by R S Surtees
Abel Snorem, having purchased a pair of new top-boots, appears in the sky-blue coat, lined with pink silk, and the canary-coloured shorts of the previous evening, looking very much like a high-sheriff’s horse foot-man going out to meet the judges. Not meaning to risk his neck, although booted, he makes the fourth in a fly with Mr. and Miss Mordecai, and fat old Mr. Guzzle, who goes from watering-place to watering-place, trying the comparative merits of the waters in restoring appetite after substantial meals: he looks the picture of health and apoplexy. Mrs. Barnington’s dashing yellow barouche comes hurrying down the street, the bays bearing away from the pole, and the coachman’s elbows sticking out in a corresponding form. Of course all the flys, horses, and passengers that are not desirous of being driven over by “John Thomas,” the London coachman, are obliged to get out of the way as fast as they can, and he pulls up with a jerk, as though he had discovered the house all of a sudden. Out rush two powdered flunkeys in red plush breeches, pink silk stockings, and blue coatees, when, finding it is only their own carriage, a dialogue ensues between them and Mr. Coachman, as the latter lounges over the box and keeps flanking his horses to make them stand out and show themselves.
A few minutes elapse, and out comes the portly butler, with a “Now then! Missis coming down!” whereupon the Johnnies rush to their silver-laced hats on the hall table, seize their gold-headed canes, pull their white Berlins out of their pockets, and take a position on each side of the barouche door. Mrs. Barnington sails majestically down stairs, dressed in a sky-blue satin pelisse, with a sky-blue bonnet, lined with pink, and a splendid white feather, tipped with pink, waving gracefully over her left shoulder. She is followed by Barnington and Doleful, the former carrying her shawl and reticule in one hand, and his own hunting-whip in the other. Barnington, as usual, is well-dressed, having on a neat-fitting, single-breasted scarlet coat, with a blue collar, and rich gilt buttons, sky-blue cravat, canary-coloured waistcoat, well-cleaned leathers and gloves, and exquisitely polished boots, with very bright spurs. Doleful, who is rather in disgrace, for having introduced a partner to one of the three Miss Dobbses over night, and has just had a wigging for his trouble, sneaks behind, attired in a costume that would have astonished Tom Rounding himself, at the Epping Hunt. It consists of an old militia coat, denuded of its facings and trappings, made into a single-breasted hunting coat, but, for want of cloth, the laps are lined, as well as the collar covered, with blue; his waistcoat is pea-green, imparting a most cadaverous hue to his melancholy countenance, and he has got on a pair of old white moleskin breeches, sadly darned and cracked at the knees, Hessian boots, with large tassels, and black heel spurs. He carries his hat in one hand, and a black gold-headed opera cane in the other, and looks very like an itinerant conjuror. What strange creatures fine women sometimes fancy!
Mrs. Barnington steps listlessly into the carriage, throws herself upon the back seat, while Barnington and Doleful deposit themselves on the front one; the door is shut with a bang, the “Johnnies” jump up behind, “whit” cries the coachman to his horses, off they go, the fat butler, having followed them up the High Street with his eyes, closes the door, and away they bowl at the rate of twelve miles an hour, round the Crescent, through Jireth Place, Ebenezer Row, Apollo Terrace, past the Archery Ground, and Mr. Jackson’s public gardens, and along the Appledove road, as far as the Mount Sion turnpike-gate — leaving pedestrians, horsemen, and vehicles of every kind immeasurably in the distance.
At the gate a crowd is assembled — Jones Deans, the “pikeman,” has wisely closed the bar, and “No trust” stands conspicuously across the road. As the carriage approaches, it is thrown wide open, off goes Jones’s hat. Mrs. Jones Deans drops a hasty curtsey, that almost brings her knees in contact with the ground, and the little urchins on the rails burst into an involuntary huzza. John Thomas cuts on, and turns at a canter into the grass-field on the left of the road, where poor Peter has been walking his hounds about for the last hour or more. What a crowd! Grooms of every description, with horses of every cut and character, moving up and down, and across and around the field; some to get their horses’ coats down, others to get their legs down, a few to get their horses’ courage down, others to try and get them up: some because they see others do it, and others because they have nothing else to do.
There are thirteen flys full of the young ladies from Miss Prim’s and Miss Prosy’s opposition seminaries, the former in sky-blue ginghams, the latter in pink; Mrs. Fleeceall driven by her dear Fleecey with a new hunting whip, in a double-bodied one-horse “chay” with four little Fleecealls stuck in behind; Mr. Davey, the new apothecary, with his old wife, in a yellow dennet drawn by a white cart mare; Mr. and Mrs. Hookem of the library in Jasper Green the donkey driver’s best ass-cart; farmer Joltem in his untaxed gig, with his name, abode, and occupation painted conspicuously behind; old Tim Rickets, the furniture-broker, in a green garden-chair drawn by a donkey; the post-man on a mule, Boltem, the billiard table-keeper, and Snooks his marker, in an ass phaeton; Donald McGrath, “Squire Arnold’s” Scotch gardener, on “Master George’s pony;” and Sam Finch, the keeper, and Thomas, the coachman, on the carriage horses.
Enveloped in a large dirty old Macintosh, in a single-horse fly, with a dirty apology for a postilion on the animal, with hands stuffed into his front pockets, and a hunting whip peeping above his knees, the mighty Dennis O’Brien wends his way to the meet, his brain still swimming with the effects of the last night’s champagne. As he diverges from the road into the grass-field, he takes his hunting whip from its place, loosens the thong, and proceeding to flagellate both rider and horse, dashes into the crowd in what he considers quite a “bang-up way.” “Now, Peter, my boy!” he roars at the top of his voice, as standing erect in the vehicle he proceeds to divest himself of his elegant “wraprascal,” “be after showing us a run; for by the piper that played before Moses, I feel as if I could take St. Peter’s itself in my stride. — Och blood and ‘ounds! ye young spalpeen, but you’ve been after giving that horse a gallop, — he’s sweating about the ears already,” he exclaims to a little charity-school boy, whom the livery-stable keeper has despatched with a horse Dennis has hired for the “sason,” warranted to hunt four days a week or oftener, and hack all the rest — a raw-boned, broken-knee’d, spavined bay, with some very going points about him. “Be after jumping off, ye vagabond, or I’ll bate you into a powder.”
Romeo Simpkins then comes tip-tup-ing up on a long-tailed dun, with a crupper to the saddle, surrounded by the four Miss Merrygoes, all ringlets and teeth, and the two Miss Millers, all forehead and cheeks, — the cavalcade mounted by the opposition riding-master, Mr. Higgs, who follows the group at a respectful distance to see that they do not take too much out of the nags, and to minute their ride by his watch. Romeo is in ecstasies! He has got on an ill-made, cream-bowl-looking cap, with a flourishing ribbon behind, a very light-coloured coat, inclining more to pink than scarlet, made of ladies’ habit-cloth, a yellow neckcloth, his white waistcoat of the previous evening, and very thin white cord breeches that show his garters, stocking tops, and every wrinkle in his drawers; added to which, after a fashion of his own, his boots are secured to his breeches by at least half a dozen buttons, and straps round the leg. The ladies think Romeo “quite a dear” and Romeo is of the same opinion.
“Now, Barnington, don’t ride like a fool and break your neck,” says the amiable Mrs. Barnington to her sapient spouse, as he begins to fidget and stir in the carriage, as the groom passes and repasses with a fine brown horse in tip-top condition, and a horn at the saddle; a request that was conveyed in a tone that implied, “I hope you may with all my heart.” Then turning to Doleful, who was beginning to look very uneasy as mounting time approached, she added, in a forgiving tone, “Now, my dear Captain, don’t let Barnington lead you into mischief; he’s a desperate rider I know, but there’s no occasion for you to follow him over everything he chooses to ride at.”
Mrs. Barnington might have spared her
self the injunction, for Doleful’s horse was a perfect antidote to any extravagance; a more perfect picture of wretchedness was never seen. It was a long, lean, hide-bound, ewenecked, one-eyed, roan Rosinante, down of a hip, collar-marked, and crupper-marked, with conspicuous splints on each leg, and desperately broken-kneed. The saddle was an old military brass-cantrelled one, with hair girths, rings behind, and a piece of dirty old green carpet for a saddlecloth. The bridle was a rusty Pelham, without the chain, ornamented with a dirty faded yellow-worsted front, and strong, cracked, weather-bleached reins, swelled into the thickness of moderate traces — with the head-stall ends flapping and flying about in all directions, and the choak-band secured by a piece of twine in lien of a buckle. The stirrups were of unequal lengths, but this could not be helped, for they were the last pair in Handley Cross; and Doleful, after a survey of the whole, mounts and sticks his feet into the rusty irons, with a self-satisfied grin on his spectral face, without discovering their inequality.
“Keep a good hold a her mouth, sir,” says the fly-man groom, whose property she is, gathering up the reins and placing them in a bunch in Doleful’s hands; “keep a good hold of her head, sir,” he repeats, an exhortation that was not given without due cause, for no sooner did the mare find herself released from her keeper, than down went her head, up went her heels, off went the captain’s hat, out flew the militia coat laps, down went the black gold-headed cane, and the old mare ran wheel-barrow fashion about the field, kicking, jumping, and neighing to the exquisite delight of the thirteen fly-fulls of pink and blue young ladies from Miss Prim’s and Miss Prosy’s opposition seminaries, the infinite satisfaction of Mrs. Fleeceall, whom Doleful had snubbed, and to the exceeding mirth of the whole field.
“Help him! save him!” screams Mrs. Barnington, with clasped hands and uplifted eyes, as the old mare tears past the barouche with her heels in the air, and the loose riding M.C. sitting like the “Drunken Hussar” at the Circus, unconsciously digging her with his black heel-spurs as she goes. “Oh heavens! will nobody save him?” she exclaims; and thereupon the two powdered footmen, half dying with laughter, slip down from behind, and commence a pursuit, and succeed in catching the mare just as she had got the Master of the Ceremonies fairly on her shoulders, and when another kick would have sent him over her head. Meanwhile Mrs. Barnington faints. Fans, water, salts, vinegar, all sorts of things, are called in requisition, as may be supposed, when the queen of Handley Cross is taken ill; nothing but a recommendation from the new doctor that her stays should be cut, could possibly have revived her.
Peace is at length restored. Doleful, sorely damaged by the brass cantrel and the pommel, is taken from the “old kicking mare,” as she was called at the stable, and placed alongside the expiring Mrs. Barnington in the carriage, and having had enough of hunting, Mr. John Thomas is ordered to drive home immediately.
Whereupon Peter takes out his watch and finds it exactly five minutes to one, the hour that he used to be laying the cloth for Michael Hardey’s dinner, after having killed his fox and got his horses done up. Barnington having seen his wife fairly out of sight, appears a new man, and mounting his brown hunter takes his horn out of the case, knocks it against his thigh, gives his whip a flourish, and trots up to the pack, with one foot dangling against the stirrup iron.
Peter salutes him with a touch of his cap, his groom whipper-inscrapes his against the skies; and Barnington, with a nod, asks Peter what they shall draw? “Hazleby Hanger, I was thinking, sir,” replied Peter with another touch; “the keeper says he saw a fox go in there this morning, and it’s very nice lying.”— “Well then, let us be going,” replies Barnington, looking around the field.— “No!” roars Stephen Dumpling, taking a cigar from his mouth; “Hoppas Hays is the place; the wind’s westerly,” — wetting his finger on his tongue, and holding it up to the air,— “and if we can force him through Badger Wood and Shortmead, he will give us a rare burst over Langley Downs, and away to the sea.”— “Well, what you please, gentlemen,” replies Peter; “only we have not much time to lose, for the days are short, and my fellow servant here doesn’t know the country; besides which we have five couple of young hounds out.”— “I say Hazleby Hanger,” replies Barnington with a frown on his brow, for he was unused to contradiction from any one but his wife. “I say Hoppas Hays,” replies Dumpling loudly, with an irate look, and giving his boot an authoritative bang with his whip.”— “Well, gentlemen, which ever you please,” says Peter, looking confused.— “Then go to Hazleby Hanger,” responds Barnington. “Hoppas Hays!” exclaims Dumpling; “mind, Peter, I’m your master.”— “No more than myself’” replies Barnington, “and I find the whipper-in.”— “Where’s Smith?” shouts Dennis O’Brian, working his way into the crowd, with his coat-pockets sticking out beyond the cantrel of his saddle, like a poor man’s dinner wallet. “Here! here! here!” responded half a dozen voices from horses, gigs, and flys.
“No, Round-the-corner Smith I mean,” replies O’Brian. “Yonder he is by the cow-shed in the corner of the field;” and Smith is seen in the distance in the act of exchanging his hack for his hunter. He comes cantering up the field, feeling his horse as he goes, and on being holloaed to by some score of voices or more, pulls short round and enters the crowd at a trot. “What shall we draw first, Smith?” inquires Mr. Barnington; “I propose Hazleby Hanger.” “I say Hoppas Hays,” rejoins Dumpling— “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-zleby Ha-ha-hanger, or Ho-ho-ho-ho-hoppas Ha-ha-ha-ha-hays! I should think Fa-fa-fa-farley Pa-pa-pasture better than either.” “Well then, let us draw lots,” replied Dennis O’Brian, “for it’s not right keeping gentlemen and men of fortune waiting in this way. By the great gun of Athlone, but the Ballyshannon dogs, kept by Mr. Trodennick, would find and kill a fox in less time than you take in chaffing about where you’ll draw for one. See now,” added he, pulling an old Racing Calender out of his capacious pocket, and tearing a piece into slips, “here are three bits of paper; the longest is for Hazleby Hanger, the middle one is Hoppas Hays, and the short one shall be Farley Pasture, and Peter shall draw;” whereupon Dennis worked his way through the crowd, advanced into the middle of the pack, and just as Peter drew a slip, Dennis’s spavined steeple-chaser gave Abelard, the French poodle, such a crack on the skull as killed him on the spot. The field is again in commotion, two-thirds of the young ladies in pink ginghams burst into tears, while one of the sky-blue pupils faints, and a second is thrown into convulsions and burst her stays with the noise of a well-charged two-penny cracker. “Who-hoop!” cries Dennis O’Brian, “here’s blood already!” jumping off his horse and holding the expiring animal in mid air; “Who-hoop, my boys, but we’ve begun the season gallantly! killed a lion instead of a fox!” and thereupon he threw the dead dog upon the ground amid the laughter of a few pedestrians, and the general execration of the carriage company.
We need not say that the sport of the ladies was over for the day. There lay poor Abelard, the only dog in the pack they really admired; whose freaks and gambols, in return for buns and queen-cakes, had often beguiled the weariness of their brother’s kennel lectures. The sparkling eye, that watched each movement of the hand, was glazed in death, and the flowing luxuriance of his well-combed mane and locks clotted with gory blood — Alas, poor Abelard! “Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear! Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.”
The hounds alone seemed unconcerned at his fate, and walked about and smelt at him as though they hardly owned his acquaintance, when “Mr. Fleeceall,” the white terrier with the black patch on his eye, having taken him by the ear, with the apparent intention of drawing him about the field, Miss Prim most theatrically begged the body, which was forthwith transferred to the bottom of her fly, to the unutterable chagrin of Miss Prosy, who was on the point of supplicating for it herself, and had just arranged a most touching speech for the occasion. Eyes were now ordered to be dried, and the young ladies were forthwith got into marching order. Pink ginghams wheeled off first; and when they got home, tho
se that did not cry before were whipped, and made to cry after; while the sky-blue young ladies had a page of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, commencing “Dear sensibility! source unexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys or costly in our sorrows!” &c., to learn by heart, to make them more feeling in future.
The field, reduced one-half, at two o’clock set off for Farley Pasture; the procession consists of five flys, twenty-three horsemen, four gig-men, and a string of thirteen donkeys, some carrying double, and others with panniers full of little folk.
Dumpling and Barnington look unamiable things at each other, but neither having carried his point, they ride along the sandy lane that leads to the cover in pouting sullenness. The cavalcade rides the hill that commands the cover in every quarter, where Peter and the pack wait until the long-drawn file have settled themselves to their liking. The cover is an unenclosed straggling gorse of about three or four acres in extent, rising the hill from a somewhat dense patch of underwood, bounded on the east by a few weather-beaten Scotch firs; the country around being chiefly grass-fields of good dimensions. Dumpling canters round the cover, and takes a position among the firs, while Barnington plants himself immediately opposite; and Smith, determined not to be outdone in importance, establishes himself to the south. “Yooi in there!” cries Peter at last with a wave of his cap, his venerable grey hair floating on the breeze; “yooi in there, my beauties!” and the old hounds, at the sound of his cheery voice, dash into the gorse and traverse every patch and corner with eagerness: “Have at him there!” cries Peter, as Belmaid, a beautiful pied bitch, feathers round a patch of gorse near a few stunted birch and oak trees: “have at him there, my beauty!”— “yooi, wind him!” “yooi push him!”