by R S Surtees
The Chase bogs are a very peculiar kind of bog; not that nervous, protracted blob, blob, blob, “deeper and deeper still,” of moors and heaths, but deep, black, over-head-and-ears-at-once sort of places that a horse should clear in his stride. Some of them are awfully deep, though not very holding, a late occupant looking more like a man out of an inkstand than out of a mud cart. To be sure the places are tolerably marked by the unhealthy green, and yellow, and grey moss on the stunted birch trees, as also by the hassocky ground and coarse reedy grass about, but strangers are seldom satisfied of the real importance of a Chase bog until they have fathomed one. After that they ride to a “leader,” as they all did to-day. That leader was old Ben, who has a sort of map of the bogs in his head. How he sailed away to be sure, hopping over them just like water furrows, trusting as much to his voice as his reins for making his old mare leap. Horses are much like sheep in the leaping line, when one begins, the rest generally follow; much in the same strain, too, as will often have been observed by men whose horses have made tremendous leaps over “nothings,” merely because the one before them leapt wide. Ben had the best of it, barring the risk, for before they had gone very far, the black daubs, and spots, and stains on the white breeches and ties showed who rode behind and who didn’t. It was no time for stopping, however; indeed we question that any horse worthy the name of a hunter would have submitted to be pulled up with such ravishing music before him. If he did, we are sure the man on his back wouldn’t deserve to be called a sportsman. Forrard! they went, making every bunny on the ground and torn-tit in the trees quiver with fear.
We often wondered whether there is such a thing in the world as a man whose heart wouldn’t leap into his mouth at the sound of a pack of hounds in full cry. We should think not; at least, if there is, we should be very sorry to back a bill for him. To-day would have been a grand one to try him.
None of the field who were out seemed deficient in sporting spirit, for they went at a pace that might be called truly awful — awful considering the squire traps, trees, and other contingencies.
There was no time for politeness — no time for saying, “Take care, sir, or you’ll be getting your eyes scratched out,” or, “Mind what you’re after, sir, or you’ll be getting your head in your hand;” it was every man for himself and the mud take the hindmost. If the hounds ran musically, the field rode mute. And here let us pause to pay a tribute of respect to dog packs generally. There is something fine and noble in the appearance of the great strong animals, and theirs is a far honester, more substantial, John Bullish style of hunting, than the quick sharp whimper and cut away of the bitches. The dogs seem to say to the horses, “Come along, my hearties, and let us enjoy ourselves together,” while the bitches seem as if they were always wanting to steal a march upon the nags, and to have all the sport to themselves. The dogs look grand and noble; something to “fill the eye,” as Trumper says. —
Away, away, away the field went, now alongside of the hounds, now behind, now perhaps a leetle before. Reynard picked his ground with judgment.
A check at last ensued.
“He’s into the enclosure!” said old Ben, eyeing Brilliant jumping at the high palings — over they go,” hallooed he as a whole bevy of hounds charged the palings in line.
“He’s down!” cried Ben, holding his hand in the air for silence whilst he listened for the sound of their tongues in the dean.
“The’re on him again!” (added he, as a slight whimper burst into full cry).
“Get together hounds! get together!” hallooed Tom Bowles, cracking his whip, though there wasn’t a straggler to he seen.
“We must be inside,” observed Mr. Neville, hustling along with a great patch of black mud on the side of his hat that looked for all the world like a cockade. —
“There’s a bridle-gate just below,” observed Ben, who knows every point and pass in the country.
They were presently at it; — a nasty place it was, too, as most wood bridle-gates are — boggy and plungy, with a pair of most resolute posts for a hot horse to dash his rider’s legs against.
“One at a time, and it’ll last the longer!” exclaimed Mr. Neville, cocking up his knees to avoid a collision.
“I’ll lead” observed Mr. Trumper, throwing himself from the now lathered Golumpus.
“Why, what a mess you’re in, Beaney!” observed Trumper, eyeing Beanstack’s desperately bespattered front. —
“Am I?” replied the now purple-faced Bean-stack; “I can’t be much worse than yourself; look at your breeches!”
The time for estimating dilapidations, however, was not yet come, and having all blobbed through the gateway in some fashion or other, and Mr. Trumper having climbed on to Golumpus again, they now found themselves in a better managed part of the Chase. In lieu of the natural straggling glades and rotten inundations of land, they were among regular grassy rides, diverging in all directions through thriving plantations, whose open bottom afforded every facility to the chase.
The hounds pushed their fox through as straight as an arrow.
“If there’s half such a scent in the open as there is in cover,” observed Mr. Neville, “we shall have him in hand in ten minutes.”
“Hark! he’s down,” exclaimed he, as a sudden burst of melody to the left proclaimed the fox had turned at last.
“He must break,” said Mr. Neville, turning too, “or be killed in cover. Hark! I believe they have him,” added he, as a sudden lull ensued.
“No, he’ll be away,” said old Ben, spurring his horse into a canter, and making for the spot; adding, “I’ll be bund he’s just slipped back at the woodman’s cottage below.”
A loud, long, shrill tallyho! almost instantly confirmed Ben’s surmise, and on scuttling away to the gate they found the second whip with his cap in the air, in the high state of excitement lads are generally in who have “viewed the fox.”
“Hoop! hoop! hoop!” screamed he, turning his horse, and sweeping his cap towards the ground on the line the fox had gone.
Out poured the hounds; crash came Ben, horn in hand, through the wattled fence; and the scene shifter having changed the slides, the second act of the drama commenced in the open.
What an open it was, too! And how the top of the rising ground, up which the fox had gone, favoured the view! After hugging and holding up the hill, they looked upon the rich vale of Bright-well, the vaunted “crack” of the Dazzlegoose country. Large grazing grounds stretched away in fertile greenness, while what arable land there was showed sound and brown on the surface. There is something fine in running slap into an adjoining country. It is a sort of sporting foray, which enables us to compliment our friends on the sport they unwillingly afford us. The old spirit, in fact, that instigated the Pytchley man of old to exclaim to his horse, as the fox went away into Leicestershire —
— “Now, Contract,” said Dick,
“But well show these d — d Quornites the trick.”
Loving and sociable as fox hunters undoubtedly are in the aggregate, still there is always a strong feeling of jealousy between neighbouring packs. On this occasion the Dazzlegoose men began to hustle their horses and show in front as the hounds pointed for their vale, as though they thought it incumbent on them to do the honours of the country. “Recumbent” — one of them — Dick Jellyhead — very soon was, for his trouble. The fox having taken the old Swinbrook road, for a couple of hundred yards, which runs parallel with the hills from whence they had all just descended, and the hounds, after running that distance nearly mute, suddenly burst into chorus on the grassy side of the road next the vale, and in another instant they flew over the fence, formed of a bank with a hedge on the top, into the adjoining pasture.
The fox had run the inside of the fence, and there was a gate from the road into the field a little before, but Jellyhead, disdaining such chicken-hearted work, pulled his hairy-heeled steed across, and shoved him at the bank.
Perhaps there is not a more promising way of getting a
fall than pulling a horse up short, and shoving him away from his companions. Independently of this, Jelly’s horse didn’t look like a flyer. We don’t want to buy him, therefore we have no interest in disparaging him; but we shall convey an idea of the style of the animal when we say that he was a sort of horse that a dealer would declare “looked solitary without the gig at his tail” — a good machiner; thirty pounds’ worth, perhaps.
One sometimes sees an affinity between rider and horse; indeed we have seen them alike in the face, and between Jellyhead and his there was a decided similarity of cut. They were both stout, square, clumsy-made looking creatures, and the broad cut of Jellyhead’s laps corresponded with the square dock of the horse’s tail. This resemblance was painfully apparent when, having mounted the fence, the laps flew up in response to the tail, the master “spread-eagling” as the horse went down on his head on the far side — a melancholy example of disappointed “show off.” Fortunately the ground was soft, or there is no saying but such a head as “Jelly’s” even might have suffered.
“When the rest of the sportsmen got into the field by the gate, they found him busy pulling his head out of his hat, with the unconcerned air men assume when the crown lies at their feet. The insensate author of the misfortune was grazing quietly at the hedge-row, just as if nothing had happened. This, too, in spite of the hounds pouring up the side of the field, pointing straight into the vale in defiance of all conjectures that the fox was back to the “Chase.” —
Leaving the open for the vale is like leaving the camp for the thick of the fight; but no one seemed at all concerned at the change. Even Mr. Trumper, who declines leaping altogether, pounded along on Golumpus, as though he had perfect confidence in getting through. Indeed the field soon resolved themselves into a sort of mutual assistance society, and keeping with the hounds was all they looked to. The rest of the apricot coats took warning by their fellow, and discontinued the pioneering trade.
Good farming is certainly a great promoter of hunting. Instead of high, rough, ragged, briar-choked, water-soughed fences, through which a horse can scarcely bore, and which occupy no end of ground, our friends now got among nice, level, well-laid, well-pleached fences, that a horse could both see his way “on and off.” The total absence of hedge-row timber, too, aided the sight, which would otherwise have been rather impeded by the extreme flatness of the land. What a change of opinion we have seen in the matter of hedge-row timber! We remember when the wise ones used to counsel a man to stick trees in his fences at every yard, and used to calculate to a fraction what they would be worth at the end of the world; whereas now “Mechi and Co.” teach us to shave our fences as close as our faces. All fox hunters are Mechiites in that matter.
The burst of the early part of the chase had now settled down into a good hunting run — not a scent-diminishing run, but a good holding steady pace, that looked like mischief. Every hound threw his tongue, and first one and then another took the lead — a most sporting, mud-stained, varmint-looking, working-like pack they were, as they bustled and carried the scent amongst them — not one would go a yard without it.
When they got upon grass, they ran hard; but master Reynard seemed to have preferred the light land of the fallows, indeed rather to have gone out of his way for them.
This caused a division of opinion as to his point, Mr, Neville fixing Linton Woods, while Ben and Mr. Trumper stood up for the main earths at Castlebar.
These main earths are a drawback upon running a fox into a neighbouring country; for if he reaches them, there’s an end of the matter so far as his brush is concerned; and a fellow sitting, straddling, and “whohooping,” cap in hand, as though he were full of delight, over a main earth, is a poor substitute for the joyous, upstanding, baying of the “fox in hand” of a kill.
Mr. Neville was right, and Trumper gladly acknowledged the superiority of his judgment. If the fox had had any doubt on the point himself, it would appear to have been settled in his mind in the course of his progress up a long slip of rubbishing wood, between a turnip-field and a fallow; for on getting to the end of it, he put his head straight for the woods, despite the rising ground over which he had to travel.
“Yonder he goes!” exclaimed Mr. Neville, viewing him somewhere, though “where,” nobody could tell but himself.
Some people have a wonderful knack at viewing foxes, and think those desperately “dunch” who don’t see them.
“Where?” exclaims one.
“Why there — there to be sure!” replies the viewer, as if the fox’s line was set out like a railway.
Our friend hadn’t much “where”-ing to-day, everybody being satisfied that Mr. Neville knew a fox from a cur, and the hunting of the hounds held out every expectation that they would shortly have a closer inspection of the one they were after. Moreover, a few of the nags had begun to sob, and Mr. Trumper thought it well to take the castle off the elephant, and lead up the hill.
On reaching the rising ground, after easing their horses, grinning and holding on by the manes up the hill, they all saw the fox sailing away down the other side towards the river. Nor did his pace and action give much prospect of speedy relief to the now panting and perspiring steeds. On the contrary, he went high, and though he had lowered his standard, he kept on at an even pace that looked very like lasting.
The hounds hunted him as true as beagles over the wretched starvation land that he had now chosen for his course, stuff that one would be sorry to take at two-and-sixpence an acre. Little advantage was perceptible on either side, so long as they kept on the high land, but when the fox descended, and ran the river margin, the hounds evidently gained upon him, until Dangerous and Hannibal caught view, when, as if by magic, the whole pack flew from their noses to the worry, and rolled one over another with their victim into the river.
“God bless us, what a f-o-i-n-e run!” exclaimed Mr. Trumper, pulling up, his horse and himself all running down with sweat. The lathered Golumpus gave himself a hearty shake, as much as to say to his master, “Why don’t you get off, you great slush-bucket?”
Mr. Trumper then plumped down, and the scraping of his whip-stick under the horse’s belly was followed by a regular flow of water.
How different the poor dripping rat-like fox looked as he was brought out of the river to the dashing, staring, brush-whisking, high-going flyer they had started with an hour or so before — an hour, a glorious hour! What a deal had been compressed into that time! The field had done a week’s work in it.
How variously we estimate time! We knew a man who went to a dentist’s to get his dinner set overhauled, and after haying been some twenty minutes in the chair he went away declaring he had been three hours. And he was a man of veracity too, but doubtless calculated the time by the pain. So with a run. The ground we go over, the incidents of each moment, the change of scene, the varieties of pace, all tend to magnify the time — especially if there happen to be two or three checks, when every minute is like a half hour, except when one’s nag is rather blown, or there is a big leap that we don’t yet see how to avoid.
“One hour and ten minutes, exactly,” observed Mr. Neville, shutting his gold hunter against his cheek. —
“So,” replied Mr. Trumper, “I thought it had been more.”
“Well hunted he was,” said Mr. Neville, alighting from his horse.
“Oh well!” rejoined Trumper in ecstasies.
“What an old villain he is!” exclaimed Ben, opening the fox’s mouth as he lay distended on the ground. “He’s hardly a tooth in his head. He’s had many a turkey poult, I’ll be bound.”
Ben then proceeded to the usual ceremony of decapitation, de-paditation, and brush-i-tation.
“Give me that l” said Mr. Neville, as Ben was proceeding to pocket the yet dripping brush.
“Now, Mr. Trumper,” said he, wringing it out, “you often send me a very fine hunted hare — let me present you with the brush of the animal I hunt.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Tru
mper, receiving it with a low bow. “I’ll put this in a glass case, and write the particklars below it.”
“Ay, you may say it was a ‘tickler,’” observed Mr. Neville.
“So it was!” replied Trumper, “a reglar one.”
The pads were then distributed to Jellyhead and the Dazzlegoose gentlemen, who in the harmony of the kill buried the jealousies of country.
It was carried unanimously that he was a good fox, had shown them a good run, over a good country, and Ben very truly observed, that he was just as likely to be one of Mr. Neville’s foxes as one belonging to the Dazzlegoose country.
So the mixed field parted in the greatest harmony.
Let us now take a glance at the absentees.
“Aw — yaw — aw — they say Neville’s had a run,” said Captain Rasher, throwing his cap into the corner, as he rolled into the mess-room in the tight-laced ease of a full-figged heavy.
“I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Lieutenant Scrimagour.
“Aw — yaw — aw — why I don’t much,” said Rasher, twirling his resolute mustachios, a process that he generally has recourse to when short of ideas.
“People tell such lies about hunting,” observed Major Tinhead, who had done somebody out of a dinner, it being band day.
“They do,” exclaimed little Comet Mutton-jaw.
“There isn’t one man in fifty knows what a run ought to be,” said Tinhead.
“Aw — yaw — aw — I defy them to have a run from such a place as that Chase,” observed Rasher; adding, “It suits old Neville and old Ben, and a few old potterers of that sort; but who the deuce could take any pleasure in such riding?”
Captain Rasher then resolved the mess table into a model of the country, making the plateau-stand in the centre do duty for the Chase, and the lamps and wine-coolers to represent the Linton Woods, Castlebar earths, and covers generally, from which premises he made the most satisfactory deduction that it was utterly impossible for hounds to have a run — a position that he established to the satisfaction of all, just as the tawdry mess-waiter came in with the soup. —
