Washington Winter Show 2013

42 The landed gentry also began coaching for recreation, and the Bensington Association, the first driving club, was founded in 1806. The coaching boom continued into the 1830s, but by the mid-19th century, the railway took over as the least expensive and far more rapid mode of transit across the countryside in both England and America. The transition to railways was dependent on forward-thinking entrepreneurship. In France, for example, railways were not made legal until the 1840s, and as a result coaching was en vogue longer. By the early 1850s, coaching in London had petered out to the point that only a single coach was in operation in the city. 6 Coaching was preserved as a recreational activity by members of society and aristocracy who formed clubs in England and America in the latter half of the nineteenth century to pleasure drive and reenact the old mail coach runs. In London To-day: The Illustrated Handbook of the Season of 1885, the meets of the Four-in-Hand and Coaching Clubs at Hyde Park were described; “The coaches of these clubs are built on the model of the old mail-coaches of fifty years ago, and therefore answer the purpose of being useless except for show.” 7 The detailed early twentieth century English sterling silver coach [Fig. 1], complete with removable post horn, is a model of a typical “park drag,” a style of coach which is a lighter, more elegant version of the road coach. A park drag, or a “drag,” is also known as a private coach. It has seats atop and is usually driven with four well- matched carriage breeds, often Hackneys. The tradition continued into the twentieth century with the founding of additional clubs, such as the British Driving Society. Coaching weekends and national and international competitions are still held today in dressage, cross country, and cone driving events with singles, pairs, tandems, and teams of horses or ponies. FOXHUNTING By the time coaching reached its heyday in the early 1800s, foxhunting was already a long established pastime that had flourished as a country pursuit. Equine bloodlines were developed and hound packs trained and bred for speed and stamina across country. The enclosure movement tamed the land and set the stage for a rural landscape suited to the chase in England. This created a challenging and exhilarating sport which required skill to master. By the first half of the nineteenth century foxhunting had become an activity pursued nationally, undertaken not only by the aristocracy but also by the rural and urban upper middle class with subscription financed hunts. 8 Foxhunting was also pursued in America with the introduction in the mid 1600s This page is sponsored by Linda Bogaczyk, Jane Brookins, and Angie Leith Fig. 6: Edmund Henry Osthaus (American, 1858–1928), A Brace of Pointers in a Marsh. Watercolor on paper, 10½ x 14½ inches. On loan from Mrs. Jacqueline B. Mars.