Napoleon Rides Bareback On Erotic Steed (May Be NSFW)

by Stephen J. Gertz

This  astonishing and keenly amusing original watercolor of a bare-bottomed Napoleon with membre viril exposed riding a horse composed of nude women is being offered at Christie's-Paris during their Collection d'un Amateur Bibliophile sale, Tuesday, October 30, 2012.

What's the estimate for this unique erotic caricature of Napoleon? $21,000 - $27,000. Nappy in flagrante delicto ain't cheap to collecto.

The watercolor, created c. 1810 by an unknown artist in the manner of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, is 232 x 180 mm in size. The draftsmanship is excellent, the arrangement of the women to form a horse with mane and tail is artful and clever, the composition is a sight to delight. It's a minor masterwork.

Napoleon was no stranger to political caricature and this eye-opener, while singular, reflects the contemporary German and English sport of casting Napoleon in the worst possible light.

I'm not sure what the underlying message is in this particular lampoon  - Napoleon, imperial scepter exposed, riding on the backs of women as a commentary on his staying power; Napoleon as a sex-addled emperor; what? - but it is, as they say in Brooklyn, cherce.

This is just one of many fine items of erotica, etc, offered by Christie's. We'll feature more from this sale as it draws close.

In the meantime, Booktryst provides, as a public service, the following advice for horseback riders engaged in l'amour fou à cheval.

Equestrian Safety Tip #1: Men who hold on to their pommel when riding without saddle may feel warm and secure but it will do absolutely no good if the horse rears and/or bolts into a wild gallop. You may hold your own during the ordeal but that won't hold the prospect of flying over the high side at bay.

Equestrian Safety Tip #2: French emperors who bare their buttocks while riding may justifiably be confused with a horse's ass.

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Image courtesy of Christies, with our thanks.
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The Story Of A Drunk, Diseased, Insane Hunter And Inglorious Squire

By Stephen J. Gertz

Original boards, untouched.

What do you call a 175 year old copy of a book that looks exactly as it did on the day it was published, completely untouched without any sort of restoration at all?

I call it an astonishment.

Light come, light go.

But, beyond the wild-tale,  it's the night scenes in aquatint engravings by Henry Alken and T.K. Rawlins that will make a lasting impression upon readers of Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton, Esq. (1837) by Nimrod, the mighty hunter otherwise known as C.J. Apperley (1777-1843), British sportsman and sports writer.

The Oaks filly.

"This is not a work of fiction, for John Mytton, a rather inglorious character for a biography, was a hard-living, hard-drinking country squire of Halston, Shropshire, capable of the utmost physical endurance, and ready to accept any wager to walk, shoot or ride against any man. Many of his feats are recorded and graphically delineated, including the climax of his folly in setting his nightshirt on fire to cure a hiccough (Martin Hardie). Kids, don't try this at home.

John "Mad Jack" Mytton, born into comfortable circumstances, attended Westminster School. He was expelled a year later for fighting. He went to Harrow. He was expelled three days later. He had tutors. He tormented them with practical jokes; he once left a horse in one's bedroom.  Despite poor academic achievement he was accepted into Cambridge. He brought 2,000 bottles of port along to fortify him for study. He left before graduating because he was bored.

He went into the army and devoted himself to gambling and drinking. When he turned twenty-one he came into his inheritance. Then the real fun began.

He decided to stand for Parliament. His campaign platform was, apparently, Vote for me and I'll give you a £10 note. He won the election. But he found politics boring and only attended Parliament once, for thirty eternally excruciating minutes. He declined to stand for re-election.

In 1832 he thought he'd  give Parliament another shot. When the polling results began to be counted he quit the race when it was clear he was going to ignominiously lose. The fact that he had gone into exile to avoid debts may have had something to do with it.

The straight life cramped his style, which, at this point, centered upon horse racing and gambling, and, oh yes, drinking. About that wager he made and won: he rode his horse into the Bedford Hotel, up the grand staircase and on to the balcony, and jumped, still a-saddle, over diners in the restaurant below and then out the window and onto the street.

He was cuckoo for fox-hunting and did so no matter the weather. In winter, caught up in the thrill of the chase, he would strip naked to continue the pursuit. He enjoyed arising in the middle of the night and, buck naked with only his gun to keep him warm, would go out, ambush ducks, and return to bed.

Stand and deliver.

He owned 700 pairs of hunting boots, 1,000 hats, and 3,000 shirts. He loved pets; he owned 2,000 dogs, as hounds, and some attired in livery, others in costumes. He fed them steak and champagne.

He was, as must now be apparent, a marinated, extravagant thrill seeker. He was hell in the carriage driver's seat, the shortest, most inconsequential ride a feral dash to the finish line. He once invited a parson and doctor to dine at his home one evening. He dressed himself as a highwayman, and, face disguised, rode out and held them up at gun-point, calling "Stand and deliver!"

The list of his eccentric and scandalous behavior is long. We will gloss over the time he rode a bear into a dinner party, and dog-fought a mastiff.

Money ran through his fingers like water. His inheritance went down the drain. He died in debter's prison.

In its review of Memoirs...  the Literary Gazette contrasted Mytton's promise with his sad end:

". . .heir to an immense fortune, gifted by nature with a mind susceptible of noble cultivation, and a body endowed with admirable physical powers with the wretched drunkard who died in a gaol at the age of thirty-eight, a worn-out debauchee and driveling sot" (Literary Gazette, review of Memoirs).

". . . Did the late Mr Mytton really enjoy life amidst all this profusion of expenditure? No. He lacked the art of enjoyment. He was bored and unhappy. There was that about him which resembled the restlessness of the hyena. A sort of pestering spirit egged him on" (Nimrod).

Well done. Neck or Nothing.

"When Lockhart said of 'Nimrod' that he could 'hunt like Hugo Meynell and write like Walter Scott,' he was doubtless excited into exaggeration by the pleasure of having hit upon a man who could write of sport without the vulgarity of Egan. 'Nimrod,' whose name was Charles James Apperley, was a man of education, a country squire and a genuine sportsman. Loss of means turned him to literature; he contributed articles on sport to The Sporting Magazine, The Quarterly Review and other journals; but is best known by his two books, The Life of a Sportsman, and Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton, both of which were illustrated with coloured engravings by Alken...

"Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton appeared as a book in 1837, a portion of the work having been printed in The New Sporting Magazine in 1835. It shows a difficult task performed with fidelity and tact. Apperley had been Mytton’s neighbour in Shropshire, and had extended to him all the care that was possible when both were living in Calais in order to avoid their creditors. Apperley’s task was to write the life of a man who, while he was one of the most heroic sportsmen that ever lived, was also drunken, diseased and insane; and he performed the task with admirable judgment" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two, VI. Caricature and the Literature of Sport).

"A most valuable and important book for the sporting life of the period, aptly described by Newton as 'a biography of a man that reads like a work of fiction'" (Tooley).

And this is an unsophisticated copy of a book that looks like a work of restoration, an under-the-bed-in-a-box-and-forgotten-OMG example. Tally-Holy Mackerel.

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[ALKEN, Henry, artist]. NIMROD (pseud. of C.J. Apperley). Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton, Esq. Formerly M.P. for Shrewsbury, High Sheriff for the Counties of Salup & Merioneth, and Major of the North Stropshire Yeomanry Cavalry. With Notices of His Hunting, Shooting, Driving, Racing, Eccentric and Extravagant Exploits By Nimrod. With Numerous Illustrations by H. Alken and T.J. Rawlins. Second Edition. Reprinted with considerable Additions from the New Sporting Magazine. London: R. Ackermann, 1837.

Second and enlarged edition, with additions to the text and six extra hand-colored plates. Tall octavo )9 7/8 x 5 3/4 in; 240 x 146 mm). ix, [3], 206, [2], [8], as publisher's catalog] pp. Extra-engraved title page. Eighteen hand-colored aquatint plates.

Publisher's original green pebbled cloth with large trophy vignette in gilt enclosing title, and gilt lettered spine with dog and rabbit gilt stamps bordering title and "1837" in gilt at foot. All edges gilt. Yellow endpapers. 

Abbey, Life, 385.  Tooley 67.  Schwerdt 1, p. 38.  Martin Hardie, pp. 185-186.  Prideaux, p. 326.         

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Annals Of Sporting, 1809; Or Take This Horse And Shove It!

By Stephen J. Gertz

Titlepage.

In 1809, the great caricaturist, Thomas Rowlandson, engraved plates after designs by two other celebrated caricaturists, Henry Bunbury and George Moutard Woodward, for Annals of Sporting, a satire of contemporary sporting anecdotes by "Caleb Quizem Esq." Sporting anecdotes as a literary genre would not recover until refreshed by Pierce Egan, his fundamental contributions to sports journalism collected as Sporting Anecdotes in 1823.

How to Vault from the Saddle

In 1808, the year before Annals of Sporting was published, Rowlandson engraved the plates after Bunbury designs for the first collected edition of The Annals of Horsemanship and The Academy For Grown Horsemen, both satires by "Geoffrey Gambado" originally appearing in the late 18th century. The author of its text,  the pseudonymous Gambado, has been tentatively identified as the antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose, best known for his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785).

The True Method of sitting on a Horse Mathematically Delineated.

"The text consists of sixteen letters to, and answers by C. Quizem. The first letter relates the amusing story of a sportsman mistaking his wig for a hare, and bang went the contents of the gun, and the fancied hare lay prostrate!" (Chute).

Only here are wigs considered fair game for hopeless hunters; they rarely provide much skill to fell and, significantly, don't bite when wounded. This holds true for all known species.

Game Wigs.

A Long Bob; A Short Bob.
A Black Scratch; A Physical Tie.
A Sir Cloudesley Shovel; A Three Tier.

"The text, in the form of letters, is a satire on sporting anecdotes and cockney sportsmen..." (Mary Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vol. 8, no. 11479A).

The Bucephalus Riding Academy for grown Gentlemen.

The author behind the pseudonym "Caleb Quizem Esq." remains unknown. Considering that Rowlandson and Bunbury had earlier collaborated on the two Gambado volumes satirizing horsemanship and that Francis Grose was, apparently, responsible for the volumes' text*, it would seem reasonable to presume that Grose wrote the text to Rowlandson and Bunbury's Annals Of Sporting. The portrait engraving of Quizem, with its references to Gambado and Annals of Horsemanship, certainly suggests it.

However, after checking Grose's pulse I learned that not only is he indeed defunct but that he died in 1791, eighteen years before Annals Of Sporting. He thus seems an unlikely candidate for its authorship. Unless, of course, he shows up as one of the ringleaders of the looming zombie invasion and stakes his claim as Quizem, inquisitor of correspondents amongst the sporting set.

Hounds.

The Black Straddler [and] The short legg;d Shag Hound.

The deliriously amusing plates in Annals Of Sporting include: The Bucephalus Riding Academy for grown Gentlemen (frontispiece); How to Vault from the Saddle; The True Method of sitting on a Horse Mathematically Delineated; How a Man may Shoot his own Wig; The Maid of Mim; Costume of Hogs Norton” (two plates); Game Wigs (two plates); Hounds (two plates); Mathematical Horsemanship (six plates); Fashionable Furniture at Hogs Norton (two plates); and The Bailiffs Hunt (eight plates).

Caleb Quizem Esq.

Note volumes on book stand:
Annals of Horsemanship and Tristram Shandy.

Further note portrait in background of "Geoffrey Gambado,"
i.e. Francis Grose, who wrote the text to Annals of Horsemanship;
Henry Bunbury designed its engravings.

Commonly rebound, the book is rather rare in the publisher's boards (original price 10s. 6d).  "Caleb Quizem" appears to have written only one other book,  another satire titled Economy: a Pindaric Tale in Three Parts (1811).

"First edition of a coloured-plate Sporting-book, which is esteemed on account of its humorous plates by Rowlandson..." (Schwerdt).

"The Rowlandson colour-plates are most humorous" Chute).

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[ROWLANDSON, Thomas, engraver. BUNBURY, Henry and George Moutard Woodward, artists]. QUISEM, Caleb (pseudonym). The Annals of Sporting. By Caleb Quizem Esq. and his Various Correspondents. London: Thomas Tegg, 1809.

First edition. Twelvemo (6 3/4 x 4 in; 171 x 105 mm). [10], 104 pp., untrimmed. Hand-colored fold-out frontispiece engraved by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry Bunbury, hand-colored vignette title of a rider falling from Pegasus, and twenty-six hand-colored etched plates by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry Bunbury, George Moutard Woodward, and possibly others.

Publisher's original printed boards. Publisher's advertisements printed on rear board within ornamental border.

Not found in Abbey, Tooley, nor, surprisingly, Siltzer.

Schwerdt II, pp. 119-120. Chute 533. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, p. 178.  Falk, p. 216. Grolier, Rowlandson 63.
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*“Gambado is said to have been Francis Grose, compiler of  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” (Riely, John C.  Horace Walpole and ‘the Second Hogarth’, in Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Autumn, 1975).
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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Of related Interest:

When Horses and Human Keisters Collide.

The Story Of Nobody, By Somebody, Illustrated By Someone.
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Sometimes A Not So Great Notion, Or When Buffoons Horse Around (1831)

By Stephen J. Gertz

 A good rider can hear his horse speak to him, a great rider can hear his horse whisper, but a bad rider won't hear his horse even if it screams at him. 

• • •

 Right now it's only a notion. l think l can get money to make it into a concept, then turn it into an idea - Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), Annie Hall.

 

I have a NOTION that DUCROW could not excel this...his is all Art, mine Nature.

Some notions are best left just that particularly when they get into the heads of amateurs with horseback ambitions and delusions of grandeur. Slapstick ensues.

I had no NOTION of the Comforts of Hunting by Water.

1831-33. Henry Alken, sporting caricaturist, had a great notion that a series of engraved plates with wittily understated captions satirizing  men on steeds at unsafe speeds and the horse's ass on horseback would tickle the withers of those who find the pretensions of the upwardly mobile downright funny, i.e. everybody. He turned the notion into a concept, the concept into an idea, and Sporting Notions was born, twisting the not-so-great notions of nincompoops in the saddle into a great lampoon.

I have a NOTION that this Bridge will a-Bridge my Sport.

Inspired perhaps by circus performer Andrew Ducrow (1793-1842), "The Father of British Circus Equestrianism," and his popular acrobatics on horseback act at Astley's Amphitheater, Alken, who took special glee when riders landed on their glutes, imagined them as inept performers in a bent Cirque du Soliel, equestrian ninnies in a cirque du oy vey.

I have a NOTION that this may be called "Riding to the hounds at a Smashing rate."

In thirty-six soft-ground etched and aquatint plates, Alken skewers those in over their heads on horseback and drowning while on a fox hunt. Somewhere, the fox is on the sidelines texting his den mates, "ROTFLMAO."

I had a NOTION that Timber jumping was quite an easy thing.
I held him TIGHT in hand, too.

Henry Thomas Alken (1785-1841)  "was the dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century... he delivered a long series of designs to the leading sporting printsellers—S. and J. Fuller, Thomas McLean, and Rudolph Ackermann among others.

"He was also a prolific designer, etcher, and lithographer of scenes relating to racing, shooting, coaching, and other sports... He wrote several books on aspects of engraving, including The Art and Practice of Engraving (1849).

"In later life he drifted into ill health, consumption, and poverty... He died in the early summer of 1851" (Oxford DNB)

 I have a NOTION  that the Brute is going to make the best of his way out
and leave us to shift for ourself.

I have a NOTION this is not the HARD way the Man told us of.

Quite scarce, only four copies of Sporting Notions have come to auction within the last thirty-six years but only one, twenty-eight years ago at Christie's in 1984, was colored.

Modern litterateurs will have picked up the reference to Ken Kesey's magnum opus in today's headline, the hard-headed Stamper family's motto, "Never Give An Inch," apropos of the the stubborn pride exhibited by the soft-headed whose self-appraisal of their skills on horseback is off by a mile.

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ALKEN, Henry. Sporting Notions. London: T. McLean, 1831-33.

First edition. Oblong quarto (10 1/4 x 14 1/8 in; 261 x 358 mm). Thirty-six hand-colored soft-ground etchings and aquatints with tissue guards as issued without title page, watermarked 1831-1833.

Tooley 54. Siltzer p. 73.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

Slightly Nuts But Not Crazy: Artist Henry Alken Lampoons Art.

A Horse's Ass In The Saddle, With Henry Alken.
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Thoroughbred Collection of Rare Books On Show At Texas A & M

By Nancy Mattoon

Wood Cut of the Unicorn From:
The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes (1607),
by Edward Topsell.

(All Images Courtesy of Texas A&M University.)

If the Cheshire Cat seems to have an extraordinarily wide grin on his puss this year, or if you notice that Doctor Doolittle has a bit more spring in his step than usual, it might be because they know 2011 has been named World Veterinary Year. The dedicated professionals who keep the wag in Fido's tail are commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the world's first school of veterinary medicine. Back in 1761 French veterinarian Claude Bourgelat opened the doors of the first college dedicated to animal health in Lyon, and four years later unveiled a second veterinary school in Paris. And at least one library has found the perfect way to celebrate: The Medical Sciences Library at Texas A&M University is displaying for the first time a newly acquired collection of rare books about animal care valued at just under $650,000.

The Equine Nervous System From:
The Anatomy of An Horse (1687),
By Andrew Snape.

The rare book library now at home in the Lone Star State was a lifelong labor of love created by English veterinarian John G.P. Wood of Reepham (near Norwich). Dr. Wood, a rural practitioner specializing in large animals, built a collection of over 900 volumes dating as far back as 1528, with a special emphasis on equine medicine and farriery. According to Esther Carrigan, associate dean and director of the Medical Sciences Library, "It’s a collection that every veterinary school in the world would envy... and several of these books are not owned by any other library." The volumes form a veritable history of veterinary medicine from the 16th to the early 20th century, with a special emphasis on diseases of the horse, an animal of critical importance for farming, transportation, and the military.

Title Page of:
Vegetii Renati Artis Veterinariae (1528),
By Publius Vegetius Renatus.

Several of the volumes in the Texas A&M collection are particularly noteworthy. One of the oldest books in the collection was printed in 1528, but it was translated from Greek into Latin, and greatly expanded, way back in 480 AD by the Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. Vegetii Renati Artis Veterinariae contains some of the best information available on ancient horse breeds. Vegetius created a list of sixteen highly valued types of horses, which he compiled from his travels throughout the ancient world. The list was created to help buyers avoid being defrauded by unscrupulous horse traders misrepresenting the origin of their livestock. The large amount of equine health information in the volume has led some scholars to label it "the first published book on veterinary medicine."

Topsell's 1607 Title Page,
Graced By A Rather Unusual Creature.

Another of the rare volumes in the collection is The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes by Edward Topsell. Published in 1607, it features superb woodcut illustrations accompanied by vivid descriptions of creatures both real and imagined. The wolf and dog are featured alongside the unicorn and manticore. Topsell's text gives insight into the Elizabethan world's view of both domesticated and wild animals. Much of his "scientific information" is questionable, for example that lemmings graze in the clouds, but the volume stands on its beauty alone. It was magnificently printed in London by William Jaggard, the same man who would go on to publish Shakespeare’s first folio.

Robert Almond's Exceedingly Rare,
The English Horsman and Complete Farrier. (1673.)

Another notable work is The English Horsman and Complete Farrier: directing all gentlemen and others how to breed, feed, ride, and diet all kind of horses whether for war, race, or other service: with a discovery of the causes, signs, and cures of all diseases, both internal and external, incident to horses: alphabetically digested: with The humours of a Smithfield jockey, (Whew!) by Robert Almond. The title page states the author "Is a well known and skillful farrier of the city of London, practicing therein above 45 years." This book was first published in 1673. "It is considered extremely rare and some British book dealers we have consulted say they have never seen a copy of it in over 50 years," says Carrigan.

Andrew Snape's 1687 Volume,
The Anatomy of An Horse.

Two later works are also considered especially important. The Anatomy of an Horse (1687), by Andrew Snape, is one of the earliest written in English on equine anatomy, and is often called the first modern veterinary textbook. And A Domestic Treatise on the Diseases of Horses and Dogs, was written by Delabere Blaine in 1803. Blaine was trained as a surgeon for humans, but became known as the "Father of Canine Medicine," after spending twenty years as a veterinarian in London, seeing between two and three thousand hounds, terriers, and lap dogs annually.

Woodcut Of The Horse From:
The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes (1607),
by Edward Topsell.

The entire collection is currently being processed at the Medical Sciences Library. Rare materials will be housed in the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, home of Texas A&M’s rare books, manuscripts and archives. The volumes will no doubt be invaluable to the students of Texas A&M's School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, which was established in 1916, and is the state’s only veterinary medicine school, as well as one of the largest in North America.

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The Comic (and True!) Misadventures of a Man Maladjusted to a Horse

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Shivering the timbers"

The Reins of Terror: The Count can't cantor, leaps to contusions, falls to the rear. Tally Ha! Ha! Ha!

"Larking - more dirt, the less hurt!"

Poor Count Sandor. He visits his friend, Lord Alvanley, in Leicestershire, gets on a horse, participates in a fox hunt, and spends half of his time trying to stay on his mount, the other half on his keister.

"Doing it well"

Count Sandor's Exploits in Leicestershire, published by R. Ackermann, Jr., son of the great English publisher of prints, Rudolph Ackermann, in 1833, is a color-plate book of extraordinary scarceness, with OCLC/KVK noting only one copy in library holdings worldwide (Union Catalogue Italy). The ten mounted hand-colored aquatints by Edward Duncan (1803-1882) after paintings by John Ferneley make their Internet debut here on Booktryst.

"A flying leap! - après vous monsieur"

The British Museum has no records in its online database for individual prints from this series, nor of  Ferneley's original paintings upon which these aquatint engravings were based.  This is the first copy to come to market in eighteen years of this classic, desirable, and priceless visual narrative of a woefully inept equestrian with a marvelous self-deprecating sense of humor.

"That's your sort"

 "Smooth glides the water where the brook is deep"

 "He's off! - no, he's on! - he hangs by the rein!"

"At first sight these drawings appear to be, more or less, examples of caricature, but, as a matter of fact, they are actual adventures, described first hand and in ludicrous terms to the artist by the hero, and depicted in the same spirit.

"Taking it coolly - very like a whale!"

 "Yooi - over he goes!"

"Count Sandor, the performer in this pictorial epic, was a Hungarian nobleman who spent one season at Melton Mowbray, on a visit to Lord Alvanley. His daring horsemanship, together with the ensuing mishaps, were the provocation to many a merry laugh over the Melton dinner tables, at the time and long after" (Siltzer).

"A Floorer - pick up the pieces!"

"John Ferneley (1782–1860), sporting painter, was born on 18 May 1782 in the village of Thrussington, 6 miles from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. In 1801 he began a three-year apprenticeship to the Leicestershire-born sporting artist Ben Marshall (1768–1835). Within ten years of starting his apprenticeship Ferneley was earning in excess of £200 a year. The centre of the sporting world, the ‘queen of the shires’ (Brownlow), was Melton Mowbray, and in 1813 Ferneley took lodgings there and in the following year he built in the town first a studio and then a substantial house.. From 1818 onwards he proudly signed his paintings ‘John Ferneley, Melton Mowbray’ and never lacked commissions. He was a prolific painter. Between 1806 and 1853 Ferneley exhibited twenty-two pictures at the Royal Academy, four at the British Institution, and thirteen at Suffolk Street. His average earnings were about £400 a year" (Oxford DNB).

I have a personal affection for British caricature and its often go-for-the-jugular satire. Booktryst recently covered one of Henry Alken's rarer color-plate books satirizing the pretensions of a Londoner inept in the saddle. What makes this volume so very special is that the object of the satire is the one telling the jokes at his own expense, and delightfully so.

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FERNELEY, J. Count Sandor's Exploits in Leicestershire. London: R. Ackermann, Jr. 1833. First edition. Folio (16 x 19 in; 408 x 494 mm). Ten mounted hand-colored aquatints by E. Duncan after J. Ferneley, captioned London, Pub.d 1st Aug.t 1833 by R. Ackermann Jun.r at his ECLIPSE Sporting Gallery, 191 Regent St., each full margined measuring 14 1/4 x 16 1/2 inches (357 x 420 mm).

Siltzer 121 (2d ed., 1841). Wilder p. 126. Bobins 775. Mellon Prints, p. 72. Not in Schwert.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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A Horse's Ass in the Saddle, with Henry Alken

by Stephen J. Gertz

"There's nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse," Sir Ronald said. But Lord Reagan never rode Flossie, upon whose back my insides were pureed and my outsides left as an ugly  palette of hematomas. Of my bones and sinews the less said the better.

But I get ahead of myself, as I would soon get ahead of the horse.

I am nothing if not a gentleman, and what is a gentleman if not a skilled horseman, I ask? And so, accompanied by my faithful companion, Sancho, I went for a relaxing ride in the country just outside of London where we could walk, trot, and gallop our steeds without fear of moving violations amidst the clamor and clutter of the City. Traffic's a bugger, Jack.

"Dissatisfied."

We mounted our horses at the stable. I was immediately dissatisfied: While the stableman looked on with bloody annoying amusement I attempted to move Flossie off the ten-penny piece she had stalled upon, alas to little effect. It was as if the coin was the last upon earth and Flossie a miser; the nag would not budge. Sancho's horse, apparently a precocious student of geology, was transfixed by the rocks in its immediate path. By the look of him, you'd think the horse a jeweler examining a gem; if the plug had asked for a loupe I would not have been thrown for one.

"Knights - View of the City Road."

Finally, we took off, knights on the City Road. And shortly thereafter, so, too, did the wind, almost taking us off our horses. "No more beans for breakfast," I flatulently noted to Sancho, whose horse, the geologist, looked back at him as if to say, "Hey, Stinky, lay off the Limburger!" The malodorous gale blew out our umbrellas, which we brought along to insure a full day of uninterrupted sunshine. Had we not brought umbrellas a monsoon would have surely engulfed us, its thumb on its nose with fingers wiggling, the universal sign for "na na-na na na!"

"The pleasure of riding in company.
One would stop if the other could."

Nostrils flared and offended our horses took off, alas and appropriately like  farts in a windstorm. We passed a lone gravestone. "The last guy to ride this scrag," I thought to myself as my life simultaneously passed before me. I swear, the horses levitated. Mine had its head to the heavens as if imploring the Creator, "Get this idiot off of me - pleeeze!" It was then that I lost all confidence in my ride, as I suspect Flossie lost all confidence in me. A horse with an opinion cannot be trusted.

"Symptoms of Things going Downhill."

Thus, we soon experienced symptoms of things going downhill, fast, the horses, apparently, of the opinion that, things heading in that direction anyway, the metaphysical should be equally met. While I struggled to get mine moving - the damned dobbin was gazing longingly into the distance as if seeing an end in sight that I was unfortunately blind to and could not enjoy - Sancho's couldn't keep his eyes off of the rocks on the ground in front of him, and I felt sorry for my compatriot: To be ignored in favor of the igneous is an ignominy not soon forgotten.

 

"The consequences of having plenty of company on the road."

How is it that one can be out in the middle of nowhere with not another human being in sight yet a drayman appears out of the blue, onto the ground, and directly in our path to vex us, throw our horses into a tizzy and us nearly off of them? It was as if our Lord, Jesus, had enlisted Loki, the Trickster, to make our day one for the scrapbook of woe. "You gents need a lift?" the drayman impertinently asked with a degree of evil glee usually associated with Satan collecting on a contract. My soul withered as I slipped my steed's withers.

"Preparing for the Easter Hunt (I shall be over Jack)."

"Whither thou goest?" I ruthfully thought afterward. The question was soon answered: right up to a fence. The horses would have none of it. Sancho's decided to tip-toe and take it one leg at a time. Mine, obviously still smarting from the hatchet-job the horse barber gave his tail (ouch!), tried to eject me from the saddle as he took wing over the barrier. My hat remains in mid-air in that spot to this day, testimony to my being scared stiff. The only part of me not stiff was my upper lip, which had  lost all tone, slackened, and now limply flapped when I tried to speak, making enunciation a challenge, to say the least. But since I couldn't say the least or much of anything else, the issue was moot.

"One of the comforts of riding in company."

We now come to the denouement of our equestrian jaunt into Hell in the hinterlands. Just when I thought that things could not get any worse, a bee landed on Flossie's anus, stung, and thence inspired her to perform a psychotic Highland fling that flung me over the high side and onto my backside. Swept up in the choreography, Sancho's horse joined Flossie, and the two performed a pas de deux worthy of Terpsichore,  if Terpsichore had four legs, a snout, and grazed on locoweed. Sancho bounced twice and rolled before coming to a full stop.

I thought of Shakespeare, Henry V: "When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes."

But the down-to-earth pains of reality stabbed my posterior, all romance bled-out, and I recalled the definition of horseback riding: "The art of keeping a horse between you and the ground."

And then: "Horse sense is what keeps horses from betting on people."

Finally: "Horse sense is what keeps amateurs from riding them."

If only I'd had any. Clearly, Bucephalus would be the death of us.

I grabbed my spare hat from mid-air, Sancho and I dusted ourselves off, swallowed our pride, and let the horses ride us home, total  collapse of our spinal columns a small price to pay for peace of mind.
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ALKEN, Henry. Specimens of Riding Near London. Drawn from Life.
London: Published by Thomas M'Lean...,1821.
First edition (second edition, 1823). Oblong folio.
Printed title and eighteen hand-colored engraved plates.
Tooley 52.

The Plates:

1.  One of the comforts of riding in company. H. Alken 1821.
2.  Symptoms of Things going downhill. H. Alken 1821.
3.  The pleasure of riding in company. One would stop if the other Could. H. Alken 1821.
4.  Preparing for the Easter Hunt (I shall be over Jack). H. Alken 1821.
5. The Consequences of having plenty of company on the Road. H. Alken 1821.
6.  A thing of the last consequence. H. Alken 1821.
7.  Delighted. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
8.  Perfectly satisfied. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
9.  Dissatisfied. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
10. Surprised. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
11. Displeased. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
12. Terrified. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
13. 'Taste - View near Knigtsbridge. Drawn and Engraved by S. Alken Septr. 1, 1821.
14. Lords - View in Hyde Park. Oct. 1, 1821.
15. Yeomanry of England paying a visit. H. Alken del et sc. 1821.
16. Fancy - View near Grays Inn Road. Drawn and Engraved by S. Alken Septr.1, 1821.
17. Folly - View near Acton. Drawn and Engraved by S. Alken Septr. 1, 1821.
18. Knights - View in the City Road. Oct. 1, 1821.
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Henry Alken (1785-1851) was an English painter and engraver  known primarily as a caricaturist and illustrator of sporting subjects and coaching scenes, with an eye often cocked to the follies of human behavior.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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When Horses and Human Keisters Collide

Thirty-thousand years ago, horses began to appear in cave-paintings. Their domestication occurred between 4000-3500 BCE. The Botai culture of modern Khazakstan, land of the superb Cossack horsemen, were early masters of horseback riding. The Blackfoot tribe of Native-Americans of the Plains were noted for their expert horsemanship.

Nations stood or fell upon the back of a horse. The trade in horses was lively, and sharp salesmen could make a killing: “A horse! A horse! My Kingdom for a horse!” Such a deal; I imagine the horse-trader in this hustle retired quite comfortably after fleecing Richard the Fool; he would have settled for a hamlet in Herefordshire. Never spill your guts to a horse- or car-salesman.

 

 By the nineteenth century, owning and riding a horse was as necessary as owning and driving a car is today, essential for personal transportation.

And the number of blockheads then behind the reins was no less than those behind the wheel today. Today’s driving school is yesterday’s equestrian academy. One imagines the frustrations of riding instructors in that era to be as acute as driving instructors now experience, leading to transient ischemic attacks just shy of lethal heart attack or stroke.

You can lead a horseman to water but you can’t make them think. So, cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of the wary: These horseback riders are a menace to themselves and the public.

However, all is not lost (except dignity); help is on the way.

Presenting An Academy for Grown Horsemen; Containing the Completest Instructions for Walking, Trotting, Cantering, Galloping, Stumbling, and Tumbling by “Geofrey Gambado,” with hand-colored copper-plate engravings by Henry Bunbury, along with Annals of Horsemanship, a piquant account of uneasy posteriors on anxious ponies and subsequent accidents. Both books are quite rare.

Never has the human heine had such comic impact with saddles.

But who the heck is Geofrey Gambado, who snaps quips with a buggy whip?

“Gambado is said to have been Francis Grose, compiler of  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” (Riely, John C.  Horace Walpole and ‘the Second Hogarth’, in Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Autumn, 1975). In addition to his works on antiquities, satiric essays, and volumes on non-standard words and meanings, Francis Grose (1731-1791) wrote Rules for Drawing Caricaturas: with an Essay on Comic Painting (1788).

“Though only an indifferent draughtsman, he mixed with professional and amateur artists, and exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1767–8 and at the Royal Academy in the nine years following” (Oxford Online DNB). The frontispiece portrait of “Gambado” in The Academy, unsigned (all other signed Bunbury), bears an uncanny resemblance to Grose: a “stocky, corpulent figure which Grose himself caricatured" (DNB).

 The stipple engraved plates were designed by Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811). "Bunbury owed much during his lifetime to the charm of a genial nature, and to his position as a man of family and education. West flattered him, and Walpole enthusiastically compared him to Hogarth. He was the friend of Goldsmith, Garrick, and Reynolds, and the favourite of the Duke and Duchess of York, to whom in 1787 he was appointed equerry. All this, coupled with the facts that he was seldom, if ever, personal, and wholly abstained from political subjects, greatly aided his popularity with the printsellers and the public of his day, and secured his admission, as an honorary exhibitor, to the walls of the Academy, where between 1780 and 1808 his works frequently appeared… [They] are not without a good deal of grotesque drollery of the rough-and-ready kind in vogue towards the end of the last century¾that is to say, drollery depending in a great measure for its laughable qualities upon absurd contrasts, ludicrous distortions, horseplay, and personal misadventure." (DNB).

 “’The lovers of humor were inconsolable for the loss of Hogarth, but from his ashes a number of sportive geniuses have sprung up, and the works of Bunbury [et al] have entertained us’ (Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, May 1790). Just at this time, one of these ‘sportive geniuses’ was at the height of his popularity. Of the many amateur caricaturists who flourished during the second half of the eighteenth century, Bunbury was undoubtedly the most famous. His talents for depicting humorous incidents of everyday life and manners established him as a master of the burlesque, and his reputation in social caricature rivaled that of Thomas Rowlandson or James Gillray.” (Op cit Riely, p.28).

A “singulier ouvrage” (Brunet).
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[BUNBURY, Henry]. Gambado, Geoffrey (pseud.). An Academy for Grown Horsemen; Containing the Completest Instructions for Walking, Trotting, Cantering, Galloping, Stumbling, and Tumbling. Illustrated with Copper Plates, and Adorned with a Portrait of the Author. London: Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly, 1812.

[With:]

[BUNBURY, Henry]. Gambado, Geofrey (pseud.). Annals of Horsemanship: Containing Accounts of Accidental Experiments and Experimental Accidents, Both Successful and Unsuccessful: Communicated by Various Correspondents to Geoffrey Gambado, Esq.…Together with Most Instructive Remarks Thereon, and Answers Thereto, by that Accomplished Genius. And Now First Published, by the Editor of the Academy for Grown Horsemen. Illustrated with Cuts by the Most Eminent Artists. London: Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly, 1812.

First Collected Edition, originally issued separately in 1785 and 1791 respectively with the engravings in sepia only. Two works in one large quarto volume (12 7/8 x 9 3/4 in; 315 x 250 mm). Hand colored frontispiece, xxviii, 36, eleven hand colored plates; [1 half-title], [printer’s imprint], hand colored frontispiece, xix, [1 blank], 81, [blank], [1 directions to binder], [1 blank, sixteen hand colored plates, pp. With the original title label neatly mounted on blank.

Fourth editions of Gambano’s droll classics on horsemanship featuring Bunbury’s humorous caricatures, issued here as one volume with separate title pages and hand colored plates as called for, the plates in prior editions typically in sepia only.

Cf. Huth 52. Cf. UCBA I,633. CF. Lowndes 860. Cf. Graesse III,22. Cf. Podeschi 90. Cf. Lewine 204. Cf. Allibone, vol I, p.282. Cf. Brunet II, 1474.

Color Plates in Academy…:

Portrait of Gambado
The Mistaken Notion
A Bit of Blood
One Way to Stop Your Horse
How to Ride Genteel and Agreeable Down Hill
How to Lose Your Way
How to Turn Any Horse, Mare, or Gelding
How to Stop Your Horse at Pleasure
How to be Run Away With
How to Pass a Carriage
How to Ride a Horse on Three Legs
How to Ride Up Hyde Park

Color Plates in Annals:

The Apotheosis of Geoffrey Gambado
Mr. Gambado Seeing the World in a Six Mile Tour Famed in History
Dr. Cassock F.R.S. T.P.Q. Inventor of the Noble Puzzle for Tumble Down Horses
The Puzzle for the Dog, The Puzzle for the Horse, The Puzzle for Turk, Frenchman, or, Christian
How to Make the Most of a Horse
How to Make the Least of Him
How to Do Things by Halves
Tricks Upon Travellers
Love and Wind
Me & My Wife and Daughter
How to Make the Mare to Go
How to Prevent the Horse Slipping his Girths
How to Ride Without a Bridle
A Daisy Cutter with his Varieties
The Tumbler, or its Affinities
A Horse with a Nose
How to Travel Upon Two Legs in a Frost