by R S Surtees
It is derogatory to a wit to act the part of a retriever.
We have seen this sort of cut-and-dried trotting out attempted in the country, but it is not adapted for general use, and this reminds us that we are taking — if not the words out of Tom’s mouth — at all events the thoughts out of his head, who the obliging reader will have the kindness to consider as still dozing in his arm-chair, with much the same thoughts passing through his head that we have been detailing.
The most flagrant case of premeditated “trotting-out” I ever witnessed, thought Tom, beginning to grapple with particulars, was that of poor Jerry Goldfinch, of Bumpkin Lodge. Jerry had the vanity to marry the daughter of a dilapidated baronet, and having nothing but her pedigree to regale on, she is extremely tenacious of maintaining her dignity; and awful are the rages she used to get into when her claims were not recognised and allowed. When she first came into the county she spoilt two or three dinner parties by declaring she had the cramp in her stomach when she was not taken out first, and monopolised all the hot plates to apply them to it, instead of letting people get their victuals upon them. All this, of course, was visited on poor Jerry’s head when he got home. “Poor spiritless wretch, to see his wife used so “not fit to be called a man,” and so on. By-and-by, Jerry, who had been bred to the bar, started what he would call a “beautiful fiction,” a sort of “leader of the gallop,” or “trotter-out.” This was a sneaking, grinning, wriggling, old bachelor, of the name of Rufus Slackbags, who goes the round of country parties just as an organ-grinder’s hat goes the round of street ones. The following was their mode of proceeding; it is much in the style of the old thimble-riggers: —
The company being assembled, Jerry and Slack-bags would get together in the thick of the covey, and start a controversy respecting the date of some real or imaginary baronetage, which Jerry would carry on in the loud argumentative style so distinctive of the lower order of the bar; while Slackbags, on his part, maintained his position with a greater degree of tenacity than is usually shown by gentlemen fishing for dinners. “He would say, that Sir Mark was a baronet of yesterday, a baronet of yesterday — yes, a baronet of yesterday;” speaking as if he held new baronets in the utmost contempt. Cunning Jerry would then take the other side, and maintain the antiquity of the title; and so they would wrangle and battle on till they got general attention drawn to themselves, — a thing not at all difficult to do, just before dinner, especially in the country. “Well, but my good friend,” Jerry would rejoin, sotto voce, as if his delicacy rather made him shy of proclaiming it before company, “well, but my good friend,” he would repeat, his voice rising as he saw the plot ripen, “I know you are wrong, and I’ll tell you why. In the first place,” continued he, applying the forefinger of his right hand with a flourish to the palm of his left—” in the first place, I MARRIED THE DAUGHTER OF A BARONET. My wife, Mrs. Goo-o-o-oldfinch,” — for he puts no end of o’s in, “my wife, Mrs. Goo-o-o-old-finch, is the sixth DAUGHTER OF SIR MARTIN MOONSHINE, OF SUNBEAM-COURT, IN SOMERSETSHIRE, AND”—” Please, sir, dinner’s sarved!” exclaims old Berlins, throwing open the door; and away goes the happy, smiling, smirking, Mrs. Goldfinch, with the host, minus the cramp in her stomach.
I’m sure, thought Tom, draining his tumbler of negus, I saw that “cross” come off” half-a-dozen times, till Mrs. Goldfinch got her precedence fairly established.
The greatest “sell” I ever heard in the way of a “trot-out,” continued Tom, as he brewed himself another, was that by my old friend Mr. Trumper, of Jollyrise, of the great Mr. Tarquinius Muff, of Muff Hall. Trumper doesn’t like Muff — never did, indeed. Long before Tarquinius hallooed him on to the fresh hare, and insulted his harriers by calling them beagles (or beggles, as Trumper pronounces it), he used to fight shy, and talk of him as “that man Muff,”
“Noodle Muff,” and so on.
Somehow, Muff doesn’t see it, or doesn’t fancy it possible for any one to be insensible of the importance of his acquaintance, and he patronises Trumper extensively. He thought to show him off to his friend Major Tinhead, of Blocksby at the last meeting of the Stumpwicket Cricket Club.
At the previous meeting Mr. Trumper had been discussing the merits of Mr. Neville’s and the Teardevil countries, when he entered into a very long and interesting discussion, showing how by the omission of certain great woodlands in one, and the drainage of certain great tracts in the other, an excellent country might be formed of the two; to all of which “Muff” said “ditto,” as though most thoroughly appreciating and approving the doctrine. Trumper then favoured us with some of his “hunting reminiscences,” — what he did long, long ago, much in the style of Nimrod’s popular work of that name; and altogether the party spent a most agreeable and instructive evening, as the newspaper reporters would say. Well, the next meeting being the last, and consequently the best, each member had the privilege of feeding a friend, and the strangers being placed next their hosts in the seats of honour at the top of the table, our thinker sported Trumper, and Tarquinius brought Tinhead, the couples sitting opposite each other.
Tarquinius having “wined” with Mr. Trumper, and done all that a gentleman in diamond studs could be expected to do by an old drab-breeched farmer, tried to trot him out during dinner, beginning with the subject that had brought him out before. Trumper kept snorting and tucking in his dinner, giving monosyllabic answers and most likely angry looks, varied occasionally by a kick of Tom’s shins under the table, just as if he were spurring a horse to get away from a humbug out hunting. Tarquinius, however, was too dense to see any thing of the sort, and attributed Trumper’s indifference to devotion to his dinner; and after the usual loyal and patriotic toasts had gone the rounds, and the tight-lacedness of eloquence had dissolved into the freedom of a circle round the fire, Muff began again before the now diminished audience. Never was such a man set to tickle a trout as Muff! His action was just like the ungainly gambol of a cow compared to the smooth glide of the race-horse. Instead of getting something fresh and ‘ticeing him up another stream, he tried the old bait that Trumper had already refused to nibble at. He went out of his way in the most forced, self-evident manner, and interrupted an argument on draining to lug in that of hunting. And he would have it in, too, despite the efforts of the Rev. Timothy Goodman, the chaplain of the Goose and Dumpling Hunt, who, seeing the perplexity of his great patron, tried hard to restore the current of conversation to its former channel.
“Don’t you think, Mr. Trumper,” asked Tarquinius, appealing directly to our friend, “that Neverbreak woods are a great drawback to Mr. Neville’s country?”
“Well, but if a two-foot drain will carry,” interposed Goodman.
“At all events, don’t you think we could easily afford to give them to the — ?”
“The Elkington system of draining,” again interposed the parson.
“Well, but now there’s no man knows more about’ hunting or the country than you do, Mr. Trumper,” observed Muff, throwing out an arm, and raising his voice high above that of the chaplain, “and I’m sure there’s no one whose opinion we all respect more: might I ask now, for the sake of information, what is your opinion of the general character of this country as a hunting one?”
That was a point-blank question, and put so forcibly and publicly that Muff hugged himself at having at length pinned him, and thought how his promise to Tinhead of trotting out Trumper was about to be fulfilled. He was, however, reckoning without his host. Trumper, who had had recourse to a pipe by way of parrying Muff’s importunities, sat some seconds after the question was put, with his keen eye glistening, and a smile on his countenance, which Tarquinius construed into an arrangement of thoughts, and expected the same extensive observation and luminous discussion he had listened to before, showing how the Grassmere vale was very fine, and the Roxley Hills very heavy, and the Tew Woods very troublesome, and so on, all of which he thought would impress Tin-head with a due sense of his (Muff’s) great importance as a sporting
character.
Instead of this Trumper sat “whif, whif, — until silence could no longer be maintained without rudeness, when knocking the top ashes out of his pipe on the hob, as if he were going to begin, he looked Muff in the face, and uttered these words, “Think of the country — arle bog!” amid the outrageous laughter of the party.
“And yet Trumper will trot when he’s properly handled,” mused our friend Tom, still sipping at the tumbler.
“A great deal,” continued he, “depends on the skill of the leader in the matter of a trot out. A man will trot quite freely with one person and yet be perfectly restive in the hands of another. Nay, I have seen men trot themselves out who would “shut up” directly if the trot was attempted by another. Trumper may be quoted as an instance of this sort. He has a joke that has laughed off half the waistcoat strings in the country, which he lies in ambush for with the most perfect malice prepense that ever was witnessed. It is the chorus of a hunting song, not the old —
“There’s nothing CAN compare
To hunting of the hare!”
but a regular ballad, built by the local bard of the country in honour and glory of Trumper himself, descriptive of his superlative qualities, his keenness — his gameness — the worth of his hounds, with the usual flourish about his love of the poor and all that sort of thing, the chorus of which is —
“May Trumper live a thousand years, a thousand years,
May Trumper live a thousand years,
And I be there to see.”
This is the stock song of a certain set in our country; the farmers sing it, the ale-houses roar with it — it comes belching out of the beer-shop doors — the clods hum it at the smithy, and altogether it is just as well known as the cross in the market-place. If I have heard it sung once in Trumper’s presence, I have heard it sung fifty times, and have often wished for the pencil of Thackeray to sketch the delightful complacency with which he sits listening to all the handsome things that are said of him. But richer far is the twinkle of his eye and the sly chuckle of his face as he prepares to let off the well-accustomed joke. It is a fine piece of acting. The first time over he merely puts on a wise face and cocks his ear as if surprised at the proposition, and considering whether, if he is to take a lease certain, he may not as well ask for twelve or fifteen hundred years. Then he listens while the song recites the stoutness of his horses and the mettle of his hounds, when he begins fidgeting his great patent cords about in the arm-chair, as if unable to sustain the idea of separating from the darlings at any time; but when the chorus again hursts forth, limiting him to a paltry
“THOUSAND TEAKS,”
his feelings quite overcome him, and starting from his seat, he exclaims at the top of his voice,
“I DON’T LIKE TO BE STINTED!” —
amidst the uproarious plaudits of the delighted company. Hooray! hooray! hooray! hooray!
‘ Reader! what say you to “One cheer more for old Trumper!” HOORAY!
“Confound it,” continued Tom, rousing up with the excitement produced by this last recollection, “I’ll be hanged if I won’t put these thoughts upon paper — make an article for Bell’s Life, the Quarterly Review, or some of the periodicals.” So saying, he snuffed the thick-wicked cauliflowerheaded candles, stirred the fire, arranged his paper, and when he had got all ready he found his thoughts had taken flight and he could not catch any of them.
He therefore went to bed instead.
CHAP. VIII.
THE STOUT-AS-STEEL HOUNDS.
PEOPLE WHO FANCY all the dirt and discomfits of life are centered in large towns, have only to visit the small one of Sludgington to satisfy themselves of their error. One would think that a place through which a two-horse coach can barely pay its way thrice a week, would be tolerably free from the noise and din of bustling places; but not even the “White Horse” in Fetter-lane, or the old “Bull and Mouth,” in their noisiest, dirtiest, most coaching times, could surpass the disquiet of the Goldtrap Arms. Long before daylight Mr. Scott was aroused by the roll of carts, and the most unearthly yells proceeding from the drivers to their horses; a sort of guttural sound, that seemed to come up from their very stomachs, much like what one hears aboard a steam packet. Having once commenced, the nuisance was repeated every half hour or so, either at the front or the side of the house, both of which passages his bedroom commanded, until it seemed as if all the carts in the world were grinding about the Goldtrap Arms. Sleep with such a noise was impossible, even if his old friend the cuckoo clock, had not kept jingling, clattering, and chiming, in the intervals unoccupied by the carters. He was curious to see what could cause such commotion, and availed himself of the first dawn of day to look out of the window to see what sort of a morning it was, and look what the carts were loaded with. Of course they then suspended operations for a time; and having tired of staring at the closed shutters of the chemist’s opposite, and the sign of “Isabella Jenkins, licensed dealer in tea, coffee, tobacco and snuff,” at the side, he again crept into bed, thinking the transit was past, and he might yet sleep off the head-achey discomfits of the night. No such thing, however. Just as he was dropping into a doze, jingle, jingle, jingle, went the works of the old cuckoo clock, bang flew the doors, out pounced the bird, and cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! sounded with the most provokingly prolonged monotony. When it ceased, two cats on the top of Isabella Jenkin’s house commenced a serenade that was enough to disturb the whole town.
“Flesh and blood can’t stand this!” cried Tom, turning deliberately out of bed and groping for his razor. “I’ll abate two nuisances at once;” so, stealing quietly on to the staircase where the clock was, he very soon returned with its weights in his hand, leaving the cuckoo to flounder itself down at its leisure.
Up then went the window, and — bang! went the weights at the cats, causing them to start in the midst of a most uproarious frolic, and run helter skelter over the pantiles in contrary directions.
Singular as it may seem, notwithstanding the constant noise the thing kept up in the house, neither Cake nor Madame missed it; at least Scott heard nothing about it, and the house is too small to allow of any commotion without it being heard “all over.” He heard no observation about the cuckoo clock having suspended payment — no sudden exclamation, “Law me! what’s got the cuckoo clock weights nothing, in fact, to indicate anything “out of the common.” Nor was there anything in the bill, though it had almost every imaginable item printed, from pipes and baccey down to ginger beer.
When one gets into a place, how it magnifies, and how one feels part and parcel of it! Though there never was a more contemptible place than Sludgington, still, like a vapouring bully, it had forced itself into something like importance; and it was only when three or four strides of the old mare took Scott clean out of it up the road towards the hills, that he was satisfied what a regular “cock-o’-my-thumb” place it was.
* * * * * *
How beautiful everything looked — magnificent, we might say, — the noble mountains, in all their pure and placid grandeur, swelling over each other till the snow-clad points of the highest seemed to touch the very sky. The goats and sheep browsing on the sides looked like mere specks; while the hells of the cattle lower down kept up a lively jingle, as each motion in feeding set them agoing. The road was well calculated for showing off the scenery; now winding round the hill bases, now past some stupendous steep, with naught but stunted trees starving in the rocky desolation around; now skirting some gentle slope up which the plough had ventured as high as the depth of soil would carry; now past some wooded dell at the base of adjoining hills, down whose rugged course the mountain torrent flowed in gentle, sparkling streams. All about was so pure and healthy — such a contrast to little cramped Sludgington. The white farmhouses, the rose-twined, heather-thatched cottages, the rustic bridges, the very rustics themselves, all had a clean wholesome look, far different to the frowsy ostler and people Scott had left at the Gold-trap Arms. The incompatibility — to make use o
f a fine term — of combining real romantic scenery with first-rate hunting, is, perhaps, the only drawback to the chase, and certainly the two have hitherto been denied to all countries we have seen. Those wags of all wags, “the Warwickshire wags,” as the song calls them, used to boast of the picturesque beauties of their “shire;” and “picturesque” is a very proper term to apply to them, being chiefly of the tame tractable order suited to a picture — beauties that look better in a picture perhaps than in reality. But the grand mountain scenery of the Welsh side of our island, where the sagacious reader will of course see our friend’s travels lie, defies the power of the artist; and however good their pictures may be for recalling the scene, they fail of conveying an idea of the bold realities of the land to parties who have not been there.
But we are turning artist instead of sticking to our text — the Stout-as-Steel Hounds. Scott had penetrated some five or six miles (according to time, for they don’t sport milestones) into the bowels of the mountains ere he saw any indication of hunting. Having pulled up at a cross road a little beyond a small row of white cottages, to try and decipher a washed-out finger-post, a halloo and a waive of a hand to the left from a man that Scott’s red coat had brought to the door, put him on the right line; and presently Scott saw his guide take the same direction by the fields, followed by a large black and tan hound, whose deep-mouthed baying, as he jumped and frolicked about his master, was echoed back by the surrounding hills. After the man’s politeness in directing him, our friend could not do less than court his society; so he pulled up to a pace at which the man would easily overtake him.
He was a stout young fellow dressed in the conical hat, red and green embroidered flannel jerkin, cord breeches, blue stockings, and laced boots of the hill country.