by R S Surtees
“I think it will be the frost,” observed an earthstopping gamekeeper, touching his hat, and cracking an ice-star with his staff.
“Frost?” exclaimed Muff; “there’s no frost to hurt.”
“None whatever!” assented Blatheremskite, breaking an upshot column of smoke against his hat brim.
“Oh, they’re sure to come,” rejoined Muff, after a pause, hoping they wouldn’t, adding, “there’s no frost in the ground, none whatever.”
“It’s hard here,” observed the gamekeeper, tapping his hob-nailed shoes against the ground.
“Oh, but that will give by twelve o’clock; see what a sun there is overhead,” continued Muff, looking up at the heavens.
“They can’t plough,” observed the keeper, thinking to clench the argument.
“Ah, that’s because they won’t,” replied Muff, turning to Brown with a “what do you think of the matter, Mr Brown?”
Of course Brown, like all men at a meet, thought hounds were “sure to come but mere opinion not having the effect of drawing them, after about ten minutes consumed in smoking and flopping their arms, the conversation began to take a downhill turn, derogatory to the hounds and their management.
“Well, this is the slowest thing I ever saw in my life,” exclaimed Muff, as his fears were quieted on recognising Tom Muffinmouth’s face under a hunting cap, instead of that of one of the servants coining as he feared with the dread intelligence that the hounds would be there at twelve.
“Well, this is the slowest thing I ever saw in my life,” repeated he, tendering Tom the unusual compliment of a hand; for Muff tries to combine the courtesy of the candidate with the open frankness of the fox-hunter.
“What?” inquired Tom, blushing, thinking Muff meant that his new sugar-loaf-shaped cap was the slowest thing he ever saw in his life; nor would it have been far from the mark if he had said so.
“The hounds not coming,” replied Muff, with ill-feigned disgust; Tom Muffinmouth assented, notwithstanding his blue nose and red-rimmed ears give striking evidence of the severity of the frost.
“Neville’s getting too old,” observed Muff, with a toss of the head and flourish of the hand. “One doesn’t like to say any thing in disparagement of an old man who has been a good one in his time,” continued he, “but, between you and I, it’s about time he was laid on the shelf.”
“Old Ben’s all bedavered, too,” observed Dolores Brown with a sneer; “he never rides over a fence if he can get any one to pull it down. He set all my South Downs wrong the other day merely because he wouldn’t ride over a hurdle.”
With this and similar conversation the next quarter of an hour was beguiled, the perfect incompetence of the whole establishment becoming - more clearly developed as the discussion proceeded, until, like Gil Blas’s mule, it seemed all faults. A successor, who lived more in the centre of the country (like Muff), was faintly hinted at, and having allowed the discussion to run up to appropriating point, Muff adjourned the meeting, and attended by his staff, Blatheremskite and Tinhead, proceeded to Honeybower Hall to lunch and flirt with the Miss Ogleby’s — for, shocking to relate, such is the lamentable destitution of country society, that these fine girls are forced to tolerate the Muffs, while Tinhead is pawned off on the old lady.
As they disappeared in the distance, Scott came sneaking out of his hiding-place, intending to be off too, when a joyous “Yonder they come! yonder they come!” diffused pleasure over the faces of the hitherto disappointed-looking countrymen who had been losing a day in hopes of a hunt. We always pity a countryman under such circumstances. Strong must be the passion for hunting that induces a man to sacrifice his total income for that day for the pleasure of the chase. “Little think the great men,” as Mr. Canning’s friend of humanity said to the needy knife-grinder, when interrogating him about his misfortunes, “little think the great men,” say we, “mounted on their spicy steeds, with cigars in their mouths, and good dinners in view at the end of the day, how much better they are off than the poor pedestrian, who returns leg-weary and worn to his home, without even the usual humble fare his labour would have procured him.” The cynic may say he had no business out hunting; but sportsmen will take a kinder view of the case, and feel for the man whose ardour has carried him into a pleasure that he cannot afford. Let sportsmen do more! Let them put their hands in their pockets and give them a shilling.
Money thus bestowed is not always wasted, as we will prove by an incident that happened to our friend Scott last season. He was riding over a half-finished bridge on the “Grand Gammon and Spinach Junction Railway,” when the taskmaster, timekeeper, overlooker, or whatever they call the man in authority, exclaimed, as the hounds caused the navvies to pause and look up from their work, “Come! drop it at once, or stick to it!” causing a struggle between duty and inclination, ending, however, in the general triumph of duty, and return to the digging. Two men only out of above forty threw down their spades, and, mounting their flannels, set off after the hounds.
“You are fond of a hunt then?” said Scott, as they came running past him.
“‘Deed am I, your honour!” replied the first, whose good-natured, open countenance proclaimed him an Emeralder, even before he spoke.
“Well, then, I’ll give you a shilling,” said Scott, handing them each one.
“Long life to your honour!” exclaimed one.
“Sure you’re a worshipful jontleman,” observed the other.
After crossing the railway they came upon the rich vale of Grassmere, rich in agricultural possessions, lavish in black bogs, and renowned for the width and bottomlessness of its drains. What persuaded old Ben, who was merely going from cover to cover, to cross it, we don’t know, but the field were presently at a cut that set the “funkers’ nerves a-shaking,” as the song says. It wasn’t a large place, but it was a deep one, and the three or four first horses breaking the somewhat undermined banks, it began to look wider and wider, till Tarquinius Muff’s famous water-jumper, Harlequin, coming up full tilt, made a regular “stand and deliver,” shooting his luckless rider overhead in the muddy water.
Splash, splash, blob, blob, up and down, backwards and forwards, Muff went, now calling out for help, now emptying his hat, now fishing for his whip, now feeling for his gloves, in the dripping, forlorn, drowned-rat, pitiable-looking state of an extinguished exquisite, setting those who had got across laughing, and those who were on the wrong side wishing “they were well over.”
There wasn’t a man there but whose horse would have taken the cut (according to their own accounts), if Tarquinius’s had not set them the example of refusing, and diverting it was to see the half resolute, half timid way some of them rode at it, pretending to “shove,” but in reality holding for a crane.
“None but the bold deserve to clear the brook,” and unless horse and rider are well agreed upon the point and go at it resolutely, it is far better to tie the whipthong to the snaffle rein, and lead over, or to blob in and out, any thing rather than a “stand and deliver,” or a mutual recumbency in the bottom. We don’t know a more humiliating sight than a man “rocking-horsing it” in a brook — now the head up, now the tail, now the tail, and now the head — till they either struggle out (perhaps on the wrong side), or part company, the horse perhaps setting off on an expedition of its own to discover the source or defluxion of the stream.
Scott was riding the “young-un,” the chestnut, a sweet horse, well worth a hundred to any of our readers, but with the common complaint of well-bred, young-uns — rayther given to bucking at water. In getting away from Coldbrook Gorse one day after just two rounds that showed there was a rare scent, and the crash and music of the bitches had raised any little remnant of pluck to its highest pitch, when, careering down the grass-field on the north side of the cover, Scott came upon Tarquinius Muff’s former bed of roses before he knew where he was. He was up in his stirrups though, and seeing master Reynard travelling away at a very business-like pace over a famous large past
ure, he dropped the “Vincents” into the young-un, giving him a shake of the head, as much as to say, “Look what you’re after.”
Down they came upon the brook.
Tom thought nothing in the world could prevent their being over, when, lo! up bucked the young-un, Tom doesn’t know how high, and dropped right into the middle of it. If he had only stretched himself to the extent that he rose, he would have cleared two such places.
But we will draw the curtain over the remainder of that scene, and proceed to “Brook No. 2.”
With a lively recollection of the misfortunes of No. 1. Tom contemplated the scene at No. 2. with any thing but pleasurable emotions.
The “young-un” had not seen water since his immersion, though he set up his back and snorted as he came up as if he had a perfect recollection of it. Cold-blooded water leaping, especially on a cold day, is always to be deprecated, and Tom was just going to practise what we preach, by knotting the point of his whip to the rein, and leading over, with “lots of line,” when his Irish friend nudged his elbow.
“Sure, your honour, I’ll ride him over for you,” said Paddy.
“Will you?” said Scott; “but are you sure you can ride?”
“Arrah, by Jasus, and is it myself you ax that question on? Sure I was groom to the great Squire O something, of O something Castle, who kept a stud of forty horses, besides milch cows, and a dacent sprinkling of pigs.”
With this his friend began poking his high-low into the stirrup, and having got the reins clubbed in his hand, in the true “hang-on-by-the-head” style, he was presently in the saddle, and turned away to get a run at the brook, so as to take it flying. And very flying-like he looked, his wild hair straggling away from beneath a muffin cap, his loose flannel jacket filling with wind, and his red and green garter ends flowing about the saddle flaps as he went.
Having taken a liberal distance, he forthwith began kicking and talking to the horse, increasing his speed and raising his voice as he went till he got him full gallop, when, with a flourish of his arm and a wild hier-r-r-o-s-h sort of shout, he sent him flying many feet beyond the foremost hoof-mark across the cut.
“Ride mine over, Paddy! and I’ll give you a shilling!”
“Ride mine over, Paddy, and I’ll give you half-a-crown!” shouted several.
“Sure but I’ll be losing the hunt if I do,” replied. Pat, dismounting and running away.
There’s a long story by way of parenthesis, supposed to be told on a frosty morning while waiting for hounds. We had just got to the outburst of joy that proceeded from the group of pedestrians as old Ben and the hounds appeared, rounding Wenburg Hill in the distance, after giving the field a somewhat long wait, that looked very like not coming. The bustling pace at which they approached, while it looked very like business, would have cut our story through in the middle, if we had been allowed no longer time for the telling it than intervened between the view and the arrival.
“Gently Rantipole! hie back!” rated Tom Bowles, as Rantipole dashed in advance to seek for her master in the crowd.
“Here again, hounds, here again!” exclaimed old Ben, with a whistle and wave of his hand, pulling up short at a gate to take the hounds into a grass field.
“Good morning, Ben,” said Scott, thinking that looked like throwing off—” What are you going to do?”
“Oh, I suppose we shall hunt, Sir,” said Ben quite gaily, with a touch of his cap as he spoke.
“Is Mr. Neville coming?” asked Scott.
“No, Sir, but he said we had to hunt, if we could. It’ll do the hounds no harm.”
“Foxes nouther,” observed Tom Bowles.
“Tom Scott nouther,” added our hero cheered by the intelligence.
“We hav’n’t been here since cub-hunting,” observed Ben, “and the foxes want routing out sadly. There were three litters hereabouts, and the farmers are beginning to complain of the poultry. In such a season as this we must just take every day we can get.”
“It’s a bad season,” observed Scott.
“Shocking!” rejoined Ben, with a solemn look and shake of the head.
“I see the sessions are coming on,” observed Tom Bowles, “and they are advertising for people to send instructions for indicting prisoners. I wish some one would send instructions for indicting the weather. Talk about ether,” added he, “for cutting folk’s heads off when they’re asleep, without hurtin’ of them, I wish they’d etherise me, and let me sleep during a frost.”
It is odd how people “turn up” at a meet of hounds, let the hour be what it will. The select party had not consumed above five minutes in this sort of conversation before half-a-dozen horsemen of one sort and another appeared.
Tom Griston and Giles Clapgate, both farmers, turned out of the Falcon, while Mr. Sheepskin of Bossall and Mr. Randall of Reay came riding together, and then there was Tom Muffinmouth, and Podgers, and the earth-stopping gamekeeper, who had now got upon his pony. Best of all, Dolores Brown had taken his departure in the wake of the Muffs, the whole swearing that hounds not coming was the “slowest thing” they ever saw in their lives.
“Well I suppose we may as well be going,” observed Ben, eyeing the workpeople going home to their dinners, adding, “it’s twelve o’clock by these clocks, it seems, though I should say it was half past twelve by the day.”
So saying, he whistled his hounds together, and trotted out of the field to the cover.
This was a chain of woodlands, beginning at the village of Thornfield, and stretching into a wider range about two miles further on, where a wild and broken sort of country intervenes between the vales. Rossington Wood comes in here, a sort of amphitheatre, formed of wooded hills round an area of warm, well-cultivated land, just the sort of place for a doubtful day. In went the hounds.
They had not been in cover ten minutes before Tom Scott saw by the increased motion of Ben’s shoulders and heels, that there was a scent afloat, though no hound as yet having spoke, Ben did not care to break the silence.
At last, a low short whimper, more of a catch than a note, brought out a “at him, Brilliant, old boy,” and presently Brilliant threw his tongue in a downright “I’ll stake-my-reputation-there’s-a-fox” sort of way, that convinced Ben there was one, though none of the others taking it up, Mr. Sheepskin, the solicitor, hinted that it was in consequence of Ben’s cheer, and muttered something about its “not being right to lead hounds in that way.”
Brilliant presently dropped another note still deeper, that old Ben cheered to the echo; and first one and then another joined in the proclamation, upon which Sheepskin observed, “if there wasn’t a fox they ought all to be sits, per col.”
“Hoic l hoic! forrard! forrard!” screamed old Ben, and with one twang of the horn he went scrambling and tearing through the wood regardless of branches, briars, breeches, and boots.
What a crash they made! There were five-and-twenty couple of hounds, and every hound throwing his tongue, making the woods echo and re-echo to their music.
They soon got to where the full width of the woods made it advisable to keep inside, when the softness and splashiness of the rides satisfied Tom Scott that old Ben had done right in throwing off. The horses sunk in the ground as they went, and threw the clay and mud about in a manner that was quite delightful considering the frost. Scott got stained in a way that would have done credit to November, and Sheepskin’s great splay-footed black horse put his foot in a trod that sent the yellow water squirting up into his master’s face, and nearly blinded him.
“You’ve got six-and-eight pence worth there, I think, Sir,” said Tom Bowles, cantering past, as Sheepskin sat mopping his face, dying a cheap white silk handkerchief yellow.
How much finer, wilder, and more natural is the cry of hounds in a large, resounding wood, than the close, suppressed muffle from a small, confined gorse. Artificial covers are doubtless useful, but they detract sadly from the fine, riotous spirit of hunting. Our friends had a rare chivey to-day. We don’t
know how many foxes they viewed, but if the hounds changed they must have done it very quickly, for they were never off their noses. It takes a good deal of persuasion to induce a fox to leave a wood of several hundred acres, especially a wood where the travelling is more favourable to him than to the hounds, and possibly nothing but the fact of his having been hunted before, and being about as good a judge of pace as a Newmarket “tout,” could have induced him to be satisfied with the two rings that he made of the amphitheatrish ground before he proceeded up the Dean to the west of it.
There he was viewed by the foot people, “an enormous big-un!” and “dead beat,” of course; and as he was getting into more circumventable covers, and the scent was first-rate, Mr. Sheepskin expressed his opinion that he was as good as “realised.”
It is seldom that anybody says a good word for a fox, but this certainly was a most accommodating one; for instead of taking the high ground, and sending the field skating and sliding about at the risk of their limbs, he ran the bottoms, and those he selected with considerable judgment. He took them up Apedale Dean, through the Buckland Bog, and past the Decoy at Casterton, scarcely crossing a dozen enclosures the whole way. His line was then Swinbrook Plantations, where he hung a bit, having been headed by some shooters, and probably driven from his point, for he took down the little valley of the Dingle, and was presently into Hardingham Plantation.
One loses one’s latitude and longitude so desperately out hunting, especially in cover, that Scott had no idea which side of the plantations they came out at, or where they were going, further than that some well-hung green gates, and better cultivated land, betokened prosperity.
They clattered through the gates, making the hard ground resound with their horses’ hoofs, while the frosty air was filled with the cry of the pack, now running frantic for blood.
The nimble and accommodatingly disposed reader will now perhaps have the kindness to transport him or herself to Honeybower Hall, and imagine the Muffs palavering the young ladies, while old Tom Tinhead is billeted on “mamma.”