by R S Surtees
Neither Watchorn nor Viney being sportsmen, they thought they had nothing to do but apply to two friends who were; and after thinking over who hunted in couples, they were unfortunate enough to select our Flat Hat friends, Fyle and Fossick. Fyle was indignant beyond measure at being asked to be steward to a steeple-chase, and thrust the application into the fire; while Fossick just wrote below, ‘I’ll see you hanged first,’ and sent it back without putting even a fresh head on the envelope. Nothing daunted, however, they returned to the charge, and without troubling the reader with unnecessary detail, we think it will be generally admitted that they at length made an excellent selection in Mr. Puffington, Guano, and Tom Washball.
MR. VINEY AND MR. WATCHORN GETTING UP ‘THE GRAND ARISTOCRATIC’
Fortune favoured them also in getting a locality to run in, for Timothy Scourgefield, of Broom Hill, whose farm commanded a good circular three miles of country, with every variety of obstacle, having thrown up his lease for a thirty-per-cent reduction — a giving up that had been most unhandsomely accepted by his landlord — Timothy was most anxious to pay him off by doing every conceivable injury to the farm, than which nothing can be more promising than having a steeple-chase run over it. Scourgefield, therefore, readily agreed to let Viney and Watchorn do whatever they liked, on condition that he received entrance-money at the gate.
The name occupied their attention some time, for it did not begin as the ‘Aristocratic.’ The ‘Great National,’ the ‘Grand Naval and Military,’ the ‘Sports-man,’ the ‘Talli-ho,’ the ‘Out-and-Outer,’ the ‘Swell,’ were all considered and canvassed, and its being called the ‘Aristocratic’ at length turned upon whether they got Lord Scamperdale to subscribe or not. This was accomplished by a deferential call by Mr. Viney upon Mr. Spraggon, with a little bill for three pound odd, which he presented, with the most urgent request that Jack wouldn’t think of it then — any time that was most convenient to Mr. Spraggon — and then the introduction of the neatly-headed sheet-list. It was lucky that Viney was so easily satisfied, for poor Jack had only thirty shillings, of which he owed his washerwoman eight, and he was very glad to stuff Viney’s bill into his stunner jacket-pocket, and apply himself exclusively to the contemplated steeple-chase.
Like most of us, Jack had no objection to make a little money; and as he squinted his frightful eyes inside out at the paper, he thought over what horses they had in the stable that were like the thing; and then he sounded Viney as to whether he would put him one up for nothing, if he could induce his lordship to send. This, of course, Viney readily assented to, and again requesting Jack not to think of his little bill till it was perfectly convenient to him — a favour that Jack was pretty sure to accord him — Mr. Viney took his departure, Jack undertaking to write him the result. The next day’s post brought Viney the document — unpaid, of course — with a great ‘Scamperdale’ scrawled across the top; and forthwith it was decided that the steeple-chase should be called the ‘Grand Aristocratic.’ Other names quickly followed, and it soon assumed an importance. Advertisements appeared in all the sporting and would-be sporting papers, headed with the imposing names of the stewards, secretary, and clerk of the course, Mr. Viney. The ‘Grand Aristocratic Stakes,’ of 20 sovs. each, half-forfeit, and £5 only if declared, &c. The winner to give two dozen of champagne to the ordinary, and the second horse to save his stake. Gentlemen riders (titled ones to be allowed 3 lb.). Over about three miles of fine hunting country, under the usual steeple-chase conditions.
Then the game of the ‘Peeping Toms,’ and ‘Sly Sams,’ and ‘Infallible Joes,’ and ‘Wideawake Jems,’ with their tips and distribution of prints began; Tom counselling his numerous and daily increasing clients to get well on to No. 9, Sardanapalus (the Bart., as Watchorn called him), while ‘Infallible Joe’ recommended his friends and patrons to be sweet on No. 6 (Hercules), and ‘Wide-awake Jem’ was all for something else. A gentleman who took the trouble of getting tips from half a dozen of them, found that no two of them agreed in any particular. What information to make books upon!
‘But what good,’ as our excellent friend Thackeray eloquently asks, ‘ever came out of, or went into, a betting book? If I could be Caliph Omar for a week,’ says he, ‘I would pitch every one of those despicable manuscripts into the flames; from my-lord’s, who is “in” with Jack Snaffle’s stable, and is overreaching worse-informed rogues, and swindling greenhorns, down to Sam’s, the butcher’s boy, who books eighteen-penny odds in the tap-room, and stands to win five-and-twenty bob.’ We say ditto to that, and are not sure that we wouldn’t hang a ‘leg’ or a ‘list’ man or two into the bargain.
Watchorn had a prophet of his own, one Enoch Wriggle, who, having tried his hand unsuccessfully first at tailoring, next as an accountant, then in the watercress, afterwards in the buy ‘‘at-box, bonnet-box,’ and lastly in the stale lobster and periwinkle line, had set up as an oracle on turf matters, forwarding the most accurate and infallible information to flats in exchange for half-crowns, heading his advertisements, ‘If it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive!’ Enoch did a considerable stroke of business, and couched his advice in such dubious terms, as generally to be able to claim a victory whichever way the thing went. So the ‘offending soul’ prospered; and from scarcely having shoes to his feet, he very soon set up a gig.
CHAPTER LXVIII
HOW THE ‘GRAND ARISTOCRATIC’ CAME OFF
STEEPLE-CHASES ARE GENERALLY crude, ill-arranged things. Few sportsmen will act as stewards a second time; while the victim to the popular delusion of patronizing our ‘national sports’ considers — like gentlemen who have served the office of sheriff, or church-warden — that once in a lifetime is enough; hence, there is always the air of amateur actorship about them. There is always something wanting or forgotten. Either they forget the ropes, or they forget the scales, or they forget the weights, or they forget the bell, or — more commonly still — some of the parties forget themselves. Farmers, too, are easily satisfied with the benefits of an irresponsible mob careering over their farms, even though some of them are attired in the miscellaneous garb of hunting and racing costume. Indeed, it is just this mixture of two sports that spoils both; steeple-chasing being neither hunting nor racing. It has not the wild excitement of the one, nor the accurate calculating qualities of the other. The very horses have a peculiar air about them — neither hunters nor hacks, nor yet exactly race-horses. Some of them, doubtless, are fine, good-looking, well-conditioned animals; but the majority are lean, lathy, sunken-eyed, woe-begone, iron-marked, desperately-abused brutes, lacking all the lively energy that characterizes the movements of the up-to-the-mark hunter. In the early days of steeple-chasing a popular fiction existed that the horses were hunters; and grooms and fellows used to come nicking and grinning up to masters of hounds at checks and critical times, requesting them to note that they were out, in order to ask for certificates of the horses having been ‘regularly hunted’ — a species of regularity than which nothing could be more irregular. That nuisance, thank goodness, is abated. A steeple-chaser now generally stands on his own merits; a change for which sportsmen may be thankful.
But to our story.
The whole country was in a commotion about this ‘Aristocratic’. The unsophisticated looked upon it as a grand réunion of the aristocracy; and smart bonnets and cloaks, and jackets and parasols were ordered with the liberality incident to a distant view of Christmas. As Viney sipped his sherry-cobler of an evening, he laughed at the idea of a son-of-a-day-labourer like himself raising such a dust. Letters came pouring in to the clerk of the course from all quarters; some asking about beds; some about breakfasts; some about stakes; some about stables; some about this thing, some about that. Every room in the Old Duke of Cumberland was speedily bespoke. Post-horses rose in price, and Dobbin and Smiler, and Jumper and Cappy, and Jessy and Tumbler were jobbed from the neighbouring farmers, and converted for the occasion into posters. At last came the great and important
day — day big with the fate of thousands of pounds; for the betting-list vermin had been plying their trade briskly throughout the kingdom, and all sorts of rumours had been raised relative to the qualities and conditions of the horses.
Who doesn’t know the chilling feel of an English spring, or rather of a day at the turn of the year before there is any spring? Our gala-day was a perfect specimen of the order — a white frost succeeded by a bright sun, with an east wind, warming one side of the face and starving the other. It was neither a day for fishing, nor hunting, nor coursing, nor anything but farming. The country, save where there were a few lingering patches of turnips, was all one dingy drab, with abundant scalds on the undrained fallows. The grass was more like hemp than anything else. The very rushes were yellow and sickly.
Long before midday the whole country was in commotion. The same sort of people commingled that one would expect to see if there was a balloon to go up, and a man to go down, or be hung at the same place. Fine ladies in all the colours of the rainbow; and swarthy, beady-eyed dames, with their stalwart, big-calved, basket-carrying comrades; gentle young people from behind the counter; Dandy Candy merchants from behind the hedge; rough-coated dandies with their silver-mounted whips; and Shaggyford roughs, in their baggy, poacher-like coats, and formidable clubs; carriages and four, and carriages and pairs; and gigs and dog-carts, and Whitechapels, and Newport Pagnels, and long carts, and short carts, and donkey carts, converged from all quarters upon the point of attraction at Broom Hill.
If Farmer Scourgefield had made a mob, he could not have got one that would be more likely to do damage to his farm than this steeple-chase one. Nor was the assemblage confined to the people of the country, for the Granddiddle Junction, by its connection with the great network of railways, enabled all patrons of this truly national sport to sweep down upon the spot like flocks of wolves; and train after train disgorged a generous mixture of sharps and flats, commingling with coatless, baggy-breeched vagabonds, the emissaries most likely of the Peeping Toms and Infallible Joes, if not the worthies themselves.
‘Dear, but it’s a noble sight!’ exclaimed Viney to Watchorn as they sat on their horses, below a rickety green-baize-covered scaffold, labelled, ‘GRAND STAND; admission, Two-and-sixpence,’ raised against Scourgefield’s stack-yard wall, eyeing the population pouring in from all parts. ‘Dear, but it’s a noble sight!’ said he, shading the sun from his eyes, and endeavouring to identify the different vehicles in the distance. ‘Yonder’s the ‘bus comin’ again,’ said he, looking towards the station, ‘loaded like a market-gardener’s turnip-waggon. That’ll pay,’ added he, with a knowing leer at the landlord of the Hen Angel, Newington Butts. ‘And who have we here, with the four horses and sky-blue flunkeys? Jawleyford, as I live!’ added he, answering himself; adding, ‘The beggar had better pay me what he owes.’
How great Mr. Viney was! Some people, who have never had anything to do with horses, think it incumbent upon them, when they have, to sport top-boots, and accordingly, for the first time in his life, Viney appears in a pair of remarkably hard, tight, country-made boots, above which are a pair of baggy white cords, with the dirty finger-marks of the tailor still upon them. He sports a single-breasted green cutaway coat, with basket-buttons, a black satin roll-collared waistcoat, and a new white silk hat, that shines in the bright sun like a fish-kettle. His blue-striped kerchief is secured by a butterfly brooch. Who ever saw an innkeeper that could resist a brooch?
He is riding a miserable rat of a badly clipped, mouse-coloured pony that looks like a velocipede under him.
His companion, Mr. Watchorn, is very great, and hardly condescends to know the country people who claim his acquaintance as a huntsman. He is a Hotel Keeper — master of the Hen Angel, Newington Butts. Enoch Wriggle stands beside them, dressed in the imposing style of a cockney sportsman. He has been puffing ‘Sir Danapalus (the Bart.)’ in public, and taking all the odds he can get against him in private. Watchorn knows that it is easier to make a horse lose than win. The restless-looking, lynx-eyed caitiff, in the dirty green shawl, with his hands stuffed into the front pockets of the brown tarriar coat, is their jockey, the renowned Captain Hangallows; he answers to the name of Sam Slick in Mr. Spavin the horse-dealer’s yard in Oxford Street, when not in the country on similar excursions to the present. And now in the throng on the principal line are two conspicuous horses — a piebald and a white — carrying Mr. Sponge and Lucy Glitters. Lucy appears as she did on the frosty-day hunt, glowing with health and beauty, and rather straining the seams of Lady Scattercash’s habit with the additional embonpoint she has acquired by early hours in the country. She has made Mr. Sponge a white silk jacket to ride in, which he has on under his grey tarriar coat, and a cap of the same colour is in his hard hat. He has discarded the gosling-green cords for cream-coloured leathers, and, to please Lucy, has actually substituted a pair of rose-tinted tops for the ‘hogany bouts’. Altogether he is a great swell, and very like the bridegroom.
But hark — what a crash! The leaders of Sir Harry Scattercash’s drag start at a blind fiddler’s dog stationed at the gate leading into the fields, a wheel catches the post, and in an instant the sham captains are scattered about the road: Bouncey on his head, Seedeyhuck across the wheelers, Quod on his back, and Sir Harry astride the gate. Meanwhile, the old fiddler, regardless of the shouts of the men and the shrieks of the ladies, scrapes away with the appropriate tune of ‘The Devil among the Tailors!’ A rush to the horses’ heads arrests further mischief, the dislodged captains are at length righted, the nerves of the ladies composed, and Sir Harry once more essays to drive them up the hill to the stand. That feat being accomplished, then came the unloading, and consternation, and huddling of the tight-laced occupants at the idea of these female women coming amongst them, and the usual peeping and spying, and eyeing of the ‘creatures.’ ‘What impudence!’ ‘Well, I think!’ ‘‘Pon my word!’ ‘What next!’ — exclamations that were pretty well lost upon the fair objects of them amid the noise and flutter and confusion of the scene. But hark again! What’s up now?
‘Hooray!’ ‘hooray!’ ‘h-o-o-o-ray!’ ‘Three cheers for the Squire! H-o-o-o-ray!’ Old Puff as we live! The ‘amazin’ instance of a pop’lar man’ greeted by the Swillingford snobs. The old frost-bitten dandy is flattered by the cheers, and bows condescendingly ere he alights from the well-appointed mail phaeton. See how graciously the ladies receive him, as, having ascended the stairs, he appears among them. ‘A man is never too old to marry’ is their maxim.
The cry is still, ‘They come! they come!’ See at a hand-gallop, with his bay pony in a white lather, rides Pacey, grinning from ear to ear, with his red-backed betting-book peeping out of the breast pocket of his brown cutaway. He is staring and gaping to see who is looking at him.
Pacey has made such a book as none but a wooden-headed boy like himself could make. He has been surfeited with tips. Peeping Tom had advised him to back Daddy Longlegs; and, nullus error, Sneaking Joe has counselled him that the ‘Baronet’ will be ‘California without cholera, and gold without danger’; while Jemmy something, the jockey, who advertises that his ‘tongue is not for falsehood framed,’ though we should think it was framed for nothing else, has urged him to back Parvo to half the amount of the national debt.
Altogether, Pacey has made such a mess that he cannot possibly win, and may lose almost any sum from a thousand pounds down to a hundred and eighty. Mr. Sponge has got well on with him, through the medium of Jack Spraggon.
Pacey is now going to what he calls ‘compare’ — see that he has got his bets booked right; and, throwing his right leg over his cob’s neck, he blobs on to the ground; and, leaving the pony to take care of itself, disappears in the crowd.
What a hubbub! what roarings, and shoutings, and recognizings! ‘Bless my heart! who’d have thought of seeing you?’ and, ‘By jingo! what’s sent you here?’
‘My dear Waffles,’ cries Jawleyford, rushing up to our Laverick Wells friend (who is
looking very debauched), ‘I’m overjoyed to see you. Do come upstairs and see Mrs. Jawleyford and the dear girls. It was only last night we were talking about you.’ And so Jawleyford hurries Mr. Waffles off, just as Waffles is in extremis about his horse.
