Winter Closes In: Hibernating With Carriage Driving Fodder

With colder weather on its way and Christmas coming up, I thought I'd alert you to some reading material.  Any carriage driving enthusiast should read the following historical books: A Manual of Coaching by Fairman Rogers, Driving For Pleasure by Francis T. Underhill, Driving by the Duke of Beaufort, The Private Stable by James Albert Garland and Driving As I Found It by Frank Swales.  All are still as relevant as Shakespeare.  Santa might have to dig a little to find them, but Amazon and ebay are enterprising elves.  Original copies will set you back one to several hundred dollars, but they are all worth holding in your hand.  Reprints are he next best thing, but try not to buy the photocopied paperbacks.  The quality is awful and disrespectful to these grand books.  You can find several of them available for download, which is nice but there is nothing like leafing through the pages of these historical tomes.

For the grandkids, Sue Greenall's Animal Lovers' Bed Time Reader or her latest, Animal Lovers' Bedtime Stories.  These are lovely books to encourage and inspire children to have animals as important elements of their lives.

If it is audio visual material that you need to inspire 2011 carriage driving plans, check out anything by Tim Maloy available for purchase online at: http://www.cavewoodproductions.co.uk/store.html If you aren't familiar with Tim's name, do a search on this blog and view some of his excellent video shorts.  World Four In Hand Championships 2002 from Jarez is available on VHS from Driving Essentials and is excellent.  I have not see the Aachen 2006 Championships yet [ehem, Santa], but I'm sure it is equally as thrilling.  You can order that online through: http://www.aachen2006.de/HighlightDVD_e.htm

Search Amazon.com for carriage driving

Kind Regards,
Michelle Blackler
Serendipity
www.hossbiz.com
Serendipity is an Accidental Sagacity Corporation company.

Accidental Sagacity for Today: A Manual of Coaching

I just got off the phone with my friend, Harold Ault. I had called to ask if my understanding of eveners and splinter bars was correct. My interpretation was that eveners are used for draft vehicles and splinter bars are used for carriages. Of course, Harold gave me a long dissertation of how this was almost correct, but there were many instances where it was not. This included, but was not limited to and in other instances varied, whether the vehicle had a fixed or drop pole, platform gear or reach, the weight of the vehicle and the terrain and/or use of the vehicle.

So, now I know more about how much I don't know. But, I picked up some neat information that was accidental sagacity. For instance, I did not know that the leaders in a four in hand pulled from the pole head. I also learned that when you crest the top of a steep hill, you should disengage the leaders from draft or they could snap off the pole. Good to know.

Also good to know is that Harold told me just about everything I needed to know was in Fairman Roger's A Manual of Coaching. I lamented that I didn't have possession of this book, whether reprinted or first edition, as no doubt, Harold has, so I got online and found an internet archive of the book at: http://ia341317.us.archive.org/2/items/manualofcoachi00roge/manualofcoachi00roge.pdf

I also found a review of the book on the New York Times Archive, December 9, 1899 http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9C05E6D91530E132A2575AC0A9649D94689ED7CF

[I heart this archive!] which says, "Small wonder is it then that when the public, to whom coaching is a lost art, and who only know of it through reading, pictures and the occasional sight of some rich man tooling his break or coach, or through the annual coaching parades of London, Paris, Newport, Philadelphia and New York, throng a building to see a coaching exhibition, a man of long purse, who is in addition a lover of horseflesh, can find keen interest in the old sport." And "In reading its pages there will come to them a feeling of older times and older manners, which is so well voiced by Austin Dobson in his lines: With slower pen men used to write, In Anne's or George's day, But now- electric light hath dazed our sight, We may not write-ah, would we might, With slower pen."

Isn't it a wonderful strange world that I should find these connections today? And that I should find a friend with the spirit of Fairman Rogers in Harold Ault? Or that the high speed internet connection allowed me to slow down, and download A Manual of Coaching. What ever needs to be done today can wait until I find the answers that are still relevant, or at times, even more so, one hundred and ten years later.

Kind Regards,

Michelle Blackler

Serendipity

www.hossbz.com

Serendipity is an Accidental Sagacity Corporation company.