by R S Surtees
What “strange confusion there was in the vale below!” as the poet sings.
First and foremost were Mr. Sylvanus Bluff’s swallow tails flying out, as, horsewhip in hand, he hurried from one upturned ewe to another, rescuing herself or her lamb from the fury of the savage pack. Others were similarly engaged, while their horses fled or grazed at their leisure. Dead ewes and lambs were scattered around, while some of the more depraved of the pack actually did battle with the rescuers for the bodies of their victims. Others sneaked stealthily around, diving up to the very eyes in blood as opportunity offered, and those that had gorged themselves with tender lamb, curved their distended sides, and sought repose among the bushes on the hill.
So the last state of Mr. Sylvanus Bluff was a deal worse than the first.
MORAL.
All you kindly disposed, generous-minded, country gentlemen who encourage fox-hunting without partaking of it yourselves, make allowances for masters, and beware, oh! beware, of the Scratchley dogs.
And now we really think, what with the chapter on the weather and this moral on the “muttons,” we have done something to rescue our work from the charge of utter uselessness. It is somewhat singular that we should extract a moral from the misfortunes of the man who made the complaint; but truth is stronger than fiction, and performs far more unaccountable feats. The obligations we were under to Mr. Bluff for buying all our works, without wanting them, made us desirous of showing him some little civility in return; accordingly, we despatched our friend Phiz to make the sketch illustrative of the scene we have described, and which we hope the worthy man will like. We have kept a proof before letter on India paper, which we purpose framing and presenting to Mrs. Bluff, for her boudoir or physic-room rather. Phiz, when down on this errand, made a sketch of Hawbuck Grange on speculation, which, as things have turned out, was fortunate.
Our friend Scott doffed his red coat on his return to Hawbuck Grange with very different feelings to what sportsmen generally experience on parting with their “pinks,” and as he replaced the breeches with tweed trowsers and the dusty tops with good honest double-soled shoes, he felt rather glad than otherwise that there was at last an end to the humbug of hunting.
“I wouldn’t give twopence to have any day over again,” said he, running the winter quickly through his mind as he sat changing his stockings, when his thoughts were suddenly directed into another, channel by the protrudance of a big toe through a great hole.
“Confound the thing!” exclaimed he, pulling the stocking off again and throwing it from him, “that’s the care one’s housekeeper takes of one;” whereupon his thoughts immediately flew to Snailswell and matrimony, and if he had not wanted most particularly to see how his drainers were getting on, and whether Jack Hoggers had harrowed out the oat field or not, we have little doubt he would have trotted over to Snailswell, and finished the day with a little tea and courtship.
“I’ll go to-morrow, any-how,” said he: “I’ll not bother mother Bluff about her teeth: at all events I’ll go over and see her,” continued he, relapsing into cautiousness, and thinking he could make the old excuse of trying the brother’s three-year-old serve again, as it had already served him very often.
Having at length equipped himself for country exercise, he broke cover and proceeded down stairs.
On the centre of a most bachelor-like little table in the middle of the parlour, conspicuous on the green baize cover, lay a note — pink paper with a blue seal, a woman’s all over! —
“Why here’s a letter from!” exclaimed Tom, darting to where he lay. —
He opened and read it. Thus it ran: ——
“Snailswell, Friday.
“MY DEAR MR. SCOTT,
“The kind, I may say fatherly, interest you have ever taken in my welfare makes me anxious to give you the earliest intelligence of a matter deeply affecting my future prospects. My cousin, Harry Crow, to whom you doubtless know I have long been deeply attached, has at length made sufficient money to enable him to quit the sea, and we are about to be married forthwith. I would not for the world that you should hear of this from any one but myself. I have therefore sent the boy over on the young horse at exercise; and with the repeated expression of my sincere gratitude for all your kindness, believe me to remain, my dear Mr. Scott, ever yours most sincerely, —
“LYDIA CLIFTON.
“P. S. Would you have the kindness to ask your housekeeper for her receipt for making gooseberry fool, and send it by post as the boy must not wait.”
“Curse those cousins!” exclaimed Tom, dropping the note and sinking into his easy chair.
“No man’s safe with them, I declare!” continued he, thumping the stuffed arm as he rose. “This young vagabond’s been running about the house just like a domestic cat when he was ashore, for I don’t know how many years, without ever raising the slightest suspicion, and now it turns out —
“Fatherly interest, indeed,” muttered he, eyeing himself in the glass, “that’s a precious piece of impudence too. — Not so old as all that comes to, either. “D — n all cousins, say I!” exclaimed he, pacing hurriedly up and down the room, adding “No man’s safe where they are.” —
“Gooseberry fool, indeed!” exclaimed he, tearing up the note and committing it to the flames. “I wonder who’s been the fool in this business. Dare say she wants to feed that young water-rat upon it adding, as he turned away, “I hope she’ll make him sick if she does.”
But we will not pursue the painful subject —
The old ladies will doubtless say—” sarved him right,” while the young ones — to whom we now address ourself — will, we hope, take a kinder view of the case, especially as our friend Tom is now in the market. We alluded to the fortunate circumstance of “Phiz” having made a sketch of Hawbuck Grange, and the little dears will see why we thought it so. Addressing ourself personally to them we may say, it is all very well for you to give yourselves airs among other girls, — say “I wouldn’t have this man,”— “I wouldn’t think of that,” and so on; but when it comes to a downright case of tangible matrimony, few of you are such fools as to throw away a chance. Here then is a chance. Our young friend, and we are confident your mammas will tell you that all men are young till they are married, our young friend Tom Scott wants a wife, and, as we have shown, he is not imperative about money. That is putting the case we believe in its true light. He doesn’t say, “No girl with money need apply far from it.
He would rather have one with money, but money is not a “sine quâ non” — which is French for indispensable.
“Up then and at him!” as the Duke of Wellington said to the Guards at Waterloo.
Of Hawbuck Grange we need not say much; indeed Phiz has saved us the trouble of saying any thing, for as poor Hood sang of Tom Rounding the huntsman, when he exhibited him as a frontispiece to his Epping Hunt,
Here shall the muse frame no excuse,
But frame the man himself; so Phiz serves up Hawbuck Grange in a similar way.
N.B. — Only purchasers of this work will be entitled to view Hawbuck Grange. They must come, Hawbuck Grange in hand, in fact.
Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour
Illustrated by John Leech
Surtees’ first major success, Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour was serialised in the New Monthly Magazine in 1849-1851 as Soapey Sponge’s Sporting Tour. It was then released again in twelve monthly numbers during 1853, in which year it was also published in book form. Another episodic comic novel, it relates the adventures of “Soapey” Sponge, an eccentric London dealer in horses, who specialises in selling bad-tempered or otherwise un-ideal specimens to credulous customers. His tour of Britain’s country estates is undertaken with one eye on the hunt, another on the possibility of a dodgy sale and another on the chance to bag a wealthy heiress. The novel is rich in comical, satirical depictions of the wealthy ‘country’ set and the class structure underpinning Victorian country life.
The first monthly part in the serial
publication
Frontispiece and title page of the first edition
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI
CHAPTER XLVII
CHAPTER XLVIII
CHAPTER XLIX
CHAPTER L
CHAPTER LI
CHAPTER LII
CHAPTER LIII
CHAPTER LIV
CHAPTER LV
CHAPTER LVI
CHAPTER LVII
CHAPTER LVIII
CHAPTER LIX
CHAPTER LX
CHAPTER LXI
CHAPTER LXII
CHAPTER LXIII
CHAPTER LXIV
CHAPTER LXV
CHAPTER LXVI
CHAPTER LXVII
CHAPTER LXVIII
CHAPTER LXIX
CHAPTER LXX
One of the few extant portraits of Surtees
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ELCHO,
IN GRATITUDE
FOR MANY SEASONS OF EXCELLENT SPORT WITH HIS HOUNDS,
ON THE BORDER.
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED,
BY HIS
OBLIGED AND FAITHFUL SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE
THE AUTHOR GLADLY avails himself of the convenience of a Preface for stating, that it will be seen at the close of the work why he makes such a characterless character as Mr. Sponge the hero of his tale.
He will be glad if it serves to put the rising generation on their guard against specious, promiscuous acquaintance, and trains them on to the noble sport of hunting, to the exclusion of its mercenary, illegitimate off-shoots.
November 1852
CHAPTER I
OUR HERO
IT WAS A murky October day that the hero of our tale, Mr. Sponge, or Soapey Sponge, as his good-natured friends call him, was seen mizzling along Oxford Street, wending his way to the West. Not that there was anything unusual in Sponge being seen in Oxford Street, for when in town his daily perambulations consist of a circuit, commencing from the Bantam Hotel in Bond Street into Piccadilly, through Leicester Square, and so on to Aldridge’s, in St. Martin’s Lane, thence by Moore’s sporting-print shop, and on through some of those ambiguous and tortuous streets that, appearing to lead all ways at once and none in particular, land the explorer, sooner or later, on the south side of Oxford Street.
Oxford Street acts to the north part of London what the Strand does to the south: it is sure to bring one up, sooner or later. A man can hardly get over either of them without knowing it. Well, Soapey having got into Oxford Street, would make his way at a squarey, in-kneed, duck-toed, sort of pace, regulated by the bonnets, the vehicles, and the equestrians he met to criticize; for of women, vehicles, and horses, he had voted himself a consummate judge. Indeed, he had fully established in his own mind that Kiddey Downey and he were the only men in London who really knew anything about horses, and fully impressed with that conviction, he would halt, and stand, and stare, in a way that with any other man would have been considered impertinent. Perhaps it was impertinent in Soapey — we don’t mean to say it wasn’t — but he had done it so long, and was of so sporting a gait and cut, that he felt himself somewhat privileged. Moreover, the majority of horsemen are so satisfied with the animals they bestride, that they cock up their jibs and ride along with a ‘find any fault with either me or my horse, if you can’ sort of air.
Thus Mr. Sponge proceeded leisurely along, now nodding to this man, now jerking his elbow to that, now smiling on a phaeton, now sneering at a ‘bus. If he did not look in at Shackell’s or Bartley’s, or any of the dealers on the line, he was always to be found about half-past five at Cumberland Gate, from whence he would strike leisurely down the Park, and after coming to a long check at Rotten Row rails, from whence he would pass all the cavalry in the Park in review, he would wend his way back to the Bantam, much in the style he had come. This was his summer proceeding.
Mr. Sponge had pursued this enterprising life for some ‘seasons’ — ten at least — and supposing him to have begun at twenty or one-and-twenty, he would be about thirty at the time we have the pleasure of introducing him to our readers — a period of life at which men begin to suspect they were not quite so wise at twenty as they thought. Not that Mr. Sponge had any particular indiscretions to reflect upon, for he was tolerably sharp, but he felt that he might have made better use of his time, which may be shortly described as having been spent in hunting all the winter, and in talking about it all the summer. With this popular sport he combined the diversion of fortune-hunting, though we are concerned to say that his success, up to the period of our introduction, had not been commensurate with his deserts. Let us, however, hope that brighter days are about to dawn upon him.
Having now introduced our hero to our male and female friends, under his interesting pursuits of fox and fortune-hunter, it becomes us to say a few words as to his qualifications for carrying them on.
Mr. Sponge was a good-looking, rather vulgar-looking man. At a distance — say ten yards — his height, figure, and carriage gave him somewhat of a commanding appearance, but this was rather marred by a jerky, twitchy, uneasy sort of air, that too plainly showed he was not the natural, or what the lower orders call the real gentleman. Not that Sponge was shy. Far from it. He never hesitated about offering to a lady after a three days’ acquaintance, or in asking a gentleman to take him a horse in over-night, with whom he might chance to come in contact in the hunting-field. And he did it all in such a cool, off-hand, matter-of-course sort of way, that people who would have stared with astonishment if anybody else had hinted at such a proposal, really seemed to come into the humour and spirit of the thing, and to look upon it rather as a matter of course than otherwise. Then his dexterity in getting into people’s houses was only equalled by the difficulty of getting him out again, but this we must waive for the present in favour of his portraiture.
In height, Mr. Sponge was above the middle size — five feet eleven or so — with a well borne up, not badly shaped, closely cropped oval head, a tolerably good, but somewhat receding forehead, bright hazel eyes, Roman nose, with carefully tended whiskers, reaching the corners of a well-formed mouth, and thence descending in semicircles into a vast expanse of hair beneath the chin.
Having mentioned Mr. Sponge’s groomy gait and horsey propensities, it were almost needless to say that his dress was in the sporting style — you saw what he was by his clothes. Every article seemed to be made to defy the utmost rigour of the elements. His hat (Lincoln and Bennett) was hard and heavy. It sounded upon an entrance-hall table like a drum. A little magical loop in the lining explained the cause of its weight. Somehow, his hats were never either old or new — not that he b
ought them second-hand, but when he got a new one he took its ‘long-coat’ off, as he called it, with a singeing lamp, and made it look as if it had undergone a few probationary showers.
When a good London hat recedes to a certain point, it gets no worse; it is not like a country-made thing that keeps going and going until it declines into a thing with no sort of resemblance to its original self. Barring its weight and hardness, the Sponge hat had no particular character apart from the Sponge head. It was not one of those punty ovals or Cheshire-cheese flats, or curly-sided things that enables one to say who is in a house and who is not, by a glance at the hats in the entrance, but it was just a quiet, round hat, without anything remarkable, either in the binding, the lining, or the band, but still it was a very becoming hat when Sponge had it on. There is a great deal of character in hats. We have seen hats that bring the owners to the recollection far more forcibly than the generality of portraits. But to our hero.
That there may be a dandified simplicity in dress, is exemplified every day by our friends the Quakers, who adorn their beautiful brown Saxony coats with little inside velvet collars and fancy silk buttons, and even the severe order of sporting costume adopted by our friend Mr. Sponge is not devoid of capability in the way of tasteful adaptation. This Mr. Sponge chiefly showed in promoting a resemblance between his neck-cloths and waistcoats. Thus, if he wore a cream-coloured cravat, he would have a buff-coloured waistcoat, if a striped waistcoat, then the starcher would be imbued with somewhat of the same colour and pattern. The ties of these varied with their texture. The silk ones terminated in a sort of coaching fold, and were secured by a golden fox-head pin, while the striped starchers, with the aid of a pin on each side, just made a neat, unpretending tie in the middle, a sort of miniature of the flagrant, flyaway, Mile-End ones of aspiring youth of the present day. His coats were of the single-breasted cut-away order, with pockets outside, and generally either Oxford mixture or some dark colour, that required you to place him in a favourable light to say what it was.