CHAPTER IV
LAVERICK WELLS
We trust our opening chapters, aided by our friend Leech's pencil, willhave enabled our readers to embody such a Sponge in their mind's eye aswill assist them in following us through the course of his peregrinations.We do not profess to have drawn such a portrait as will raise the same sortof Sponge in the minds of all, but we trust we have given such a generaloutline of style, and indication of character, as an ordinary knowledge ofthe world will enable them to imagine a good, pushing, free-and-easy sortof man, wishing to be a gentleman without knowing how.
Far more difficult is the task of conveying to our readers such informationas will enable them to form an idea of our hero's ways and means. Anaccommodating world--especially the female portion of it--generallyattribute ruin to the racer, and fortune to the fox-hunter; but though Mr.Sponge's large losses on the turf, as detailed by him to Mr. Buckram on theoccasion of their deal or 'job,' would bring him in the category of theunfortunates; still that representation was nearly, if not altogether,fabulous. That Mr. Sponge might have lost a trifle on the great races ofthe year, we don't mean to deny, but that he lost such a sum as eighteenhundred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, we are in a condition tocontradict, for the best of all possible reasons, that he hadn't it tolose. At the same time we do not mean to attribute falsehood to Mr.Sponge--quite the contrary--it is no uncommon thing for merchants andtraders--men who 'talk in thousands,' to declare that they lost twentythousand by this, or forty thousand by that, simply meaning that theydidn't make it, and if Mr. Sponge, by taking the longest of the long oddsagainst the most wretched of the outsiders, might have won the sums henamed, he surely had a right to say he lost them when he didn't get them.
It never does to be indigenously poor, if we may use such a term, and whena man gets to the end of his tether, he must have something or somebody toblame rather than his own extravagance or imprudence, and if there is no'rascally lawyer' who has bolted with his title-deeds, or fraudulent agentwho has misappropriated his funds, why then, railroads, or losses on theturf, or joint-stock banks that have shut up at short notice, come in asthe scapegoats. Very willing hacks they are, too, railways especially, andso frequently ridden, that it is no easy matter to discriminate between thereal and the fictitious loser.
But though we are able to contradict Mr. Sponge's losses on the turf, weare sorry we are not able to elevate him to the riches the character of afox-hunter generally inspires. Still, like many men of whom the commonobservation is, 'nobody knows how he lives,' Mr. Sponge always seemed wellto do in the world. There was no appearance of want about him. He alwayshunted: sometimes with five horses, sometimes with four, seldom with lessthan three, though at the period of our introduction he had come down totwo. Nevertheless, those two, provided he could but make them 'go,' werewell calculated to do the work of four. And hack horses, of all sorts, itmay be observed, generally do double the work of private ones; and if thereis one man in the world better calculated to get the work out of them thananother, that man most assuredly is Mr. Sponge. And this reminds us, thatwe may as well state that his bargain with Buckram was a sort of jobbingdeal. He had to pay ten guineas a month for each horse, with a sort ofsliding scale of prices if he chose to buy--the price of 'Ercles' (the bigbrown) being fixed at fifty, inclusive of hire at the end of the firstmonth, and gradually rising according to the length of time he kept himbeyond that; while, 'Multum in Parvo,' the resolute chestnut, was booked atthirty, with the right of buying at five more, a contingency that Buckramlittle expected. He, we may add, had got him for ten, and dear he thoughthim when he got him home.
The world was now all before Mr. Sponge where to choose; and not being theman to keep hack horses to look at, we must be setting him a-going.
'Leicesterscheer swells,' as Mr. Buckram would call them, with theirfourteen hunters and four hacks, will smile at the idea of a man going fromhome to hunt with only a couple of 'screws,' but Mr. Sponge knew what hewas about, and didn't want any one to counsel him. He knew there wereplaces where a man can follow up the effect produced by a red coat in themorning to great advantage in the evening; and if he couldn't hunt everyday in the week, as he could have wished, he felt he might fill up his timeperhaps quite as profitably in other ways. The ladies, to do them justice,are never at all suspicious about men--on the 'nibble'--always taking itfor granted, they are 'all they could wish,' and they know each other sowell, that any cautionary hint acts rather in a man's favour thanotherwise. Moreover, hunting men, as we said before, are all supposed to berich, and as very few ladies are aware that a horse can't hunt every day inthe week, they just class the whole 'genus' fourteen-horse power men,ten-horse power men, five-horse power men, two-horse power men, together,and tying them in a bunch, label it '_very rich_,' and proceed to takemeasures accordingly.
Let us now visit one of the 'strongholds' of fox and fortune-hunting.
A sudden turn of a long, gently rising, but hitherto uninteresting road,brings the posting traveller suddenly upon the rich, well-wooded,beautifully undulating vale of Fordingford, whose fine green pastures arebrightened with occasional gleams of a meandering river, flowing throughthe centre of the vale. In the far distance, looking as though close uponthe blue hills, though in reality several miles apart, sundry spires andtaller buildings are seen rising above the grey mists towards which astraight, undeviating, matter-of-fact line of railway passing up the rightof the vale, directs the eye. This is the famed Laverick Wells, theresort, as indeed all watering-places are, according to newspaper accounts,of
'Knights and dames, And all that wealth and lofty lineage claim.'
At the period of which we write, however, 'Laverick Wells' was in greatfeather--it had never known such times. Every house, every lodging, everyhole and corner was full, and the great hotels, which more resembleLancashire cotton-mills than English hostelries, were sending awayapplicants in the most offhand, indifferent way.
The Laverick Wells hounds had formerly been under the management of thewell-known Mr. Thomas Slocdolager, a hard-riding, hard-bitten, hold-hardingsort of sportsman, whose whole soul was in the thing, and who would haveridden over his best friend in the ardour of the chase.
MR. THOMAS SLOCDOLAGER, LATE MASTER OF THE LAVERICK WELLSHOUNDS]
In some countries such a creature may be considered an acquisition, and solong as he reigned at the Wells, people made the best they could of him,though it was painfully apparent to the livery-stable keepers, and others,who had the best interest of the place at heart, that such a red-faced,gloveless, drab-breeched, mahogany-booted buffer, who would throw off atthe right time, and who resolutely set his great stubbly-cheeked faceagainst all show meets and social intercourse in the field, was not exactlythe man for a civilized place. Whether time might have enlightened Mr.Slocdolager as to the fact, that continuous killing of foxes, afterfatiguingly long runs, was not the way to the hearts of the Laverick Wellssportsmen, is unknown, for on attempting to realize as fine a subscriptionas ever appeared upon paper, it melted so in the process of collection,that what was realized was hardly worth his acceptance; saying so, in hisusual blunt way, that if he hunted a country at his own expense he wouldhunt one that wasn't encumbered with fools, he just stamped his littlewardrobe into a pair of old black saddle-bags, and rode out of town withoutsaying 'tar, tar,' good-bye, carding, or P.P.C.-ing anybody.
This was at the end of a season, a circumstance that considerably mitigatedthe inconvenience so abrupt a departure might have occasioned, and as oneof the great beauties of Laverick Wells is, that it is just as much invogue in summer as in winter, the inhabitants consoled themselves with theold aphorism, that there is as 'good fish in the sea as ever came out ofit,' and cast about in search of some one to supply his place at as smallcost to themselves as possible. In a place so replete with money and theenterprise of youth, little difficulty was anticipated, especially when theold bait of 'a name' being all that was wanted, 'an ample subscription,' to
defray all expenses figuring in the background, was held out.
Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour Page 4