CHAPTER LII
SHOOTING AND SLAUGHTERING
AVING now, like Mrs. Glasse, caught his hare, the Duke of Tergiversation proceeded to consider how he should cook him; roast him, bake him, jug him, or stew him. The Prince was there for two distinct purposes, viz., that of the Lady Honoria Hopkins, and his Grace’s own, who of course wanted to make a magnet of attraction of him. The two pursuits being perfectly dissimilar could be carried on simultaneously without detriment to each other.
Leaving the ladies, therefore, to their own devices, we will proceed to notice his Grace’s entertainment of the great guest.
Beyond striving for power or place, the Duke of Tergiversation had no particular pursuit that interested him more than another, though he turned his hand to most things, by way of keeping up his interest and doing as others did. Hunting he followed as a matter of business; keeping the hounds because he thought they got him votes; and he shot on a somewhat similar principle. In the shooting way he was, perhaps, more determined than he was in the hunting line, for he liked to compete with his political opponent, the Earl of Musk and Lavender; so if his Lordship announced that so many guns had killed so many head of game, the Duke would bestir himself to eclipse the performance. Now it’s all very well for people to say I will have plenty of pheasants, I will have plenty of partridges, I will have plenty of hares; but unless they take the necessary means of securing them, they stand a very poor chance of having them. Lord Lavender was a shooter, a slaughterer rather, and fed highly, allowing a thousand a-year for barley, whereas the Duke of Tergiversation only allowed a hundred; and most of the land about the castle being in grass, there was no tenants’ grain whereon to make reprisals.
Bagwell was therefore in a somewhat similar position to poor Ducrow at Astley’s, who was overheard exclaiming one night, when it was his turn to go upon the stage to represent Autumn in the allegorical piece called the “Seasons,” “Ow the ’ell can I play Hautumn without the happles?” “Ow the ’ell could Bagwell have a good battue without the barley?”
The Duke, however, didn’t care about the barley, he was peremptory, and if he willed a thing, he would know the reason why he hadn’t it; and Bagwell knew by the experience of his predecessors that if the slaughter was not commensurate with the Duke’s expectations, his place would very soon be vacant. So he had to exert his utmost energies, arrange the covers to the best advantage for back-handing the birds, and employed people to beat all the straggling out-lying ones down into the magic circle of the beat. He then essayed to supply any deficiency by an ingenious expedient, that we shall relate hereafter.
The cooking question with the Duke then was, whether to lead off with a hunt, or a shoot, or a course or a flourish about the country in the carriage and four. His Highness, like most foreigners, including both hunting and shooting under the one comprehensive term “chasse,” was quite ready to assist at one, and the Duke having duly conned over the eligible parties to ask, it was finally arranged that a Battue should inaugurate the Prince’s visit. It required a little tact and consideration to get it up properly, for some people like battues while others don’t. Mr. Waddles would like to shoot if Mr. Pepper was to be there; while Mr. Addleton would not go if he thought farmer Meadow-croft was coming. Again, the guns are to be taken into account, some people being too good shots, others too bad; Tomkins dangerous and Simpkins not altogether safe. There is the excitement of being shot as well as the excitement of shooting.
In addition to all this, the Duke had the political and other tendencies of the parties to consider, for he was “a nothing for nothing man,” and always liked to see his way to a return. Asking people to come and shoot at a battue with a Prince, was quite a different thing to giving them a day’s leave over hill and dale, from Eastgate rim to Westfield corner, or from Broomey Banks to Limefield Lawn. And this leads us to observe, that it is hardly possible to imagine that one and the same amusement can be followed in such ways as to look like two distinct pursuits, as in the case of shooting and battueing. In one case a man goes out with his dogs and gun, just as he would with his walking-stick; roves the fields, looks at his stock or his drains, or his turnips, or the coming corn; goes just as fancy prompts him, or his dog inclines to his game; if he gets his two or three brace of birds, well and good, if not, he gets healthy exercise, and the birds are there for another day; he has looked over the manor, and let the country see that the Squire is astir. He has used shooting much as Beckford used hare-hunting, who said that it “should be taken instead of a ride after breakfast to get one an appetite for dinner. If you make a serious business of it,” says he, “you spoil it.” That is just the case with the battue. There is little or no exercise, while there is great preparation, trouble, and expense. True, in ordinary shooting, a stranger does not range the estate with the same interest as the owner; but it is perfectly possible to have quite as much game as will satisfy every reasonable requirement, and bring a friend home with a very good appetite for dinner without any extravagant outlay. The exercise and the pleasure a man has in watching the working of his dogs, is quite as great as sending the poor birds neck and crop over. If, as is said of coursing, you are mad for a moment, and starved for an hour; so with the battue, you exterminate in a day what should serve you a year.
We never heard of but one utilitarian reason attempted to be given for the battue, which was, that to lessen the quantity of game and to kill it for the surrounding district, the battue is infinitely a better way than to potter after game thinly spread over a wide extent, whereby a man would not be able to kill half so much; but that is rather an argument for not having so much game than for reducing it in that way. The party, to be sure, added a very sensible observation, namely, “that elderly gentlemen, like himself, who had had the gout, could not get over hedges and ditches as well as they did five-and-twenty years before; and therefore, without the battue, they would be debarred from the amusement altogether.” Still they are not the things for able-bodied men; and the fact of their being of foreign extraction does not recommend them to our notice. Another thing is, that after all the barley—the beat, beat, beating, and the bang, bang, banging—the ‘tottle of the whole,” as poor Mr. Hume used to say, is tame and insignificant compared to the campaign of the foreigner. “I assisted,” writes Count Veltheim from Germany to a friend in England, “at a battue at Baron Assburg’s” (a very proper name for the giver of such an entertainment), “where a company of a dozen shots killed in three days 13 deer, 56 roes, 10 foxes, and 327 hares. We could at the same time have killed a dozen wild boars if the proprietor of the estate had not wished them to be spared.”
The Count then relates how two friends of his had been at a battue, where in four days 2400 hares were killed; “but,” says the Count, “I do not like such feats, which are more a massacre than a sport; partly, because I am of opinion, that there should be at all sports some chance and skill; and partly, because I like shooting the best where different kinds of game are expected, though not in such immense quantities.”
The sport that the then King of Naples, the greatest sportsman of Europe, is reported to have had in Germany, about the year 1791,1 would have been more to the Count’s taste, so far as variety is concerned; the result being—5 bears, 1820 wild boars, 1968 stags, 13 wolves, 354 foxes; pheasants, rabbits, hares, she-goats, roebucks and partridges, innumerable. The results of a British battue, the pheasants, partridges, and hares, seem small by the side of such doings as that.
But let us to the Ducal preserves, and see what we can do. First, however, for a word with the Keeper and about the guests.
