Part 9

Among hunting men there is nothing so unpopular as what is called by the rest of the world a most beautiful, clear, bright day. The gaudy thing is disagreeable to eyes because it is dangerous to the bodies to which they respectively belong; for when every twig glitters in the sunshine, and every drop of dew that hangs upon them looks like a diamond, the fences so dazzle the eyes of riders, and especially of horses, that a number of extra falls are very commonly the result. Soft ground, dull weather, an easterly wind, and a cloudy sky, form the compound that is most approved of. On such a day, and under such circumstances, we beg leave to invite our readers to sit with us patiently for a very few minutes in a balloon, as, like a hawk hovering above a partridge, it hangs over the quiet little village of Arthingworth, in Northamptonshire. Those hounds, headed by that whipper-in riding so lightly and neatly on his horse, and surrounding their huntsman Charles Payne, jogging along, seated in his saddle as if he had grown there, are on that portion of the Queen's highway which connects Northampton with Market Harborough. They are the Pytchley hounds, the hereditary property, not of the present master, but of the hunt. They are on their way from their kennel at Brixworth to a park at Arthingworth to draw "Waterloo Gorse," which means that every man who intends to come (and their name is legion) will send there, not his best-looking, but, what is infinitely better, that which he knows to be "his best horse," simply because the covert of Waterloo not only usually holds a good fox, but because it is encircled by very large grass-fields, enlivened in every direction by the severest fences in Northamptonshire. See how quietly along every high-road, bye-road, and footpath, horses and riders, of various sizes and sorts, walking, jogging, or gently trotting, are converging towards a central point! Schoolboys are coming to see the start on ponies; farmers on clever nags; others on young horses of great price; neatly-dressed grooms, some heavy and some light, are riding, or riding and leading, horses magnificent in shape and breeding, in the most beautiful condition, all as clean and well-appointed as if they had been prepared to do miserable penance in Rotten Row. And are all these noble and ignoble animals beneath us going to the hunt? Yes, and many more that we cannot see. Look at those straight streams of white steam that through green fields are concentrating from north, south, east, and west upon Market Harborough, from Leicester, from Northampton, from Stamford, and from Rugby--denoting trains that, at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, are hurrying boxes all containing hunters for the meet.

On the huntsman and hounds slowly entering and taking up their positions in the small park at Arthingworth, excepting two or three farmers, no one is there to receive or notice them. However, in a few minutes, through large gates and through smaller ones, grooms on and with their horses walk steadily in; while Charles Payne, occasionally chucking from his coat-pocket a few crumbs of bread to his hounds, most of whom are looking upwards at him, leaning over his horse, is holding confidential conversation with a keeper. "_It's too bad!_" whispers an old farmer, who had just been entrusted with the secret that another fox had last night been shot by poachers; "_and, what's more, it's been a-going on +IN MANY WAYS+ a long time_." "_Yes!_" replies Charles Payne, looking as calmly and philosophically as Hamlet when he was moralising over Yorick's skull; "_you may rely upon it that, what with greyhounds,--and poachers,--and traps,--and poison,--there are very few foxes now-a-days that die a natural death_"--meaning that they were not eaten up alive by the Pytchley hounds.

But during all this precious time where are all the scarlet coats? Oh! here they come, trotting, riding, and galloping to the meet from every point of the compass, and apparently from every region of the habitable globe, some of the young ones--diverging as usual from their path of rectitude--to lark over a fence or two. Along the turnpike and country roads, drags with four horses, light dog-carts with two, post-chaises and gigs, each laden with men muffled up in heavy clothing, showing no pink, save a little bit peeping out at the collar, are all hurrying onwards to the same goal; and as these living bundles, with cigars in their mouths, are rapidly landing in the park, it will be advisable that we also should descend there to observe them.

By about a quarter before eleven the grass in front of the hospitable hunting-box of one of the late masters of the Pytchley--who, take him all in all, is one of the very best riders in the hunt--becomes as crowded as a fair with sportsmen of all classes, from the highest rank in the peerage down to--not exactly those who rent a 6_l._ house,--but who can afford money and time enough to "_hoont_," as they call it. While two or three well-appointed servants in livery are very quietly, from a large barrel, handing glasses of bright-looking ale to any farmer or groom who, after his long ride, may happen to feel a little thirsty, and while others from white wicker-baskets are distributing bits of bread and lumps of cheese to any man who may feel that beneath his waistcoat there is house-room to receive them, the honourable and gallant proprietor of the brown barrel and white baskets, lounging in his red coat, &c., on his exalted lawn, with sundry small scratches (from bull-finches) on his face, with something now and then smoking a little from his mouth, and with that placid and easy manner which in every situation of life distinguishes him, says to any friend in pink that happens to pass him, "_Won't ye go +IN+ for a moment?_" But, without invitation, most of the aristocrats, leaving their horses with their grooms, to ascend a flight of ladder steps which raises them to the lawn, walk slowly and majestically across it, adjusting their hair, "just to make their bow." When that compliment has been paid, they pause for a second or two in the hall, and then recross the lawn, indolently munching, and with perfumed handkerchiefs carefully wiping lips or mustachios (as the case may be), which, if they were very closely approached, might possibly smell _partly_ of cherries, to proceed to their respective grooms, and mount their horses.

"_Move_-+ON+,-_Sir_?" says Charles Payne, in his sharp, quick tone, touching his cap to the master, who slightly nods to him. "_Now-then,-gentlemen!_" he adds, "_ware +HOUNDS+, if you please_!" and accordingly, surrounded by them, onwards he, his two whips, and about two hundred horsemen, proceed at a walk to cross for nearly half a mile magnificent fields of grass of from eighty to a hundred acres. As the Pytchley and Quorn men are, for the reasons we have explained, each mounted on the very best of their stud, it need hardly be stated that the lot of horses before us are an accumulation of the finest specimens in the world; and yet with the highest breeding, courage, and condition, with magnificent figures, and with bone and substance sufficient to carry, through deep ground, from twelve to eighteen stone, there is a calm, unassuming demeanour in their walk, which it seems almost impossible sufficiently to admire. In like manner, among the riders, nobody appears to have the smallest disposition to talk about what he is going to do, or apparently even to think of where he is proceeding. A man from Warwickshire will perhaps describe the run he had there on Thursday; while another will fashionably say to a Leicestershire friend--"Did you _do_ anything on Friday?"--but most of the field are conversing as they ride along, not at all about foxes, but about Lords Palmerston, Derby, Italy, the Pope, &c.

On arriving close to Waterloo Gorse, Charles Payne pulls up to remain stationary for a couple of minutes, surrounded by his hounds, who, instead of gazing at his face, are all looking most eagerly at the covert, until the two whips, getting round it, have each taken up a position on the other side. "+Now-then+-_little-bitches_!" says Charles, as, with a twitch corresponding with his voice, he waves forwards his right hand, in which is grasped the silver horn presented to him by the farmers. Without taking the smallest offence at the appellation (which after all is a just one, for, as they are the fastest of his two packs, Charles does not object to bringing them to "Waterloo"), in they dash; and in a second Charles and his horse are over the low flight of rails, to gallop along a briary path which conducts them to a small open space in the centre of the covert. The greater portion of the field, in coats of many colours, congregate on its right.

But "quanto sono insensibili questi Inglesi!" Instead of evincing the smallest degree of anxiety, the conversations we have described are renewed; and though certainly nobody seems to care the hundred-thousandth part of a farthing about what his lips are saying, and though the countenance of every man appears to acknowledge that, on the whole, he is well enough satisfied with this world, yet men and horses remain perfectly cool, and occasionally cold, until it might be fancied by any old soldier standing a mile off that a shell had suddenly burst in the middle of them. "+Pray+, _don't holla_!" exclaims an old sportsman in a loud whisper. "+By Jove, He's Away!+" screams a very young one in pink, pointing to a shepherd who, grasping a struggling dog with one hand, is holding up his hat with the other. Half a dozen loud, slow, decisive, monotonous blasts from Charles Payne's horn are instantly heard, while his hounds, tumbling over each other, jump almost together over a small hedge and ditch out of the covert, with their beautiful heads all pointing towards Leicestershire. As they and reynard take the opposite side of the large grass field in which the riders had assembled, the start of the latter is very nearly as sudden as that of the former. Packed together almost as closely as the wild young creatures that on Epsom course run for the Derby, the best men and the best horses belonging to the Pytchley, Quorn, Cottesmore, and Warwickshire hounds start together over turf down a gentle declivity, at the bottom of which runs an insignificant stream. Steady horsemanship in every rider is necessary to prevent treading on those immediately before, or jostling those on each side. Many a horse, by shaking his head, clearly enough shows how unwelcome to him is the restraint. From this conglomeration nearly a dozen men extricate themselves by the superior speed and management of their horses. Before them[G] is a well-known broad and strong fence, which, without competing against each other, they most gallantly charge, "magnâ comitante catervâ," followed by the great ruck. One,--two,--three,--four,--five,--six men and horses take it almost together in their stride, and, to the astonishment of the remainder, all disappear! Every horse had well cleared the broad ditch on the other side, but all nearly simultaneously had landed in an artificial bog beyond it, made for draining purposes only a few days before, and in which the six men and the six horses, each perfectly unhurt, are now as prostrate and as "comfortable" as if they had, to use the old nurse's expression, "just been put to bed." The Hon. Fred. Villiers and Harry Everard are the first over and down. As they lie together in the mud, looking upwards, they see coming over the stakes of the hedge the Fitzwilliam girths of the horses of Henry Forrester and Thomas Atkinson (_Vive L'Empereur!_), followed almost instantly by two strangers. However, nearly as quickly as they all fell, they severally arise, mount their horses, and gallantly regain the hounds. The field of riders, unable to comprehend what has happened, and moreover unable as well as unwilling to stop their horses, as it were by word of command, all gracefully swerve together in a curve to the right to take two stiff fences instead of one. About half a dozen, on perfect timber-jumpers, cross a ditch overhung by a stout ash rail, firmly fixed between two trees; the remainder break their way through a bull-finch, and then, throwing their right shoulders forward, at a very honest pace, all make every proper effort to catch Charles Payne and the few others who with him had followed the line of the hounds.

We should certainly tire and jolt our readers very grievously were we to presume to hustle them through the well-known and splendid run that ensued. Not only, however, do our limits forbid us to do so, but as we shall shortly have to quote hunting-anecdotes from a very superior pen, we willingly pull up to make, in cool blood instead of in hot, a very few remarks.

[Footnote G: This scene we happened to witness.]

+Effects Caused by the Sight of Hounds.+

A description of a fox-hunt is not very agreeable either to read or to write,--firstly, because it records a series of events of no very great importance when they are over; and secondly, because the picture generally bears the appearance of exaggeration; the reason being, that it is composed of two parts, one of which it is almost impossible accurately to delineate. The danger or difficulty which a man and horse incur in taking any particular leap depends on the one hand upon the size of the fence, and on the other upon the combined amount of weight, strength, and activity which the horse can bring up to it. In trade, if a given weight, whether small or great, be put into one scale, it can be at once over-balanced by putting a still greater weight into the other scale. But while the dimensions of a fence can accurately be measured, it would be not only very difficult to determine the physical powers of a hunter, but, even if the statement could be made, ninety-nine people out of every hundred would most certainly disbelieve it; for, as the old proverb says, "seeing is believing;" so when a man has ridden a horse across his farm for many years, he is fully persuaded that,--to use another common expression,--"he knows what he is made of." But the truth is, he only knows what he has done, and what he can do under the maximum of excitement he hitherto has ever experienced; what he does _not_ know, and indeed what without trial he can have no idea of, is the enormous amount of latent physical power in his horse which even the sight of hounds will develop.

For instance, in riding a hack along the road, the confidence or, as it may be termed, the courage of the rider depends not on himself, but on the strength and action of the animal he is bestriding. If the nag picks up his feet quickly, and pops them down firmly--if he goes stout in his canter and strong in his gallop, his owner rides _boldly_. If, however, the very same hero crosses a poor, weak, weedy animal, with strait action, tripping in all his paces, and with his toes sending almost every loose stone rolling on before him, he declares the instant he dismounts that he has been _frightened_; which difference, in truth, only means that, on trial, he has satisfactorily and unsatisfactorily ascertained the physical powers of the first horse to be amply sufficient, and those of the last totally insufficient, to perform the given amount of work he requires. Now it is really no exaggeration to say, that the excitement to a horse caused by the presence of hounds creates in his physical powers as wide a difference as exists between those of the two nags just described. The old, jaded, worn-out, "groggy" hunter, who came hobbling out of his stable, and who has been fumbling and blundering under his groom along the road, no sooner reaches the covert side than, like a lion "shaking the dew-drops from his shaggy mane," he in a moment casts away the ills which flesh is heir to--in short, his prostrated powers suddenly revive; and accordingly it is on record, that in one of the severest runs with stag-hounds ever known in Essex, the leading horse was aged, twenty-two. Again, on the road, when a horse has travelled thirty or forty miles, he usually becomes more or less tired; whereas, during the ten or twelve hours that a hunter is out of his stable, he will, with the utmost cheerfulness, besides trotting more than that distance on the road, follow the hounds for many hours across a heavy country and large fences; and as it is well known that, in harness, a horse is less fatigued by trotting before a carriage on a hard macadamized road for forty miles than in dragging it through an earth road for ten, it would appear almost fabulous to state how many miles on the road, or especially on dry turf, could be performed by the amount of excitement, activity, and strength expended by a hunter during a long and severe day's work.

For the foregoing reasons, if a man during summer rides his hunters, he will see a variety of fences which, as he quietly ruminates, he will pronounce to himself to be impracticable, simply because he can both see and feel that they are greater than the powers he is bestriding; and yet, when the trees are leafless and the hounds running, if he happens on the same horse to come to these very fences, he crosses them without the smallest thought or difficulty--not because _he_ is excited (for the cooler he rides the better he will go), but because, while the height and breadth of each fence have not since he last saw them increased, the physical powers of his horse, developed by hunting, have been, to say the least, doubled. The scales which in summer had turned against him now preponderate in his favour; and accordingly Prudence, who but a few months before, with uplifted hand, had sternly warned him to "_beware_!" with smiling face and joyous aspect now beckons to him to "_Come on_!"

The feats which the mere skin and bones of a horse can perform during hunting are surprising. The comparatively small shin-bone of his hind legs will, without receiving the smallest blemish, smash any ordinary description of dry oak or elm-rail, and occasionally shiver the top of a five-barred gate, and yet, strange to say, though the frail bone so often fractures the timber, the timber is never able to fracture the frail bone, which, generally speaking, receives not the smallest injury from the conflict. Again, when even a singed horse at great speed has forced his way through a high, strong, spiteful-looking thorn-hedge, frightening almost into hysterics the poor little "bull-finch" that is sitting there, he almost invariably passes through the ordeal with his skin perfectly uncut, and often not even scratched!--nay, a horse going at great speed may be thrown head over heels by a wire fence without receiving from it the smallest blemish!

The trifling facts we have just stated will, we believe, not only explain the courage and physical powers of a hunter, but the difficulty of describing to non-hunting readers, without an appearance of exaggeration, the feats which, during a run, he can without danger or difficulty perform; for, instead of boasting about a large fence, it is an indisputable fact that it is infinitely safer for the horse, and consequently for his rider, than a little one, at which almost all their worst accidents occur: indeed when a liberal landlord, for the benefit of his tenants, cuts through their fields a series of narrow deep drains, to be loosely filled up with earth, it is good-humouredly said by hunting men, that he is "_collar-boning_" them!

And now it is an extraordinary truth that the excitement which the horse feels in simply witnessing the chase of one set of animals after another, seems to pervade every living creature on the surface of the globe. In savage life, the whole object, occupation, and enjoyment of man, whenever he is not engaged in war, consists in catching and killing almost any of the creatures that inhabit the wilderness through which he roams. In a drop of putrid water a microscope informs us that animalcules of all shapes and sizes, with the same malice prepense, are hunting and slaying each other. The 600 boys at Eton, if collected together, would resolve readily among themselves to receive with decorum, and no doubt with youthful dignity, any great personages about to honour them with a visit; and yet, while the grand procession was approaching them, or even just after it had arrived, if a rat were to run about among them, all their good intentions in one moment would be destroyed.

During the grand reviews in France of the Allied armies under the command of Wellington, although the British troops had behaved steadily enough at Waterloo, it was found that the presence and authority of "the Iron Duke" were utterly unable to keep them immoveable as soon as the hares began to jump up among them. Nay, at Inkerman, while the battle was raging, several men of the Guards were observed by their officers suddenly to cease firing at the Russians, who were close to them, in order to "_prog_" with their bayonets a poor little scared hare that was running among their feet!

In like manner, although the Anglo-Saxon race are proverbially phlegmatic (a word described by Johnson to mean "dull; cold; frigid"), yet no sooner do they hear, in the language of Shakspeare,

"The musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction,"

than the windows of manufactories are crowded with pale eager faces, the lanes, paths, and fields become dotted with the feet and ankles of people of various classes and ages, whose eyes are all straining to get a glimpse of the run. If Dolly be among them, her cow, wherever she may be, is quite as curious as herself.

As the fox, who has distanced his pursuers, lightly canters along the hedge-side of a large grass field, the sheep instantly not only congregate to stare at him, but for a considerable time remain spell-bound, gazing in the direction of his course. Herds of bullocks with noses almost touching the ground, and with long straight tails slanting upwards, jump sometimes into the air, and sometimes sideways, with joy. As soon as the hounds appear, the timid sheep instantly follow them, and accordingly, almost before the leading rider can make for and get through perhaps the only gap in an impracticable fence, eighty or a hundred of these "muttons," with fat, throbbing, jolting sides, rush to and block up the little passage, in and around which they stand, forming a dense mass of panting wool, on which no blow from a hunting-whip or from a hedge-stake produces the slightest effect; and thus the whole field of gentlemen sportsmen, to their utter disgust, are completely stopped. "_I had no idea_," lisps a very young hard-riding dandy, in as feminine and drawling a voice as he can concoct, "_I really hadn't the +SLIGHTEST+ idea, before, that sheep were such ---- fools_!" But their offspring are, in their generation, no wiser. A poor little lamb, almost just born, the instant it sees the hounds, will not only leave its mother to follow them, but under the legs of a crowd of horses--that if they can possibly avoid it will never tread upon it--canters along, until, its weak knees and lungs failing, it reels, and is left lying on its side, apparently dead.

+Cruelty of Hunting Considered.+

Over the closed eyes, panting flank, and exhausted frame of this tiny, innocent, and yet seduced orphan, who had never known its father, and has just lost its mother, we will venture to offer to our readers a very few remarks on the strange dissolving view that has just vanished, or rather galloped, from their sight.

"It's just," said Andrew Fairservice to Frank Osbaldistone, "amaist as silly as our auld daft laird here and his gomerils o' sons, wi' his huntsmen and his hounds, and his hunting cattle and horns, riding haill days after a bit beast that winna weigh sax punds when they hae catched it."