by R S Surtees
We trust the reader will believe Mr. Scott sincere in saying that he had every intention of going home that day. Indeed he wished it; for, independently of being out of linen, he was extremely short of other things, and a man feels the want of trifles that he does not appreciate when at hand. Besides, he wanted to see how things were going on, whether the red cow had calved, or any of the young horses got lamed. Still, what could he do? Here was an old friend whom he had not seen for twenty years, gouty and unwell, yet willing to take a glass of wine with him. Prudence said “No,” but inclination said “Ay,” and accordingly “ay” had it.
“Come and see a course,” said Sir Charles, as the cavalcade turned off the road through a gate into some extensive pastures; “you don’t know what fun it is, and we are getting near a tie,” added he.
Tom had a pretty good idea though, for he” once kept a greyhound himself, and a more daft, mischievous, useless beggar was never seen. It used to do nothing but run a muck at the poultry, and sheep, and foals, and practise feats of agility through the windows. Worse still, the insensate brute was continually losing itself, and cost him no end of half-crowns for casting up, until he was fortunate enough to see the animal enticed away by a mugger-man, from whose care there is seldom much escape. The fellow thought he’d got a prize.
Scott followed the motley group, which had now been joined by his pedestrian friend, into the field, and a couple of dogs were stripped of their hoods, and spectacles, and quarter-pieces, and put in the slips. They then made a circuit of the enclosure, following the important Mr. Marksman, the judge, with the rear brought up by a most miscellaneous rabble of foot people, interspersed with brandy-ball and lollypop merchants, the usual concomitants of pedestrian crowds.
They ranged that field and another, and beat a bank-side, and then crossed a nice trout-stream on to some water meadows beyond.
“Let us stand here and see the course,” said Sir Charles, sheltering under the lee of a tumbledown building, from one of those heavy, cutting, rattling hail-storms that so disconcert lazy housemaids with bright grates. Patter, patter, patter it came, rattling down upon the harsh dry mackintosh, making the large bullets bound again.
Before it was well over, at least before they had fairly opened their daylights again, a shout proclaimed the course begun, and, looking across the water, Scott saw two great snake-like animals stretching and striding away over the plain after an unfortunate little driblet of a thing, that evidently had a very poor chance with them. It went away stoutly at first, to be sure, and there was little sensible advantage so long as it ran straight; but the moment it began to swerve, the superiority of the followers was evident.
So it went twisting and turning, the efforts becoming “smaller by degrees and beautifully less.”
Sir Charles was in ecstasies! He jerked, and he jumped, and he worked his arms, and bit his lips, and hung to one side, just as a cockney does in a cab that he thinks is about to capsise. “Beautiful course!” exclaimed he; “beautiful course!” as the dark dog turned the poor drab thing to the left, and the light dog sent it right ahead again. “Finest course I ever saw in my life! — finest course I ever saw in my life!” ejaculated he, as the hare made straight for a gate.
“By Jove, that’s well done!” said he, as the dogs cleared it together. “Now for the tug of war!”
They were now upon a seed field, and gaining painfully upon poor puss. First one strider turned her, then the other, the poor thing’s energy contracting with each effort, till the dark dog shot a length in advance, and chucked her right up in the air.
Then up hurried the field, the victor all glee, the loser all glum, while water-bottles and clothing were produced, and another brace of dogs had their spectacles taken off and were put in the slips.
So they went on from field to field, coursing and killing, and losing and missing, amid the betting and cheering of the company.
At last the course came on deciding whether the owner of the dark dog or a red one was to have the honour of keeping a pewtery-looking cup for the year, and of sacking a certain number of sovereigns in the shape of stakes. We dare say there was as much as ten pounds at issue; and if there had been a million, there couldn’t have been more noise. “Five shillings on the Dusty Miller!” exclaimed a great, fat, butcherified-looking fellow, in blue woollens or tweeds, mopping the perspiration from his brow, which he had managed to acquire in the “trot” of the last course — a thing that none but a twenty-stoner could accomplish with such an atmosphere.
“I’ll lay a shilling on the Miller! I’ll lay two! I’ll lay three! I’ll take three to two!” exclaimed another.
“I’ll lay you half-a-crown to two shillings, Jubbins,” replied Popkins; and the quantity and nature of the betting showed that there would be a great demand for silver after the course.
The awkward part of betting on a course seems to be that there is no way of regulating the race. It isn’t like a trial of speed between horses, for twisting and turning seems to have quite as much to do with winning as the straightforward fly. So it was here. After much to do they at length got a satisfactory hare; but, after the usual bowling about, the victory was declared in favour of Bright Star, Dusty Miller, for some unapparent cause, being non-suited, though an inexperienced courser would have said that he followed suit quite as stoutly as his competitor.
Amidst cheers for the victor the scene closed, and many of the field availed themselves of the opportunity afforded by pulling out their purses to pull out their pocket-handkerchiefs too, for it was intensely cold.
On reaching the village of Leighford, Sir Charles abandoned his cob, and a brougham, with post horses, was presently at the Greyhound Inn door, in which he insisted on seating Scott, and carrying him off to his residence.
It requires a strongish intimacy to accompany an invalid with no better prospect than what the baronet had held out; but friends decrease so, as we get on in life, that it is cheering to put one’s hand into the back shelf of time, and pull out an old one, altered, dusted, and damaged though he may be. If a chap is a good fellow at twenty, there’s little chance of his being a bad one at forty; and, barring his ailments, Sir Charles was just the same hearty cock Scott had parted with twenty years before, when he sailed for India. Alas! the then gay stripling was now the premature old man.
It was just light enough, as they dashed across the ornamental bridge, over the swan and fowl-swarming water, and dived among the undulations of the deer-stocked park, for Scott to see that his friend had “lit on his legs;” and when they stopped, with a jerk, under the wood-paved Gothic porch of the ancient edifice, and two neatly dressed footmen responded to the sound of the bell, it was evident there was what a literary appraiser would estimate at “thousand a year.”
Nobody that has “any thing” has less, thanks to the liberal talent of Mr. Warren.
“I don’t keep these fellows to look at,” said Sir Charles, as he sidled from his seat in the brougham on to their crossed arms, and was carried bather-woman fashion into the house, ordering one to get the room next his ready for Scott, and the other to tell the groom to see after our friend’s mare, which was coming with his cob. —
“Oh, doctor!” groaned the baronet, as they placed him on a couch, in a perfect snuggery of a room; “ah, doctor!” groaned he, to a little whiteheaded old man, in knee-breeches and buckles, who Scott could have sworn was the doctor if he hadn’t been so addressed; “I’m dreadfully exhausted — very ill indeed!”
“Indeed, Sir Chorles, I’m sorry to hear that, Sir Chorles,” replied the little gentleman, advancing solemnly to his patient, at the same time pulling up a great noisy watch by a sort of jack-chain, to which was appended many seals, as if he was going to feel his pulse.
“Oh, no; it’s not physic I want — it’s not physic I want! I’ve taken all your pills and the blue draught into the bargain,” exclaimed the invalid. “I want something to restore me — to revive me, in fact.”
“Well, Sir Chor
les,” mouthed the man of medicine, “suppose you have a little water gruel,” looking mysteriously at Scott.
“D — n your water gruel!” screamed the invalid; “why, what an inhuman monster you must be to want me to take water gruel on the day I’ve fallen in with Tom Scott, after an absence of nearly twenty years!”
“Well, Sir Chorles,” responded little black-legs, taken rather aback, “what would you like to have, Sir Chorles?”
“ — Hang it; I want you to recommend, man!” continued he, precisely in the tone that he used to blow up the waiters and landlords of the inns when they didn’t please him. “I want you to recommend, man. What’s the use of being a doctor if you can’t tell what’s good for me?”
The little man was quite abashed.
“Do you think a glass of maraschino would do me any harm?” at last asked Sir Charles.
“Oh, not the least — none whatever,” replied the doctor, glad of the suggestion— “at least, that’s to say if you don’t take more than a glass, or two” added he, seeing the brow begin to lour.
“And a slice of patê de foie, perhaps?” continued Sir Charles.
“You might find benefit from it,” replied the doctor, “especially if your stomach’s empty, and it wants an hour yet to dinner,” continued he, looking at the watch, which he still fumbled in his hand.
“Stomach empty,” growled Sir Charles; “why, now, is it likely a man would eat if his stomach wasn’t empty? At least I know I wouldn’t.”
“And bring two or three dozen oysters, and some pale ale,” exclaimed Sir Charles, as the servant was going, after receiving the above orders; adding to the doctor, “Oysters are wholesome enough, at all events, I hope?”
“Nothing more so, Sir Chorles,” replied the man of medicine.
“A beaker of burgundy would be right after the paté, wouldn’t it?” asked he in continuation.
“It would give tone to the stomach, Sir Chorles, especially if you have rather overdone yourself with exercise.”
“Well, then, my good fellow,” interrupted the patient, “will you have the kindness to go into the cellar for it yourself, and see and wrap it properly up in flannel, so that it mayn’t get chilled by the way?”
With such a “whet” the reader will conjecture what the dinner was like; nor will it, perhaps, be necessary to point out why Sir Charles is not as healthy as he was with his hundred a year, to prevent rich people parting with their money for fear of getting like him. Should there be any alarmists, however, Mr. Scott says he can take a few sackfuls, which may either be sent to Hawbuck Grange, or left with the Publishers of this work. The accommodating reader will now have the kindness to suppose our friend Tom Scott returned to the former place.
CHAP. 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 any thing 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 incredible 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 Heathbanger 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 Tin-head, “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 c
hance 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. —