by R S Surtees
CHAPTER LXV.
MR. JOVEY JESSOP AND HIS JUG.
MR. JOVV JESSOP, as his name would almost indicate, was a good fellow — a thorough sportsman, and a hearty hospitable man. His fault perhaps was in being rather “too good” a fellow, a foiling, however, that tells against a man himself and not against his friends, and one that the world is always happy to overlook. The supply of good fellows is by no means in excess of the demand. A man has only to hoist the flag of hospitality to insure a very considerable amount of custom. So it was with Mr. Jessop. Coming into a large fortune on reaching years of indiscretion, and having undergone the depredations of the O’Dicey tribe, he presently ascertained that hunting was his forte, and took to it accordingly. He began with that best of instructors, a pack of harriers, and having mastered the rudiments of scent, as much as that puzzling phenomenon can be mastered (for, after all is said and done, all the learning in the world will not make a scent), he gave his harriers away and took to foxhounds.
Getting a country is now a very easy matter, the next great social science to scent being that of getting one’s sport out of other people’s pockets. So Mr. Jessop had many countries offered him, all either richly endowed with subscriptions or presenting great local advantages. His first was the well known Bough and Ready-shire, where the subscriptions collapsed nearly one-half in collection, added to which, the few subscribers who did pay considered themselves entitled to have the hounds to adorn their lawns the morning after they had had two soups, two fishes, &c., on the table. Mr. Jessop not caring to be a servant, soon gave it up, and finding that a nominal subscription was in reality worse than none, resolved to hunt the next country he took at his own expense, an arrangement that gave great satisfaction to the squires of his present one, more especially as Mr. Jessop was a good-looking young bachelor who might make a permanent settlement in the country. He took Appleton Hall, a large, rambling old place, the owner of which had raced himself to the door, ‘leaving the house and all about it in a sad state of dilapidation. If, however, the beds were hard and the furniture scant and shabby, there was no fear of a powdered and pink silk stockinged footman meeting a returning sportsman at the foot of the stairs with a boot-jack and slippers to prevent his harming it, and as a good fox makes any country good, so a good cook makes any house comfortable. And a capital cook Mr. Jessop kept — two, indeed; an Englishman to cook his beefsteak for breakfast, and a Frenchman to send up the fricandeau, &c., for dinner. Here Mr. Jessop exercised a great amount of hospitality — more, indeed, than was good for him, but which is difficult to stop when a man once begins — guests succeed guests, the man of last year likes to come this, and so, what with one and another, a Lost has a hard time of it. Bachelor houses may be very independent, but there is always this objection about them, that there is no break in the evening, and men sit longer after dinner than they otherwise would. In addition to this, Mr. Jessop had some capital port, fine rich, ruby, silky wine, that connoisseurs would give any money for, and wine-merchants, if they had any, would not know how many expletives to put before it in their lists. What was more, he had a good stock of it, and Ambrose, the butler, always knew that the convulsive shake of the wire in his pantry (for the dining-room bell wouldn’t always ring) meant “wine,” and in he came with a bottle accordingly.
The consequence of all this was that Mr. Jessop was somewhat in the position of the man at the fight, where the rule was, “one down, t’other come on,” for as fast as he spoiled the digestion of one man, a fresh one appeared to supply his place. So our host was kept at it from week’s end to week’s end, and though it is said that notwithstanding all the deleterious compounds they put into their insides, nobody ever saw a bilious post-boy, yet the rule did not seem to hold good with foxhunters — for Mr. Jessop, though not yet in the prime of life, not only began to be rather pink about the nose, but to have some disagreeable internal sensations, which not yielding to the treatment of the country apothecary, he just put himself into the express train one non-hunting day, saying that he was going up to Mason’s to look at a horse, and, arrived in town, he went sneaking along all the bystreets to the great Dr. David Whitlow’s gloomy, dirty-windowed old House, so conspicuous an object in C — Square, hoping none of his acquaintance would see him and imagine there was anything the matter with him. In feet he didn’t look as though there could be anything the matter with him, for he was a tall, stout, fresh -complexioned young man, scarcely turned of thirty, with bright hazel eyes, and clustering brown hair, who walked as though he could never tire; but, as the child told its nurse, when assuring it it was not hurt, after a fell, “Ou can’t feel me, ou knows,” so Mr. Jessop knew better than anybody else what his internal sensations were; and this observation will apply to many other people whom the stout healthy world calls fanciful. Mr. Jessop having gone at the Doctor’s dirty door just as he would at the Whissendine or any other brook, was speedily let in by a queer-looking little old fellow, dressed in a red-striped livery-vest, a blue drab coat with dim-centered brass buttons, and black shorts above gray worsted stockings, with absentee calves, whose Lynx-like eyes, set in an almost entirely hair-denuded head, saw at a glance who were good for a tip, and who might be done out of their turns. Seeing the hale comely person of our foxhunter, he immediately, after getting him in, began expressing his regret that there were so many visitors before him, a dissertation that Mr. Jessop cut short by showing him a half-crown, and telling him it should be his if he got him in the next turn.
“If you’ll favour me with your card, I’ll see what I can do,” whispered the man, eyeing the money, whereupon Mr. Jessop handed him one of his best double-glazed pieces of pasteboard, and was then ushered into the dismal, seedy-carpeted dining-room, among sundry valetudinarians in various stages of languor and debility. Men with white faces, men with yellow faces, men with blue faces, men with green faces, men with every description of face, other than pleasant insurable ones. Jessop started, for it was like getting into a morgue, the contrast was so great to the mirthful healthy red-coated customers he was in the habit of seeing. The room, too, was dull and gloomy, the straggling rays of the winter’s sun being about excluded by a too liberal allowance of old purple-bordered drab window-curtains. On the long green baize-covered dining-table lay a couple of penny papers, while sundry reports and subscription-lists of hospitals and charitable institutions were scattered around, which the restless patients took up and threw down again, hardly knowing what they were doing. It has been said that the time spent in a lawyer’s outer office waiting for an audience, is about the most unprofitable part of a man’s existence, but the great Doctor’s waiting-room is a more fearful ordeal, for the lawyer merely deals in dross, while the Doctor deals out life and death, some of them, we are sorry to say, rather abruptly.
If Mr. Jessop had gone to the great house of call for sportsmen — Tattersall’s yard — he would have been hailed half a dozen times before he got up to the fox, but here he thought there was no chance of meeting any one he knew. In this, however, he was mistaken. Crouched between the sideboard and the cellaret sat a man muffled up in a green shawl cravat, and a gray fur-collared boat cloak shading a sallow face, wrinkled and compressed into something like Cambridge biffin.
“Jessop, my b-o-u-y, how are you?” gasped a sepulchral voice, with a forced attempt at hilarity from over the fur collar.
Mr. Jessop stood aghast.
“What! don’t you know me?” asked the speaker, peevishly, slightly lowering his green muffler from before his mouth—” Scudder, Jack Scudder,” muttered he, holding out a lean clammy hand for Jessop to shake. It was indeed a cold repulsive grasp, and like most men with unhealthy hands, he gave the shakee a good benefit of it.
“Why, what’s happened?” asked Mr. Jessop, now endeavouring to reconcile the dry haggard features of the invalid with the once bright cheerful countenance of Jack Scudder, whose red-coat laps had often been distended before him flying over the leaps in a run—” What’s happened?”
repeated he, with a tone of concern—” what’s happened, I say?”
“Oh, nothing ‘ticklar, nothing ‘ticklar,” muttered Scudder, replacing his wraps, “only,” continued he, drawing Mr. Jessop towards him, and adding confidentially in his ear, “I can’t lush as I used to do — no, by Jove! — I can’t lush as I used to do Scudder giving a melancholy shake of his head, as if his inability to drink was a national calamity.
Just then the street-door opened and closed on a departing patient, and presently the old servant opened the drawing-room one, and, with a knowing glance of the eye, summoned Mr. Jessop to the presence. Out then our master went, leaving Scudder and the rest of the patients to grumble at the preference.
“Can’t lush as I used to do — can’t lush as I used to do,” repeated Jessop, ascending the spacious old staircase after the servant. “No, by Jove, I should wonder if you could,” thought he, conning over the many carouses he had seen in Scudder’s company. This brought him before the imitation rosewood door of the consultation room, where his conductor now stood, card in hand, waiting for the promised halfcrown. That paid and pocketed, the man opened the door, and advanced with the “Jovey Jessop” card to his master — which having presented, he withdrew.
Dr. Whitlow or Davy Whitlow, as he is commonly called, was one of Nature’s rough diamonds, who, despairing of polishing himself up into anything like civilisation, had adopted the Abernethy tack, and was as rough and free spoken as his great prototype. This style, of course, only does for the men, the ladies requiring manner and feeling, while the men rather like those who come to the point, and get through their cases quickly. So Davy used to stare at them and question them and bully them, declaring there was nothing the matter with them, or that they had nearly got to the end of their tether, with much the same unconcern either way. Having invested the guinea of the last patient (the shilling in his baggy black and white Tweed trowsers pocket, the sovereign in his table-drawer), he was taking a slip-shod turn round the scantily furnished room with his hands in the pockets of his blue flannel dressing-gown, thinking now of his dinner, now of a proposed trip to Ham, when he was presented with the card, our friend closely following, who stood transfixed at the sight of the great bearded hairy monster, into whose hands he was now delivered. He looked more like a lion rampant than a man. Davy, seeing Jessop start, affected surprise too, and throwing himself into attitude with the card in the palm of his extended right hand, fixed his ferrety eyes (almost concealed with hair) steadily upon him, and then exclaimed, with an ominous shake of his great shaggy head, “Ah! I say Mr. Jovey, what’s your name? If you don’t mind what you’re arter, you’ll very soon be the late Mr. Jovey what’s your name?” So saying, the monster tore the card into quarters, and threw the pieces behind him.
This was not very encouraging, but still did not preclude hope, so Jessop tried to laugh it off, and then endeavoured to draw Davy into a retail consideration of his case.
“Come this way,” said the Doctor, laying his hairy paw upon Jessop’s arm, and leading him up to the middle window, where a mark in the oil-doth showed the place for examination. Davy scanned Jessop, and Jessop scanned Davy, and at last Davy spoke.
“Ah, it is as I said, Mr. Jovey what’s your name — if you don’t put the muzzle on, you’ll very soon be the late Mr. Jovey what’s your name.”
“Well, but if” — ejaculated Jovey.
“You go down stairs, and ask to see Mr. Scudder,” interrupted Davy, “and if you’d like to be like Scudder, you’ll go on as you’re doing, if not, you’ll just put the muzzle on, and live till you’re eighty. So now give me a guinea; none of your sovereigns, but one pound one, and go,” the Doctor holding one hairy paw out for the money, and ringing a little hell with the other. So Mr. Jessop was ejected, and not caring to inquire particularly into Mr. Scudder’s ailments, took his departure, much relieved by his visit, inwardly resolving not to emulate him in fixture. It was not that Mr. Jessop cared about wine, but he cared about company, and he presently hit upon an expedient for having the latter without the inconvenience of the former.
Among the steadiest customers of Appleton Hall — one always ready to come at long or short notice, or stay on if required — was a gentleman of the name of Boyston — Mr. Thomas Boyston, who hunted a little, but did a good deal more in the drinking way. The Boystons of Boyston, in H — shire, are a good old English family, filling a full page of “Burke,” even in the compressed form in which he has now potted the Commoners, but Boyston Père having left ten children behind him, when the moon came to be cut up into stars there was little left for our Squire but a receivership. So he let Boyston Park, and led a sort of wandering life, now hailing in London, now hunting where he could get a free pack. Our friend Mr. Jessop’s being of that description, Mr. Boyston had early taken up with them, and consumed as much Appleton port wine as any two of the hunt. He was quite the reverse of Mr. Jessop, being a dull, heavy, phlegmatic sort of man, who drank for drinking’s sake, never leaving a heel tap, and always filling a bumper. His peculiarities consisted in talking in his sleep. and always wearing nankin trowsers, both summer and winter; — expensive wear, considering his propensity for sitting cross-legged with his glass on his knee. “I didn’t shay I wouldn’t take any more wine,” he would mutter in his sleep. “I shaid if any other shentleman would like another bottle!” — awakening himself to consciousness by sluicing his legs with his wine. He was a short, thick, bristly, black headed fellow, who did not seem to feel any ill effects from the drink, and it occurred to Mr. Jessop that by having him to have with him all the winter he might go on with Ids hospitality as before, getting Boyston to bear the brunt of the battle.
So he established him a bachelor bed-room, not over sumptuously furnished, with a couple of stalls for his horses, and made him perpetual vice-president of his table. And the arrangement suited Mr. Boyston uncommonly well, for he not only got capital fare, but rose considerably in the estimation of the ladies, who requested the honour of Mr. Jessop and Mr. Boyston’s company, instead of asking Mr. Jessop alone.
And the arrangements answered well in a sanatory point of view also, for in less than a month, the then lately rising rubicund hue had been transferred from Mr. Jessop’s nose to that of his guest, whose great harvest-moon face now waxed broader and redder, until it looked as if it had been put into a furnace and blown red-hot. The change was not lost on the ladies, and, one day after a dinner-party at Mr. Springfield’s, during the interregnum of the drawing-room, the abstemiousness of Mr. Jessop, and the rapacity of Mr. Boyston, came to be commented upon, when Mrs. Captain Cambo, who was the wit of the party, suggested that Mr. Jessop used Mr. Boyston as a jug to carry away the wine in he couldn’t hold himself. And Mr. Boyston’s great square figure favouring the idea, it was passed round among the gentlemen when they returned, by whom it was well haw-haw-hawed, and pronounced to be extremely good, and thenceforth Mr. Jessop and his Jug became familiar as household words.
Having now introduced parties with whom our hero will presently come in contact, let us return to him at his weather-bound quarters at Burton St. Leger.
CHAPTER LXVI.
A SHOCKING BAD SADDLE.
THE NEXT DAY was as bright and cheerful as its predecessors had been dull and gloomy. Nature would seem to have shed her tears, dried her eyes, and put her pocket-handkerchief away. The sun shone forth with redoubled splendour; the noisy geese went screeching and cackling and clapping their wings over the green to the water; the emancipated pigs roved leisurely about; the sparrows twittered on the eaves; while the fluttering pigeons were here, there, and everywhere. It was a fortunate circumstance that the weather had changed, for the Duke of Tergiversation had fixed upon this day to exhibit the prowess of his pack to his illustrious guest the Prince Pirouetteza. To this end all the odd horses had been put in requisition, and all the old yellow coats exhumed from their boxes to put upon helpers and straps, to swell the number and importance of the retinue. Great was the preparat
ion at the Castle — Mr. Haggish alone was moody and thoughtful; for, independently of the noise and mischief of these amateur whips, the loss of his “varra best hound” was generally the result of a show day. However, the Duke willed it so, and Mr. Haggish was obliged to comply.