Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  When he reached the summit, Pigg, whose sight was much improved, had hunted his fox with a very indifferent scent round the base of the hill, and having just got a view, was capping the hounds on as hard as ever his horse could lay legs to the ground, whooping and forcing the fox away into the open.

  “Wot a man it is to ride!” ejaculated Jorrocks, eyeing Pigg putting one of Duncan Nevin’s nags that had never seen hounds before at a post and rail that almost made him rise perpendicularly to clear. “Well done you!” continued Mr. Jorrocks, as with a flounder and scramble James got his horse on his legs on the far side, and proceeded to scuttle away again as hard as before. “Do believe he’s got a view o’ the varmint,” continued Mr. Jorrocks, eyeing Pigg’s cap-in-hand progress.

  “Wot a chap it would be if it could only keep itself sober!” continued Mr. Jorrocks, still eyeing James intently, and wishing he hadn’t been too hard upon him. “Of all ‘bominable vices under the sun that of hintemperance is the most degradin’ and disgustin,” continued our master emphatically, accompanying the assertion with a hearty crack of the whip down his leg.

  Jorrocks now gets a view of the varmint stealing away over a stubble, and though he went stouter than our master would have liked if he had been hunting himself, he saw by Pigg’s determined way that he was master of him, and had no doubt that he would have him in hand before long. Accordingly, our master got Arterxerxes by his great Romannosed head, and again letting the Latchford’s freely into his sides, sent him scrambling down hill at a pace that was perfectly appalling. Open went the gate at the bottom of the hill, down Jorrocks made for the Long Tommy ford, splash he sent Arterxerxes in just like Johnny Gilpin in Edmonton Wash, —

  “ — throwing the water about,

  On both sides of the way,

  Just like a trundling mop,

  Or a wild goose at play.”

  Then having got through, he seized the horse by the mane, and rose the opposing bank determined to be in at the death if he could. “Blow me tight!” ejaculated he, “do believe this hungry highlander will grab him arter all!” And then rising in his stirrups and setting up his great shoulders, Jorrocks tore up the broken Muggercamp lane, sending the loose stones flying right and left as he went.

  “If they can but pash him past Ravenswing-scar,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, eyeing the leading hounds approaching it, “they’ll mop ’im to a certainty, for there’s nothin’ to save ’im arter it. Crikey! they’re past! and its U. P. with old Pug! Well, if this doesn’t bang Bannager I doesn’t know what does! If we do but kill’un, I’ll make sich a hofferin’ to Bacchus as ‘ill perfectly ‘stonish ’im,” continued Mr. Jorrocks, settling Arterxerxes agoing again. “Gur-r-r along! you great ‘airy ‘eeled ‘umbug!” groaned he, cropping and rib-roasting the horse with his whip.

  Arterxerxes, whose pedigree, perhaps, hasn’t been very minutely looked into, soon begins to give unmistakeable evidence of satiety. He doesn’t seem to care much about the whip, and no longer springs to the spur. He begins to play the castanets too in a way that is anything but musical to Mr. Jorrocks’s ear. Our master feels that it will very soon be all U. P. with Arterxerxes too.

  “Come hup, you snivellin’, drivellin’, son of a lucifer match-maker!” he roars out to Ben, who is coming lagging along in his master’s wake. “Come on!” roared he, waving his arm frantically, as, on reaching the top of Ravenswing scar, he sees the hounds swinging down, like a bundle of clock pendulums into the valley below. “Come hup, I say, ye miserable, road-ridin’, dish-lickin’ cub! and give me that quad, for you’re a disgrace to a saddle, and only fit to toast muffins for a young ladies’ boardin’ school. Come hup, you preter-pluperfect tense of ‘umbugs!” adding, “I wouldn’t give tuppence a dozen for such beggarly boys; no, not if they’d give me a paper bag to put them in.”

  Mr. Jorrocks, having established a comfortable landing-place on a grassy mound, proceeded to dismount from the nearly pumped out Arterxerxes, and pile himself on to the much fresher Xerxes, who had been ridden more as a second horse than as a whipper in’s.

  “Now go along!” cried our master, setting himself into his saddle, and giving Xerxes a hearty salute on the neck with his whip. “Now go along!” repeated he, “and lay yourself out as if you were in the cut-me-downs,” adding, “there are twenty couple of ‘ounds on the scent!”

  “By ‘eavens, it’s sublime!” exclaimed he, eyeing the hounds, streaming away over a hundred-acre pasture below. “By ‘eavens, it’s sublime! ’ow they go, screechin’ and towlin’ along, jest like a pocket full o’ marbles.” Ow the old wood re-echoes their melody, and the old castle seemingly takes pleasure to repeat the sound. A Jullien concert’s nothin’ to it. No, not all the bands i’ the country put together.”

  “How I wish I was a heagle!” now exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, eyeing the wide stretching vale before him. “How I wish I was a hegle, ‘overin over ’em, seein’ which ‘ound has the scent, which hasn’t, and which are runnin’ frantic for blood.”

  “To guide a scent well over a country for a length of time, through all the changes and chances o’ the chase, and among all difficulties usually encountered, requires the best and most experienced abilities,” added he, shortening his hold of his horse, as he now put his head down the steep part of the hill. Away Jorrocks went wobbling like a great shape of red Noyeau jelly.

  An accommodating lane serves our master below, and taking the grassy side of it, he pounds along manfully, sometimes hearing the hounds, sometimes seeing Pigg’s cap, sometimes Charley’s hat, bobbing over the fences; and, at more favoured periods, getting a view of the whole panorama of the chase. Our master is in ecstacies! He whoops, and shouts, and grins, and rolls in his saddle, looking more like the drunken Huzzar at the circus, than the sober, well-conducted citizen.

  “F-o-r-rard on!” is still his cry. Hark! They’ve turned and are coming towards him. Jorrocks hears them, and spurs on in hopes of a nick. Fortune favours him, as she generally does the brave and persevering, and a favourable fall of the land enables our friend to view the fox still travelling on at an even, stealthy sort of pace, though certainly slower than the still pressing, squeak, squeak, yap, yap, running pack. Pigg and Charley are in close attendance, and Jorrocks nerves himself for a grand effort to join them.

  “I’ll do it,” says he, putting Xerxes at a well broken-down cattle-gap, into Wandermoor common. This move lands him well inside the hounds, and getting upon turf he hugs his horse, resolved to ride at whatever comes in his way. Another gap, not quite so well flattened as the first, helps our friend on in his project, and emboldened by success, he rams manfully at a low stake and rice-bound gateway, and lands handsomely in the next field. He thus gains confidence.

  “Come on, ye miserable, useless son of a lily-livered besom-maker,” he roars to Benjamin, who is craning and funking at the place his master has come so gallantly over. “Rot ye,” adds Jorrocks, as the horse turns tail, “I’ll bind ye ‘prentice to a salmon pickler.”

  The next field is a fallow, but Jorrocks chooses a wet furrow, up which he spurts briskly, eyeing the country far and near, as well for the fox, as a way out. He sees both. The fox is skirting the brow of the opposite heathery hill, startling the tinkling belled sheep, while the friendly shepherd waves his cap, indicating an exit.

  “Thank ‘ee,” cries Jorrocks, as he slips through the gate.

  There is nothing now between him and the hounds, save a somewhat rough piece of moorland, but our master not being afraid of the pace so long as there is no leaping, sails away in the full glow of enthusiastic excitement. He is half frantic with joy!

  The hounds now break from scent to view and chase the still flying fox along the hill side — Duster, Vanquisher, and Hurricane have pitched their pipes up at the very top of their gamut, and the rest come shrieking and screaming as loudly as their nearly pumped-out wind will allow.

  Dauntless is upon him, and now a snap, a turn, a roll, and it’s all over with reynard.

/>   Now Pigg is off his horse and in the midst of the pack, now he’s down, now he’s up, and there’s a pretty scramble going on!

  “Leave him! leave him!” cries Charley, cracking his whip in aid of Pigg’s efforts. A ring is quickly cleared, the extremities are whipped off, and behold the fox is ready for eating.

  “O Pigg, you’re a brick! a fire brick!” gasps the heavily perspiring Mr. Jorrocks, throwing himself exhausted from his horse, which he leaves outside the now riotous ring, and making up to the object of his adoration, he exclaimed, “O Pigg, let us fraternise!” Whereupon Jorrocks seized Pigg by the middle, and hugged him like a Polar bear, to the mutual astonishment of Pigg and the pack.

  “A — a — a wuns man, let’s hev’ him worried!” roared Pigg, still holding up the fox with both hands high above his head. “A — a — a wuns man, let’s hev’ him worried,” repeated James, as Jorrocks danced him about still harder than before,

  “Tear ’im and eat ’im!” roars Pigg, discharging himself of the fox, which has the effect of detaching Jorrocks, and sending him to help at the worry. Then the old boy takes a baunch, and tantalises first Brilliant, then Harmony, then Splendour, then Vengeance, all the eager young entry in short.

  Great was Mr. Jorrocks’s joy and exultation. He stuck his cap on his whip and danced about on one leg. He forgot all about the Cat and Custard-Pot, the gob full of baccy, and crack in the kite, in his anxiety to make the most of the victory. Having adorned the head-stall of his own bridle with the brush, slung the head becomingly at Pigg’s saddle side, and ‘smeared Ben’s face plentifully with blood, he got his cavalcade in marching order, and by dint of brisk trotting re-entered Handley Cross just at high change, when everybody was abusing him for his conduct to poor Pigg, and vowing that he didn’t deserve so good a huntsman. Then when they saw what had happened, they changed their tunes, declaring it was a regular preconcerted do, abused both James and Jorrocks, and said they’d withdraw their subscriptions from the hounds.

  CHAPTER XXXVII. MR. JORROCKS’S JOURNAL.

  WE LEARN FROM the above veracious record, that when our worthy friend arrived at home after the foregoing memorable day, he found how it was that the prophet, Gabriel Junks, the peacock, was not in the garden when he went to consult him about the weather. Among other letters, a highly musked, superfine satin cream-laid paper one lay on his table, from no less a man than Doctor Sebastian Mello, complaining in no measured terms of Gabriel having killed Mello’s fine white Dorking cock.

  “Humph!” grunted Mr. Jorrocks, throwing it down, “that ‘counts for the bird not bein’ forthcomin’ this mornin’. Wot business has he out of his own shop, I wonder.” Fearing, on second thoughts, that Mello might try to make him pay for him, and that too at the rate of the mania price for poultry, Mr. Jorrocks thought it best to traverse the killing altogether, which accordingly he did by the following answer.

  “M.F.H. John Jorrocks presents his compliments to Dr. Sebastian Mello, and is much surprised to receive a note complaining of the M.F.H.’s peacock, Gabriel Junks, havin’ slain the Doctor’s dung-ill cock. The M.F.H. thinks the Doctor must be mistaken. The M.F.H. cannot bring himself to think that Gabriel, with his ‘igh and chivalrous feelins, would condescend to do battle with such an unworthy adwersary as a dung-’ill cock. Nevertheless, the M.F.H. begs to assure the Doctor of his distinguished consideration.

  “Diana Lodge.”

  And having despatched Ben with it, and given him instructions to find out, if he could, whether any one saw the bird at work, Mr. Jorrocks proceeded to make the following entry in his journal:— “Letter from Bowker, requesting the loan of a 50l. Stock been seized for rent and arrears, — seems to be always gettin’ seized; — no interest paid on former fifty yet. Queer chap, Bill, with his inwoices, and flash of supplyin’ the trade, when 50l. was all he set up with, and that I had to lend him. — Never chop-fallen, seemingly, with all his executions and misfortunes. — Writes,

  “‘I had a rum go in a ‘buss on Saturday. Streets being sloppy, and wantin’ to go to my snuff-merchant in the Minories, I got into a ‘buss at the foot of Holborn Hill, and seated myself next a pretty young woman with a child in her arms. Stopping at Bow Church, she asked if I’d have the kindness to hold the babby for a minute, when out she got, and cut down the court as hard as ever she could go. On went the ‘buss, and I saw I was in for a plant. A respectable old gentleman in black, shorts and a puddingey white tie, sat opposite; and as the ‘buss pulled up at the Mansion-house, I said, ‘Perhaps you’d have the kindness to hold the babby for a minute, while I alight;’ and popping it into his lap, I jumped out, making for Bucklersbury, threading all the courts in my line till I got back to Lincoln’s Inn.’

  “Sharp of Bill; — deserves 50l. for his ‘cuteness. May as well lend it on an ‘I. O. U.,’ for it’s no use throwin’ good money after bad by usin’ a stamp.”

  While our master was thus writing, Ben returned with the following minute account of the Gabriel Junks’ transaction from the refined Mr. Sebastian Mello himself: —

  “Sir, — I am surprised that you should contradict my assertion respecting your cock having killed my white Dorking fowl, on no better grounds than mere supposition. I tell you he did kill my cock. He passed through the Apollo Belvidere gardens and perched on one of the balls at my back gates, as if the place were his own. When my maid, Maria, fed the fowls, he flew among them, and because my cock resented the intrusion he killed him on the spot; and then his master adds insult to injury, by saying he does not believe it. These sort of manners may be very well for the city, but they won’t do for civilised life. I may take this opportunity of observing that you are very indecorous in your general proceedings. The day before yesterday you walked your hounds and your servants in scarlet before my windows, and stood there, a thing that I, as a religious man, would not have had done for ten sovereigns. I desire you will not do so again.

  “Your obedient servant,

  “Sebastian Mello.

  Sulphur Wells Hall”

  To which Mr. Jorrocks makes a “Mem. — To take ‘orns as well as ‘ounds next time, and blow before his house — a beggar.”

  The next entry of importance is the following: —

  “Had Fleecey to see how the cat jumps in the money department. Sharp chap, Fleecey — manages to keep the expenses up to the receipts, what with earth-stoppin’, damage, cover rent, and law bills. Wanted to take credit for receivin’ no salary. Axed him what his bills were? Said public officers always had a fixed salary besides their bills. Had twenty-five pounds a-year from the Mount Sion Turnpike-road. Told him I knew nothin’ about ‘pikes, but if he did not get me all arrears of subscription in by New Year’s Day I’d be my own sec., and save both his law bills and his salary.

  “Read the Life — good letter on bag foxes.

  “‘BAG FOXES. “‘To the Editor of Bell’s Life in London.

  “‘Sir, — as your journal is a sporting one, and unquestionably the first in the kingdom, I am very sorry frequently to see in it accounts of runs with bagged foxes. You, sir, who are so well acquainted with the sports of the field, must know what a very difficult thing it is to show sport with fox-hounds, and that very much of that difficulty arises from the almost entire impracticability of preserving foxes, occasioned in great measure by their being stolen and sold to hunters of bagged foxes. It matters not if the animal is turned out before hounds in a country where no regular fox-hounds are kept, the crime (in a sporting sense) and the evil done are always the same. I am sure you will acknowledge that fox-hunting is, of all others, the noblest of English sports, and cannot doubt that a moment’s consideration will show you, that your publishing accounts of runs with bagged foxes is giving a tacit approval of that practice (I will not term it sport). Should you, upon consideration, decline publishing accounts of any more of these runs, you will have the hearty thanks of every real sportsman, and you will show that you are determined that the character of your journal shall be that o
f The Sporting Chronicle of England.

  “‘A Fox-hunter,

  “‘BUT NOT A Master of Hounds.’

  “Waterbury Turnpike.— ‘Pikes are better for meetin’ at than publics. Gabriel Junks began screamin’ at day-break; so put on my old hat and coat, ditto boots, and breeches. — Began to drop just as we left kennel. Useful bird Junks, to be sure, — no pack perfect without a peacock; — the most ‘arden’d minister dirsn’t tax a peacock. Reg’lar down-pour by the time we got to the ‘pike. Duncan Nevin’s screws out as usual; and a groom in twilled fustian, with a green neckcloth, and a cockade in his ‘at, leadin’ some rips up and down the road for soger officers. Home at one — wet as water. Paid for catchin’ my oss Is.

  “Turtle soup day. Roger Swizzle dined and got glorious; — says the true way to be healthy is to live freely and well. — Believes he has cured more people of indigestion than any man goin’. — Thinks Mello a cantin’ humbug. — Wishes he could ride, that he might hunt: subscribes twenty-five guineas to the ‘ounds since I got them — pays too. — Showed him Mello’s letters. — Says the open in front of Sulphur Wells Hall is public property, and I may kick up whatever row I like upon it. — Will write to Bowker to send a company of mountebanks down to perform there.”