by R S Surtees
It is odd that few days are so bad but that some one will appear at an advertised meet. Even though they go sliding and skating at the imminent risk of their limbs, if they mount their scarlets, they will mount their horses too. They get their rides at all events, and their horses exercised; and even should the hounds come, they know they have no occasion to ride a yard unless they like. It is another matter, however, with the huntsman and whips. They must follow their hounds, and despite the cavillings and grumblings of fault-pickers and hole-finders, we maintain that hounds far oftener throw off when they should not than refuse when they ought.
There is no pleasure in hunting in a frost. None whatever. ‘Far better stay at home, and read the “Post Office Directory,”
“Annual Register,” or any work that is not encumbered with a plot, than go picking one’s ground so as to keep where the sun has struck, leaving a yard measure behind each hoof on pulling up. Men who leave their homes for the purpose of hunting must occupy their time in some way or other, and those who can’t read are perhaps excusable in accompanying hounds. It is of no use contending with the elements. It is poor work shivering at a meet, calculating whether hounds will come or not — magnifying old women’s red petticoats into “pinks,” and flocks of sheep into hounds.
There is a sort of desolation attending doubtful days, unlike the concomitants of regular seasonable hunting ones. Long before one gets to the meet — whatever country it may be in — one sees something indicative of hunting on a real hunting day. A lad riding faster than his horse, a countryman with a stick pacing along at a very different rate to what he would be going if he were carrying a message from his master; the imprints of light-shod horses on the grassy road sidings, or careful grooms clustering at the doors of the Red Lion or Barleymow, taking their early glasses as they loiter to cover; but on a doubtful frosty morning, all doors are closed, no one turns out that can help it; master rides his own horse on, and saunters round by the farm, or the factotum’s, or some place or other to kill time and see what effect the sun has as he goes. If you arrive at the meet at the right time, the chances are there is nobody there, and you begin to fear you have mistaken the day. The children stare with astonishment; and one urchin bolder than the rest at length ventures to ask if the “hunds be a coomin to-day?” That’s just what you want to know. A quarter of an hour elapses and still no symptoms of hunting. Your watch perhaps may have stolen a march, or the clocks may vary. If it’s at a village, however, the clocks presently undeceive you. A miller comes past, riding on his sacks; you ask him where the hounds come to when they meet there, and he assures you he knows nothing about them — millers never do — they are the most uninformed race of men under the sun. Some people, however, have the knack of knowing nothing, and the way they preserve their ignorance is truly astonishing: they should have a patent for it. “Ar doan’t know”—” Ar carn’t tell” — are the invariable drawls after a good stare. Ask a cockney boy where such a street is, and he tells you in a minute, or slangs you well; but a yokel can’t declare his ignorance without exposing his stupidity.
But we are reversing the order of things, and converting a real Tom Scott day into an imaginary one, instead of making an imaginary day look as much like a real one as possible. We began by deprecating doubtful days, and showed how Tom had missed two runs during the brief interregnum of January by adhering to the doctrine, and now we propose showing, a very common case if people would but admit it, how Tom was piqued into going by a man — a gentleman we should say — of whose hunting capabilities he has no great opinion. Mr. Neville’s Hounds met on this day at the village of Thornfield, on the north side of their country, not a bad rough sort of meet, and one whose woodlands are favourable and accommodating for hounds, especially in frosty weather. Still it is a place Tom very seldom goes to, nor would he have thought of it, but for the crowings of Tarquinius Muff, and the fear of giving him another opportunity. Independently of that, Tom had employed some of his leisure frost in riding over to Snailswell once or twice, and though we are not at liberty to mention (except in strict confidence of course) what passed between the fair Lydia and him, yet we may say, that it had been so far satisfactory as to induce him to make a fresh appointment at each leaving. “I’ll ride over again on Sunday,” or “I’ll look in upon you again as I’m passing to Edge-Hill on Monday,” he would say, for he carried on the courtship more by “innuendo” than by the old point blank, “If you love me as I love you,” &c. Indeed, to tell the truth, Tom is rather a cautious cock, and thought if he could but get his own consent, that of the lady would follow as a matter of course. We have already hinted that she would not have any money, but this deficiency Tom had at length induced himself to overlook, but thinking that a woman who was to be a “fortune in herself,” ought to be sound and all right, he had lately stuck at the matter of her teeth, whose beautiful pearly whiteness he thought “too good to stand.” Upon this point he determined to take the opinion of his friend Mrs. Sylvanus Bluff, a lady great in the medical, art, and it was until her decision was obtained that he now “hung off.” All that, however, will hereafter more fully and at large appear, as the lawyers say, though we believe if the frost had lasted steadily, Tom would have dropped quietly into an engagement, an offer at all events, for the visits were getting both more frequent and longer, when the upbraidings of Muff nettled him into taking advantage of an apparent change in the weather.
So now to the day named at the head of the page. The previous one felt like frost, and the morning of this one was decidedly frosty, but having been called for hunting Tom got up, and having got up he got breakfast, and having got breakfast he got on to his horse, and though his hoofs made that ringing sort of sound peculiar to horses and well-built London carriages on hard roads, he speculated on the influence of the sun and the favourableness of the woodland bottoms, and proceeded on his road as we have described up to the conversation with the miller. Therefore that part of the sketch may stand as “part of the bill.”
As the miller slouched out of sight, and Scott rode backwards and forwards on the village bridge, a pair of leather breeches hove in sight, not the genteel cream-coloured things of modern times, but a pair of good old-fashioned yellow ochre’s, whose owner was further encased in a black dress coat, a black satin stock, and dingy lack lustre boots.
It was our old friend Doctor Podgers, on his fat black pony, master and nag counterparts of each other. —
On ordinary occasions a doctor may be in boots and breeches without signifying a hunt, but a rich grandfather-looking silver-mounted hunting-whip, and a ribbon to his shaved black hat, committed him beyond all extrication.
“Good morning, Doctor,” said Scott; “do you think the hounds will come?”
Doctor (raising his hat to the extremity of the ribbon). “Upon my word, sir, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Why I think so of course, or I shouldn’t be here.
“It’s very cold. Do you think the frost is going to hold?” at length Scott asked, rather ashamed of his tartness.
Doctor. “Upon my word, sir, I don’t know. What do you think?”
Though a man may “trot” himself into a belief that there will be hunting, the sad reality of “standing” generally produces a candid opinion.
Scott could not but admit that the ground about was very hard, that the atmosphere was very, frosty, and the only chance there was of hounds coming seemed to be the possibility that it might not be quite so hard or so frosty in the neighbourhood of the kennel.
The only alleviating circumstance there is in a case of non-hunting is the coming of the hounds, which shows that a man is not so wide of the mark as he would otherwise appear. Indeed, it almost amounts to a case of “big foolism” being there without them, and Scott strained his eyes and cocked his ears up the Gunnerton-road, in hopes of seeing them or of hearing one of those knowing notes that fall so musically on the ear, so symptomatic of hunting, so unmistakeable for any thing else.
It was all in vain.
There was a crack of a whip, but it was a cartman’s — there was a holloa, but it was from a boy frightening crows. There is no more similarity between these and the genmine thing than there is between the jovial mirth of the village school broke loose upon the green and the determined tallyho of the man who has been thrown into convulsions by viewing the fox.
Scott began to be rather ashamed of having come, especially as he could not but feel (though of course he would not admit it to anybody) that he had been rather “talked into it” by Tarquinius Muff.
Just as he thought of Muff, his other greatest abhorrence of life, Dolores Brown of Bleakhope, cast up.
There are some people in the world whose looks or whose manners are so melancholily lugubrious as to make one unhappy to see them, and Dolores combines both these unfortunate qualities. He is the most unhappy-looking wretch that ever was seen. He is a sort of ill-omened bird, for people say they never have sport when he is out. Some people’s jolly good-natured phizzes set one agog and cheer one up, but Dolores never does any thing but depress the spirits. It isn’t his nasty looks alone, but he is an ill conditioned creature into the bargain. Nobody ever heard him say a good word of any one without his adding as much spite as counteracted the praise. He may be called a praising detractor, only he does much more in the detracting than in the praising line. He is a grumbling, dissatisfied, cantankerous animal, never happy but when he’s miserable. He has always some fault to find, some hole to pick, or some misfortune to forbode. The master of the hounds is generally his stock victim. He, poor man! never does any thing right. After the master, the huntsman comes in for his maledictions, and then the whip. It is gratifying to know that Mrs. Brown takes her “change” out of him at home. There, he daren’t say his “soul’s his own,” and we have often heard it suggested that he comes out hunting to escape her. Whatever his motive may be, it is a frequent observation that Dolores Brown never brings luck. A doubtful day seems just the sort of one for him to cast upon.
If we had a Daguerreotype machine we would sketch him as he sits under the stunted, crooked, decaying ash tree, and impale him on our page; but that not being practicable, and our friend “Phiz” not being at hand, we will just do what we can with the pen.
Dolores is a farmer — a large fanner — he keeps four or five draughts, and has two or three thousand sheep herding on the downs about his appropriately-named residence of “Bleakhope;” one of the highest, coldest, most exposed places in the country. Still, as if by a frolic of nature, there is some good land upon it, and, cold as he looks, Dolores is supposed to be warm. To look at his nasty, lank, straggling, sandy-coloured hair, impoverished whiskers, and clay-coloured cheeks, you would fancy he was the follower of some noisome trade instead of a wholesome out-of-door living framer. He may be any age from thirty to fifty; indeed, one often sees far fresher looking men at sixty or even seventy. His features are harsh and sharp, and there is a cunning watchfulness about his little watery grey eyes.
His clothes are as unwholesome looking as his person. His napless, low-crowned hat is all glue stained round the band, the marks widening out in front into a thing like a chimney-sweeper’s badge. The frost makes the hat’s browning hue more apparent. A good hat is about the only thing that looks well on a frosty day, and if any thing will bring a thaw it surely is the temptation a new one offers to Jupiter Pluvious. Dolores’s coarse draggling gills are guileless of starch, and his washed-out, blue-striped neckcloth, dirty, twisted, and knotted into what the French call a “Tyburn tye,” exposes, rather than covers, his long scraggy neck. The greasy collar of a browning black cutaway coat, and the frayed top of a shabby striped waistcoat, appear above a seedy, well-worn brown tweed, slightly slit up behind for the saddle, and covering the greater part of the hard, crackey-looking patent cords, and almost black top-boots in which his spindle shanks are shrouded.
His horse was a bay, until it was clipped and singed into a dun-duckety sort of mud colour. The cold makes the uneven jagging of the scissors and the blotches of the singer more apparent, for badly clipped greys are the only horses that will stand the searching investigation of a frosty day. This horse is a sour-headed, sunk-eyed, cock-throppled, ewe-necked, ragged-maned beggar, though with some apparent breeding about him. Light feeding seems the order of the day both with horse and master, and despite the laziness of the season, Dolores has contrived, by the substitution of bran mashes and boiled turnips for corn, to keep his horse’s girth in much the same moderate compass as his own. Between its ragged, rubbed-out tail and Dolores’s shabby, straggling locks there is a striking resemblance, and altogether, what with the bother of the little doctor, the nastiness of Dolores, and the unpromising appearance of the day, we hope the considerate reader will excuse Tom Scott slipping up to the sign of the “Haymaker” to get a glass of brandy and water.
* * * * *
Hark! here come horses! Three red coats heave in sight on the sheep-walk road, visible as they pass the gaps and bits of walls built into the ragged hedge, where the village and pedestrian depredations have extinguished all hopes of the quicks being permitted to grow.
The sight of red coats is cheering. “No knowing but the hounds may come yet,” said Scott to himself, as he returned, feeling like a giant refreshed, “throw off, have a glorious run, old Dolores be trundled into a black bog, and the hounds run into their fox on the hill above Hawbuck Grange.”
“The horses’ hoofs sound louder than I like,” continued he, cocking his ear to the east wind, “forbiddingly keen;” but no sportsman ever forgets that the celebrated Billesden Coplow run took place under similar unfavourable circumstances.
The tramp of horses approaches.
What a noise the riders make! Their jabber sounds on the clear frosty air as if they were close by, though they are still a quarter of a mile off. “Hah! hah! hah!” what a laugh. There it is again! ‘“Haw! haw! haw!” deeper and deeper still. “He! he! he!” a third volley. The hounds must be coming, and they know it. There goes the baccy! Smoking and all. How clear that puff by the gate curled up in the pure air: Lord how they laugh! That must be a capital joke, for they are all “haw! haw! hawing!” together. Who can they be?
“As I live,” exclaimed our friend Scott, “the Muffs, and old Tom Tinhead!” —
Fortunately Scott made the discovery just in time to enable him to slip back to the sign of the Haymaker, from the cowshed at the end of which he surveyed the scene and overheard the conversation.
Up came great “Muff Tarquinius,” as Trumper calls him, full fig, in a spick and span hat, new bright scarlet coat, with the corner of a white cambric handkerchief peeping out of the breast pocket, a sky blue satin cravat, embroidered with roses and lilies, a roll collar waistcoat, most unexceptionable leathers, and shining jack boots, set off with bright heavy spurs, running most desperately to neck. Tarquinius Muff is an immense man; we dare say he rides eighteen stone, and sits full souse on his horse, for all the world like a five thousand a year man, as he is. Could he have been certain that the hounds would not come he would not have had a care, in the world, for he was “got up” for the drawing-room and not for the cover side. Just the man for a frosty day.
Bad as old Muff is we really think he is better than his brother, Blatheremskite. Blatheremskite affects the coachman; but his favourite “Rover” and “Telegraph” being off the road, he mourns their glories in the dress of a coachman, which he cleverly adapts to all the pursuits of life. His shining silk hat is as round “as a cheese, and as flat as a flounder.” His hair is close-cropped, and his white shawl cravat is secured by a massive gold coach-and-four pin, forcing its way above the step collar of his long, coachman-cut, rough, drab velvety-looking, waistcoat, with a double row of flap pockets. His stout, India rubber cloth, strait-cut, cuffless scarlet, is a compound of stitching, back strapping, and flaps. The narrow collar has a strong double hem, the seams behind are back strapped, and there is a curious device of strength just ab
ove the waist buttons, looking as though he expected a trial of strength with the garment generally, or a game of “pull devil, pull baker,” with the laps. The outside pockets are guarded with ample double-stitched flaps, out of the mouth of one of which what he would call a “bird’s eye fogle” appears, while the other has got a decided drag downwards from the frequent occupation of his hand. The front buttons are firmly set in on a separate strip of cloth, and about the centre of the breast is a small sort of watch-pocket, as if he had to time himself constantly. The broad greenish-coloured patent cord breeches, buttoning in front with mother-of-pearl buttons, come a long way down the leg, where they at last meet a pair of receding tops, the length of the breeches and the shortness of the boots producing the observation from Tom Bowles, the first whip and wag of the hunt, that “he supposed Mr. Blatheremskite paid double price for one and half price for the other.” The long tops are of the roseate tint, and the thick double soles are of a texture to resist any quantity of wet; all very well for a coachman paddling about a coach in sloppy weather, but perfectly unnecessary for even the most inveterate “leader over” of a fox-hunter. His action, as well as his dress, is that of the oachman. He holds his reins, and works his arms, as if he were on the box; and, altogether, he is about as great a snob as the great’ historian of “Snobs” himself could wish to draw.
“Hallo, doctor!” exclaimed Muff to our friend of the yellow ochres as the trio turned into the road, “halloo, doctor! at it again; keen dog, keen dog, very.”
Doctor Podgers acknowledged the compliment by raising his hat to the limit of the hunting string.
“Where are the hounds?” asked Muff.
“Not come,” replied the doctor.
“Not come!” retorted Muff; “why what’s happened?”