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

by Siegfried Sassoon

  The lower half of Kipward & Son’s shop window was fitted with a fine wire screening, on which the crows and vultures of several still undethroned European Majesties were painted. In spite of this hauteur the exterior now seemed quite companionable, and I felt less of a nobody as I entered. A person who might well have been Mr Kipward himself advanced to receive me; in his eyes there was the bland half-disdainful interrogation of a ducal butler; for the moment he still seemed uncertain as to my credentials. On the walls were some antlered heads and the whole place seemed to know much more about sport than I did. His suavely enunciated ‘what name?’ made the butler resemblance more apparent, but with his, ‘Ah, yes, Mr Sherston of course; your coat and breeches are quite ready for you to try, sir’, and the way he wafted me up a spacious flight of stairs, he became an old-fashioned innkeeper who had been in first-rate service, and there seemed nothing in the world with which he was not prepared to accommodate me. To have asked the price of so much as a waistcoat would have been an indecency. But I couldn’t help wondering, as I was being ushered into one of the fitting compartments, just how many guineas my black hunting-coat was going to cost.

  A few minutes later I was sitting on a hard, shiny saddle and being ciphered all over with a lump of chalk. The sallow little man who fitted my breeches remarked that the buff Bedford cord which I had selected was ‘a very popular one’. As he put the finishing touch with his chalk he asked me to stand up in the stirrups. Whereupon he gazed upon his handiwork and found it good. ‘Yes, that’s a beautiful seat,’ he remarked serenely. I wondered whether he would say the same if he could see me landing over a post-and-rails on Harkaway. The artist responsible for my coat was a taciturn and deferential Scotchman, stout, bald, and blond. He, too, seemed satisfied that the garment would do him credit. My sole regret was that I hadn’t yet been asked to wear the Hunt button. Downstairs in the dignified and reposeful reception room the presiding presence was warming himself in front of a bright fire. As he conducted me to the door I observed with secret awe some racing colours in a glass case on the wall. In after years I recognized them as being Lord Rosebery’s.

  Craxwell & Co. was a less leisurely interior. As might have been expected, there was an all-pervading odour of leather, and one was made to feel that only by a miracle could they finish up to time the innumerable pairs of top-boots for which they had received orders. The shop bristled and shone with spurs; and whips and crops of all varieties were stacked and slung and suspended about the walls. Pace was indicated everywhere and no one but a hard-bitten thruster could have entered without humility. A prejudiced mind might have imagined that all Craxwell’s customers belonged to some ultra-insolent, socially snobbish, and libertine breed of military Mohocks. But the percentage, I am sure, was quite a small one, and my boots, though awkward to get into at first, were close-fitting and high in the leg and altogether calculated to make me feel that there were very few fences I would not cram my horse at. In outward appearance, at least, I was now a very presentable fox-hunter.

  Stephen Colwood had advised me to patronize those particular places, and it was no fault of his that I was still a comparative greenhorn. Anyhow, young Mr Craxwell (who looked quite as much a gentleman as the self-satisfied sportsmen I saw in his shop) was kind enough to tell me that I had ‘a very good leg for a boot’.

  By the time I had put my bowler hat under my seat in the grand circle at Queen’s Hall I was in a state of unsporting excitement about Kreisler. The name itself was suggestive of eminence, and I was aware that he was a great violinist, though I did not know that he would afterwards become the most famous one in the world. I was also unconscious that I was incapable of discriminating between a good violinist and a second-rate one. My capacity for admiration was automatic and unlimited, and his photograph on the programme made me feel that he must be a splendid man. I was influenced, too, by the audience, which showed its intensity of expectation by a subdued hubbub of talk which suddenly ceased altogether and was swept away by the storm of clapping which greeted the appearance of Kreisler.

  That he was an eminent violinist was obvious, even to me, before he had played a single note of the Handel Sonata with which the concert began. There was something in the quiet and confident little swing of his shoulders as he walked on to the platform; something about the way he bowed with his heels together; something about his erect and dignified attitude while the accompanist flattened the pages of the music on the piano; this ‘something’ impressed me very much. Then with a compact and self-possessed nod he was ready, and his lofty gaze was again on the audience.

  During the serenely opening bars of the accompaniment both the bow and the violin were hanging from his left hand, and the inevitable gesture with which he raised the instrument to his chin seemed to sustain the rhythm of my excitement which reached its climax as I heard the first calm and eloquent phrase. The evergreen loveliness of the sonata unfolded itself, and Kreisler was interpreting it with tenderness and majesty. For him the concert was only one in that procession of recitals which carried him along on his triumphant career. But I knew then, as I had never known before, that such music was more satisfying than the huntsman’s horn. On my way home in the train my thoughts were equally divided between the Kreisler concert and my new hunting things. Probably my new boots got the best of it.

  2

  Sitting by the schoolroom fire after tea on the last Saturday in November, I cleaned my almost new pipe (for I had taken to smoking, though I hadn’t enjoyed it much so far) with a white pigeon’s feather from the lawn.

  I had got home early after a rotten half-day with the Dumborough. I’d had four days with them since the opening meet, and it was no use pretending that I’d enjoyed myself. Apart from the pleasure of wearing my self-consciously new clothes I had returned home each day feeling dissatisfied. It wasn’t so much that the Hunt seemed to spend most of its time pottering round impenetrable woodlands as that the other subscribers appeared to be unwilling to acknowledge my existence except by staring me into a state of acute awareness of my ignorance of what was being done and how to do it. There was also the problem of Harkaway, who demonstrated more clearly every time I took him out that his stamina was insufficient for a hard day’s hunting. It was only his courage which kept him going at all; in spite of Dixon’s efforts in the stable the old horse was already, as he ruefully remarked, looking ‘properly tucked-up’, and the long distances to the meets were an additional hardship for him.

  As I lit my pipe I felt that I ought to be blissfully reconstructing the day’s sport. But there seemed to be no blissful details to reconstruct. The hounds had run fairly well for about half an hour, but very little of it had been in the open. And I had been so busy hanging on to my excitable horse that I had only a hazy recollection of what had happened, except that Bill Jaggett had damned my eyes for following him too closely over the only jumpable place in a fence. Bill Jaggett was, to my mind, one of the horrors of the Hunt. He was a hulking, coarse-featured, would-be thruster; newly rich, ill-conditioned, and foul-mouthed. ‘Keep that bloody horse well out of my way,’ was a specimen of his usual method of verbal intercourse in the hunting-field. What with the vulgarly horsey cut and colour of his clothes and the bumptious and bullying manners which matched them, he was no ornament to the Dumborough Hunt; to me he was a positive incubus, for he typified everything that had alarmed and repelled me in my brief experience of fox-hunting. Except for the violent impression he made on my mind I should have said nothing about him; but even now I cannot remember his behaviour without astonishment. He was without exception the clumsiest and most mutton-fisted horseman I have ever observed. No horse ever went well for him, and when he wasn’t bellowing at his groom he was cursing and cropping the frothing five-year-old which was carrying his fifteen-stone carcass. (He usually rode young horses, since he flattered himself that he was ‘making’ them to sell at a profit; but as he was short-sighted he frequently fell on his head and gave me the satisfaction of watching him eme
rge from a ditch, mud-stained and imprecating.) He took no interest in anything except horses and hunting, and it was difficult to believe that he had ever learnt to read or write.

  He was one of a small contingent who fancied themselves as hard riders. Owing to the character of the country they always had to be looking for something to jump, whether the hounds were running or not, and they were often in trouble with Lord Dumborough for ‘larking’ over unnecessary fences. In this they were conspicuous, for the other followers of the Hunt were a pusillanimous lot of riders, and there was always a queue of them at the gaps, over which they bobbed and bounced like a flock of sheep. Musing on my disappointing experiences, I decided that next week I would go and have a day with the Potford Hounds who were no further off than the Dumborough. They were said to be short of foxes, but Dixon had heard that their new Master had been showing good sport.

  Elaborate arrangements had to be made for my day with the Potford. The distance to the meet was nearly fourteen miles, and Dixon decided that the best plan was for him to ride Harkaway over the night before. This outing was very much to his taste, and it was easy to imagine him clattering importantly into the yard at the Bull Inn with Harkaway’s rug rolled on the saddle in front of him, and doing everything that was humanly possible to make the old horse comfortable in the strange stable. It is equally certain that, over his glass of beer, in the evening, he would leave no doubt in the minds of the gossips in the bar-parlour that his young gentleman was a very dashing and high-class sportsman. All this he would do with the sobriety and reticence of an old family servant; before going to bed he would take a last look at Harkaway to see whether he had finished up his feed.

  Driving myself to the meet in the soft, cloudy morning, I enjoyed feeling like Mr Sponge on his way to look at a strange pack. The only difference was that Sponge was a bold and accomplished rider and I was still an experimental one.

  But my appearance, I hoped, would do Dixon no discredit, and on the seat beside me was my newest acquisition, a short leather hunting-crop with a very long lash to it. The length of the lash, though extremely correct, was an embarrassment. The crop had only arrived the previous day, and I had taken it out on to the lawn and attempted to crack it. But I was unable to create the echoing reports which hunt servants seemed to produce so effortlessly, and my feeble snappings ended with a painful flick on my own neck. So I resolved to watch very carefully and see exactly how they did it. Big swells like Bill Jaggett never lost an opportunity of cracking their whips when they caught sight of a stray hound. I couldn’t imagine myself daring to do that or shout ‘Get along forrid’ in such tremendous tones; but it would be nice to feel that I could make the welkin ring with my new crop if I wanted to. I had yet to learn that the quiet and unobtrusive rider is better liked by a huntsman and his assistants than the noisy and officious one.

  I wondered whether I should know any of the people out with the Potford, and wished I had made a better job of tying my white stock that morning. Tying a stock was very difficult, especially as I didn’t know how to do it. Mr Gaffikin’s was wonderful, and I wished I knew him well enough to ask him how the effect was produced.

  I was keen to see what the new Master of the Potford was like. Dixon had heard quite a lot about him. His name was Guy Warder, and he was a middle-aged man who hunted the hounds himself and did everything as cheaply as possible. He bought the most awful old screws for next to nothing at Tattersalls, made his stablemen ride them all the way down from London to save the expense of a horsebox, and brought them out hunting next day. It seemed that the Hunt was already divided into factions for and against him, and it was doubtful whether he would be allowed to hunt the country another season. It was said that he was a bad rider and always held on to the pommel of his saddle when jumping his fences. It was also rumoured that he sometimes got very drunk. People complained that he was slow, and often drew the coverts on foot. But he was popular with the farmers, and had been killing an abnormal number of foxes.

  There he was, anyhow, sitting low down in the saddle among his hounds on a patch of grass in front of the Bull Inn. He was a dumpy little man with a surly red face, and he wore a coat that had once been scarlet and was now plum-coloured. He was on a good-looking horse, but the whips were mounted on under-bred and raw-boned animals which might well have been sent to the kennels for the hounds to eat. The hounds were dull-coated and hungry-looking. Evidently Mr Guy Warder cared nothing for smartness.

  Dixon saw me into the saddle with a quietly satisfied air and I rode out of the stable-yard. The first person I recognized was Bill Jaggett, who was hoisting himself on to the back of a slim, skittish, and startled-looking roan mare. He greeted me with a scowl and then remarked with a grunt, ‘You’ve brought your old skin over here, have you? Don’t give him much rest, do you?’ The sneer in his voice made me hate him more than ever, but I was too diffident and confused to reply.

  With him was his boon companion, Roger Pomfret, a ginger-haired, good-for-nothing nephew of Lord Dumborough who blundered about the country on a piebald cob and vied with Jaggett in coarseness of language and general uncouthness. But Pomfret, who was impecunious and spent his spare time in dubious transactions connected with the Turf, had a touch of bumpkin geniality about him, and was an amiable and polished gentleman when closely compared with his unprepossessing associate, who, at that moment, was adjuring him (with the usual epithets) not to knock the guts out of that horse or he’d never lend him another (at the same time jogging his own mare unmercifully in the mouth and kicking her with one of his long spurs). ‘Will you stand still, you—’ but before the last word was out of his mouth the huntsman had shaken up his hounds with a defiant toot of the horn and was trotting down the road.

  ‘The old rat-catcher doesn’t allow much law, does he? It’s only six minutes past eleven now!’ remarked Pomfret, consulting his ticker with an oafish grin.

  I dropped behind them, and was at once joined by Mr Gaffikin, effusively cheerful, elbows well out, and a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. His friendliness revived my spirits, and he seemed to regard Jaggett and Pomfret as an excellent joke. ‘It’s as good as a play when they start slanging one another,’ he said, eyeing their clumsy backs as they tip-tupped along.

  He then told me, in an undertone, to keep pretty wideawake today, as he’d heard that old Warder’d got something up his sleeve. He winked expressively. ‘I hear they’ve had one or two very queer foxes lately,’ he added. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I nodded sagaciously.

  Nothing exciting happened, however, at the first covert. In accordance with his usual habit, the huntsman got off his horse and plunged into the undergrowth on foot.

  ‘They say the old boy’s got a better nose than any of his hounds,’ someone remarked.

  In spite of my anxiety to avoid him, I found myself standing close behind Jaggett, who was bragging about a wonderful day he’d had ‘up at Melton’ the week before. But I was feeling more at my ease now, and I was expressing this by swinging the lash of my crop lightly to and fro. The result was appalling. Somehow the end of it arrived at the rump of Jaggett’s roan mare; with nervous adroitness she tucked in her tail with my lash under it. She then began kicking, and in my efforts to dislodge the lash I found myself ‘playing’ Jaggett and his horse like a huge fish. The language which followed may be imagined, and I was flabbergasted with confusion at my clumsiness. When I had extricated my thong and the uproar had subsided to a series of muttered imprecations, I retreated.

  To my surprise Mr Gaffikin came up and congratulated me admiringly on the way I had ‘pulled Bill Jaggett’s leg’. He said it was the neatest thing he’d ever seen and he wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. He slapped his leg in a paroxysm of amusement, and I modestly accepted the implication that I had done it on purpose. Guy Warder then emerged from his investigations of the undergrowth and blew his hounds out of covert.

  ‘Where are you going now, Master?’ shouted a sharp-faced man with a green collar on h
is cut-away coat.

  ‘You’ll find out when I get there,’ growled Warder, hunching his shoulders and trotting briskly down the lane.

  Mr Gaffikin explained that the green-collared man was a notoriously tardy and niggardly subscriber. Nevertheless, we were apparently making an unexpected excursion, and people were audibly wondering what the old beggar was up to now. Anyhow, I gathered that we were heading for the best bit of the vale country, though it had been expected that we would draw some big woods in the other direction. After a couple of miles he turned in at a gate and made for a small spinney. Word now came back from the first whip that ‘an old dog-fox had been viewed there this morning’. Half-way across the field to the spinney the Master pulled up, faced round, and exclaimed gruffly, ‘I’d be obliged if you’d keep close together on this side of the covert, gentlemen.’ He then cantered off with his hounds and disappeared among the trees.

  ‘Stick close to me,’ said Mr Gaffikin in a low voice. ‘The old devil’s got a drag laid, as sure as mutton.’

  He was right. A minute afterwards there was a shrill halloa; when we got round to the far side of the spinney there was the huntsman going hell for leather down the slope with his hounds running mute on one side of him. With my heart in my mouth I followed Mr Gaffikin over one fence after another. Harkaway was a bold jumper and he took complete control of me. I can remember very little of what happened, but I was told afterwards that we went about four miles across the only good bit of vale in the Potford country. The gallop ended with the huntsman blowing his horn under a park wall while the hounds scrabbled and bayed rather dubiously over a rabbit-hole. There were only eight or ten riders up at the finish, and the credit of my being among them belonged to Harkaway. Jaggett, thank heaven, was nowhere to be seen.

  Warder took off his cap and mopped his brow. Then he looked with grudging good humour at the remnant of his field and their heaving horses. ‘Now let the bastards say I don’t go well enough!’ he remarked, as he slipped his horn back in its case on his saddle.