Horse Show

For the first quarter-century of its history as a parade of sport and fashion, the National Horse Show, traditional premiere of the New York social season, was hampered by the fact that the horse was a standard means of conveyance. Not until the automobile removed its last stigma of practicality did the Horse Show really come into its own. Since the War, while the utility of the show horse has declined to the vanishing point, the glittering popularity of the Horse Show has enormously increased. New events, active and frivolous, replacing stodgy regiments of carriage horses, have made the whole affair intelligible and even entertaining to people who once considered it no more than a malodorous nuisance. Last week the National Horse Show entered the second half of its first century as a New York institution. Though it could not be said to have opened the social season, already in full swing, it made all old horse shows look uncombed and shabby by comparison.

Opening night was the most brilliant on record. The crowd of 15,000 that packed Madison Square Garden crackled with applause when a severe, vaguely familiar-looking man in a tail coat came out into the ring to receive the salute of 26 of the world's ablest cavalry officers, picked from Canada, Chile, France, Great Britain, the Irish Free State, Sweden and the U. S. He was General John Joseph Pershing. Most popular event of the evening was the performance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. More spectacular than in fiction or cinema, a troop of 37 in scarlet tunics and broad-brimmed hats, carrying lances with pennants, maneuvered to the tune of The Campbells Are Coming.

International Military Jumping was first introduced into the National in 1909. Since then it has become the No. 1 event of the show. Last week cavalry officers from seven nations were entered in the jumping events. For the first international event on the program, for which competition lasted three nights, riders were judged on form after a succession of difficult individual and group jumps. In first place after the first night's performance were the French (Captain Franc,ois Durand and Lieutenant Amador de Busnel), with 19 faults to 23 each for Chile, Great Britain and the U. S. Jumping in pairs the next evening, the French team was charged 1/2 a fault, when Captain Durand and Captain Pierre Clave were a step out of alignment at one barrier, but even this left them a lead of 3 1/2 points over the U. S., whose score was perfect. The margin grew no larger on the third night of the show when Swedes, Canadians, Irish and Americans negotiated the course of nine jumps perfectly, and the Frenchmen, jumping last, did likewise. To them was then awarded the High Score Challenge Trophy for a total of 19 1/2 faults to 23 for the U. S., 34 1/2 for Canada. French Captain Clave later carried off the individual honors.

Ribbons, blue, red, yellow and white, are show horses' traditional prizes. Last week competition for the largest number of blues was close between Atlanta's Judy King, whose harness horses took three the first day and two more the second, and Frances Dodge of Rochester Mich., who moved into the lead the third day when her collection of three harness horses shown in single harness took first and Miss King's three were second. The following day they were tied again at six blues each. Surprisingly enough, no ribbon at all went to the oldest horse of the 450 in the show. She was Kitty, bought for $85 thirteen years ago by the Essex Troop of Newark, N. J., whose members used her to pull the harrow in their riding ring for nine years before they discovered by accident that she was an expert jumper. Last week, the winner of innumerable minor prizes, unpredictable Kitty, aged 26, was entered in the military and police jumping class, rapped several fences, was unplaced.

For horsemanship of pupils and instructor, fourth prize went to the Paradise Riding Club: three chorus girls from Manhattan's famed Paradise Restaurant.

Dressage is to riding what Picasso (see p. 44) is to painting. Until the automobile placed riding of all sorts in the realm of pure sport, few horsemen in the U. S. had ever even heard of such a thing but by last week it began to look as though they might eventually cease to be absurdly inferior to European horsemen in this refined equestrian abstraction. In dressage, the rider, without apparent movement, sound or use of the reins, guides his mount through a set program of maneuvers far more complex than those accomplished by a circus horse under stimulus of shouting, gesticulation and whip cracking. No. 1 U. S. exponent of dressage is currently Major Hiram E. Tuttle who introduced it to the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden last year. Last week, nothing else in the show so fascinated spectators as the spectacle of this phlegmatic, white-haired officer seated imperturbably on a horse which, apparently on its own initiative, pirouetted, trotted for ward and sidewise at the same time, galloped backwards, galloped forward with a change of lead first every four steps, then every two, and then every step, trotted in place and otherwise comported itself like a creation of cinematic trick photography.

Recognized abroad as the quintessence of horsemanship since 1700, dressage made its formal debut in the U. S. at Los Angeles in 1932. Eager to be represented in every event on the Olympic Games program, the U. S. Olympic Committee set out to find someone who could do it. At Fort Riley, Kans., where Generals Short and Henry had introduced it to the U. S. Cavalry School in 1912, they found Major Tuttle, who had been interested in dressage since the War. He and two other officers set out to school three horses. In the 1932 Olympics their mounts made a creditable showing but in the Olympics at Berlin last summer they were hopelessly outclassed. Finishing 23rd, 25th and 27th in a field of 29, they got the U. S. 9th place in a field of nine.

Jovial, grey-haired, leather-faced Major Tuttle was a Boston lawyer before he joined the Army in the War. His three high-school horses, Vast, Si Murray and Olympic, can each do 135 different tricks. Each trick has a technical name like the piaffe (trotting on one spot), the passage (highly accentuated trot with slight forward movement). His horses get neither beatings for punishment nor carrots for reward. The best that they can hope for is an occasional pat. The immobility of a good dressage rider is actually an illusion. He achieves his effects by shifts of weight so slight as to be imperceptible, pressure on the bit so gentle that Vast, Si Murray or Olympic can perform with silk threads instead of reins. The secret of dressage lies as much in the delicacy of the rider's hands as of the horse's mouth. Major Tuttle is an expert violinist. Olympic is now valued at $15,000. He cost $1. Like Vast and Si Murray, who cost $100 each, he is a thoroughbred race horse considered valueless by his former owner because he could not, or was too clever to, run fast.

Five years ago, horse racing was thrown into an uproar when a horse named Shem, who won a race at Havre de Grace at odds of 52-to-1, was proved to be not Shem but another faster horse named Aknahton, made up to resemble him by an expert "ringer" named Paddy Barrie (TIME, March 21, 1932). When the scandal was exposed, Paddy Barrie was deported and Aknahton was ruled off the track. What had become of the original Shem no one seemed to know.

When Shem disappeared, he was two years old. As a race horse he would now be worthless but last week Horse Show rumor said that Shem, now 7, a handsome chestnut gelding with two white legs, had been exhibited in a green hunter class under an assumed name, spirited away when recognized by a prospective buyer to whom he had been offered as a bargain for $3,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.