The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston 1 - Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man

by Siegfried Sassoon

  And then there was the difficulty of dress, a subject on which he never offered advice. Desperately in need of information, I asked myself what I was to wear on my head. Stephen had worn some sort of cap last year, but the idea of buying a jockey-cap seemed somehow ludicrous. (I remembered the old brown corduroy one I wore on my first day with the Dumborough.)

  On this particular afternoon I had shortened my stirrups by several holes. I had observed, in some steeplechasing photographs in an illustrated paper, that the jockeys rode with their knees ever so much higher than mine. This experiment caused me to feel important and professional but less secure in the saddle. And when Cockbird made a sudden swerve (quite needlessly alarmed by a blackbird that flew out of the hedge which we hugged so as to make the field as large as possible) I almost lost my balance; in fact I nearly fell off. Dixon said nothing until we were on our way home, and then he merely remarked that he’d never believed in riding very short. ‘They always say that for a point-to-point there’s nothing like sticking to the old-fashioned hunting seat.’ I took the hint, which was a wise one.

  Much depended on Cockbird; but much more depended on me. There were moments when I felt acutely conscious of the absolute nullity of my past as a race-rider. It wasn’t easy to discuss the event when one was limited by a tacit avowal that one had no idea what it would feel like. The void in my experience caused circumlocutions. My only authority was Stephen, whose well-known narrative of last year’s race I was continually paraphrasing. The fact that the Ringwell country was so far away added to the anxious significance of my attempt. How could we – humble denizens of an inglorious unhunted region – hope to invade successfully the four-day-a-week immensity which contained the Colonel and his coveted Cup?

  Such was the burden of my meditations while I lugged the garden roller up and down the tennis lawn after tea, while the birds warbled and scolded among the laurels and arbutuses in the latening March twilight and Aunt Evelyn tinkled Handel’s ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ on the piano in the drawing-room.

  3

  It will have been observed that, in the course of my career as a sportsman, I was never able to believe that I could do a thing until I had done it. Whatever quality it was which caused this tentative progress toward proficiency, it gave intensity to everything that I did. I do not claim that it was unusual – this nervousness of mine about my first point-to-point race. On the contrary, I am sure that it was a normal and exemplary state of mind. Anyone who cares to do so is at liberty to make fun of the trepidations which a young man carries about with him and conceals. But there is a risk in such ridicule. As I remember and write, I grin, but not unkindly, at my distant and callow self and the absurdities which constitute his chronicle. To my mind the only thing that matters is the resolve to do something. Middle-aged retrospection may decide that it wasn’t worth doing; but the perceptions of maturity are often sapless and restrictive; and ‘the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts’, even though they are only about buying a racing-cap.

  A week before the races I went to London and bought a cap with a jutting peak; it was made of black silk, with strings that hung down on each side until they had been tied in front. I had remarked, quite casually, to Stephen, that I supposed a top-hat was rather uncomfortable for racing, and he had advised me about the cap, telling me to be sure to get one which came well down over my ears, ‘for there’s nothing that looks so unworkmanlike as to have a pair of red ears sticking out under your cap’. Whereupon he pulled one of mine, which, as he said, were big enough to catch any wind there was.

  I also bought a weight-cloth. The Heavy Weight Racers had to carry fourteen stone, and after Dixon had weighed me and my hunting saddle on the old weighing machine in the harness-room, we came to the conclusion that, assuming our antiquated machine to be accurate, I should be required to carry twelve pounds of lead.

  ‘Thank heaven it wasn’t thirteen,’ I thought, as I went into the stable to give Cockbird a few well-washed carrots.

  He certainly was looking an absolute picture, though Dixon said he’d like to get a shade more of the meat off him. As he nipped playfully at my sleeve I marvelled at my good fortune in being the possessor of such unparalleled perfection.

  With an access of elation I ran back to the house in a hailstorm. The sun was out again by the time I was upstairs brushing my hair for luncheon. I got out my new cap and tried it on before the glass. Then Miriam bumped into the room with a can of hot water, and as I hadn’t time to snatch it off I stood there with the strings hanging down, looking, no doubt, a bit of a fool.

  ‘Oh, sir, you did give me a turn!’ she ejaculated, ‘I’d hardly have known you in that there jockey-cap!’ She added that I’d be the death of them all before I’d done.

  During luncheon Aunt Evelyn remarked that she did so hope it wouldn’t be wet for the point-to-points. She had never seen one in her life, but she had once been to Dumborough Races, which she considered dangerous. Fortunately for her peace of mind, she still visualized a point-to-point as a sort of paper-chase, and I said nothing to counteract this notion, although I did not want to minimize the grandeur of next week’s events. Aunt Evelyn’s intense love of horses made Cockbird the object of an admiration which almost equalled my own. This, combined with her unshakeable faith in Dixon, gave her a comfortable feeling that I was quite safe on Cockbird. But when Miriam, rather tactlessly, blurted out, ‘Mr George hasn’t half got a lovely jockey-cap!’ she showed symptoms of alarm.

  ‘Oh, I do hope the jumps won’t be very big!’ she exclaimed. To which I replied, somewhat boastfully, that I meant to get over them whatever they might be like.

  ‘I’m going over to walk round the course with Stephen on Sunday. He says it’s a course that wants knowing,’ I said, helping myself to some more tapioca pudding.

  Stephen had warned me that I shouldn’t be able to stay at the Rectory for the Races, because his mother was already ‘in such a muck-sweat about it’ that the topic was never touched on in her presence. So I bicycled to Dumbridge, took the slow train which explored Sussex on Sunday mornings, got out at a wayside station, and then bicycled another seven miles to the course. (The seven-mile ride saved me from going on to Downfield and changing on to the branch line which went to the station close by the course.) These exertions were no hardship at all on that dusty spring day; had it been necessary, I would gladly have bicycled all the whole thirty miles from Butley and back again. Nothing in my life had ever appeared more imperative than that I should walk round that ‘three and a half miles of fair hunting country’ and memorize each obstacle in the sequence. I wanted to carry home in my cranium every inch of the land over which Cockbird would, I strenuously hoped, stride with his four legs.

  In the meantime I had plenty to occupy my mind pleasantly as I pedalled seriously along the leafless lanes. I already knew that part of the Ringwell country moderately well; I could identify most of the coverts by their names, and I ruminated affectionately on the rainy February days when I had gone round and through them in a hot and flustered gallop with the mud from the man in front of me flying past my head. Eagerly I recognized the hedges and heave-gates which I had jumped, and the ruddy faces of the Ringwell sportsmen accompanied my meditations in amicable clusters.

  Memories within memories; those red and black and brown coated riders return to me now without any beckoning, bringing along with them the wintry smelling freshness of the woods and fields. And how could I forget them, those evergreen country characters whom once I learnt to know by heart, and to whom I have long since waved my last farewell (as though at the end of a rattling good day)? Sober-faced squires, with their civil greetings and knowing eyes for the run of a fox; the landscape belonged to them and they to the homely landscape. Weather-beaten farmers, for whom the activities of the Hunt were genial interludes in the stubborn succession of good or bad seasons out of which they made a living on their low-lying clay or wind-swept downland acres. These people were the pillars of the Hunt – the land
owners and the farmers. The remainder were merely subscribers; and a rich-flavoured collection of characters they were, although I only half-recognized them as such while I was with them.

  There was loquacious old Mr Dearborn; formerly a none-too-successful stockbroker, and now a gentleman of leisure, who enjoyed himself on a couple of spavined screws which (he continually asserted) were worth at least a couple of hundred apiece and as clever as cats, though he’d never given more than thirty pounds for a horse, and rarely went as high as that; both of them, as Stephen said, looked lonely without a gig behind them. Old Dearborn jabbered his way through the days, attaching himself to one group of riders after another until a fox was found; at the end of a good hunt he would always turn up again, puffing and blowing and purple in the face, but voluble with enthusiasm for the way his horse had got over ‘one of the ugliest places you ever saw in your life’. However tedious he may have been, the Ringwell field wouldn’t have been the same without him.

  Many an exuberant voice and lively countenance I could revive from that vanished cavalcade. But I can’t help thinking that the best man of them all was ‘Gentleman George’, as we called him. George was a grey-haired groom; Mr Clampton, his middle-aged master, was ‘something in the City’ – a natty untalkative little man, who came out in queerly cut clothes and a low-crowned hat. Mr Clampton kept three stout-hearted weight-carriers, but he seldom hunted more than one day a week. George put in as many days as possible; he called it ‘keeping the guv’nor’s ’osses well in work’. No day was too long and no fence too hairy for George and the guv’nor’s ’osses. At the most remote meets he would trot up – his fine-featured open face subdued to the decorum of servitude and a jolly twinkle for ever lurking in his keen eyes. (He was a man who could condense more meaning into a single wink than most political speakers can put into a peroration.) Always he had his free and easy hail for the hunt-servants (to whom he could generally give some useful information during the day); for the gentry he reserved a respectful rap of his hat-brim and a sonorous ‘Mornin’, sir’. However curt his utterances were, the tones of his voice seemed to imply the underlying richness and vigour of his vitality. He knew every inch of the country backwards, and the short-tailed grey who was his favourite had done fourteen seasons with those hounds since Mr Clampton first bought him as a five-year-old from a farm in County Waterford.

  The great joke about George was his method of acting as second horseman when his worthy master was out hunting. This, of course, should have meant that he kept as much as possible to the roads and handed the horse over to his employer as soon as the first horse had done as much galloping and jumping as was considered good for him. Not so George, who was seldom more than two fields away from hounds, however hard they ran. Times without number I have seen him come crashing through some black-looking fence and then turn to shout back at the irresolute Mr Clampton, ‘Shove ’im at it, sir; there’s a big old ditch on the landing side!’ And at the end of a gallop, when both horses were smoking hot, he would dismount with the utmost gravity and exchange horses with his master, who had even been known to go home first, leaving his privileged retainer to knock holes in the fences in a late afternoon hunt.

  In him I seem to be remembering all that was warm-hearted and exhilarating in my days with the Ringwell, for he showed a special interest in Stephen Colwood and myself, and was never so well contented as when he was showing us the way over an awkward place or giving us the benefit of his ripe experience and intimate knowledge. There was something noble about him. And so (I choose to think) it was for ‘Gentleman George’ that I kept the kindliest of my meditations as I was bicycling to the point-to-point course.

  It was peaceful and pleasant to be squatting on a gate and opening the package of sandwiches that Miriam had made me. The gate opened on to a boggy lane which ran through Cruchett’s Wood – a well-known covert. But Cruchett’s Wood was beginning to look more idyllic than sporting now; it was dotted with primrose bunches, and the wild anemones were numerous. Although I saw them with placid appreciation my uppermost thought was that the country was drying up nicely; deep going was believed to be a disadvantage to Cockbird, who was supposed to possess a turn of speed which he would have more chance of showing if the ground were dry.

  The early afternoon was quiet and Sunday-like as I sat with half a ham-sandwich in my hand; a saffron butterfly fluttered aimlessly along the hedge; miles away the grey-green barrier of the downs overlooked the inactive Weald, and I thought I’d rather like to be up there, by the old windmill on Ditchbury Beacon.

  Discarding this unsportsmanlike notion I went on my way; half an hour later my uncompanioned identity had been merged in my meeting with Stephen and we were very deliberately inspecting the first few fences. There was a stake-and-bound hedge on a bank which we didn’t much like the look of. While we were still planted in front of it the cheery voice of Arthur Brandwick hailed us with ‘That’s a place where you’ll have to take a pull at your old horse, Steve.’ With him was Nigel Croplady, wearing white gaiters and puffing a cigar; his somewhat supercilious recognition of my existence made me feel that I had no business to be there at all. Croplady was on the Point-to-Point Committee; he had helped to plan out the course and had supervised the making up and trimming of the fences.

  ‘I’m not at all sure we oughtn’t to have made the course a bit stiffer,’ he remarked.

  Brandwick replied that he wouldn’t be saying that if he were having a bump round it himself.

  Croplady expressed regret that he wasn’t able to ride the horse he’d entered for the Heavy Weights. ‘That infernal knee of mine went groggy again while I was playing golf on Thursday. But I’ve got “Boots” Brownrigg to ride him for me, so he ought to be in the picture all right.’

  I gathered that ‘Boots’ Brownrigg was in the ‘Blues’ and had ‘ridden a clinking good finish at the Guards’ Meeting at Hawthorn Hill the other day.’

  Brandwick told us that he’d asked Roger Pomfret to ride his young horse. ‘He’s a mutton-fisted beggar; but the horse is a bit nappy, and young Roger’ll be the man to keep him going at his fences.’

  Every syllable they uttered made my own private aspirations more preposterous and perishable; my optimism was at a very low ebb as we plodded across a wet pasture to the next obstacle, which had a wide ditch on the take-off side.

  ‘There’s another place where there’ll be trouble for somebody!’ Brandwick’s jolly voice seemed to be glorying in the prospect of horses refusing and riders shooting up their necks, or even over their ears. He turned to me. ‘Let’s see, you’re running that nice-looking bay of yours, aren’t you?’

  I replied, ‘Yes, I’m having a ride.’

  Croplady became knowledgeable about the entries, which had long been a subject for speculation between Stephen and myself. ‘Quite a hot lot for the Heavy Weights this year. Two of those Cavalry thrusters who keep their nags in Downfield. They’re always rather an unknown quantity.’

  Stephen remarked that the Colonel’s Cup was well worth winning, and Croplady agreed that it was a much better pot than the Light Weight one, and must have cost the old boy five-and-twenty quid at least.

  Silent and disheartened, I longed to be alone again; the presence of the other two made it impossible for me to talk naturally to Stephen, and I couldn’t help feeling that they regarded me as an entry which could be ruled out of all serious consideration. The whole affair had become bleakly detached from my previous conception of it. I was just a greenhorn. What chances had I got against Brownrigg of the ‘Blues’, or those ferociously efficient Cavalry officers? Bicycling back to the station with only just time to catch the train, I visualized myself refusing the first fence and colliding with Roger Pomfret, who was associated in my memory with all my most timorous experiments with the Dumborough.

  Aunt Evelyn found me an uncommunicative companion that evening; and it wasn’t easy to talk to Dixon about the course when I went to the stable next morning. ‘I hear there’s a
very hot lot entered for the Heavy Weights,’ I said, as I watched him polishing away at Cockbird’s glossy coat. My tone was, perhaps, a shade extenuatory. I couldn’t bring myself to speak of Brownrigg of the ‘Blues’.

  Dixon straightened himself and passed his hand along Cockbird’s back. ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll bet our horse gives some of ’em a shaking up!’ he replied.

  Cockbird gave a playful hoist of his hind quarters and then snatched a mouthful of hay from his rack. I wished that the confidence of my confederates was a little more infectious.

  4

  The races were to be on Wednesday. After exercising our minds on the problem of how best to convey Cockbird to the course by two o’clock on that afternoon, we decided against his spending the previous night in Downfield. I suggested that he would probably sleep better in his own stable, which struck me at the time as being improperly expressed, though it was necessary that he should lie down and shut his eyes like everybody else who has something important to do next day. In this connection I should like to mention an odd fact, which is that when I dream about horses, as I often do, they usually talk like human beings, although the things they say, as in most dreams, are only confused fantasias on ordinary speech.

  Anyhow, it was arranged that Dixon should ride Cockbird to Dumbridge on Wednesday morning, box him to Downfield, put him up at Whatman’s ‘Hunting and Livery Stables’ for two or three hours, and then jog him quietly out to the course, which was about four miles from Downfield. In the meantime I was to ride Harkaway to Dumbridge (I felt that this ride would be better for me than if I drove in the dog-cart), catch a later train, and find my way to the course as best I could. The bag holding my coat, boots, cap, spurs, and weight-cloth would go by the carrier. (I mention these details because they did seem so vastly important at the time.)