HORSE SHOW WEEK
By RAWLE KNOX
IF the Dublin air in Horse Show Week is not quite champagne it is at least black velvet ; champagne certainly mingles with the local porter. The Horse Show must be the only sporting event left— save Canterbury Cricket Week?—in which a whole community feels that it shares, and this is a community of half a million persons. From unlikely doorways in broody Dublin suburbs flit determinedly fashionable bird-of-paradise hats to the parade at Ballsbridge. For the week is largely a feminine festival ; as consciously as at Ascot women rival the horses. But among the men, too, many of whom have only one thought about the Horse Show—a resolve not to attend it—there appears a wave of blue suits that engulfs the common homespun. All Dublin regards the week as worthy of effort.
There are dances everywhere ; dancing ranks only slightly behind racing and drinking among Ireland's national sports. There is a race-meeting at the beautiful Leopardstown course and two at Phoenix Park. (" Entrance, 205. ; students, 55." To go racing is part of one's education in Ireland.) And all the while the Show is packed with people. On the aisle benches in the Industrial Exhibi- tion tired fathers sit and remove their boots while their indestructible offspring still point and question. In the Jumping Enclosure crowds who are totally ignorant of the subtleties of exhibition jumping " ooh " and " aah " at each failure and success.
The Show's Industrial Exhibition, like all such displays nowadays, wore a slightly mocking face. The de Valera Government's policy has been that if Britain or anyone else can make it, so can Eire. And so she can, granted the possibility of importing the where- withal to do the making. Business was reported to be brisk, for this was not quite such a Utopian shop-window as the " Britain Can Make It." Nevertheless, there were paradoxes. Hot and dusty Dubliners, after a lunch-hour of searching for a pub that had not run out of stout, could watch a painstaking demonstration of how Guinness is brewed. C.I.E. (the transport corporation) displayed a shining replica of the driving-cab of its newest locomotive, to see which visitors had to travel to Ballsbridge in some of the most antiquated rolling-stock in Europe. Altogether publicity made Industry the beauty queen, while Agriculture, who is the'Martha of the two sisters in Ireland, was not dressed as one on whom the future of the country depends.
Friday was the day of days, when military teams from France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, England and Ireland competed for the Aga Khan Cup in the jumping arena. The President arrived in an open coach, escorted by the troop of Blue Hussars so strongly reminiscent of the Monaco soldiers in Sacha Guitry's Roman d'un Tricheur—who marched with quick clockwork steps as easily back- wards as forwards. The President wears a natural dignity, and on Friday he needed it. It was Intended that he should drive round the arena, but by ill-luck the lead horses of his coach shied at the start, and the traces became hopelessly entangled. The ensuing con- fusion was riotously enjoyed by the crowd and most calmly accepted by the President, and no one had any foolish sensibility about loss of face. Then the competing teams rode in, and their national anthems were played. English visitors, who at home seldom open their mouths before " Send him victorious . . .," seemed to feel that here an effort was called for, and sang loud and true. (" Ah, blood's thicker than porter," commented a Dubliner, unable to resist a pun.) And, as if again to repel the English, the Soldier's Song rang out with Gaelic fervour. But the English won, and in doing so provided the Show's greatest paradox: The team was entered unofficially—their victory was a fine example of independent enter- prise—and was mounted on commandeered German horses, one of which, Notar, had triumphed for the Germans before the war. The jumping perfectly represented the countries that competed. The French had their usual fire and dash, and not quite enough accuracy ; the Italians a little less fire and dash, and even more inaccuracy. The Swedes and the Swiss—it was good to see them, yes, and Captain Holm of Sweden, on Grim, provided the best individual performance of the Show, but one did feel they should be on skis, not horses. This left the horse-loving Irish to fight it out with the horse-loving English, and in the end the Irish were just mastered. Thus the ceremony ended with the President handing the Cup to Lt.-Col. A. B. Scott, and standing, hatless, while the band again played " God Save the King," an unusual enough finale for any event in Ireland.
Records seem easy to make and easier to break, and it does not mean much to say that this was a record Horse Show ; 152,204 people passed through the turnstiles—not a very striking figure when you know that Dublin's population was swelled by 200,000 visitors. Over r,too horses were entered for the Show, another record figure ; but owing to the decline of hunting in England and the difficulty of finding fodder the number of sales was not outstanding. Sales of race-horses were larger, though prices had risen to more than three times those of 1939.
It mattered more than the figures that the ladies of Dublin, young and old, were saying that the Show was " as good as before the war." Young and old, of course, meant different things and different wars, but the fact that they were happy was a measure of the Show's success. The Irish who think about these matters realise that the best proof of their new nationhood is to show the world a way of life worth living. This month the Royal Dublin Society, out of pride in the past, and the Irish Government, of design for the future, put on a Show to demonstrate that in Catholic, capitalist Ireland you can still find the splendid gaiety that in other countries is a fading memory.
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