by R S Surtees
We need not trouble them with their balderdash; howthey abused “old Neville,” and ridiculed the idea of hounds not coming, and how Tarquinius talked of “taking the country himself if they didn’t make him represent it,” and so on, as being matter quite as easily imagined as described. For that piece of leniency, however, we must request the reader — non-luncheon eater though he maybe — to accompany the party to the parlour, where the usual savoury hashes are commingled with jellies, roast potatoes, and cold fowls — Hie-sos-sos-sos-sos!
“ — Hark!” exclaimed Muff in the middle of a merry-thought: “I thought I heard the horn,” continued he, rising and going to the bay window which opens to the ground.
Muff was right. It was old Ben sounding a requiem over his fox in the park on the east side of the hall, a view that never having taken of it before caused Scott not to recognise it, till Muff stepped out of the window on to the lawn.
“Why, there’s Mr. Muff!” exclaimed our friend, as he recognised Muff’s great white stomach between his black jacks and red coat.
“So it is!” replied Ben. “This will be Honey-bower Hall, I dare say,” observed he, looking at the house, with the right of entry air of a Fox-hunter.
Ben had now got the brush and head in hand, and the pads being distributed, up went the fox and down it came rolling right into the jaws of the whole fifty hounds.
“ — Who-hoop! tear him and eat him! Who-hoop!”
“I’ll tell you what, Tom,” said Scott to the whip as soon as the latter had satisfied himself with hooping and screeching while the hounds worried the fox, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a guinea if you’ll go and present Mr. Tarquinius Muff with the brush,” pointing to Muff as he stood at the window, surrounded by the ladies, like a cock of the midden.
“I’ll soon do that for nothing,” replied Tom, taking the brush from the huntsman, and shuffling away in the crab-like fashion of a whipper-in, up to the house. —
“Please, sir,” said he, touching his cap, as he saw a frown o’erspreading Muff’s ample face instead of the smile that usually irradiates a man about to be honoured. “Please, sir, Ben has made free to send you the brush, and is sorry you’ve missed the run.”
“Is he?” sneered Muff. “I feel much flattered by his condescension,” at the same time sticking his hands under his coat-tails to remove all idea of his accepting the offer. —
“Pray where is Mr. Neville?” asked he, after a pause.
“He’s not out, sir,” replied Tom, with another touch of the cap.
“Not out!” exclaimed Muff. “You don’t mean to say you’ve thrown off without him?”
“Master said we were to hunt if we could, and there was anybody there.”
“Well, and who have you had?” asked Muff.
“Oh, there’s Mr. Scott, and Mr. Sheepskin, and Mr. Brown, and Mr. Randall of Reay, and several others,” replied Tom.
“They are not owners of covers, I think,” snapped Muff. —
“Hazelhanger belongs to Mr. Scott,” observed Bowles. —
“Well, you know your orders best,” observed Muff pompously, “but if you were my servants, I should say you had done extremely wrong in throwing off on such a day, especially to such a field, disturbing such an extent of country whereupon he gave a loud hem, and returned with the ladies to the luncheon, repeating as he went, “extremely wrong, — indeed!”
“Vain his attempt who strives to please them all!”
CHAP. XII.
THE BAD MEET.
“OH! YAU — au — Neville’s at the chase. Monday,” puffed great Captain Rasher through a mouthful of mustachios in his barrack-room at Scrapetin, as he read the county paper. “Sha’n’t go — never get a run — confounded woodland place — up to one’s horse’s hocks all the day in mud and clay — bad for curbs” — with which observation the man of war settled the matter; and being the hunting authority of the regiment, of course all the subs followed suit. Lieutenant Scrimagour denounced it as the most uncivilised place that ever was seen; and little Comet Muttonjaw, who is just weaned and entered to hunting, swore “he wouldn’t go if anybody would lend him a horse and give him five pounds into the bargain.”
So they settled the matter in barracks.
“I sha’n’t hunt to-morrow, William,” said Tarquinius Muff, strutting into his stable at the four o’clock feeding time, with his friend old Major Tin-head, to show off his stud. It’s the most confounded nasty place to get away from that ever was seen, and a very likely one for an accident. Strip that horse, Tom,” said Muff to helper No 1., who had just replaced the clothing, “and let the major see him.”
“There!” exclaimed Muff, as the lad swept the highly-finished richly-lettered clothing over the horse’s quarters again. “There” repeated he, extending his right arm, “I call that shape. You may go up to him,” continued he, seeing the major stand in the vacant way people do when called upon to admire a horse in a stable, “you may go up to him — he’s quite quiet;” whereupon Tinhead availed himself of Muff’s liberality, and squeezed up the stall till he got beside the servant, when he underwent the usual penalty of spanning the horse’s knee, grasping his pastern, admiring his loins, and criticising his colour.
Muff then rewarded him by making him do “ditto” by another, and so on through the five; four hunters and a hack being Muff’s complement, though one would do all his work. We need scarcely say that Tinhead is Muff’s toadey. He looks like a toadey — a little shrivelled, parchment-faced, precise, old-maidish sort of animal, that nine men out of ten would take a dislike to at first sight without knowing why.
“You may exercise the horse to-morrow, as well as the mare,” said Tom Talkington to his half groom, half flunkey, “I sha’n’t go to that beastly Chase — was nearly smothered in a bog the last time I was there.” —
“What horse will you ride to-morrow, sir?” asked Joe Beans of his master, Mr. Muffinmouth as the latter came in from coursing. “To-morrow!’ exclaimed Muffinmouth, “to-morrow — what’s tomorrow?”
“The Chase,” replied Beans.
“The Chase be hanged,” replied Muffinmouth, turning on his heel as though it were not worth a thought.
Every country has its proscribed meet — its place that “nobody thinks of going to,” which redeems itself every now and then by some tremendous run, drawing all the chatterers back, to be choked off by degrees, and Abbeycroft Chase is the “beastly place” of Mr. Neville’s hunt; not that it is a bad place, looking at it as far as the interests of hounds are concerned, for it is sporting-like and spacious, and lying on the verge of two countries, is always full of foxes belonging to each. In short, it is one of those sort of places that requires routing out every fortnight or so, in order to be sure of finding foxes in the smaller ones. Its great imperfection undoubtedly is the absence of fences and leaps, which are hardly compensated for by sundry terrific bogs that dye a red coat black in no time. Still that is not the sort of excitement Capt. Rasher, Cornets Muttonjaw and Shaver, or such like cocks, delight in; they want a cutting whip, and a line of flags through four miles of stiff country, with a break-back brook in the middle.
Long life and two necks to each of them, say we!
Neither is the out-of-the-way locality of the Chase, nor the wild sylvan beauty of its scenery, attractive to men like the Muffs, who prefer basking in the sunshine of sloping lawns, or the gentle undulations of the deer-stocked parks of turreted towers.
If a large extent of rideable woodland, with wildness and boldness at every step, has any charms for fox hunters, Abbeycroft Chase ought to rank high; and though too many foxes undoubtedly lead to changing, still if hounds have the luck to get settled to a good one at starting, and there is anything of a scent, he must either fly or be twisted up in cover.
If it were a favourite place its situation would be convenient for the commingling of the apricot-coloured coats of the Dazzlegoose Hunt with the British scarlet of Mr. Neville’s; but save just after some re
deeming run, which is most likely magnified to stag-hunters’ measure who, we are sorry to say, often lie (under a mistake, of course, as Lord Byron said), they seldom muster more than ten or a dozen, independently of farmers.
But we will take Monday’s meet as a sample.
It was almost the first real hunting day our friend Tom Scott and Co had had after the most disreputable season of 1846-7, turned the Tattenham Corner of 1847, and as Tom got on to his hack, he felt the sort of spring glow that almost persuades one into growing. The colt’s coat had a kindly glossy hue, which underwent no change on opening the stable door, though he stood immediately opposite. A horse’s coat furnishes a pretty good criterion of the state of the atmosphere, far better than one of those curious old instruments in bottles which profess to show everything, though, if they are all like ours, they only show the purchaser’s stupidity in buying them.
“The Chase” is an unmeasured fourteen miles from Hawbuck Grange, to do which Tom allows himself two hours and a half. When he got to where the Galton cross-road joins the Hardingham turnpike, he saw, by the great splay footmarks on the lifting mud, that the hounds were “on,” and he presently got a glimpse of a red coat passing a gap in a plantation beyond. Hounds’ feet certainly do not show to advantage in sticky soil, and nobody would have thought that Mr. Neville’s round ball-footed dog pack would have left such great slovenly-looking imprints behind them.
The meet was at a beggarly farmhouse just on the confines of the Chase; a farm that has brought more people on the parish than all the rest of the township put together.
When our friend arrived he found even Mr. Trumper’s attention was drawn from the powerful pack, now stretching and rolling about on the soundest part of the much plunged green, to the picture of misery and desolation before him.
“Did you ever see such a place, Mr. Scott?” asked Trumper, pointing to the dilapidated house, with the windows pasted over with paper, or stuffed full of straw and old hats. “Just look at those stacks,” added he, pointing to three or four crooked half-covered corn stacks, slipping out of their ropes, on which the pigeons, poultry, and sparrows were regaling.
“Good morning, Mr. Trumper,” exclaimed Mr. Neville, bustling up on his hack, and shaking hands with our hero; adding, “I’m very glad to see you out with my hounds.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Mr. Trumper, making his obeisance.
“And how are your hounds going on?” asked Mr. Neville, for he is one of the few masters of foxhounds who are not jealous of harriers.
“Oh, middling well, sir, thank you,” replied Trumper; “we began our season early, and had some good running up to the end of November, but we’ve done nothing almost since.” —
“Nor we,” replied Mr. Neville, “nor we; nothing, at least, to speak of. Runs that we should have thought nothing of last year are magnified into splendid ones this.”
“Ay, that’ll be your fine pen-and-ink gentleman, I presume,” said Trumper; adding, “I’ve been suffering a little in that way myself. I’ll goose and dumplin them,” continued he, with a shake of the head. —
“You’ve got the old horse still, I see,” said Mr. Neville, eyeing our friend Golumpus.
“Ay, the Yorkshire horse,” replied Trumper, lifting his long green lap up so as to show the horse’s great round barrel, adding, “good horse, varry.”
“What a size he is!” observed Mr. Neville.
“I don’t like to be stinted,” replied Trumper, quite incontinently.
“I know you don’t,” rejoined Mr. Neville, with a smile.
“What age is that horse, now?” inquired Mr. Neville, after a pause.
“He’ll be seventeen this grass,” replied Trumper. “This is his tenth season, and he’s as fresh as a four-year old.”
“You didn’t begin riding him till he was seven, I think,” observed Mr. Neville.
“He wasn’t broke till he was six,” replied Trumper, “but then he comes of a good sort — a M’Orville — all the M’Orvilles are natural hunters, and you save a season or two that way. Mr. Muff Tarquinius wanted to buy him,” added Trumper; “indeed he sent his groom for him with a blank cheque for me to fill up, and very much astonished the man was at not getting him away. ‘Do you think he is strong enough to carry your master?’ asked I.
“‘Indeed I think he is,’ replied the man, cautiously.
“‘Then I think he’s strong enough to carry me,’ added I; ‘so I won’t part with him.’ Tarquinius has never been quite friendly with me since,” added Trumper.
“Whose horses are those?” asked Mr. Neville of a diminutive tiger who now rode round the corner of the stackyard with a couple of splendid animals, just as Mr. Neville had exchanged his hack for his hunter.
“My Lord Lazytongs’,” replied the lad with a touch of his hat.
“And whose are those?” asked Mr. Neville, as two more hove in sight.
“My Lord Lazytongs’, too,” replied the speaker.
“What’s his lordship going to ride four?” asked Mr. Neville, with a smile.
“No, sir, those are for Captain Windeyhash,” replied the lad.
“And where are they coming from?” asked Mr. Neville.
“From Dawdle Court, sir,” replied the lad. “We are from Newbolt this morning.”
“Dawdle Court!” exclaimed Mr. Neville— “why, that’s thirty miles off.”
“Five-and-twenty, sir,” replied the groom, who had now come up, having given the benefit of his superior weight to the Windeyhash detachment.
“They’ll never come,” whispered Scott, remembering the Ecclesford Green day.
“We must wait a few minutes,” observed Mr. Neville, “for gentlemen who are coming so far.”
“Is his lordship riding?” asked Mr. Neville of the groom, after a pause.
“He comes in the carriage as far as Danebury Hill, sir,” replied the man, “where there are hacks waiting to bring him on to Newbolt, and there are fresh ones again at Newbolt.”
“Humph,” considered Mr. Neville, meditating how long he ought to wait for gentlemen who had made so much preparation.
“Do you think they’ll come?” asked he, after a pause and a lapse of some minutes.
“Why, I should think so, sir,” replied the groom. “Our orders were very particular — half-past ten to a minute; it’s a quarter to eleven now,” added he, pulling out his watch.
“Is there any one at Dawdle Court?” asked Mr. Neville.
“Oh yes, sir; the house is full of company. Indeed, I know his lordship wants to be back at half-past two, to shoot a match.”
“The deuce he does!” exclaimed Mr. Neville; “then I think I’d better throw off, and have a fox on foot for him against he comes.” So saying, he gave the usual jerk of his head to old Ben, and the glad pack at length bounded away to Ben’s whistle.
“Shoot!” said Mr. Trumper to Scott, as the latter came alongside, adding— “That’s the queerest style of hunting I ever heard of. I should have thought fox-hunting was amusement enough for any man for one day.”
Before they reached the first straggling brushwood on the rising ground of the “Chase” that the hounds condescend to draw, a brimstone-coloured coat was seen sailing through the fields below at a very first-rate pace.
“Crash” the wearer went through a rotten wattled hurdle; “swich” he divided a live thorn fence; “down” he sent a row of rails, and so the wearer went careering triumphantly on till he was most ignominiously brought up by a sheep net.
“That’ll be my lord,” said Mr. Trumper, eyeing his’ lordship’s long legs working away at the nag to make it face the nets. “He’d better leave that game alone,” added he, with a shake of the head, as the animal turned tail to the stakes.
Tootle, tootle, tootle! blew Mr. Neville on his horn, to let his lordship see where the hounds were; for there was a direct way up from the enclosures into the Chase, through a most conspicuous new white gate, but Mr. Neville’s intimation had just a contrar
y effect to what was intended, and converted the affair of the nets into a sort of “eyes-of-England-are-upon-you” point of honour. Seeing he was observed, his lordship was more determined to take the nets, and making a considerable semicircle, he again charged them most stoutly.
No; deuce a bit! the horse wouldn’t have them, and round went the tail as before.
A third charge ended in a similar result.
Just as his lordship’s hack turned tail for the fourth time, the biggest fox without any exception, that Tom Scott ever sat eyes on, crossed the glade towards which they were riding in the most haughty, disdainful, arrogant manner imaginable. He had his head in the air, and his brush in the air, and went careering along just like a colt turned into a strange field. He sniffed the air, and threw his head about, as much as to say, “What the deuce do you mean, you disorderly dogs, by disturbing a gentleman in this way?” As yet nothing but the horn had been heard.
“Tallyho!” screamed Mr. Neville, enlightening him on the subject, when down went the brush, and away shot the owner across the open, amid the tallyhos, and screams, and screeches of the field, till a friendly copse screened him from view.
How the dog pack made the welkin ring, as they scored to cry, and every hound owned the scent! Echo answered echo, till one might have thought there were a hundred couple of hounds at work. —
“Moy O-oies!” exclaimed old Trumper, sucking in the melody, “but that’s.”
Screech! screech! went the horn, “crack, crack,” went the whips, but there wasn’t the slightest occasion for either, only servants are afraid if they don’t make a noise, people may think the hounds kill the fox and not them.
They now dived into the thick of the Chase, where lofty forest trees supplied the place of stunted oaks, and crags and rocks appeared hurled promiscuously around.
The riding, though not bad, at least not bad for woodland riding, required a sharp eye both above and below to keep the riders’ heads on their shoulders for the trees, and their horses on their legs for the bogs.
