by R S Surtees
“Oh, splendid place!” rejoined Tugtail encouragingly; “splendid place, indeed!”
“You’ve been there, have you?” asked Tom.
“Oh yes,” replied Tugtail; “as a sight-seer I mean — merely to see the place, you know, your grace.”
“I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you there as a guest next time,” observed Tom, with true ducal condescension.
The “cretur” nearly kissed his ugly horse’s ears.
Having “done the polite,” Tom made him a sort of half bow, as if going to talk to some one else, and got his mare jogged into a trot, which, by dint of spurring, he worked far into the yet remaining crowd, ere he again ventured to look over his shoulder.
“By gar, there was Monsieur Tonson again!” Tonson, followed by a longer tail than before, all ‘laughing, — he-he-he-ing, haw-haw-haw-ing, “you don’t say so”-ing, as if they would split their sides.
“Your grace was building your pointer kennels the last time I was at Chatsworth,” said the “cretur,” bringing his horse alongside again to the displacement of. Gurney Sadlad, Foxey Wollop, and some other wicked wags who had crowded round Tom Scott to prompt him. “Let me see, when would it be! I was staying at Matlock. Ah, well, it’s immaterial; but I ventured to suggest that the floors should be made of asphalte, which was then just coming into vogue.”
“And they are made of asphalte,” replied Tom, “and very much obliged I was to the gentleman who made the suggestion, and most happy I am to have an opportunity of thanking him personally,” continued Tom, tendering him his hand, to try if he couldn’t shake him off that way.
No go; the “cretur” stuck to him like a leech and shoved poor Sir George Stiffenecke aside, as if he were the veriest plebeian under the sun. Ungrateful man! There are times when even the knight is ardently worshipped.
“Your grace has splendid shooting at Chatsworth,” observed the “cretur.”
“Pretty well,” replied our newly-jumped up duke; “pretty well; nothing compared to what I shall have adding confidentially, “I have an idea in my head that, if carried out, will make the sporting at Chatsworth one of the finest things under the sun.”
“Indeed, your grace,” observed Tugtail with well assumed interest.
“I’m going to substitute peacocks, ostriches, cassiowaries, and other eastern birds, for our common-place pheasants and partridges. What think you of a peacock battue or an ostrich hunt?” asked Tom.
“Splendid! magnificent!” exclaimed Toe, as though he could hardly contain himself.
“I will tell you what my idea is,” continued Tom, lowering his voice, “but this, of course, is between ourselves, and in strict confidence; but my idea with regard to Chatsworth is this — it’s a fine place, no doubt, and the present mansion has its advantages, but I think I could orientalise the whole thing, and combine every English comfort with eastern magnificence.”
“Indeed, your grace,” said Tugtail, all attention.
“My idea is this — but of course it goes no further — to buy the Pavilion at Brighton, and place it on the site of the present house, or to take the Pavilion for a model, and try to improve upon it.”
“It would have, a very fine effect, indeed, your grace,” interrupted the “cretur.”
“You know the Pavilion, then?” asked Tom.
“Oh yes, your grace,” replied he; “I frequently go to Brighton; was there last summer — stay at the York, on the Esplanade, close by the Pavilion, you know.”
The “cretur” had the advantage of poor Tom again, for he has never been there, and his only acquaintance with the Pavilion is through a picture on his old housekeeper’s workbox, where it certainly looks like a most gingerbread affair.
“Well,” said Tom, determined to brazen it out, “I’m in treaty for the thing, and I think I shall get it too. The Queen evidently doesn’t like it; but it doesn’t do for a purchaser to appear too keen. We all like good bargains, and royalty is not exempt from the feeling.”
“I should think her Majesty would be too happy to give it to your grace,” observed the “cretur,”
“especially to ornament so fine a site as Chatsworth.”
“I don’t know that,” replied Tom. “You see if she was to give me the Pavilion some one else might take a fancy to Buckingham Palace, or St. James’s; not that I think any one is likely to trouble either of those; but still the principle is the same, and she might be left houseless, which would be unbecoming the Queen of a great nation of foxhunters like this.”
“It would so,” assented the “cretur.”
“However,” said Tom, “if the worst comes to the worst, and she tries to ‘Jew me,’ I can always build a similar thing, and perhaps improve upon it too.” The hounds had now got to Cressingham Copse. It is an oval dean, with a strongish stream, fringed with sedgy banks, the water running into the large reservoir of the Dusty Binn Mills, a little below. After the usual “make believe” drawing, Lord Harry crossed the mill race at the sluice, and scrambling up a rough brush-woody bank, horn in hand, surveyed the scene below.
It requires a steady horse to insure your safe transit over a mill dam, and some of the field did not seem to fancy giving theirs a chance of tumbling them in; among the number the “cretur,” who, sliding down the bank below the dam, began exploring a south-east passage.
“DUKE!” exclaimed he at the top of his voice, as he saw a footpath winding up the bank from the road he was now taking, “DUKE!” repeated he, though Tom answered at the first shot, “Here’s a better way! here’s a better way!”
“Oh, your grace, I’m not going to draw any more!” halloaed Lord Harry Harkaway, fit to drop out of his saddle with laughing. So saying he took off his hat with great deference, and having acknowledged his courtesy, Tom cut away as hard as ever he could lay legs to the ground.
Well it’s four years ago, as we said before, and Tom had forgotten all about the “cretur,” and the “duke,” and the “Pavilion,” and all the nonsense he had talked, until they were most unpleasantly forced on his recollection last season.
Mr. Neville’s hounds met at Scruffington Clump, one of the wildest and most out-of-the-way places they have; but proscribed meets being rather in vogue since the “Chase” day, there was a fairish sprinkling of sportsmen, including our unfortunate friend, the “duke for a day.” Why he went we don’t know, save that oats were very dear, and he had had very little hunting for his money; for Scruffington Clump, independently of being a most uninviting place, is only an uncertain draw, especially in the spring. It lies handier for the Dazzle-goose hounds; but Mr. Neville, who is one of the old, hard-bitten, uncompromising order of masters, and would as soon part with an inch off his nose as an acre off his country, keeps it as a sort of Botany Bay to send his hounds to in bad weather, or on days that he doesn’t mean to go out himself. When asked to give it up, “as it is of no use to him,” he always says, “I don’t blow how soon I want it,” and muttering something about railways he closes the discourse. It’s a nasty place — a landmark clump of Scotch firs, that haven’t grown an inch these twenty years, placed on the summit of the swelling Whitcliffe Hills. The land around is of the poorest, most impoverished order; the wretched water weeds, the yellow moss, the unhealthy rushes, and the scattered broom and brushwood scarcely covering the thin water-gruelly-looking soil. It seems to grow every thing but what it should. Some enterprising individuals enclosed a considerable portion of it some years ago, and the weak hedges are in that delightful state of mossy rottenness as to make gates superfluous articles. The cattle just walk through the hedges where they like. The country indeed is fast returning to its pristine, goose an acre, state. Its fox-hunting feature is not amiss, and if it were a sure find it would not be a bad place; but there is no regular holding cover in the draw, and Mr. Neville’s hounds are generally indebted to the Dazzlegoose people for a run when they get one. Such was the place which our friend Tom Scott cast up at, and not having been there for five years,
he got such a fright, that we don’t think he will venture there again.
Unpromising as the place was, they had a field — Trumper was there, also the Hobbletrots, and one or two other Goose and Dumpling men.
Of red coats they had Muffinmouth, Colonel Buckskin, Mr. Palmer of Walford, Mr. Moulden of Bradfield, Mr. Harford and his son, Mr. Murray of Hadham, a few Dazzlegoose men in apricot colour, and some of the great unshaved from the barracks.
Judge of our poor friend’s horror on leaving the clump to draw some loose-bottomed belts of plantations below, at seeing Tarquinius Muff’s great white stomach coming along with a diminutive-looking companion, who, at a glance, Scott saw was the “cretur.”
He had hardly time to shove his great Graham-like gills into his cravat, push his coat collar up, ‘Sir James Graham is very liberal in the matter of shirt collars, as used to be ably depicted by Punch during the virtuous administration that did so much for the farmers. — and stick his hat on sideways, (à la Jerry, the race-list seller,) make himself as unlike himself as possible, ere they were within descrying distance of each other.’
Scott pretended not to see Tugtail, but with a sidelong sort of glance watched the first view strike his frame, and saw that if revolving years had deepened the wrinkles in his old cheeks, the day had not yet taken the lustre out of the hair dye, his precise locks being as black and as trim as a raven’s wing.
Moreover, Scott saw Tugtail point him out to Muff, and could almost tell by their manner what each said.
“There’s the Duke of Devonshire!” exclaimed Tugtail.
“Not a bit of it,” replied Muff.
“Who is it, then?” inquired Tugtail.
“Which do you mean?” asked Muff.
“The man on the chestnut.”
“Oh! that’s — haw — Mr. Scott — haw — a sort of a — haw — gentleman — haw — farmer — haw — lives at a place called Haw — Buck Grange — haw.”
Muff was the great man of the day, and the poor “cretur” who doats upon titles,. was absolutely high and dry for want of one. In this sad dilemma he actually sought the acquaintance of our friend Tom at the hands of Tarquinius Muff, all because Tom looked like the Duke of Devonshire, or a man he had been told was the duke, for he is no more like him than we are.
Tom had dodged them for nearly an hour, till they pinned him in the corner of a field from whence there was no escape but over a high stone wall.
“Scott, let me introduce my friend Mr. Tugtail,” said Muff, bringing Tuggey up.
“Happy to make the acquaintance of Mr. Scott,” said the “cretur” with a most patronising bow, just such a bow as Tom made to him on the former occasion.
Tom sky-scraped in return.
After a common-place or two, the “cretur” thus began: —
“Do you know, Mr. Scott, I was very nearly making a most ridiculous mistake just now?” observed he.
“What was that, Sir?” asked Tom, with a pretty good idea of what was coming.
“Why, do you know when I first saw you, I absolutely took you for my friend the Duke of Devonshire.”
“That would have been a mistake, indeed,” observed Tom.
“Well, I assure you it was so,” replied he. “Our friend Muff will tell you the same. ‘That’s the Duke of Devonshire!’ said I, as you rode up. ‘Nonsense!’ said Muff; ‘it’s Mr. Scott.’ By the way, may I ask if you are any way related to the great Sir Walter?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Tom.
“Most likely, I should think,” observed the “cretur,” anxious to make the best of our friend. “Most likely, I should think,” repeated he. “Pray do you spell your name with two t’s?”
“Yes,” replied Scott.
“You don’t know my friend the Duke of Devonshire, then,” observed Tugtail, after a minute scrutiny of Tom’s features.
“No,” replied Tom; “I never saw him.”
“Ah! well, you’d know him if you were to see him, for there’s certainly a resemblance between you,” observed he; “and your voice is something similar. It must be so, indeed, or I couldn’t have mistaken you for a man I know so well.”
“Does his grace hunt?” asked Tom, thinking to “trot Tuggey out” a little. —
“Oh, yes,” replied he; “rides well, too; I should say, but his mind inclines more to shooting.”
“He’ll have good shooting, I suppose,” observed Scott.
“Capital,” replied his — not friend, but persecutor.
“He’s great with his gun,” added he. “Indeed it is in the shooting way that I see most of him. I’ve a room at Chatsworth whenever I like to go,” added Tugtail.
“Which you will occupy pretty often, I imagine,” observed Tom; adding, “at least I would, I know.”
“I’ve many other friends,” replied Tugtail, “desirous of my company.”
“Ay, but I’d always go to the biggest,” observed Tom.
“Well, there’s something in that,” replied Tug-tail, with a sagacious nod of his now puice-coloured head.
Here Tom managed to shove in between old Trumper and Tom Hobbletrot, and escaped the “cretur” for half an hour or so.
After the usual promiscuous rambling about of a “wild draw,” going first to one nameless place and then to another, just as they turned up, and seemed likely for a fox, the field arrived at Willowby Brake, the first really plausible-looking place they had been at.
Here the “cretur” pinned poor Tom again.
“You don’t know Chatsworth, I think you say, Mr. Scott?” observed Tugtail.
“No I don’t,” grunted Tom.
“Beautiful place,” observed Tugtail; “at least will be, when the duke makes his grand alterations.”
Tugtail then entered into a long and confidential communication with Tom respecting the Pavilion, which, singular enough, was then lately stated in the papers to have been sold, or for sale, detailing how, “by his advice,” the duke, having held off for some years, had now got it at his own price, and how his grace was going to establish an ostrich hunt, and have battues of peacocks; a “rechauffé,” in short, of the information Tom had given him four years ago, with a few variations tending to Tuggey’s own glorification and exemplification of his intimacy with the Duke.
So the “cretur” persecuted poor Tom from cover to cover, throughout a long blank day, who declares that if everybody suffers as much for telling a lie as he did, he’s sure they won’t tell any more.
Now, if that isn’t a blank day, we don’t know what a blank day is.
CHAP. XV.
THE SEASON 1846-7.
“WHAT QUEER BOOKS you write!” observed our excellent but rather matter-of-fact friend, Sylvanus Bluff, the other day, who seeing us doubling up a sheet of paper in a rather unceremonious way, concluded we were at what he calls our “old tricks.”
“I buy all your books,” added he with a solemn shake of the head, as though we were beggaring him— “I bought your ‘Jorrocks, Jaunts, and Jollities,’ I bought ‘Handley Cross, or the Spa Hunt,’ I bought ‘Hillingdon Hall, or the Cockney Squire;’ but I don’t understand them. I don’t see the wit of them. I don’t see the me of them. I wonder you don’t write something useful. I should think now,” added he seriously, “you could do something better. I should say now you would be quite equal to writing a dictionary, or a book upon draining, and those would be really useful works, and your friends would get something for their money.”
Gentle reader! we plead guilty to the charge of writing most egregious nonsense. Nay, we are sometimes surprised how such stuff can ever enter our head, astonished that we should be weak enough to commit it to paper, amazed that there should be publishers rash enough to print it, and lost in utter bewilderment that there should be good, honest, sane, nay sensible folks, not only idle enough to read it, but, oh wonder! of all wonders! extravagant enough to part with their good current coin to buy it!
And talking of friends buying our books out of politeness, w
e may here avail ourself of the opportunity to say that there is nothing we dislike more; nay, so great is our objection, that if we knew any honest, mistaken man about to commit such an absurdity, we would absolutely forestall our own market by offering him a copy. At least we think we would.
We don’t know why any one should do so, we are sure, for neither by name, dedication, or date, do we ever provoke so suicidal an act. We may say, with our excellent friend Peter Morris, that “if putting our Christian name and surname at the beginning of a book were necessary conditions to the dignity of authorship, we should never be one while we live.” Like Peter, “we want nerves for this.” We rejoice in the privilege of writing and printing incognito, and think with him that it is the “finest discovery” that ever was made. Peter, to be sure, got bolder with age, but then he felt that he was “somebody.”
Writing, we imagine, is something like snuffing or smoking — men get into the way of it, and can’t well leave it off. Like smoking, it serves to beguile an idle hour. Individually speaking, writing makes us tolerably independent, both of the world and the weather. We are never regularly high and dry for want of a companion so long as we can get pen, ink, and paper; and though we should not like to back ourself against such a winter as the last (1846-7), yet writing enables us to contend with a tolerable amount of bad weather. An author has pretty much the same pleasure in seeing his ugly cramped hand turned into neat print that a traveller has in receiving five and twenty francs for a sovereign on landing in France. Revising is something like returning to the realities of English money again. But we are getting into the mysteries of authorship.
Next to buying our books out of politeness, our greatest objection is to having them exposed to view. If the great Lord Mayor was to “look us up,” and invite us to one of those gorgeous feasts that annihilate so many turtles, and if on the table in his reception room we were to see one of our books — Hawbuck Grange, for instance — (and what author does not recognise his own works at a glance!) our appetite would immediately fail us, and his lordship would save both “his meat and his mense,” as they say in the country.
