G. J. Whyte-Melville

“ Who that has ever spent a season in the cosy, cheerful, joyous little town, but would wish to turn the stream of time, and live those golden days and pleasant nights over again?—would wish to be galloping his covert-hack once more through the fragrant air and under the dappled sky of a February morning, with a good horse to ride from Ranksborough Gorse or Barkby Holt, as his day’s amusement, and a choice of at least a couple of invitations, offering him the pleasantest society and the best dinner in England, for his evening’s gratification? ”

“ I fancy that every man who goes out hunting thinks he only wants an opportunity to show his back to the rest of the field. I fancy that when the opportunity does come, he lets it slip in hopes of a better, and that no one attributes to want of nerve, horsemanship, or common sense, that failure, on which it would be no bad investment to offer each equestrian nine to one! Well, everybody has an equal chance on a fine scenting day, when the fox has slipped quietly away, by good fortune only seen by a countryman, with a quinsy, who couldn’t halloo to save his life. ”

“ The Major, however, was proof against all the usual weapons of the female armoury. A confirmed flirt, it was his habit just to stop short of love-making with every woman he sat next to; but, if truth must be told, he never yet had seen one whose attractions he could place in comparison with his cutlet, his champagne, his claret, and his after-dinner cigar. A good-humoured, brainless, easy-going bon-vivant, it was the Major’s eventual destiny to marry a learned lady, with blue spectacles, under whose dynasty he faded away, and was lost to the world altogether. ”

“ As we rounded the slight acclivity on which the gorse was planted, a beautiful panorama was spread out before us. Already two fields ahead, the hounds were running hard, evidently with a capital scent, followed at different intervals by the scattering field, all fresh as fire, and every man taking the place to which he felt his skill and daring entitled him. Nearest ourselves I recognised Mr. Naggett, striding away on the mealy chestnut with a great display of enthusiasm and hard riding, his feet stuck out, his elbows up to his ears, and his blue coat-tails flying in the wind. ”

“ Half-a-mile or so of ridge-and-furrow, even at a hunter’s best pace, gives leisure for consideration. Ere the hounds had strung through it in single file, he was aware of a wide ditch to him; on the farther side was obviously a grass-field, and an uncertainty!
Marking with his eye the weakest place, through which, nevertheless, he could not see daylight, Mr. Sawyer, crammed his hat on his head, and set his horse resolutely at the fence; Marathon, according to custom, when he expected anything out of the common, shutting up every stride he went. ”

“ I can never see why ignorance is supposed by some men to be such an attraction in the other sex. The Tree of Knowledge is not necessarily the Tree of Evil; and, for my part, I think the more they know the better. What can be more graceful than a woman’s way of imparting her information?—the deprecating air with which she produces it, as it were, under protest, and the charming humility with which she accepts her victory when she has beaten you in argument, and swamped you with rhetoric? Oh! if Miss Merlin should turn out literary, it would be all over with me! ”

“ He did not even read; for, with all his quiet habits, the Cornet was as ignorant upon most topics of general information, as if he had been the fastest and idlest of his kind. His sole passion was music, and Miss Merlin did not know a note. Nevertheless, she fell in love with him—over head—such a fall as she never had in her life before, even in the Vale. She gave up hunting; she parted with her horses; she altered her whole habits and disposition and appearance, as a woman will, to identify herself the more with the man she loves. ”

“ Crafty Kate, shamelessly belying the first half of her name, seemed to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, swinging along at a very respectable pace, with her ears cocked, her head and tail both up, and an obvious determination to join the chase with as little delay as possible. The vehicle sprang and jerked, and swung from side to side; the wheels bespattered us from head to foot with mud: the splash-board alone prevented us from shooting out, over the mare’s back. No one who has ever tried it will wish to repeat the uncomfortable diversion of galloping in a gig. ”

“ Need I confess that I was eventually compelled to creep ignominiously through a gap in a green lane, the disappointed Tipple Cider grinding my leg against a tree and crushing my hat amongst its branches, in his disgust; or that I proceeded along this convenient alley as far as it lasted with renewed hopes, dashed by a bitter sense of vexation and shame? A stern chase is a long chase, by land as well as by sea; and there is no process, in my opinion, so utterly disheartening as that of trying to catch hounds in a run. ”

“ The process of digestion, that highly important function, when properly performed, seems to endow us with all the most admirable qualities of manhood. We become conscious that we are possessed of sagacity, courage, humour, and general benevolence. We could lend a friend a hundred pounds willingly, if we had it. We could go the best run that ever was seen, on the very backs of the hounds, if that was only an actual existing country, which we trace in the glowing embers, instead of a dream of fairyland, the offspring of Newcastle coal and Château Lafitte. ”

“ He tells us in the simplest language, and as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do it as well as himself, how we are to saddle our horse and bridle our horse, how to dress and how to feed, how to go out in the morning and how to come at night, how to transform our hack into a hunter, and, when so metamorphosed, how to ride the astonished animal over the highest gates and the widest brooks that can be found in the midland counties of merry England; the whole performance to be achieved in a jovial off-hand style, as if it were the simplest and safest thing in the world. ”

“ To judge from his own account, no man ever misses a run, save by a concatenation of circumstances totally unprecedented. Besides every normal casualty, he would always seem to have been baffled throughout by an opposing fiend of remarkable perseverance and diabolical ingenuity.
As the sun went down in a deep crimson segment, like the glow of a ruby, or the danger-signal on a railway, Mr. Sawyer lit a fresh cigar, and began to ponder on the merits of his own riding and the capabilities of his stud. ”

“ Ere long, it began to rain—first of all, an ominous drizzle, that seemed like continuing; then a decided pour, such as runs into the nape of a man’s neck and the tops of his boots, and wets him through in about a quarter of an hour. It was not much fun, churning the fluid in his soles; so he climbed stiffly into the saddle, and was disagreeably aware that Hotspur, besides being thoroughly tired, was also undoubtedly lame.
By degrees, his spirits fell considerably. He began to think of the Honourable Crasher, with his off-hand manner and his nine hunters. ”

“ Those plaguy hounds seem to follow you as if you were the Wild Huntsman himself, and you begin to appreciate the severity of the punishment inflicted on that wicked German Baron. They draw coverts that lie on your homeward way. They find, and hunt with provoking persistency alongside the very lane up which you would fain jog in solitude, crossing it more than once under your nose. There is sure to be a fair holding scent, not good enough to enable them to run clear out of your neighbourhood and have done with it, yet sufficient to afford plenty of enjoyment to such as are with them ”

“ Perhaps, ere twelve hours had elapsed, we might be drinking the palest brandy-and-water together, while I smoked my virgin weed, and she indulged in a coquettish little cigarette. Of course she smoked. It is the fast thing for a woman to do in these days, and most of us know what a pace they can go when they like. I saw it all, in my mind’s eye—the little shyness at first, the gradual warming from acquaintance into friendship, and from friendship to intimacy; my own misgivings, struggles, subjugation, and eventual discomfiture. ”

“ I wonder whether the reflections of other men in a railway-carriage, bowling through the midland counties at the rate of forty miles an hour, on such a day as I have described, are like my own. I honestly confess that a very few ideas, if they are favourite ones, are sufficient to fill my brain. As I speed along the level embankments, which give one such a commanding view of the surrounding country, I cannot help imagining myself on the back of a good horse, sailing away from field to field after a pack of hounds. ”

“ There is no secret so close as that between a horse and his rider. Up to the first check, Hotspur had realised his owner’s fondest anticipations. “He’s fit for a king!” ejaculated the delighted Sawyer, when they flew so gallantly over the brook. Even after the hounds had run steadily on for the best part of an hour, the animal’s character had only sunk to “not thoroughly fit to go;” but when they arrived at the Hemplow Hills, and the pack, still holding a fair hunting pace, breasted that choking ascent, he could not disguise from himself that the roan was about “told out.” ”

“ Once more climbing with difficulty to my seat, I found myself bumping over the ridge-and-furrow of a large grass-field, and, straining my eyes to find an egress, became aware that it was the Jovial’s intention to drive through a sort of gap in the fence, where the ditch had been partially filled up. It was now time to protest, which I did loudly and energetically; but my objections were too late. “Sit tight, Softly! Gently, Kate!” exclaimed Plumtree in a breath; and with a bump, a jerk, and a most astounding bang against the splash-board, we were safe over, and careering along the next field. ”

“ Crasher, who never “loses his stupidity,” as he calls his presence of mind, diverges for a rail that he spies where the ditch is narrowest, takes the chance of breaking that or being killed, and going at it forty-miles-an-hour, smashes it like paper, and succeeds, as Chance rises not an inch, in covering both ditches at a fly. He lands almost abreast of Luxury, who has struck back at the fence with the rapidity and activity of a cat. ”

“ There is a good animal, however, waiting for him at the door, submitting impatiently to the caresses of the admiring ostler, and having had her own suck of gruel, looking wistfully round for her master, who she knows is never very long having a suck of his.
If you want to be thoroughly acquainted with your horse to inspire him with that unreserved confidence which the animal is certainly capable of feeling in his master, ride him at night. An hour in the dark draws the bond of partnership tighter than a day in the sunshine. ”

“ At eighteen there was not a sportsman with the X.Y.Z. that cared to follow Fanny Merlin in a quick thing over the Vale, where the fences were largest, and the Swimley twisted and twined about, like the silver lace on a green volunteer uniform, never less than eighteen feet from bank to bank. I always hated hunting, I honestly acknowledge it; but oh! the duckings I have had in that accursed Swimley, following the flutter of her riding-habit, that I would have followed, if necessary, across the Styx. ”

“ Albeit much against the grain, and what he was totally unaccustomed to in the Old Country, when hounds were running, Mr. Sawyer found himself obliged to ride to a leader. That chestnut five-year-old was for ever in front of him, now doing an “in-and-out” cleverly, now topping a flight of rails gallantly, then creeping under a tree, with a discretion beyond his years, and anon facing and rasping through a bullfinch, in the successful temerity of youth, Mr. Varnish sitting very far back the while, with the graceful ease of a man who is playing a favourite instrument in an arm-chair. ”

“ This knack is a sort of instinct rather than an acquirement, an intuitive sagacity, akin to that faculty by which the Red Indian, in common with other savages, takes the right direction through the pathless woods, and over the monotonous prairies of the West. We will suppose a man to be riding his own line, fairly with a pack of fox-hounds, in a country he has never seen before, with a good scent, and a fox’s head set up-wind. ”

“ Cold as she is at times, and rigorous as are her icy frowns, corrugating that beaming face into unpropitious wrinkles, at least she is a mistress who never deceives. The thermometer at your dressing-room window tells you exactly the humour in which you will find her, and we do not hear the old, whose season of enjoyment has passed away, regretting the hours and days they have spent in her service. ”

“ I am a shy man—not too shy to confess it. I blush to the lobes of my ears, in replying to her kind inquiries; but Miss L. does not laugh at me; for, woman-like, she has a prejudice in favour of shy men, and she pities my infirmities, and my arm in a black leather sling.
“Your tea will have drawn in five minutes, sir, and your toast is down at the fire now,” says she, patting and smoothing the cushions of her own particular arm-chair in her own particular corner, that I may sit at ease despite my injuries. How kind, how thoughtful she is! And heavens! what a torso the woman has! ”

“ I begin to think people are born sportsmen, just as they are born poets, painters, and peers of the realm. We see them in every class of life; and there is many an honest fellow who loses half a day’s work, and wears out his shoe-leather, to make the best he can of his fox-hunting on foot, who, in a higher position, would have achieved a brilliant reputation in the eyes of the sporting world. ”

“ THE OLD SQUIRE The dinner passed off far more pleasantly than I should have imagined possible. Drawn out by their brother, and gradually losing their awe of myself as a stranger, both Rebecca and Jane found something to say, and voices wherewith to say it. Well-brought-up girls in our English society are all shy (though not half so reserved as foreign young ladies of the same age) , or at all events, are taught that it is right to appear so; but we must never forget that it is as natural for a woman to talk as for a duck to swim. ”

“ THE MATCH Lounging past Tattersall’s one baking day in June, I had the good fortune to encounter Mr. Savage, apparently as busily employed as myself in the agreeable occupation of doing nothing. If you have ever been addicted to the fascinating pursuit of fox-hunting, you will understand how, even in London, the presence of a fellow-enthusiast is as a draught of water to a pilgrim in the desert sand. ”

“ Three notes on the huntsman’s horn, five or six couple of hounds streaming noiselessly across a field, the rest more clamorous, leaping and dashing through the gorse, a rush of horsemen towards the point at which the fox has broken; and the man who is really fond of hunting has not the vestige of an idea to spare for anything else in the world. ”

“ Ay, and in the month of May, when the primroses are out, and the violets scenting the air, and other hounds have left off for the season, you may still follow up the chase, in these deep dark glades, with an ardour proportioned to the heat of the sun over your head. Large straggling ill-conditioned fences are the obstacles with which the hunter has to contend; and nothing but a good horse, with discretion as well as courage, is likely to see a run in safety ”

“ Few sensations are more enjoyable than to jog quietly to the meet, after a leisurely breakfast, with a good cigar in one’s mouth, a horse that feels like a hunter under one, and the satisfactory conviction that one is in plenty of time.
It is not my province nor my intention to describe minutely the Castle-Cropper hounds. All the world knows that the Earl of Castle-Cropper is a thorough sportsman ”

“ In another moment he is up to his girths in the gorse, cheering on the beauties, who are working up the scent with a vast deal of musical energy. The master casts an uneasy glance at the crowd; countless anxieties and apprehensions cross his mind. One way the fox will be headed, another the hounds will be cut off, a third leads up to the village, and we all know how fatal are houses and pigsties at the commencement of a run. But the fourth side is clear; happily the hounds are even now bustling eagerly towards it. ”

“ The filly full of corn, and quite well aware of the five stone of inexperience she carried on her back. It was not unnatural that her shambling trot should soon become a canter, which a desperate shy at a drove of pigs converted into a gallop under the most unfavourable circumstances. Little Tips, when she swerved, held on manfully by the bridle; the baker’s tackle was old and frayed; the head-band broke, and the bit came out of the filly’s mouth; no pleasant predicament for an urchin of nine years old, careering along a turnpike-road, on market-day, at top speed. ”

“ If a man believes his hounds (and if he don’t, he’d better hang ’em and retire himself into private life as a market-gardener) , he knows their game is before them, when he hears them throw their tongues, just as certainly as if he’d viewed it fifty times. And, ten to one, long before you see the fox, the fox sees you, and he’s headed back again. I wish I’d a pound for every good run I’ve seen spoilt in that way. ”

“ Notwithstanding the freedom of his manners, his brilliant attire and sporting exterior, I did not much admire Mr. Naggett. These instincts, prejudices—call them what you will—of likes and dislikes are oftener right than we suppose; and when I came to learn the antecedents of the sporting butcher, as in such a gossiping place as Soakington I was not long in doing, I was even less prepossessed in his favour than at first.
Mr. Naggett had begun life as the only son of a respectable tenant-farmer in the neighbourhood of Soakington. ”

“ He was right, however; presently two or three couple of hounds straggled into the field adjoining that in which we were stationed, ran to and fro along the hedge-side, put their noses down, threw their tongues, and followed by the whole pack, streamed across the pasture on the line of their prey.
It was great fun, and a new sensation, to watch the progress of the field, as one sat an unoccupied spectator, perched in a thing like a tea-tray on a pair of tall red wheels. I can quite understand the pleasure an old gentleman has, who rides quietly out on his cob, to see them “find and go away.” ”