The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston 1 - Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man

by Siegfried Sassoon

  Soon we turned in at some lodge gates, crossed the corner of an undulating park, and then everyone pulled up outside a belt of brown woodland. The hounds had disappeared, but I could hear the huntsman’s voice a little way off. He was making noises which I identified as not altogether unlike those I had read about in Surtees. After a time the chattering crowd of riders moved slowly into the wood which appeared to be a large one.

  My first reaction to the ‘field’ was one of mute astonishment. I had taken it for granted that there would be people ‘in pink’, but these enormous confident strangers overwhelmed my mind with the visible authenticity of their brick-red coats. It all felt quite different to reading Surtees by the schoolroom fire.

  But I was too shy to stare about me, and every moment I was expecting an outburst of mad excitement in which I should find myself galloping wildly out of the wood. When the outbreak of activity came I had no time to think about it. For no apparent reason the people around me (we were moving slowly along a narrow path in the wood) suddenly set off at a gallop and for several minutes I was aware of nothing but the breathless flurry of being carried along, plentifully spattered with mud by the sportsman in front of me. Suddenly, without any warning, he pulled up. Sheila automatically followed suit, shooting me well up her neck. The next moment everyone turned round and we all went tearing back by the way we had come. I found Dixon in front of me now, and he turned his head with a grin of encouragement.

  Soon afterwards the hunt came to a standstill in an open space in the middle of the wood: the excitement seemed to be abating, and I felt that fox-hunting wasn’t so difficult as I’d expected it to be. A little way below I could hear a confused baying of the hounds among the trees. Then, quite close to where I had halted, a tall man in a blue velvet cap and vermilion coat came riding out from among the undergrowth with one arm up to shield his face from the branches. His face was very red and he seemed upset about something. Turning in my direction he bawled out in an angry voice, ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re here for?’

  For a moment I sat petrified with terror and amazement. He was riding straight at me, and I had no time to wonder what I had done to incur his displeasure. So I stared helplessly until I was aware that he had passed me and was addressing someone immediately behind my horse’s heels…. Looking round I saw a surly-featured elderly man with side-whiskers: he was on foot and wore the weathered garments of a gamekeeper.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by leaving the main-earth unstopped?’ the infuriated voice continued.

  ‘Very sorry, m’lord,’ the man mumbled, ‘but I never heard you was coming till this morning, and –’

  ‘Don’t answer me back. I’ll get you sacked for this when Major Gamble comes down from Scotland. I tell you I’m sick of you and your god-damned pheasants,’ and before the man could say any more the outraged nobleman was pushing his way into the undergrowth again and was bawling ‘Go on to Hoath Wood, Jack,’ to the invisible huntsman.

  I looked at Dixon, whose horse was nibbling Sheila’s neck. ‘That’s the Master,’ he said in a low voice, adding, ‘his lordship’s a rough one with his tongue when anyone gets the wrong side of him.’ Silently I decided that Lord Dumborough was the most terrifying man I had ever encountered….

  Dixon was explaining that our fox had gone to ground and I heard another man near me saying: ‘That blighter Gamble thinks of nothing but shooting. The place is crawling with birds, and the wonder is that we ever found a fox. Last time we were here we drew the whole place blank, and old D. cursed the keeper’s head off and accused him of poisoning the foxes, so I suppose he did it to get a bit of his own back!’ Such was my introduction to the mysteries of ‘earth-stopping’….

  The comparatively mild activities of the morning had occupied a couple of hours. We now trotted away from Major Gamble’s preserves. It was about three miles to Hoath Wood; on the way several small spinneys were drawn blank, but Hoath Wood was a sure find, so Dixon said, and a rare place to get a gallop from. This caused a perceptible evaporation of the courage which I had been accumulating, and when there was a halt for the hunt-servants to change on to their second horses I made an attempt to dispel my qualms by pulling out my packet of sandwiches.

  While I was munching away at these I noticed for the first time another boy of about my own age. Dixon was watching him approvingly. Evidently this was a boy to be imitated, and my own unsophisticated eyes already told me that. He was near enough to us for me to be able to observe him minutely. A little aloof from the large riders round him, he sat easily, but very upright, on a corky chestnut pony with a trimmed stump of a tail and a neatly ‘hogged’ neck.

  Reconstructing that far-off moment, my memory fixes him in a characteristic attitude. Leaning slightly forward from the waist, he straightens his left leg and scrutinizes it with an air of critical abstraction. He seems to be satisfied with his smart buff breeches and natty brown gaiters. Everything he has on is neat and compact. He carries a small crop with a dark leather thong, which he flicks at a tuft of dead grass in a masterly manner. An air of self-possessed efficiency begins with his black bowler hat, continues in his neatly-tied white stock, and gets its finishing touch in the short, blunt, shining spurs on his black walking boots. (I was greatly impressed by the fact that he wore spurs.) All his movements were controlled and modest, but there was a suggestion of arrogance in the steady, unrecognizing stare which he gave me when he became conscious that I was looking at him so intently. Our eyes met, and his calm scrutiny reminded me of my own deficiencies in dress. I shifted uneasily in my saddle, and the clumsy unpresentable old hunting-crop fell out of my hand. Dismounting awkwardly to pick it up, I wished that it, also, had a thong (though this would make the double reins more difficult to manage) and I hated my silly jockey-cap and the badly-fitting gaiters which pinched my legs and always refused to remain in the correct position (indicated by Dixon). When I had scrambled up on to Sheila again – a feat which I could only just accomplish without assistance – I felt what a poor figure I must be cutting in Dixon’s eyes while he compared me with that other boy, who had himself turned away with a slight smile and was now soberly following the dappled clustering pack and its attendant red-coats as they disappeared over the green, rising ground on their way to Hoath Wood.

  By all the laws of aunthood we should by now have been well on our way home. But Dixon was making a real day of it. The afternoon hunt was going to be a serious affair. There never appeared to be any doubt about that. The field was reduced to about forty riders, and the chattersome contingent seemed to have gone home. We all went into the covert and remained close together at one end. Dixon got off and tightened my girths, which had got very loose (as I ought to have noticed). A resolute-looking lady in a tall hat drew her veil down after taking a good pull at the flask which she handed back to her groom. Hard-faced men rammed their hats on to their heads and sat silently in the saddle as though, for the first time in the day, they really meant business. My heart was in my mouth and it had good reason to be there. Lord Dumborough was keeping an intent eye on the ride which ran through the middle of the covert.

  ‘Cut along up to the top end, Charlie,’ he remarked without turning his head; and a gaunt, ginger-haired man in a weather-stained scarlet coat went off up the covert in a squelchy canter.

  ‘That’s Mr Macdoggart,’ said Dixon in a low voice, and my solemnity increased as the legendary figure vanished on its mysterious errand.

  Meanwhile the huntsman was continuing his intermittent yaups as he moved along the other side of the wood. Suddenly his cheers of encouragement changed to a series of excited shoutings. ‘Hoick-holler, hoick-holler, hoick-holler!’ he yelled, and then blew his horn loudly; this was followed by an outbreak of vociferation from the hounds, and soon they were in full cry across the covert. I sat there petrified by my private feelings; Sheila showed no symptoms of agitation; she merely cocked her ears well forward and listened.

  And then, for the first time, I h
eard a sound which has thrilled generations of fox-hunters to their marrow. From the far side of the wood came the long shrill screech (for which it is impossible to find an adequate word) which signifies that one of the whips has viewed the fox quitting the covert. ‘Gone Away’ it meant. But before I had formulated the haziest notion about it Lord Dumborough was galloping up the ride and the rest of them were pelting after him as though nothing could stop them. As I happened to be standing well inside the wood and Sheila took the affair into her own control, I was swept along with them and we emerged on the other side among the leaders.

  I cannot claim that I felt either excitement or resolution as we bundled down a long slope of meadowland and dashed helter-skelter through an open gate at the bottom. I knew nothing at all except that I was out of breath and that the air was rushing to meet me, but as I hung on to the reins I was aware that Mr Macdoggart was immediately in front of me. My attitude was an acquiescent one. I have always been inclined to accept life in the form in which it has imposed itself upon me, and on that particular occasion, no doubt, I just felt that I was ‘in for it’. It did not so much as occur to me that in following Mr Macdoggart I was setting myself rather a high standard, and when he disappeared over a hedge I took it for granted that I must do the same. For a moment Sheila hesitated in her stride. (Dixon told me afterwards that I actually hit her as we approached the fence, but I couldn’t remember having done so.) Then she collected herself and jumped the fence with a peculiar arching of her back. There was a considerable drop on the other side. Sheila had made no mistake, but as she landed I left the saddle and flew over her head. I had let go of the reins, but she stood stock-still while I sat on the wet ground. A few moments later Dixon popped over a gap lower down the fence and came to my assistance, and I saw the boy on the chestnut pony come after him and gallop on in a resolute but unhurrying way. I scrambled to my feet, feeling utterly ashamed.

  ‘Whatever made you go for it like that?’ asked Dixon, who was quite disconcerted.

  ‘I saw Mr Macdoggart going over it, and I didn’t like to stop,’ I stammered. By now the whole hunt had disappeared and there wasn’t a sound to be heard.

  ‘Well, I suppose we may as well go on.’ He laughed as he gave me a leg up. ‘Fancy you following Mr Macdoggart over the biggest place in the fence. Good thing Miss Sherston couldn’t see you.’

  The idea of my aunt seemed to amuse him, and he slapped his knee and chuckled as he led me onward at a deliberate pace. Secretly mortified by my failure I did my best to simulate cheerfulness. But I couldn’t forget the other boy and how ridiculous he must have thought me when he saw me rolling about on the ground. I felt as if I must be covered with mud. About half an hour later we found the hunt again, but I can remember nothing more except that it was beginning to get dark and the huntsman, a middle-aged, mulberry-faced man named Jack Pitt, was blowing his horn as he sat in the middle of his hounds. The other boy was actually talking to him – a privilege I couldn’t imagine myself promoted to. At that moment I almost hated him for his cocksuredness.

  Then, to my surprise, the Master himself actually came up and asked me how far I was from home. In my embarrassment I could only mutter that I didn’t know, and Dixon interposed with ‘About twelve miles, m’lord,’ in his best manner.

  ‘I hear he’s quite a young thruster.’… The great man glanced at me for a moment with curiosity before he turned away. Not knowing what he meant I went red in the face and thought he was making fun of me.

  Now that I have come to the end of my first day’s hunting I am tempted to moralize about it. But I have already described it at greater length than I had intended, so I will only remind myself of the tea I had at an inn on the way home. The inn was kept by a friend of Dixon’s – an ex-butler who ‘had been with Lord Dumborough for years’. I well remember the snug fire-lit parlour where I ate my two boiled eggs, and how the innkeeper and his wife made a fuss over me. Dixon, of course, transferred me to them in my full status of ‘one of the quality’, and then disappeared to give the horses their gruel and get his own tea in the kitchen. I set off on the ten dark miles home in a glow of satisfied achievement, and we discussed every detail of the day except my disaster. Dixon had made enquiries about ‘the other young gentleman’, and had learnt that his name was Milden and that he was staying at Dumborough Park for Christmas. He described him as a proper little sportsman; but I was reticent on the subject. Nor did I refer to the question of our going out with the hounds again. By the time we were home I was too tired to care what anybody in the world thought about me.

  6

  It was nearly seven o’clock when we got home; as Aunt Evelyn had begun to expect me quite early in the afternoon, she was so intensely relieved to see me safe and sound that she almost forgot to make a fuss about my prolonged absence. Dixon, with his persuasive manner next morning, soon hoodwinked her into taking it all as a matter of course. He made our day sound so safe and confidential. Not a word was said about my having tumbled off (and he had carefully brushed every speck of mud off my back when we stopped at the inn for tea).

  As for myself, I began to believe that I hadn’t done so badly after all. I talked quite big about it when I was alone with my aunt at lunch on Sunday, and she was delighted to listen to everything I could tell her about my exploits. Probably it was the first time in my life that I was conscious of having got the upper hand of my grownup relative. When she asked whether there were ‘any other little boys out on their ponies’ I was nonplussed for a moment; I couldn’t connect young Milden with such a disrespectful way of speaking. Little boys out on their ponies indeed! I had more than half a mind to tell her how I’d followed the great Mr Macdoggart over that fence, but I managed to remind myself that the less said about that incident the better for my future as a fox-hunter.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘there was a very nice boy on a splendid little chestnut. He’s staying at Dumborough Park.’ When I told her his name she remembered having met some of his people years ago when she was staying in Northamptonshire. They had a big place near Daventry, she said, and were a well-known sporting family. I packed these details away in my mind with avidity. Already I was weaving Master Milden into my day dreams, and soon he had become my inseparable companion in all my imagined adventures, although I was hampered by the fact that I only knew him by his surname. It was the first time that I experienced a feeling of wistfulness for someone I wanted to be with.

  As a rule I was inclined to be stand-offish about children’s parties, though there weren’t many in our part of the world. There was to be a dance at Mrs Shotney’s the next Friday, and I wasn’t looking forward to it much until my aunt told me that she had heard from Mrs Cofferdam that Lady Dumborough was going to be there with a large party of jolly young people. ‘So perhaps you’ll see your little hunting friend again,’ she added.

  ‘He’s not little; he looks about two years older than me,’ I retorted huffily, and at once regretted my stupidity. ‘My hunting friend!’ I had been allowing her to assume that we had ‘made friends’ out hunting. And when we were at the party she would be sure to find out that he didn’t know me. But perhaps he wouldn’t be there after all. Whereupon I realized that I should be bitterly disappointed if he wasn’t.

  At seven o’clock on Friday we set off in the village fly. While we jolted along in that musty-smelling vehicle with its incessantly rattling windows I was anxious and excited. These feelings were augmented by shyness and gawkiness by the time I had entered the ballroom, which was full of antlers and old armour. Standing by myself in a corner I fidgeted with my gloves. Now and again I glanced nervously round the room. Sleek-haired little boys in Eton jackets were engaging themselves for future dances with pert little girls in short frocks. Shyness was being artificially dispelled by solicitous ladies, one of whom now swooped down on me and led me away to be introduced to equally unenterprising partners. The room was filling up, and I was soon jostling and bumping round with a demure little girl in a pink dr
ess, while the local schoolmaster, a solemn man with a walrus moustache, thrummed out ‘The Blue Danube’ on an elderly upright piano, reinforced by a squeaky violinist who could also play the cornet; he often did it at village concerts, so my partner informed me, biting her lips as someone trod on her foot. Steering my clumsy course round the room, I wondered whether Lady Dumborough had arrived yet.

  There was Aunt Evelyn, talking to Mrs Shotney. She certainly didn’t look half bad when you compared her with other people. And old Squire Maundle, nodding and smiling by the door, as he watched his little granddaughter twirling round and round with a yellow ribbon in her hair. And General FitzAlan with his eyeglass – he looked a jolly decent old chap…. He’d been in the Indian Mutiny…. The music stopped and the dancers disappeared in quest of claret-cup and lemonade. ‘I wonder what sort of ices there are,’ speculated my partner. There was a note of intensity in her voice which was new to me.

  ‘Oh, do come on, Denis, the music’s begun,’ cried a dark attractive girl with a scarlet sash – tugging at the arm of a boy who was occupied with an ice. When he turned to follow her I recognized the rider of the chestnut pony. From time to time as the evening went on I watched him enjoying himself with the conspicuous Dumborough Park contingent, which was dominating the proceedings with a mixture of rowdiness and hauteur. Those outside their circle regarded them with envious and admiring antagonism. By a miracle I found myself sitting opposite Denis Milden at supper, which was at one long table. He looked across at me with a reserved air of recognition.