse Show

by JAMES REYNOLDS

1

I HAVE traveled the world for many years. In more countries than I can remember at the moment, I have heard this “The thing I want most to do is go to Ireland for the Dublin Horse Show “or “The most wonderful time I ever had was in Dublin for the Horse Show.”

It is an event unique in this world, surely. For many reasons the show is different from other outdoor events of this nature. The Horse Show grounds at Ballsbridge are magnificently landscaped. Flowers are everywhere. The first glimpse one gets from the broad street which passes in front of the Georgian façade of the main building seems a shade formal and cold. Once one passes the turnstile, the color and warmth of the booths offering homespuns, divers colored Donegal and Leenane tweeds, riding boots and breeches, rat-catcher jackets and beautifully tailored side-saddle habits of charcoal gray or dark blue, engulf one in friendliness. Bars galore beckon the thirsty. Restaurants both under the trees and inside offer the best and freshest Irish food. The Horticultural Hall is as dazzling as Aladdin’s Cave where flowers play the part of jewels. Then the next step is to roam along the alleys where hunters of every age and performance are being groomed or contentedly munching.

Outside there are four spacious rings surrounded by gabled buildings of black and while half-timbering. Trees shade the walks. One may stand in shade at the rails while the contestants for various hunter class honors show in the sun. These morning classes are well attended, but many persons prefer to go across the roadway to the Goff Sales of yearlings. These sales alone attract horsemen and women from all over the world. Often 175 yearlings are sold in a morning. Some of the most famous winners in England, India, France, Belgium, Italy, North and South America, and Australia have been purchased from venders at these sales.

In the afternoon the great flower-bordered main jumping ring is opened. The tremendous stands lined with boxes and the pavilions with awnings of striped ticking are full of devotees. I never tire of watching this crowd. It has been said that if one stands long enough on the bridge crossing the Bosporus at the Golden Horn one will see every nationality on earth. However true this may be, I can say that the number of nationalities, many wearing native costume, in the stands at Ballsbridge watching the International Jumping Teams contesting for the Aga Khan’s Cup, is formidable. Egyptians, maharajahs, bushwhackers from the Australian veld, flaxen Scandinavians, all the Latins.

The parade past of hunt teams is always a most spectacular event, ripe with crimson and often the music of hounds. This and the four-in-hand roadcoach event are probably the most popular of the week. It is worth coming miles to see the big, rangy hunters lake the Galway banks or Kilkenny “doubles” (a ditch with a bank on either side), which are used only in this class. I once saw a “lady" master from County Carlow hoisted by her mount. The animal mounted the bank but decided to remain there. When the woman tried to reason with him by strokes from her crop, he started to buck. The air was instantly blue with good bargee curses. The madder she got, the more active the bucking. Louder and louder rang the curses. Finally two attendants rescued the woman. As she passed me she rasped, “That hellhound goes for glue at the crack of dawn.”

The harness classes at Dublin Horse Show are uniquely different from any others I have seen elsewhere. The rigs and “vehicles suitable for road or park display" represent many epochs. High cutunders, dogcarts, landaus, victorias, breaking carts, long in the thills, gaily painted in red, green, or yellow, with a raking cob driven at breakneck speed around the ring. This event always elicits loud applause.

For me, the highlight of any Dublin Horse Show is the event called “Ladies Corinthian Hunter Class, Side Saddle, Full Appointments for the Hunting Field.” No horsewoman shows to such advantage, to my mind, as when in side-saddle habit, top hat, mesh veil, hair snaked back into a confined bun, and face scrubbed bright and shining.

A story often told in my own family circle is the compliment paid to my mother by the late Marquis de Several of Portugal, a witty bon virant renowned for his gallantries who was boon companion to Edward Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. The marquis loved Ireland and during the nineties spent a great deal of time in and around Dublin. A notable horseman, he frequently was asked to judge hunter classes. This day he eliminated all contestants but six. Then he walked slowly down the line. Carefully, the marquis looked at all tack and accoutrement such as rolled mackintosh, extra pair of gloves, and leather case for brandy flask and sandwich. He even looked into the filling of a sandwich. Finally he came to my mother, up Ambassador, a big dark chestnut Thoroughbred. The marquis stood off, regarded every detail of woman and mount carefully. Then he bowed and said, Madame, I am sure the sandwich is caviar,” and presented her with the cup.

One feature of Horse Show Week in Dublin always surprises foreign visitors — evening racing in Phoenix Park on Wednesday and Friday during the week. Racing is from seven o’clock to nine o’clock, made possible because of the long twilights enjoyed in an Irish summer. One can read a race card with ease or discern the colors on a jockey’s back on the far side of the course until half past ten. A great fashion event is this evening racing fixture, often called “the Irish Ascot,” because women dress in floating finery and picture hats, and even carry parasols to complete the costume.

I remember one year when the Friday of Horse Show Week had been chancy. A fitful gust of rain had scudded across the landscape all day. Most women wore suits or dark dresses under raincoats, and carried umbrellas during the day and did not change for evening racing. When I arrived at the Kildare Hunt Pavilion at the course, for a glass of champagne and a plate of lobster or salmon mayonnaise, I remarked on the lack of sartorial brilliance this dull day had caused. Suddenly I saw bearing down upon me a gigantic figure like a Spanish galleon in full sail. A woman whom I knew, from the back and beyond of County Fermanagh. Once a year, and once only, did Mrs. Multrea, as we shall call her, venture to the capital from her mountain fastness, and then she shone as brilliantly as a Byzantine fresco. I must have shown my surprise at her trailing rose-pink and violet draperies and rosewreathed hat, completed by a ruffled parasol of chiffon. “All right, say it,” Mrs. Multrea said sharply, tossing her rose-crowned head, “I am a figure of fun? Well, by the holy, I bought all this grandeur at terrible cost, and damn if a few showers are going to foil me in wearing it. If the moon comes out I’ll raise my parasol, so I will,” and the indomitable woman from Fermanagh swept past me.

Racing at any time over this park course in the horse-chestnut-shaded groves of Phoenix Park is sheer delight. All racing is on the flat and mostly run only in furlong distances. Swift and short are fixtures here. But The Park, as it is known, is immensely popular and never fails, no matter the weather, to draw record crowds. Within walking distance of O’Connell Bridge in the heart of Dublin, it is the pride of the city.

For all that a fashionable air hovers over The Park, one meets all manner of entertaining characters while standing at the white-painted rails of the paddock. Peers of the realm, shopkeepers, wellknown painters or authors, and bar flies from Ashton Quay pubs rub elbows and give each other tips on the next race. One day I was standing at the rails watching the field come in. A small specimen of man—called maneen, in Ireland—sidled up to me. “God’s grace to ye. Let me give ye a tip on the race over a glass ave paddy.” Looking down, I remembered where I had seen this jockser before. It was at Baldoyle Course a few weeks ago. At that meeting he had made the same suggestion. But I am a downy bird when it comes to this sort of betting. I had stood my ground and at that moment the field had come in. As the horses went to the post the man pointed to a big, scrawny, lop-eared animal I would not have owned, much less put a shilling on. The maneen fairly danced in excitement. “There he is, the big red fella. Greatest lepper in Ireland. Fly the moon, that boyo.”

I answered, “Not for one minute would I risk a farthing on that refuser. Slavering, ears flat to his head, ugly look in his eye. A chronic refuser if I ever saw one.”

Haughtily the answer was: “That harse niver refused a jump in his life.”

The field took off. This red chaser refused the first jump, shipping his rider. I turned and looked down at the man beside me. Narrow-eyed, pulling at his lower lip, he glanced up at me. “Glory be to God, if that harse wouldn’t make a liar out ave St. Paul.”

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WHEN an Englishwoman, in Ireland for the Dublin Horse Show, asked me rather acidly, “Why is it Irish horses invariably win the National at AinIree?” I replied, “In my opinion two facts stand out in startling manner. First, the heart must have been tested over flat and hilly courses. The deciding factor in a stiff steeplechase is not only negotiating the jumps: it is what speed the horse can attain on the flat between obstacles; and most important of all, how much stamina and reserve, how great his heart, when the horse is called upon to run the last stretch, often up a rise as at Aintree, to the winning post. Second, we in Ireland do not force our horses to run long grueling courses, Aintree or Punchestown for example, until they have reached an age where every ounce of bone is strongly developed.”

These horses are the athletes of the horse world. In flat racers the big build, the strongly muscled conformation one expects in the chaser is not necessary — is indeed sometimes a hindrance in a Thoroughbred racing on the flat.

Many times I have thought of the crisp day in late April when I had driven over to take a look at the small stud farm maintained by Farmer Glanty in County Tipperary. A simple farmstead I found, lying beautifully girt by tall oaks in undulating pasture land.

The name of Patrick Glanty is renowned in Ireland. A fine class of horseman, descendant of a long line of Glantys who had raised three-quarter-breds (a grand type of hunter to negotiate high, trappy Galway banks) and Thoroughbred hunters, to make chasers, as well as horses racing on the flat, for three hundred years.

After a glass or two of the mild amber porter of the region, I was shown around the stud. Stallion stables, brood-mare stables. A long, airy, warmly sheltered building for weanlings and yearlings; and close to the spacious schooling field, where great knowledge was displayed in the placing of permanent jumps, an arcaded stable for threeand four-yearolds. A sort of finishing school for horses in the last lap of training. Everywhere was bright and shining cleanliness. Whitewash gleamed on every stone and timber, for the Irish countryman dearly loves to slap his whitewash brush on every building in sight. Then I noticed a shed, just a roof borne up by poles, under which was a tightly packed pile of dark purple-bronze kelp. Two yard lads were busily forking chunks of the tightly packed kelp onto a flat wagon. The load was then driven out through the yard gate towards a field where, I noticed, a harrow had scarred the turf in long striations. “Fertilizer from the bold Atlantic, Mr. Glanty?” I asked.

The sharp blue eyes of the man looked off and away, sweeping a glance over his wide pastures. “ It is an’ all. And great thanks do I give every day ave me life to God, fer the free gift ave sea kelp. Surely God is the world’s greatest fertilizerer.”

And there you have it. God is the world’s greatest “fertilizerer.” All a farmer in Ireland has to do is to drive a cart a few miles to the seacoast. This is no hardship, for all but five counties touch the sea or a sea-waiter lough at some point. Once there, he collects as much seaweed or iodine-impregnated kelp as he can manage. The legion uses of this seaweed in the rearing of horses is worthy of discussion.

I well remember one day when I went to the Duke of St. Albans’s Newtown Anner Stud near the ancient, partly walled town of Clonmel. At one side of the gate lodge a pasture rose gently until it became an upland meadow. Against the sky, silhouetted singly and in groups were at least twenty weanlings and yearlings. I had never seen a more heart-warming picture. It quickened my blood both as a horseman and as a painter. Slowly, so as not to frighten the young horses contentedly cropping the deep, sweet grass on the hilltop, I mounted to where I could get a panorama of surrounding pasture and farmland. Spread before me was the result of centuries of “helping the land,” as the farmers call it. I turned to the yearlings, now regarding me intently as they moved about ankledeep in blades so strongly tinctured with iron that I was conscious of a susurrus of sound, almost a light clatter as the strong blades nudged one against another bending to the strong breeze. This was the answer to the question I have so often been asked, “What gives Irish horses such tremendous conformation and bone?”

Another phase of the “kelp treatment,” as Galway stable lads call it, is to wrap kelp, fresh from the sea, about the hocks of a horse. Then he is placed over a grating from which steam from water thrown on hot rocks arises. The iron-impregnated steam is wonderfully effective to strengthen the hocks and quarter muscles. And so it goes. Letting horses roll in shallow water when the tide is out, where again the iron in the water is most beneficial to stiff muscles. I have painted innumerable pictures of various moments when horses are wading or rolling in landlocked bays along the coast of Sligo, Donegal, or Galway. I have yet to find a more popular subject for my brush or one where I paint with greater ease.

In Ireland there is no “season” for racing or training, particularly in the latter case, for except in the North, where there are actually few studs or training stables of any consequence, the weather is fairly mild. Rainstorms, drifting mist, or wind never seems to damp the ardor of trainers in the West and South counties. Admittedly weather is chancy, to the point of the story of a foreign visitor who stopped a Wicklow man on the highway. “I don’t like your climate,” barked the visitor. The countryman regarded the stranger for a moment, then said disarmingly, “Man dear, wait a minute.”

I have seen many a classic race start in a blinding downpour and finish in a space of minutes in brilliant sunshine, as well as the same thing happen in reverse. If we paid any attention to the vagaries of our climate we would not be the sporting nation wo are. All horses are accustomed early in their careers to withstand cold and wet. That is the reason our greatest steeplechasing and point-to-point season is in the winter.

I believe I am safe in saying that not a day goes by in Ireland that there is not some event somewhere in which horses participate. It may be only a village horse fair. Many a winner has been picked up at some local event when a farmer will take you furtively aside. “I’ve the grandest little mare on four legs standin’ in me lean-to this livin’ minute. She’s sweetly bred be a fine stallion whipped away from a grand stable in the dead ave night be me auld friend Jockser Coby, dead this two month, God rest his lovely soul.”

The Jockser Cobys are legion, the night’s dark and a jug of poteen the reward. The compilers of the Irish Thoroughbred Stud Book frown, but those who place their shillings to win on the nose of these midnight progeny smile broadly.

So — there it is, the Irish scene with equine overtones. Before or directly after the “great ” week of the Horse Show, trips north, south, east, or west from Dublin hold legion surprises and pleasures in the way of beauty of countryside, the richly witty speech of the countrymen, and wonderfully fresh food served at village inns or pubs. The entertainment in the Irish pub is proverbial. It is said that in a village, however small, the two most important buildings are the pub and the church. I was once enlightened. “We’ve only five houses, two pubs, and a church, surely. But we’re very social. At the pubs we pour down the sins ave indulgence, at the church we wash thim away.”