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

by Siegfried Sassoon

  It had been a recognized fact that for Denis Milden the Ringwell country was only a stepping-stone to higher things. Nobody had hoped that he would remain with a provincial hunt for ever. But this was sudden. He had sometimes talked to me about his prospects of getting a better country, but he could be as dumb as a post when he had a motive for silence, and he had given me no inkling of a change before the morning when he came down to breakfast with a letter in his hand and informed me that he’d been elected Master of the Packlestone. He said it with satisfied sobriety, and I did my best to seem delighted. Now the Packlestone Hunt, as I knew well enough, was away up in the Midlands. And the Midlands, to put it mildly, were a long step from Butley. So Denis, as I might have expected, was to be translated to a region which I couldn’t even visualize. It meant that he was going out of my existence as completely as he had entered it. Every time I returned to the Kennels I found greater difficulty in making my voice sound convincing while I conjectured to him about the attractive qualities of his new country.

  In the meantime, as if to tantalize the Ringwellites, the bitches excelled themselves. The only consolation was that he couldn’t take them with him. A new Master was secured, but no one felt much confidence in him or the future. The less they knew about him the more they shook their heads over his inevitable fallibilities. Already it was rumoured that he was the slowest amateur huntsman in England; and now he was proposing to hunt the hounds himself two days a week.

  When I discussed Denis Milden’s departure with people out hunting they often assumed that I should be going with him. I replied guardedly that I hadn’t thought about it yet, although the truth was that I had thought of little else. I had to acclimatize myself to the disconsolate idea of a Ringwell country where I should once again be reduced to the status of a visiting nonentity. But one evening when Denis was unusually bright and communicative (after a good day in the nice bit of grass country close to the Kennels) he turned his blunt kindly face in my direction (he was at his writing-table with a lot of letters to answer), and remarked: ‘I’ll have to get you up to Packlestone somehow. It’s too sad for words to think of leaving you behind!’ When he said that I knew that he intended me to go with him. And Denis had a habit of getting his own way.

  PART EIGHT

  MIGRATION TO THE MIDLANDS

  1

  When Dixon arrived at the Packlestone Kennels in the middle of October, with my four hunters and a man under him, he was realizing an ambition which must often have seemed unattainable. To break away from Butley for a season in a country which adjoined such notable names as the Quorn, the Pytchley, and Mr Fernie’s – well might he have wondered how it had been brought about! But there we were and Aunt Evelyn had been left to drive through a lonely winter with Harkaway and the stable-boy – now nearly eighteen and promoted to the dignity of wearing Dixon’s top-hat and blue livery coat.

  From the moment when Denis had first suggested my going with him, I had made up my mind to do it. Nevertheless, the fact remained that I couldn’t afford it. I was putting myself in a false position in more ways than one: financially, because I should be spending my whole year’s income in less than six months; and socially, because the people in the Packlestone Hunt quite naturally assumed that I was much better off than I really was. I had discussed it all with Denis in April. Denis was good at making fifteen shillings do the work of a pound, and he was fond of talking about money. But when I divulged my exact income he gravely admitted that the pecuniary problem was no easy one to solve. He found it a terrible tight fit himself; it had been costing him over two thousand a year out of his own pocket to hunt the Ringwell country, and the Packlestone would be an even more expensive undertaking. When we had worked it out on paper – so much a week for my own keep while living with him in the huntsman’s house, so much for keep of horses, so much for my two men’s wages, and so on – the total came to more than ten pounds a week. And I had to buy two more horses into the bargain; for, as he said, I couldn’t have any fun with less than four, ‘and it absolutely defeats me how you’re going to get four days a week even then’.

  ‘I’ll have one good season, anyhow, whatever happens afterwards!’ I exclaimed. All that I needed, at that juncture, was a miraculous doubling of my income.

  The mental condition of an active young man who asks nothing more of life than twelve hundred a year and four days a week with the Packlestone is perhaps not easy to defend. It looks rather paltry on paper. That, however, was my own mental position, and I saw nothing strange in it, although I was well aware of the sort of things the family solicitor would be saying if he were permitted to cast his eye over the half-sheet of paper on which Denis had figured out my probable expenditure. Aunt Evelyn, however, cordially approved of my project, and after consultations with Stephen (who thought it a magnificent effort) and the delighted Dixon, I bought a couple of horses in April and May, and then settled down to a summer of strict economizing. Cricket matches, at any rate, were an inexpensive occupation.

  Of my new horses one was a bit of a gamble. He was a very good-looking chestnut who ‘roared like a bull’. He had the reputation of being a wonderful performer, and I bought him, rather recklessly, for forty-three guineas, at the end of a sale at Tattersalls, after the horse I’d hoped to buy had gone for double the price I was able to bid for him. A vet. from the Ringwell country drew my attention to the handsome chestnut, assuring me that he’d heard from a safe quarter that he was a remarkable jumper. Throughout the summer Dixon and I contemplated him and speculated on his problematical capabilities (which proved to be in accordance with the information given me by the vet.).

  My other new horse was the result of a chance ride in a point-to-point. He was a well-bred old horse, a great stayer, and a very bold jumper. After I had ridden him in two races, in both of which he finished strongly, though not fast enough to win, his owner offered to let me have him for thirty pounds admitting that he found him too much of a handful out hunting. I was already aware that the old chestnut had a very hard mouth, but I took him gladly and he carried me well and kept my weight down by causing me considerable exertions by his impetuous behaviour.

  When Dixon brought the horses up from benighted Butley I had already been at Packlestone the best part of a month, riding Denis’s horses out cub-hunting, getting to know my way about the country, and becoming acquainted with a few of the local characters, most of whom were extremely civil to me on account of my close connection with their new Master. I did my best to live up to my too conspicuous position, mainly by saying as little as possible and looking as knowledgeable as I knew how. My acclimatization to the new conditions was made easier by the fact that not many people came out cubbing before the middle of October. We clattered out in the misty mornings to disturb the important fox coverts and the demesnes of influential personages in the Hunt, and I learned to recognize the new faces in more or less segregated instalments.

  On one occasion we went to a place about twenty miles from the Kennels, had two days’ routing up the cubs and spent two nights in a large country house. The owner was away, probably at some German spa: the furniture was draped in dust-sheets, and I remember that we had our dinner in a little housekeeper’s room. To be there with Denis and his hounds gave me an agreeable feeling of having got into a modernized Surtees novel (though there was little evidence of modernity in what we did and saw). Less agreeable, I remember, was our sixteen-mile ride home on a grilling September afternoon, with the famous Packlestone dog-hounds, who found the dust and heat rather more than they could manage after a long morning.

  Life at the Kennels appeared to me almost perfect, especially when I was sitting with Denis in the little room in the huntsman’s house and discussing the new country in all its aspects. My approach to the country had been uncritical and eagerly expectant. Once I was settled there I saw it entirely through the eyes of Denis. If he found anything amiss I at once assumed that I had already taken the imperfection into account. For instance, several of
the artificial gorse coverts, he said, were very thin; and no right-minded fox would remain in some of the small woods when once the leaves were off and the vegetation had died down. I shook my head and agreed that a lot of the coverts wanted looking after. Several new gorse coverts ought to be planted in the Friday country, which was the best part for riding over. And then there was the wire, which was deplorably prevalent in places, though well marked with red boards in the hedges. In the kennels, too, there was much to be attended to.

  The Packlestone country was hunted four days a week. Its character was varied – cow-pastures and collieries being the extremes of good and bad. In some districts there were too many villages, and there were three or four biggish industrial towns. This abundance of population seemed to me an intrusion, and I wished I could clear every mean modern dwelling out of the hunt. For the most part, however, it appeared to be a paradise of jumpable fences, and compared with the well-wooded Ringwell region it was a tiptop country. For the first time in my life I was able to sit down and jump a dozen clear fences without pulling up. In fact, as Denis said, it was a place where I could jump myself silly. Also it had the charm of freshness, and I have always thought that a country becomes less enjoyable as one gets to know it better; in a strange country a twisting hunt seems like a straight one. But this is a truism which applies to many things in life besides riding to hounds.

  Foxes were plentiful, except in parts of the Friday country; but there was no shortage anywhere as regards rich-flavoured Surteesian figures. Coming, as I did, from afar, and knowing nothing of their antecedents and more intimate aspects, I observed the Packlestone people with peculiar vividness. I saw them as a little outdoor world of country characters and I took them all for granted on their face value. How privileged and unperturbed they appeared – those dwellers in a sporting Elysium! Half-conscious of the sense of security and stability which they inspired, I watched them and listened to them with a comfortable feeling that here was something which no political upheaval could interrupt.

  There was, however, one discordant element in life which I vaguely referred to as ‘those damned socialists who want to stop us hunting’. Curiously enough, I didn’t connect socialists with collieries, though there had been a long coal strike eighteen months before. Socialists, for me, began and ended in Hyde Park, which was quite a harmless place for them to function in. And I assured Denis that whatever the newspapers might say, the Germans would never be allowed to attack us. Officers at the barracks were only an ornament; war had become an impossibility. I had sometimes thought with horror of countries where they had conscription and young men like myself were forced to serve two years in the army whether they liked it or not. Two years in the army! I should have been astonished if I’d been told that socialists opposed conscription as violently as many fox-hunting men supported the convention of soldiering.

  2

  The Packlestone fox-hunters prided themselves on being hail-fellow-well-met – quite a happy family, in fact – though a large one, for there were always between a hundred and a hundred and fifty riders at a Monday meet. The Mondays, which were in the middle of the Hunt, attracted all the regular followers, whereas on Fridays there was a cutting and thrusting contingent from two adjoining hunts, and these people were rightly regarded as outsiders by the true-blue Packlestone residents.

  During my October days new faces continually added themselves to the covert-side crowd, and by the time when I began to ride my own horses the fields were fairly representative, and I very soon found myself included in the friendliness for which the Hunt had a reputation, though it was some time before I could say that I felt at home, especially when I was on my old chestnut, who fairly pulled my arms out.

  On a bright morning late in October, composed though slightly self-conscious on Cockbird’s back outside Olton Gorse, I could look around me and identify the chief supporters of the Hunt. Prominent owing to his official capacity, was the Field-Master, Bertie Hartby, a keen-faced man whose appointment by Denis had caused a certain amount of controversy. It was said that Hartby was always in too much of a hurry, but there he was, anyhow, intent on doing his best to keep the field in order.

  Near him was a highly important personage, Captain Harry Hinnycraft, who for a vast number of years had been Honorary Secretary of the Hunt. ‘Dear old Captain Harry’, as the young ladies called him (for on them he was wont to turn an appreciative eye), was by no means an easy old gentleman to please unless it suited him to be amiable. His unqualified approval of the new Master was balanced by an unconcealed prejudice against his Field-Master, who was, he asserted to all and sundry, ‘as wild as a hawk’, varying this with ‘mad as a hatter’. Compromise was a word of which Captain Hinnycraft had never mastered the meaning; massive and white-moustached on his magnificent weight-carriers, he had always ridden about the Packlestone country with the air of a monarch. He belonged to the old school of country gentlemen, ruling his estate with semi-benevolent tyranny and turning his back on all symptoms of social innovation. Under his domination the Packlestone country had been looked after on feudal system lines. His method of dealing with epistolary complaints from discontented farmers was to ignore them; in verbal intercourse he bullied them and sent them about their business with a good round oath. Such people, he firmly believed, were put there by Providence to touch their hats and do as they were told by their betters. As might be expected, he had conventional eighteenth-century ideas about what constituted masculine gallantry and sprightly conversation. Captain Harry defied all criticism because he was a complete anachronism. And as such he continued beyond his eightieth year, until he fell into a fishpond on his estate and was buried by the parson whose existence he had spurned by his arrogance.

  It may well be wondered how the Hunt had survived the despotism of this old-world grandee, with whom previous Masters had been obliged to co-operate (as ‘best Master we’ve ever had’ while they reigned, and ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ when they resigned and left him to find someone to replace them).

  An explanation of the continued prosperity of the Packlestone was largely to be found in Mrs Oakfield of Thurrow Park, a lady who made friends wherever she went. Since her childhood she had been intimately associated with the Hunt, for her father had been Master for more than twenty years. From her large and well-managed estate she set an example of up-to-date (though somewhat expensive) farm-management, and every farmer in the country (except a few stubborn Radicals) swore by Mrs Oakfield as the feminine gender of a jolly good fellow. As a fine judge of cattle and sheep they respected her; and to this was added her reputation for boundless generosity. The Packlestone farmers were proud to see Mrs Oakfield riding over their land – as well they might be, for it was a sight worth going a long way to see. A fine figure of a woman she was, they all agreed, as she sailed over the fences in her tall hat and perfectly fitting black habit with a bunch of violets in her button-hole. This brilliant horsewoman rode over the country in an apparently effortless manner: always in the first flight, she never appeared to be competing for her prominent position; quick and dashing, she was never in a hurry; allowing for the fact that she was very well mounted and knew the country by heart, she was undoubtedly a paragon of natural proficiency. John Leech would have drawn her with delight. I admired Mrs Oakfield enormously; her quickness to hounds was a revelation to me, and in addition she was gracious and charming in manner. Whether she bowed her acknowledgement to a lifted hat at the meet or cantered easily at an awkward bit of timber in an otherwise unjumpable hedge, she possessed the secret of style. Needless to say, she was the only person in the Hunt who knew how to manage Captain Harry, who always spoke of her as ‘a splendid little woman’. Which brings me back to my original explanation as to how the behaviour of that intractable old gentleman failed to cause as much trouble as one might have expected.

  While Captain Hinnycraft lived and bulked big in the middle of the Monday country, all roads in the Wednesday district converged on Mrs Oakfield at Thur
row Park. Fashionable Friday contained several good-sized estates and many important fox-preservers and staunch supporters, but no predominant personage. Saturday, however, had its unmistakable magnate in Sir Jocelyn Porteus-Porteous of Folesford Hall. The Saturday country was the least popular of the four divisions. Well-wooded, hilly, and sporadically blemished by collieries, it was considered very sporting by those who lived in it. A Saturday hunt was a scrambling, cramped, hound-musical affair, much enjoyed by middle-aged enthusiasts on slow horses. A minor feature which I remember was an abundance of holly trees, which contributed a cosy old-fashioned Christmas atmosphere to my impression of Saturdays. Sunny Jim, my short-tailed, short-backed, short-legged, clever performer, found Saturdays much more to his liking than the other days, with their cut and laid fences, big ditches, and quick bursts across pasture and arable. I was very fond of Jim and I always gave him half of the apple which I produced from my pocket early in the afternoon. He was an artful old customer, and sometimes when he heard me munching my apple he would halt and turn his head to receive his portion. He did this one day when I was loitering with a slack rein along one of the spacious green rides which ventilated the Folesford home coverts. The august presence of Sir Jocelyn happened to be just behind me; his amusement at Sunny Jim’s intelligent behaviour is a lucky little stroke of reminiscence, for it is not easy to describe him without seeming a shade discourteous to Porteus-Porteous. (Note the majestic variation in spelling.)