CHAPTER XI
THE DOUBTFUL DAY
DOUBTFUL days—that is to say, days on which one does not know whether to go to hounds or stay at home—are great bores. To be sure, a native has no great business to be bothered by them, seeing that he has no need to “turn out” on other than undoubted days, and can chop over to his other occupations should a day seem unpropitious; but in a sport-stinting season, even natives are very apt to try and get a day that, in a favourable winter, would be rejected. Gentlemen who leave their homes for the purpose of hunting are fairly excusable for going sliding and slipping to a meet. Not but that even they had better stay at their lodgings and read the “Annual Register,” or whatever work of light reading they have brought with them.
Speaking of the season, 1846-7, our friend Scott, after prefacing his observations by declaring that he “doesn’t wish to say anything unhandsome of the weather, or of anybody,” denounces it as “the most tricky, capricious, unhandsome season he ever remembers.” “It is not the frost and snow that I complain of,” says he, “though we had enough of them in all conscience, but it was the dirty, deceitful, delusive sort of changing that kept raising men’s hopes, apparently for no other purpose than ‘dashing them to spinage.’ ”
Of course he spoke of the weather in Mr. Neville’s country, but we believe it was pretty much the same all over. After an inordinate quantity of frost and snow, from the end of November to the beginning of January, there was a slight cessation, and the wide-awake ones actually got a few days’ hunting in some countries. At the end of the first week, however, just as all the packs were again blooming into advertisement, back came the frost, harder, if possible, than ever, accompanied by a fresh fall of snow; and again, about the last week of the month, they both disappeared, and hunting was resumed with all the advantages of first-rate scent, to be again stopped on the 31st, by the return of frost and snow. Then look at that little snuffling, shabby month of February, one that in ordinary seasons we reckon as the second best hunting one of the year. It came in, of course, with a white coat and an icicled nose, when all of a sudden, on the night of the 4th, it turned to a thaw, the west wind got up and cleared the country of snow in an incredibly short space of time, when lo! as all the snow-broth yet floated on the fields, back came the frost on the 7th, caking it on the top, to the damage, if not the destruction, of the wheat crops, and then a fall of snow succeeded to keep all snug. Now that we call very unhandsome—unworthy of the great and enlightened eighteen hundred and forty-seven; it’s as bad as kicking a man when he’s down.
Not being fond of doubtful days, Tom Scott missed a run or two during the first interregnum, and paid dearly for it by the persecution of Muff and Co., who happened to be out. Indeed he could hardly get their township books through at the next meeting of the board of guardians, from first Muff, and then Tinhead, and then Tinhead, and then Muff, bursting into exclamations about it.
“Thomas Felix Badman, relieved in kind—two kicks and a basin of barley water,” read the clerk.
“Major! do you recollect that splendid cast the hounds made of themselves at the four cross-roads? Just as we came to Briarly Dell, where the fox had met the sheep in the face, and made them ‘right about wheel’?” inquired Muff (Tarquinius), who was in the chair, of his docile friend Tinhead, who stood warming himself before the fire.
“Ellen Draggletail told she must behave herself better, or she’ll get no more ginger,” continued the clerk.
“Ah, but did you see them at Heathhanger Bridge?” asked the major: “I don’t think I ever saw hounds behave better.”
“January 3.—Mark Scrimagour received into the house at four o’clock without any hat, and a pair of shocking bad breeches—lent him a cap and a pair of union trousers,” read the clerk.
“The fox had run the parapet,” observed Tinhead, “and when the hounds came up of course they——”
“January 4.—Mark Scrimagour refused to scour the candlesticks, because he had not had enough sugar in his milk at breakfast.”
“Hang his sugar,” snapped Tinhead.
“By the way, Mr. Scott, what got you?” inquired the all-important Tarquinius Muff, throwing open his blue paletot, and displaying an acre of chest, bespangled with studs and encircled with chains. “I thought you were one of the ‘never-say-die’ sort,” continued he—“a regular sacré matin man for the chasse, as the French say.”
The hounds had had good sport, an hour and twenty minutes one day, and a very sharp twenty minutes the second; and if Tom had had an hour and twenty minutes to compose it in, he’d have said something to Muff as sharp as the last run; as it was, he parried his importunities by pretending to be desperately busy with the accounts, inwardly resolving not to give him a chance of crowing over him another time.
The foregoing took place on a Wednesday, and an opportunity was afforded on the Friday. Mr. Neville always advertises his hounds, in doubtful times, putting “weather permitting” at the top of the advertisement. This is a good plan, for though masters may say that it is always understood they hunt the last advertised meets, or meet at the kennel the first hunting day, we can assure them there is no such regular understanding in the world, and people don’t like running the double chance of “weather permitting,” and hounds being “somewhere else” too. Advertising costs nothing; the trouble to “masters” is a mere trifle, while the convenience to the country is very great. Localities vary so. The frost sometimes strikes a particular district, while a neighbouring one is wholly untouched. We have seen a difference of three weeks’ hunting between adjoining countries—hounds being at a stand-still in the one, while they were going on, with sport too, in the other. Sea-side tracts are often quite huntable, while inland and particularly upland regions are perfectly unrideable. Again we have seen the reverse of this. We have seen a sea-side country bound up in iron frost, while hounds met, hunted, had sport, ay and killed their fox, ten miles inland. At least we were told so, for we didn’t go to see. It was rather a singular circumstance, for we got within four miles of the meet before we turned back, having got our horse from the groom, who had turned too. The ground certainly was so hard where we changed that we could scarcely find fault with the man for turning; but being so far on the road, and the horse wanting work, we thought we might as well go on, which we did, till we came to the house of a friend, who persuaded us it was perfectly ridiculous going; the meet being the highest, coldest, bleakest, most frost-catching place in the world. He wouldn’t go for any money. So we sat an hour or two with him, in the course of which the horse caught cold, and we returned home with a sore throat.
These sudden changes and capricious visitations defy all calculation. The only serviceable observation that can be made is the situation of the kennel, and whether it is in a country liable to be suddenly frost-stricken or not, so as to prevent hounds leaving it, for though hounds may be entrapped into a frosty country out of a soft one, yet there is seldom much chance of their leaving a frosty one in search of a soft one. “Too hard,” the huntsman will say the first thing in the morning, and that settles the business of the day.
It is odd that few days are so bad but that some one will appear at an advertised meet. Even though they go sliding and skating at the imminent risk of their limbs, if they mount their scarlets, they will mount their horses too. They get their rides at all events, and their horses exercised; and even should the hounds come, they know they have no occasion to ride a yard unless they like. It is another matter, however, with the huntsman and whips. They must follow their hounds, and despite the cavillings and grumblings of fault-pickers and hole-finders, we maintain that hounds far oftener throw off when they should not than refuse when they ought.
There is no pleasure in hunting in a frost. None whatever. Far better stay at home, and read the “Post Office Directory,” “Annual Register,” or any work that is not encumbered with a plot, than go picking one’s ground so as to keep where the sun has struck, leaving a yard measure behind each hoof on pulling up. Men who leave their homes for the purpose of hunting must occupy their time in some way or other, and those who can’t read are perhaps excusable in accompanying hounds. It is of no use contending with the elements. It is poor work shivering at a meet, calculating whether hounds will come or not—magnifying old women’s red petticoats into “pinks,” and flocks of sheep into hounds.
There is a sort of desolation attending doubtful days, unlike the concomitants of regular seasonable hunting ones. Long before one gets to the meet— whatever country it may be in—one sees something indicative of hunting on a real hunting day. A lad riding faster than his horse, a countryman with a stick pacing along at a very different rate to what he would be going if he were carrying a message from his master; the imprints of light-shod horses on the grassy road sidings, or careful grooms clustering at the doors of the Red Lion or Barleymow, taking their early glasses as they loiter to cover; but on a doubtful frosty morning, all doors are closed, no one turns out that can help it; master rides his own horse on, and saunters round by the farm, or the factotum’s, or some place or other to kill time and see what effect the sun has as he goes. If you arrive at the meet at the right time, the chances are there is nobody there, and you begin to fear you have mistaken the day. The children stare with astonishment; and one urchin bolder than the rest at length ventures to ask if the “hunds be a coomin to-day?” That’s just what you want to know. A quarter of an hour elapses and still no symptoms of hunting. Your watch perhaps may have stolen a march, or the clocks may vary. If it’s at a village, however, the clocks presently undeceive you. A miller comes past, riding on his sacks; you ask him where the hounds come to when they meet there, and he assures you he knows nothing about them—millers never do—they are the most uninformed race of men under the sun. Some people, however, have the knack of knowing nothing, and the way they preserve their ignorance is truly astonishing: they should have a patent for it. “Ar doan’t know” —“Ar carn’t tell”—are the invariable drawls after a good stare. Ask a cockney boy where such a street is, and he tells you in a minute, or slangs you well; but a yokel can’t declare his ignorance without exposing his stupidity.
But we are reversing the order of things, and converting a real Tom Scott day into an imaginary one, instead of making an imaginary day look as much like a real one as possible. We began by deprecating doubtful days, and showed how Tom had missed two runs during the brief interregnum of January by adhering to the doctrine, and now we propose showing, a very common case if people would but admit it, how Tom was piqued into going by a man—a gentleman we should say—of whose hunting capabilities he has no great opinion. Mr. Neville’s Hounds met on this day at the village of Thornfield, on the north side of their country, not a bad rough sort of meet, and one whose woodlands are favourable and accommodating for hounds, especially in frosty weather. Still it is a place Tom very seldom goes to, nor would he have thought of it, but for the crowings of Tarquinius Muff, and the fear of giving him another opportunity. Independently of that, Tom had employed some of his leisure frost in riding over to Snailswell once or twice, and though we are not at liberty to mention (except in strict confidence of course) what passed between the fair Lydia and him, yet we may say, that it had been so far satisfactory as to induce him to make a fresh appointment at each leaving. “I’ll ride over again on Sunday,” or “I’ll look in upon you again as I’m passing to Edge-Hill on Monday,” he would say, for he carried on the courtship more by “innuendo” than by the old point blank, “If you love me as I love you,” etc. Indeed, to tell the truth, Tom is rather a cautious cock, and thought if he could but get his own consent, that of the lady would follow as a matter of course. We have already hinted that she would not have any money, but this deficiency Tom had at length induced himself to overlook, but thinking that a woman who was to be a “fortune in herself,” ought to be sound and all right, he had lately stuck at the matter of her teeth, whose beautiful pearly whiteness he thought “too good to stand.” Upon this point he determined to take the opinion of his friend Mrs. Sylvanus Bluff, a lady great in the medical art, and it was until her decision was obtained that he now “hung off.” All that, however, will hereafter more fully and at large appear, as the lawyers say, though we believe if the frost had lasted steadily, Tom would have dropped quietly into an engagement, an offer at all events, for the visits were getting both more frequent and longer, when the upbraidings of Muff nettled him into taking advantage of an apparent change in the weather.
So now to the day named at the head of the page. The previous one felt like frost, and the morning of this one was decidedly frosty, but having been called for hunting Tom got up, and having got up he got breakfast, and having got breakfast he got on to his horse, and though his hoofs made that ringing sort of sound peculiar to horses and well-built London carriages on hard roads, he speculated on the influence of the sun and the favourableness of the woodland bottoms, and proceeded on his road as we have described up to the conversation with the miller. Therefore that part of the sketch may stand as “part of the bill.”
As the miller slouched out of sight, and Scott rode backwards and forwards on the village bridge, a pair of leather breeches hove in sight, not the genteel cream-coloured things of modern times, but a pair of good old-fashioned yellow ochres, whose owner was further encased in a black dress coat, a black satin stock, and dingy lack-lustre boots.
It was our old friend Doctor Podgers, on his fat black pony, master and nag counterparts of each other.
On ordinary occasions a doctor may be in boots and breeches without signifying a hunt, but a rich grandfather-looking silver-mounted hunting-whip, and a ribbon to his shaved black hat, committed him beyond all extrication.
“Good morning, Doctor,” said Scott; “do you think the hounds will come?”
Doctor (raising his hat to the extremity of the ribbon): “Upon my word, sir, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Why I think so of course, or I shouldn’t be here.”
“It’s very cold. Do you think the frost is going to hold?” at length Scott asked, rather ashamed of his tartness.
Doctor: “Upon my word, sir, I don’t know. What do you think?”
Though a man may “trot” himself into a belief that there will be hunting, the sad reality of “standing” generally produces a candid opinion.
Scott could not but admit that the ground about was very hard, that the atmosphere was very frosty, and the only chance there was of hounds coming seemed to be the possibility that it might not be quite so hard or so frosty in the neighbourhood of the kennel.
The only alleviating circumstance there is in a case of non-hunting is the coming of the hounds, which shows that a man is not so wide of the mark as he would otherwise appear. Indeed, it almost amounts to a case of “big foolism” being there without them, and Scott strained his eyes and cocked his ears up the Gunnerton-road, in hopes of seeing them or of hearing one of those knowing notes that fall so musically on the ear, so symptomatic of hunting, so unmistakable for anything else.
It was all in vain.
There was a crack of a whip, but it was a cartman’s—there was a holloa, but it was from a boy frightening crows. There is no more similarity between these and the genuine thing than there is between the jovial mirth of the village school broke loose upon the green and the determined tallyho of the man who has been thrown into convulsions by viewing the fox.
Scott began to be rather ashamed of having come, especially as he could not but feel (though of course he would not admit it to anybody) that he had been rather “talked into it” by Tarquinius Muff.
Just as he thought of Muff, his other greatest abhorrence of life, Dolores Brown of Bleakhope, cast up.
There are some people in the world whose looks or whose manners are so melancholily lugubrious as to make one unhappy to see them, and Dolores combines both these unfortunate qualities. He is the most unhappy-looking wretch that ever was seen. He is a sort of ill-omened bird, for people say they never have sport when he is out. Some people’s jolly good-natured phizzes set one agog and cheer one up, but Dolores never does anything but depress the spirits. It isn’t his nasty looks alone, but he is an ill-conditioned creature into the bargain. Nobody ever heard him say a good word of any one without his adding as much spite as counteracted the praise. He may be called a praising detractor, only he does much more in the detracting than in the praising line. He is a grumbling, dissatisfied, cantankerous animal, never happy but when he’s miserable. He has always some fault to find, some hole to pick, or some misfortune to forbode. The master of the hounds is generally his stack victim. He, poor man! never does anything right. After the master, the huntsman comes in for his maledictions, and then the whip. It is gratifying to know that Mrs. Brown takes her “change” out of him at home. There, he daren’t say his “soul’s his own,” and we have often heard it suggested that he comes out hunting to escape her. Whatever his motive may be, it is a frequent observation that Dolores Brown never brings luck. A doubtful day seems just the sort of one for him to cast upon.
If we had a Daguerreotype machine we would sketch him as he sits under the stunted, crooked, decaying ash tree, and impale him on our page; but that not being practicable, and our friend “Phiz” not being at hand, we will just do what we can with the pen.
Dolores is a farmer—a large farmer—he keeps four or five draughts, and has two or three thousand sheep herding on the downs about his appropriately named residence of “Bleakhope”; one of the highest, coldest, most exposed places in the country. Still, as if by a frolic of nature, there is some good land upon it, and, cold as he looks, Dolores is supposed to be warm. To look at his nasty, lank, straggling, sandy-coloured hair, impoverished whiskers, and clay-coloured cheeks, you would fancy he was the follower of some noisome trade instead of a wholesome out-of-door living farmer. He may be any age from thirty to fifty; indeed, one often sees far fresher-looking men at sixty or even seventy. His features are harsh and sharp, and there is a cunning watchfulness about his little watery grey eyes.
His clothes are as unwholesome-looking as his person. His napless, low-crowned hat is all glue stained round the band, the marks widening out in front into a thing like a chimney-sweeper’s badge. The frost makes the hat’s browning hue more apparent. A good hat is about the only thing that looks well on a frosty day, and if anything will bring a thaw it surely is the temptation a new one offers to Jupiter Pluvius. Dolores’s coarse draggling gills are guileless of starch, and his washed-out, blue-striped neckcloth, dirty, twisted, and knotted into what the French call a “Tyburn tye,” exposes, rather than covers, his long scraggy neck. The greasy collar of a browning black cut-away coat, and the frayed top of a shabby striped waistcoat, appear above a seedy, well-worn brown tweed, slightly slit up behind for the saddle, and covering the greater part of the hard, crackey-looking patent cords and almost black top-boots in which his spindle shanks are shrouded.
His horse was a bay, until it was clipped and singed into a dun-duckety sort of mud colour. The cold makes the uneven jagging of the scissors and the blotches of the singer more apparent, for badly clipped greys are the only horses that will stand the searching investigation of a frosty day. This horse is a sour-headed, sunk-eyed, cock-throppled, ewe-necked, ragged-maned beggar, though with some apparent breeding about him. Light feeding seems the order of the day both with horse and master, and despite the laziness of the season, Dolores has contrived, by the substitution of bran mashes and boiled turnips for corn, to keep his horse’s girth in much the same moderate compass as his own. Between its ragged, rubbed-out tail and Dolores’s shabby, straggling locks there is a striking resemblance, and altogether, what with the bother of the little doctor, the nastiness of Dolores, and the unpromising appearance of the day, we hope the considerate reader will excuse Tom Scott slipping up to the sign of the Haymaker to get a glass of brandy and water.
Hark! here come horses! Three red coats heave in sight on the sheep-walk road, visible as they pass the gaps and bits of walls built into the ragged hedge, where the village and pedestrian depredations have extinguished all hopes of the quicks being permitted to grow.
The sight of red coats is cheering. “No knowing but the hounds may come yet,” said Scott to himself, as he returned, feeling like a giant refreshed, “throw off, have a glorious run, old Dolores be trundled into a black bog, and the hounds run into their fox on the hill above Hawbuck Grange.”
“The horses’ hoofs sound louder than I like,” continued he, cocking his ear to the east wind, “for-biddingly keen;” but no sportsman ever forgets that the celebrated Billesden Coplow run took place under similar unfavourable circumstances.
The tramp of horses approaches.
What a noise the riders make! Their jabber sounds on the clear frosty air as if they were close by, though they are still a quarter of a mile off. “Hah! hah! hah!” what a laugh. There it is again! “Haw! haw! haw!” deeper and deeper still. “He! he! he!” a third volley. The hounds must be coming, and they know it. There goes the baccy! Smoking and all. How clear that puff by the gate curled up in the pure air: Lord, how they laugh! That must be a capital joke, for they are all “haw! haw! hawing!” together. Who can they be?
“As I live,” exclaimed our friend Scott, “the Muffs, and old Tom Tinhead!”
Fortunately Scott made the discovery just in time to enable him to slip back to the sign of the Haymaker, from the cowshed at the end of which he surveyed the scene and overheard the conversation.
Up came great “Muff Tarquinius,” as Trumper calls him, full fig, in a spick-and-span hat, new bright scarlet coat, with the corner of a white cambric handkerchief peeping out of the breast pocket, a skyblue satin cravat, embroidered with roses and lilies, a roll collar waistcoat, most unexceptionable leathers, and shining jack boots, set off with bright heavy spurs, running most desperately to neck. Tarquinius Muff is an immense man; we dare say he rides eighteen stone, and sits full souse on his horse, for all the world like a five-thousand-a-year man, as he is. Could he have been certain that the hounds would not come he would not have had a care in the world, for he was “got up” for the drawing-room and not for the cover side. Just the man for a frosty day.
Bad as old Muff is we really think he is better than his brother, Blatheremskite. Blatheremskite affects the coachman; but his favourite “Rover” and “Telegraph” being off the road, he mourns their glories in the dress of a coachman, which he cleverly adapts to all the pursuits of life. His shining silk hat is as round “as a cheese, and as flat as a flounder.” His hair is close-cropped, and his white shawl cravat is secured by a massive gold coach-and-four pin, forcing its way above the step collar of his long, coachman-cut, rough, drab velvety-looking waistcoat, with a double row of flap pockets. His stout, Indiarubber cloth, strait-cut, cuffless scarlet is a compound of stitching, back strapping, and flaps. The narrow collar has a strong double hem, the seams behind are back strapped, and there is a curious device of strength just above the waist buttons, looking as though he expected a trial of strength with the garment generally, or a game of “pull devil, pull baker,” with the laps. The outside pockets are guarded with ample double-stitched flaps, out of the mouth of one of which what he would call a “bird’s eye fogle” appears, while the other has got a decided drag downwards from the frequent occupation of his hand. The front buttons are firmly set in on a separate strip of cloth, and about the centre of the breast is a small sort of watch-pocket, as if he had to time himself constantly. The broad greenish-coloured patent cord breeches, buttoning in front with mother-of-pearl buttons, come a long way down the leg, where they at last meet a pair of receding tops, the length of the breeches and the shortness of the boots producing the observation from Tom Bowles, the first whip and wag of the hunt, that “he supposed Mr. Blatheremskite paid double price for one and half price for the other.” The long tops are of the roseate tint, and the thick double soles are of a texture to resist any quantity of wet; all very well for a coachman paddling about a coach in sloppy weather, but perfectly unnecessary for even the most inveterate “leader over” of a fox-hunter. His action, as well as his dress, is that of the coachman. He holds his reins, and works his arms, as if he were on the box; and, altogether, he is about as great a snob as the great historian of “Snobs” himself could wish to draw.
“Hallo, doctor!” exclaimed Muff to our friend of the yellow ochres as the trio turned into the road, “hallo, doctor! at it again; keen dog, keen dog, very.”
Doctor Podgers acknowledged the compliment by raising his hat to the limit of the hunting string.
“Where are the hounds?” asked Muff.
“Not come,” replied the doctor.
“Not come!” retorted Muff; “why, what’s happened?”
“I think it will be the frost,” observed an earthstopping gamekeeper, touching his hat, and cracking an ice-star with his staff.
“Frost?” exclaimed Muff; “there’s no frost to hurt.”
“None whatever!” assented Blatheremskite, breaking an upshot column of smoke against his hat brim.
“Oh, they’re sure to come,” rejoined Muff, after a pause, hoping they wouldn’t, adding, “there’s no frost in the ground, none whatever.”
“It’s hard here,” observed the gamekeeper, tapping his hob-nailed shoes against the ground.
“Oh, but that will give by twelve o’clock; see what a sun there is overhead,” continued Muff, looking up at the heavens.
“They can’t plough,” observed the keeper, thinking to clench the argument.
“Ah, that’s because they won’t,” replied Muff, turning to Brown with a “What do you think of the matter, Mr. Brown?”
Of course Brown, like all men at a meet, thought hounds were “sure to come”; but mere opinion not having the effect of drawing them, after about ten minutes consumed in smoking and flopping their arms, the conversation began to take a downhill turn, derogatory to the hounds and their management.
“Well, this is the slowest thing I ever saw in my life,” exclaimed Muff, as his fears were quieted on recognising Tom Muffinmouth’s face under a hunting cap, instead of that of one of the servants coming as he feared with the dread intelligence that the hounds would be there at twelve.
“Well, this is the slowest thing I ever saw in my life,” repeated he, tendering Tom the unusual compliment of a hand; for Muff tries to combine the courtesy of the candidate with the open frankness of the fox-hunter.
“What?” inquired Tom, blushing, thinking Muff meant that his new sugar-loaf-shaped cap was the slowest thing he ever saw in his life; nor would it have been far from the mark if he had said so.
“The hounds not coming,” replied Muff, with illfeigned disgust; Tom Muffinmouth assented, notwithstanding his blue nose and red-rimmed ears give striking evidence of the severity of the frost.
“Neville’s getting too old,” observed Muff, with a toss of the head and flourish of the hand. “One doesn’t like to say anything in disparagement of an old man who has been a good one in his time,” continued he, “but, between you and I, it’s about time he was laid on the shelf.”
“Old Ben’s all bedavered, too,” observed Dolores Brown with a sneer; “he never rides over a fence if he can get any one to pull it down. He set all my South Downs wrong the other day merely because he wouldn’t ride over a hurdle.”
With this and similar conversation the next quarter of an hour was beguiled, the perfect incompetence of the whole establishment becoming more clearly developed as the discussion proceeded, until, like Gil Blas’s mule, it seemed all faults. A successor, who lived more in the centre of the country (like Muff), was faintly hinted at, and having allowed the discussion to run up to appropriating point, Muff adjourned the meeting, and attended by his staff, Blatheremskite and Tinhead, proceeded to Honeybower Hall to lunch and flirt with the Miss Oglebys —for, shocking to relate, such is the lamentable destitution of country society, that these fine girls are forced to tolerate the Muffs, while Tinhead is pawned off on the old lady.
As they disappeared in the distance, Scott came sneaking out of his hiding-place, intending to be off too, when a joyous “Yonder they come! yonder they come!” diffused pleasure over the faces of the hitherto disappointed-looking countrymen who had been losing a day in hopes of a hunt. We always pity a countryman under such circumstances. Strong must be the passion for hunting that induces a man to sacrifice his total income for that day for the pleasure of the chase. “Little think the great men,” as Mr. Canning’s friend of humanity said to the needy knife-grinder, when interrogating him about his misfortunes, “little think the great men,” say we, “mounted on their spicy steeds, with cigars in their mouths, and good dinners in view at the end of the day, how much better they are off than the poor pedestrian, who returns leg-weary and worn to his home, without even the usual humble fare his labour would have procured him.”
The cynic may say he had no business out hunting; but sportsmen will take a kinder view of the case, and feel for the man whose ardour has carried him into a pleasure that he cannot afford. Let sportsmen do more! Let them put their hands in their pockets and give them a shilling.
Money thus bestowed is not always wasted, as we will prove by an incident that happened to our friend Scott last season. He was riding over a half-finished bridge on the “Grand Gammon and Spinach Junction Railway,” when the taskmaster, timekeeper, overlooker, or whatever they call the man in authority, exclaimed, as the hounds caused the navvies to pause and look up from their work, “Come! drop it at once, or stick to it!” causing a struggle between duty and inclination, ending, however, in the general triumph of duty, and return to the digging. Two men only out of above forty threw down their spades, and, mounting their flannels, set off after the hounds.
“You are fond of a hunt then?” said Scott, as they came running past him.
“’Deed am I, your honour!” replied the first, whose good-natured, open countenance proclaimed him an Emeralder, even before he spoke.
“Well, then, I’ll give you a shilling,” said Scott, handing them each one.
“Long life to your honour!” exclaimed one.
“Sure you’re a worshipful jontleman,” observed the other.
After crossing the railway they came upon the rich vale of Grassmere, rich in agricultural possessions, lavish in black bogs, and renowned for the width and bottomlessness of its drains. What persuaded old Ben, who was merely going from cover to cover, to cross it, we don’t know, but the field were presently at a cut that set the “funkers’ nerves a-shaking,” as the song says. It wasn’t a large place, but it was a deep one, and the three or four first horses breaking the somewhat undermined banks, it began to look wider and wider, till Tarquinius Muff’s famous water-jumper, Harlequin, coming up full tilt, made a regular “stand and deliver,” shooting his luckless rider overhead in the muddy water.
Splash, splash, blob, blob, up and down, backwards and forwards, Muff went, now calling out for help, now emptying his hat, now fishing for his whip, now feeling for his gloves, in the dripping, forlorn, drownedrat, pitiable-looking state of an extinguished exquisite, setting those who had got across laughing, and those who were on the wrong side wishing “they were well over.”
There wasn’t a man there but whose horse would have taken the cut (according to their own accounts), if Tarquinius’s had not set them the example of refusing, and diverting it was to see the half-resolute, half-timid way some of them rode at it, pretending to “shove,” but in reality holding for a crane.
“None but the bold deserve to clear the brook,” and unless horse and rider are well agreed upon the point and go at it resolutely, it is far better to tie the whipthong to the snaffle rein, and lead over, or to blob in and out, anything rather than a “stand and deliver,” or a mutual recumbency in the bottom. We don’t know a more humiliating sight than a man “rocking-horsing it” in a brook—now the head up, now the tail, now the tail, and now the head—till they either struggle out (perhaps on the wrong side), or part company, the horse perhaps setting off on an expedition of its own to discover the source or defluxion of the stream.
Scott was riding the “young-un,” the chestnut, a sweet horse, well worth a hundred to any of our readers, but with the common complaint of well-bred young-uns—rayther giving to bucking at water. In getting away from Cold-brook Gorse one day after just two rounds that showed there was a rare scent, and the crash and music of the bitches had raised any little remnant of pluck to its highest pitch, when careering down the grass field on the north side of the cover, Scott came upon Tarquinius Muff’s former bed of roses before he knew where he was. He was up in his stirrups though, and seeing master Reynard travelling away at a very business-like pace over a famous large pasture, he dropped the “Vincents” into the young-un, giving him a shake of the head, as much as to say, “Look what you’re after.”
Down they came upon the brook.
Tom thought nothing in the world could prevent their being over, when, lo! up bucked the young-un, Tom doesn’t know how high, and dropped right into the middle of it. If he had only stretched himself to the extent that he rose, he would have cleared two such places.
But we will draw the curtain over the remainder of that scene, and proceed to “Brook No. 2.”
With a lively recollection of the misfortunes of No. 1, Tom contemplated the scene at No. 2 with anything but pleasurable emotions.
The “young-un” had not seen water since his immersion, though he set up his back and snorted as he came up as if he had a perfect recollection of it. Cold-blooded water leaping, especially on a cold day, is always to be deprecated, and Tom was just going to practise what we preach, by knotting the point of his whip to the rein, and leading over, with “lots of line,” when his Irish friend nudged his elbow.
“Sure, your honour, I’ll ride him over for you,” said Paddy.
“Will you?” said Scott; “but are you sure you can ride?”
“Arrah, by Jasus, and is it myself you ax that question on? Sure I was groom to the great Squire O something, of O something Castle, who kept a stud of forty horses, besides milch cows, and a dacent sprinkling of pigs.”
With this his friend began poking his high-low into the stirrup, and having got the reins clubbed in his hand, in the true “hang-on-by-the-head” style, he was presently in the saddle, and turned away to get a run at the brook, so as to take it flying. And very flying-like he looked, his wild hair straggling away from beneath a muffin cap, his loose flannel jacket filling with wind, and his red and green garter ends flowing about the saddle flaps as he went.
Having taken a liberal distance, he forthwith began kicking and talking to the horse, increasing his speed and raising his voice as he went till he got him full gallop, when, with a flourish of his arm and a wild hier-r-r-o-s-h sort of shout, he sent him flying many feet beyond the foremost hoofmark across the cut.
“Ride mine over, Paddy, and I’ll give you a shilling!” “Ride mine over, Paddy, and I’ll give you half a crown!” shouted several.
“Sure but I’ll be losing the hunt if I do,” replied Pat, dismounting and running away.
There’s a long story by way of parenthesis, supposed to be told on a frosty morning while waiting for hounds. We had just got to the outburst of joy that proceeded from the group of pedestrians as old Ben and the hounds appeared, rounding Wenburg Hill in the distance, after giving the field a somewhat long wait, that looked very like not coming. The bustling pace at which they approached, while it looked very like business, would have cut our story through in the middle, if we had been allowed no longer time for the telling it than intervened between the view and the arrival.
“Gently, Rantipole! hie back!” rated Tom Bowles, as Rantipole dashed in advance to seek for her master in the crowd.
“Here again, hounds, here again!” exclaimed old Ben, with a whistle and wave of his hand, pulling up short at a gate to take the hounds into a grass field.
“Good morning, Ben,” said Scott, thinking that looked like throwing off—“What are you going to do?”
“Oh, I suppose we shall hunt, sir,” said Ben quite gaily, with a touch of his cap as he spoke.
“Is Mr. Neville coming?” asked Scott.
“No, sir, but he said we had to hunt, if we could. It’ll do the hounds no harm.”
“Foxes nouther,” observed Tom Bowles.
“Tom Scott nouther,” added our hero, cheered by the intelligence.
“We hav’n’t been here since cub-hunting,” observed Ben, “and the foxes want routing out sadly. There were three litters hereabouts, and the farmers are beginning to complain of the poultry. In such a season as this we must just take every day we can get.”
“It’s a bad season,” observed Scott.
“Shocking!” rejoined Ben, with a solemn look and shake of the head.
“I see the sessions are coming on,” observed Tom Bowles, “and they are advertising for people to send instructions for indicting prisoners. I wish some one would send instructions for indicting the weather. Talk about ether,” added he, “for cutting folk’s heads off when they’re asleep, without hurtin’ of them, I wish they’d etherise me, and let me sleep during a frost.”
It is odd how people “turn up” at a meet of hounds, let the hour be what it will. The select party had not consumed above five minutes in this sort of conversation before half a dozen horsemen of one sort and another appeared.
Tom Griston and Giles Clapgate, both farmers, turned out of the Falcon, while Mr. Sheepskin of Bossall and Mr. Randall of Reay came riding together, and then there was Tom Muffinmouth, and Podgers, and the earth-stopping gamekeeper, who had now got upon his pony. Best of all, Dolores Brown had taken his departure in the wake of the Muffs, the whole swearing that hounds not coming was the “slowest thing” they ever saw in their lives.
“Well, I suppose we may as well be going,” observed Ben, eyeing the workpeople going home to their dinners, adding, “it’s twelve o’clock by these clocks, it seems, though I should say it was half-past twelve by the day.”
So saying, he whistled his hounds together, and trotted out of the field to the cover.
This was a chain of woodlands, beginning at the village of Thornfield, and stretching into a wider range about two miles further on, where a wild and broken sort of country intervenes between the vales. Rossington Wood comes in here, a sort of amphitheatre, formed of wooded hills round an area of warm, well-cultivated land, just the sort of place for a doubtful day. In went the hounds.
They had not been in cover ten minutes before Tom Scott saw by the increased motion of Ben’s shoulders and heels, that there was a scent afloat, though no hound as yet having spoke, Ben did not care to break the silence.
At last, a low short whimper, more of a catch than a note, brought out a “have at him, Brilliant, old boy,” and presently Brilliant threw his tongue in a downright “I’ll stake-my-reputation-there’s-a-fox” sort of way, that convinced Ben there was one, though none of the others taking it up, Mr. Sheepskin, the solicitor, hinted that it was in consequence of Ben’s cheer, and muttered something about its “not being right to lead hounds in that way.”
Brilliant presently dropped another note still deeper, that old Ben cheered to the echo; and first one and then another joined in the proclamation, upon which Sheepskin observed, “if there wasn’t a fox they ought all to be sus. per col.”
“Hoic! hoic! forrard! forrard!” screamed old Ben, and with one twang of the horn he went scrambling and tearing through the wood regardless of branches, briars, breeches, and boots.
What a crash they made! There were five-and-twenty couple of hounds, and every hound throwing his tongue, making the woods echo and re-echo to their music.
They soon got to where the full width of the woods made it advisable to keep inside, when the softness and splashiness of the rides satisfied Tom Scott that old Ben had done right in throwing off. The horses sunk in the ground as they went, and threw the clay and mud about in a manner that was quite delightful considering the frost. Scott got stained in a way that would have done credit to November, and Sheepskin’s great splay-footed black horse put his foot in a trod that sent the yellow water squirting up into his master’s face, and nearly blinded him.
“You’ve got six-and-eightpence worth there, I think, sir,” said Tom Bowles, cantering past, as Sheepskin sat mopping his face, dyeing a cheap white silk handkerchief yellow.
How much finer, wilder, and more natural is the cry of hounds in a large, resounding wood, than the close, suppressed muffle from a small, confined gorse. Artificial covers are doubtless useful, but they detract sadly from the fine, riotous spirit of hunting. Our friends had a rare chivey to-day. We don’t know how many foxes they viewed, but if the hounds changed they must have done it very quickly, for they were never off their noses. It takes a good deal of persuasion to induce a fox to leave a wood of several hundred acres, especially a wood where the travelling is more favourable to him than to the hounds, and possibly nothing but the fact of his having been hunted before, and being about as good a judge of pace as a Newmarket “tout,” could have induced him to be satisfied with the two rings that he made of the amphitheatrish ground before he proceeded up the Dean to the west of it.
There he was viewed by the foot people, “an enormous big-un!” and “dead beat,” of course; and as he was getting into more circumventable covers, and the scent was first-rate, Mr. Sheepskin expressed his opinion that he was as good as “realised.”
It is seldom that anybody says a good word for a fox, but this certainly was a most accommodating one; for instead of taking the high ground, and sending the field skating and sliding about at the risk of their limbs, he ran the bottoms, and those he selected with considerable judgment. He took them up Apedale Dean, through the Buckland Bog, and past the Decoy at Casterton, scarcely crossing a dozen enclosures the whole way. His line was then Swinbrook Plantations, where he hung a bit, having been headed by some shooters, and probably driven from his point, for he took down the little valley of the Dingle, and was presently into Hardingham Plantation.
One loses one’s latitude and longitude so desperately out hunting, especially in cover, that Scott had no idea which side of the plantations they came out at, or where they were going, further than that some well-hung green gates, and better cultivated land, betokened prosperity.
They clattered through the gates, making the hard ground resound with their horses’ hoofs, while the frosty air was filled with the cry of the pack, now running frantic for blood.
The nimble and accommodatingly disposed reader will now perhaps have the kindness to transport him or herself to Honeybower Hall, and imagine the Muffs palavering the young ladies, while old Tom Tinhead is billeted on “mamma.”
We need not trouble them with their balderdash; how they abused “old Neville,” and ridiculed the idea of hounds not coming, and how Tarquinius talked of “taking the country himself if they didn’t make him represent it,” and so on, as being matter quite as easily imagined as described. For that piece of leniency, however, we must request the reader—non-luncheon eater though he1 may be—to accompany the party to the parlour, where the usual savoury hashes are commingled with jellies, roast potatoes, and cold fowls—Hie-sos-sos-sos-sos!
“Hark!” exclaimed Muff in the middle of a merry-thought; “I thought I heard the horn,” continued he, rising and going to the bay window which opens to the ground.
Muff was right. It was old Ben sounding a requiem over his fox in the park on the east side of the hall, a view that never having taken of it before caused Scott not to recognise it, till Muff stepped out of the window on to the lawn.
“Why, there’s Mr. Muff!” exclaimed our friend, as he recognised Muff’s great white stomach between his black jacks and red coat.
“So it is!” replied Ben. “This will be Honey-bower Hall, I dare say,” observed he, looking at the house, with the right of entry air of a fox-hunter.
Ben had now got the brush and head in hand, and the pads being distributed, up went the fox and down it came rolling right into the jaws of the whole fifty hounds.
“Who-hoop! tear him and eat him! Who-hoop!
” “I’ll tell you what, Tom,” said Scott to the whip as soon as the latter had satisfied himself with hooping and screeching while the hounds worried the fox, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a guinea if you’ll go and present Mr. Tarquinius Muff with the brush,” pointing to Muff as he stood at the window, surrounded by the ladies, like a cock of the midden.
“I’ll soon do that for nothing,” replied Tom, taking the brush from the huntsman, and shuffling away in the crab-like fashion of a whipper-in, up to the house.
“Please, sir,” said he, touching his cap, as he saw a frown o’erspreading Muff’s ample face instead of the smile that usually irradiates a man about to be honoured. “Please, sir, Ben has made free to send you the brush, and is sorry you’ve missed the run.”
“Is he?” sneered Muff. “I feel much flattered by his condescension,” at the same time sticking his hands under his coat-tails to remove all idea of his accepting the offer.
“Pray where is Mr. Neville?” asked he, after a pause.
“He’s not out, sir,” replied Tom, with another touch of the cap.
“Not out!” exclaimed Muff. “You don’t mean to say you’ve thrown off without him?”
“Master said we were to hunt if we could, and there was anybody there.”
“Well, and who have you had?” asked Muff.
“Oh, there’s Mr. Scott and Mr. Sheepskin, and Mr. Brown, and Mr. Randall of Reay, and several others,” replied Tom.
“They are not owners of covers, I think,” snapped Muff.
“Hazelhanger belongs to Mr. Scott,” observed Bowles.
“Well, you know your orders best,” observed Muff pompously, “but if you were my servants, I should say you had done extremely wrong in throwing off on such a day, especially to such a field, disturbing such an extent of country;” whereupon he gave a loud hem, and returned with the ladies to the luncheon, repeating as he went “extremely wrong, indeed!”
“Vain his attempt who strives to please them all!”
