"Buckskin"s the only wear fit for the saddle; Hats for Hyde Park, but a cap for the chase; In tops of black leather let fishermen paddle, The calves of a fox-hunter white ones encase.
"If your horse be well bred and in blooming condition, Both up to the country and up to your weight, Oh! then give the reins to your youthful ambition, Sit down in the saddle and keep his head straight.
"Eager and emulous only, not spiteful, Grudging no friend, though ourselves he may beat; Just enough danger to make sport delightful, Toil just sufficient to make slumbers sweet!"
CHAPTER XI.
SKETCHES OF HUNTING WITH FOX-HOUNDS AND HARRIERS.
The Fitzwilliam.--Brocklesby.--A day on the Wolds.--Brighton harriers.--Prince Albert"s harriers.
The following descriptions of my own sport with fox-hounds and harriers will give the uninitiated some idea of the average adventures of a hunting-day:--
A DAY WITH THE LATE EARL FITZWILLIAM"S HOUNDS.[176-*]
"LOO IN, LITTLE DEARIES. LOO IN."
How eagerly forward they rush; In a moment how widely they spread; Have at him there, Hotspur. Hush, hush!
"Tis a find, or I"ll forfeit my head.
Now fast flies the fox, and still faster The hounds from the cover are freed, The horn to the mouth of the master, The spur to the flank of his steed.
With Chorister, Concord, and Chorus, Now Chantress commences her song; Now Bellman goes jingling before us, And Sinbad is sailing along.
The Fitzwilliam pack was established by the grandfather of the present Earl between seventy and eighty years ago; they hunt four days a week over a north-east strip of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire--a wide, wild, thinly-populated district, with some fine woodlands; country that was almost all gra.s.s, until deep draining turned some cold clay pastures into arable. It holds a rare scent, and the woodland country can be hunted, when a hot sun does not bake the ground too hard, up to the first week in May, when, in most other countries, horns are silenced.
The country is wide enough, with foxes enough, to bear hunting six days a week. "Bless your heart, sir," said an old farmer, "there be foxes as tall as donkeys, as fat as pigs, in these woods, that go and die of old age."
The Fitzwilliam are supposed to be the biggest-boned hounds now bred, and exquisitely handsome. If they have a fault, they are, for want of work, or excess of numbers, rather too full of flesh; so that at the end of the year, when the days grow warm, they seem to tire and tail in a long run.
Many of the pasture fences are big enough to keep out a bullock; the ditches wide and full of water; bulfinches are to be met with, stiff rails, gates not always unlocked; so, although a Pytchley flyer is not indispensable, on a going day, nothing less than a hunter can get along.
Tom Sebright, as a huntsman and breeder of hounds, has been a celebrity ever since he hunted the Quorn, under Squire Osbaldeston, six-and-thirty years ago. Sebright looks the huntsman, and the huntsman of an hereditary pack, to perfection; rather under than over the middle height; stout without being unwieldy; with a fine, full, intelligent, and fresh-complexioned oval countenance; keen gray eyes; and the decided nose of a Cromwellian Ironside. A fringe of white hair below his cap, and a broad bald forehead, when he lifts his cap to cheer his hounds, tell the tale of Time on this accomplished veteran of the chase.
"The field," with the Fitzwilliam, is more aristocratic than fashionable; it includes a few peers and their friends from neighbouring n.o.ble mansions, a good many squires, now and then undergraduates from Cambridge, a very few strangers by rail, and a great many first-cla.s.s yeoman farmers and graziers. Thus it is equally unlike the fashionable "cut-me-down" mult.i.tude to be met at coverside in the "Shires" _par excellence_, and the scarlet mob who rush, and race, and lark from and back to Leamington and Cheltenham. For seeing a good deal of sport in a short time, the Fitzwilliam is certainly the best, within a hundred miles of London. You have a first-rate pack, first-rate huntsman, a good scenting country, plenty of foxes, fair fences to ride over, and though last not least, very courteous reception, if you know how to ride and when to hold your tongue and your horse.
My fortunate day with the Fitzwilliam was in their open pasture, Huntingdon country. My head-quarters were at the celebrated "Hayc.o.c.k,"
which is known, or ought to be known, to every wandering fox-hunter, standing as it does in the middle of the Fitzwilliam Hunt, within reach of some of the best meets of the Pytchley and the Warwickshire, and not out of reach of the Cottesmore and Belvoir. It is much more like a Lincolnshire Wolds farmhouse than an inn. The guests are regular _habitues_; you find yourself in a sort of fox-hunting clubhouse, in a large, snug dining-room; not the least like Albert Smith"s favourite aversion, a coffee-room; you have a first-rate English dinner, undeniable wine, real cream with your tea, in a word, all the comforts and most of the luxuries of town and country life combined. If needful, Tom Percival will provide you with a flyer for every day in the week, and you will be sure to meet with one or two guests, able and willing, ready to canter with you to cover, explain the chart of the country, and, if you are in the first year of boots and breeches, show you as Squire Warburton sings, how "To sit down in your saddle and put his head straight."
The meet, within four miles of the inn, was in a park by the side of a small firwood plantation. Punctual to a minute, up trotted Sebright on a compact, well-bred chestnut in blooming condition, the whips equally well mounted on thoroughbreds, all dressed in ample scarlet coats and dark cord breeches--a style of dress in much better taste than the tight, short dandified costume of the fashionable hunt, where the huntsman can scarcely be distinguished from the "swell."
Of the Earl"s family there were present a son and daughter, and three grandsons, beautiful boys, in Lincoln green loose jackets, brown cord breeches, black boots, and caps; of these, the youngest, a fair, rosy child of about eight or nine years old, on a thorough-bred chestnut pony, was all day the admiration of the field; he dashed along full of genuine enthusiasm, stopping at nothing practicable.
Amongst others present was a tall, lithe, white-haired, white-moustached, dignified old gentleman, in scarlet and velvet cap, riding forward on a magnificent gray horse, who realised completely the poetical idea of a n.o.bleman. This was the Marquess of H----, known well forty years ago in fashionable circles, when George IV. was Prince, now popular and much esteemed as a country gentleman and improving landlord.
There was also Mr. H----, an M.P., celebrated, before he settled into place and "ceased his hum," as a hunter of bishops--a handsome, dark man, in leathers and patent Napoleons; with his wife on a fine bay horse, who rode boldly throughout the day.
In strange countries I usually pick out a leader in some well-knowing farmer; but this day I made a grand mistake, by selecting for my guide a slim, quiet-looking, young fellow, in a black hat and coat, white cords, and boots, on a young chestnut--never dreaming that my quiet man was Alec ----, a farmer truly, but also a provincial celebrity as a steeplechaser.
The day was mild, cloudy, with a gentle wind. We drew several covers blank, and found a fox, about one o"clock, in a small spinney, from which he bolted at the first summons. A beautiful picture it was to see gallant old Sebright get his hounds away, the ladies racing down a convenient green lane, and the little Fitzwilliam, in Lincoln green, charging a double flight of hurdles. In half-an-hour"s strong running I had good reason to rejoice that Percival had, with due respect for the fourth estate, put me on an unmistakable hunter. Our line took us over big undulating fields (almost hills), with, on the flats or valleys, a large share of willow-bordered ditches (they would call them brooks in some counties), with thick undeniable hedges between the pollards. At the beginning of the run, my black-coated friend led me--much as a dog in a string leads a blind man--at a great pace, into a farm-yard, thus artfully cutting off a great angle, over a most respectable stone wall into a home paddock, over a stile into a deep lane, and then up a bank as steep as a gothic roof, and almost as long; into a fifty-acre pasture, where, racing at best pace, we got close to the hounds just before they checked, between a broad unjumpable drain and a willow bed--two fine resources for a cunning fox. There I thought it well, having so far escaped grief, to look out for a leader who was less of a bruiser, while I took breath. In the meantime Sebright, well up, hit our friend off with a short cast forward, and after five minutes" slow hunting, we began to race again over a flat country of gra.s.s, with a few big ploughed fields, fences easier, ladies and ponies well up again.
After brushing through two small coverts without hanging, we came out on a series of very large level gra.s.s fields, where I could see the gray horse of the marquis, and the black hat of my first leader sailing in front; a couple of stiff hedges and ditches were got over comfortably; the third was a regular bulfinch, six or seven feet high, with a gate so far away to the right that to make for it was to lose too much time, as the hounds were running breast high. Ten yards ahead of me was Mr. Frank G----, on a Stormer colt, evidently with no notion of turning; so I hardened my heart, felt my bay nag full of going, and kept my eye on Mr.
Frank, who made for the only practicable place beside an oak-tree with low branches, and, stooping his head, popped through a place where the hedge showed daylight, with his hand over his eyes, in the neatest possible style. Without hesitating a moment I followed, rather too fast and too much afraid of the tree, and pulled too much into the hedge. In an instant I found myself torn out of the saddle, balanced on a blackthorn bough (fortunately I wore leathers), and deposited on the right side of the hedge on my back; whence I rose just in time to see Bay Middleton disappear over the next fence. So there I was alone in a big gra.s.s field, with strong notions that I should have to walk an unknown number of miles home. Judge of my delight as I paced slowly along--running was of no use--at seeing Frank G---- returning with my truant in hand. Such an action in the middle of a run deserves a Humane Society"s medal. To struggle breathless into my seat; to go off at score, to find a lucky string of open gates, to come upon the hounds at a check, was my good fortune. But our fox was doomed--in another quarter of an hour at a hand gallop we hunted him into a shrubbery, across a home field into an ornamental clump of laurels, back again to the plantation, where a couple and a half of leading hounds pulled him down, and he was brought out by the first whip dead and almost stiff, without a mark--regularly run down by an hour and twenty minutes with two very short checks. Had the latter part of the run been as fast as the first, there would have been very few of us there to see the finish.
ON THE LINCOLNSHIRE WOLDS.
I started to meet Lord Yarborough"s hounds, from the house of a friend, on a capital Wold pony for cover hack. It used to be said, before non-riding masters of hounds had broadcasted bridle-gates over the Quorn country, that a Leicestershire hack was a pretty good hunter for other counties. We may say the same of a Lincolnshire Wolds pony--his master, farming not less than three hundred and more likely fifteen hundred acres, has no time to lose in crawling about on a punchy half-bred cart-horse, like a smock-frocked tenant--the farm must be visited before hunting, and the market-towns lie too far off for five miles an hour jog-trot to suit. It is the Wold fashion to ride farming at a pretty good pace, and take the fences in a fly where the gate stands at the wrong corner of the field. Broad strips of turf fringe the road, offering every excuse for a gallop, and our guide continually turned through a gate or over a hurdle, and through half a dozen fields, to save two sides of an angle. These fields contrast strangely with the ancient counties--large, and square, and clean, with little ground lost in hedgerows. The great cop banks of Ess.e.x, Devon, and Cheshire are almost unknown--villages you scarcely see, farmhouses rarely from the roadside, for they mostly stand well back in the midst of their acres.
Gradually creeping up the Wold--pa.s.sing through, here vast turnip-fields, fed over by armies of long-woolled Lincoln sheep; there, stubble yielding before from a dozen to a score of pair-horse ploughs, silent witnesses of the scale of Lincolnshire farming--at length we see descending and winding along a bridle-road before us, the pied pack and the gleam of the huntsman"s scarlet. Around, from every point of the compa.s.s the "field" come ambling, trotting, cantering, galloping, on hacks, on hunters, through gates or over fences, practising their Yorkshire four-year-olds. There are squires of every degree, Lincolnshire M.P."s, parsons in black, in number beyond average; tenant-farmers, in quant.i.ty and quality such as no other county we have ever seen can boast, velvet-capped and scarlet-coated, many with the Brocklesby hunt b.u.t.ton, mounted on first-cla.s.s hunters, whom it was a pleasure to see them handle; and these were not young bloods, outrunning the constable, astonishing their landlords and alarming their fathers; but amongst the ruck were respectable grandfathers who had begun hunting on ponies when Stubbs was painting great-grandfather Smith, and who had as a matter of course brought up their sons to follow the line in which they had been cheered on by Arthur Young"s Lord Yarborough. There they were, of all ages, from the white-haired veteran who could tell you when every field had been inclosed, to the little petticoated orphan boy on a pony, "whose father"s farm had been put in trust for him by the good Earl."
Of the ordinary mob that crowd fox-hound meets from great cities and fashionable watering-places, there were none. The swell who comes out to show his clothes and his horse; the nondescript, who may be a fast Life-Guardsman or a fishmonger; the lot of horse-dealers; and, above all, those _blase_ gentlemen who, bored with everything, openly express their preference for a carted deer or red-herring drag, if a straight running fox is not found in a quarter of an hour after the hounds are thrown into cover. The men who ride on the Lincolnshire Wolds are all sportsmen, who know the whole country as well as their own gardens, and are not unfrequently personally acquainted with the peculiar appearance and habits of each fox on foot. Altogether they are as formidable critics as any professional huntsman would care to encounter.
There is another pleasant thing. In consequence, perhaps, of the rarity, strangers are not snubbed as in some counties; and you have no difficulty in getting information to any extent on subjects agricultural and fox-hunting (even without that excellent pa.s.sport which I enjoyed of a hunter from the stables of the n.o.ble Master of the Hounds), and may be pretty sure of more than one hospitable and really-meant invitation in the course of the return ride when the sport is ended.
But time is up, and away we trot--leaving the woods of Limber for the present--to one of the regular Wolds, artificial coverts, a square of gorse of several acres, surrounded by a turf bank and ditch, and outside again by fields of the ancient turf of the moorlands. In go the hounds at a word, without a straggler; and while they make the gorse alive with their lashing sterns, there is no fear of our being left behind for want of seeing which way they go, for there is neither plantation nor hedge, nor hill of any account to screen us. And there is no fear either of the fox being stupidly headed, for the field all know their business, and are fully agreed, as old friends should be, on the probable line.
A very faint Tally-away, and cap held up, by a fresh complexioned, iron-gray, bullet-headed old gentleman, of sixteen stone, mounted on a four-year-old, brought the pack out in a minute from the far end of the covert, and we were soon going, holding hard, over a newly-ploughed field, looking out sharp for the next open gate; but it is at the wrong corner, and by the time we have reached the middle of fifty acres, a young farmer in scarlet, sitting upright as a dart, showed the way over a new rail in the middle of a six-foot quickset. Our nag, "Leicestershire," needs no spurring, but takes it pleasantly, with a hop, skip, and jump; and by the time we had settled into the pace on the other side, the senior on the four-year-old was alongside, crying, "Push along, sir; push along, or they"ll run clean away from you. The fences are all fair on the line we"re going." And so they were--hedges thick, but jumpable enough, yet needing a hunter nevertheless, especially as the big fields warmed up the pace amazingly; and, as the majority of the farmers out were riding young ones destined for finished hunters in the pasture counties, there was above an average of resolution in the style of going at the fences. The ground almost all plough, naturally drained by chalk sub-subsoil, fortunately rode light; but presently we pa.s.sed the edge of the Wolds, held on through some thin plantations over the demesne gra.s.s of a squire"s house, then on a bit of unreclaimed heath, where a flock of sheep brought us to a few minutes" check. With the help of a veteran of the hunt, who had been riding well up, a cast forward set us agoing again, and brought us, still running hard, away from the Wolds to low ground of new inclosures, all gra.s.s, fenced in by ditch and new double undeniable rails. As we had a good view of the style of country from a distance, we thought it wisest, as a stranger, on a strange horse, with personally a special distaste to double fences, to pull gently, and let half-a-dozen young fellows on half-made, heavy-weight four or five years old, go first. The results of this prudent and unplucky step were most satisfactory; while two or three, with a skill we admired, without venturing to imitate, went the "in and out" clever, the rest, some down and some blundering well over, smashed at least one rail out of every two, and let the "stranger" through comfortably at a fair flying jump. After three or four of these tremendous fields, each about the size of Mr. Mechi"s farm, a shepherd riding after his flock on a pony opened a gate just as the hounds, after throwing up their heads for a minute, turned to the right, and began to run back to the Wolds at a slower rate than we started, for the fox was no doubt blown by the pace; and so up what are called hills there (they would scarcely be felt in Devonshire or Surrey), we followed at a hand gallop right up to the plantations of Brocklesby Park, and for a good hour the hounds worked him round and round the woods, while we kept as near them as we could, racing along green rides as magnificent in their broad spread verdures and overhanging evergreen walls of holly and laurel as any Watteau ever painted. The Lincolnshire gentry and yeomanry, scarlet coated and velvet capped, on their great blood horses sweeping down one of the grand evergreen avenues of Brocklesby Park, say toward the Pelham Pillar, is a capital untried subject, in colour, contrast, and living interest, for an artist who can paint men as well as horses.
At length when every dodge had been tried, Master Reynard made a bolt in despair. We raced him down a line of fields of very pretty fencing to a small lake, where wild ducks squatted up, and there ran into him, after a fair although not a very fast day"s sport: a more honest hunting, yet courageous dashing pack we never rode to. The scarcity of villages, the general spa.r.s.eness of the population, the few roads, and those almost all turf-bordered, and on a level with the fields, the great size of the enclosures, the prevalence of light arable land, the nuisance of flocks of sheep, and yet a good scenting country, are the special features of the Wolds. When you leave them and descend, there is a country of water, drains, and deep ditches, that require a real water-jumper. Two points specially strike a stranger--the complete hereditary air of the pack, and the attendants, so different from the piebald, new-varnished appearance of fashionable subscription packs. Smith, the huntsman, is fourth in descent of a line of Brocklesby huntsmen; Robinson, the head groom, had just completed his half century of service at Brocklesby; and Barnetby, who rode Lord Yarborough"s second horse, was many years in the same capacity with the first Earl. But, after all, the Brocklesby tenants--the Nainbys, the Brookes, the Skipwiths, and other Woldsmen, names "whom to mention would take up too much room," as the "Eton Grammar" says--tenants who, from generation to generation, have lived, and flourished, and hunted under the Pelham family--a spirited, intelligent, hospitable race of men--these alone are worth travelling from Land"s End to see, to hear, to dine with; to learn from their sayings and doings what a wise, liberal, resident landlord--a lover of field sports, a promoter of improved agriculture--can do in the course of generations toward "breeding" a first-cla.s.s tenantry, and feeding thousands of townsfolk from acres that a hundred years ago only fed rabbits. We should recommend those M.P."s who think fox-hunting folly, to leave their books and debates for a day"s hunting on the Wolds. We think it will be hard to obtain such happy results from the mere pen-and-ink regulations of chamber legislators and haters of field sports. Three generations of the Pelhams turned thousands of acres of waste in heaths and Wolds into rich farm-land; the fourth did his part by giving the same district railways and seaport communication. When we find learned mole-eyed pedants sneering at fox-hunters, we may call the Brocklesby kennels and the Pelham Pillar as witnesses on the side of the common sense of English field sports. It was hunting that settled the Pelhams in a remote country and led them to colonise a waste.
There is one excellent custom at the hunting-dinners at Brocklesby Park which we may mention, without being guilty of intrusion on private hospitality. At a certain hour the stud-groom enters and says, "My Lord, the horses are bedded up;" then the whole party rise, make a procession through the stables, and return to coffee in the drawing-room. This custom was introduced by the first Lord Yarborough some half-century ago, in order to break through the habit of late sitting over wine that then was too prevalent.
HARRIERS--ON THE BRIGHTON DOWNS.
Long before hunting sounds are to be heard, except the early morning cub-hunters routing woodlands, and the autumn stag-hunters of Exmoor, harrier packs are hard at work racing down and up the steep hillside and along the chalky valleys of Brighton Downs, preparing old sportsmen for the more earnest work of November--training young ones into the meaning of pace, the habit of riding fast down, and the art of climbing quickly, yet not too quickly, up hill--giving const.i.tutional gallops to wheezy aldermen, or enterprizing adults fresh from the riding-school--affording fun for fast young ladies and pleasant sights for a crowd of foot-folks and fly-loads, halting on the brows of the steep combs, content with the living panorama.
The Downs and the sea are the redeeming features of Brighton, considered as a place of change and recreation for the over-worked of London.
Without these advantages one might quite as well migrate from the City to Regent Street, varying the exercise by a stroll along the Serpentine.
To a man who needs rest there is something at first sight truly frightful in the townish gregariousness of Brighton proper, with its pretentious common-place architecture, and its ceaseless bustle and rolling of wheels. But then comes into view first the sea, stretching away into infinite silence and solitude, dotted over on sunny days with pleasure-boats; and next, perpetually dashing along the league of sea-borded highway, group after group of gay riding-parties of all ages and both s.e.xes--Spanish hats, feathers, and riding-habits--_amazones_, according to the French cla.s.sic t.i.tle, in the majority. First comes Papa Briggs, with all his progeny, down to the little bare-legged imitation Highlander on a s.h.a.ggy Shetland pony; then a riding-master in mustachios, boots, and breeches, with a dozen pupils in divers stages of timidity and full-blown temerity; and then again loving pairs in the process of courtship or the ecstasies of the honeymoon, pacing or racing along, indifferent to the interest and admiration that such pairs always excite. Besides the groups there are single figures, military and civil, on prancing thorough-bred hacks and solid weight-carrying cobs, contrasted with a great army of hard-worked animals, at half-a-crown an hour which compose the bulk of the Brighton cavalry, for horse-hiring at Brighton is the rule, private possession the exception; nowhere else, except, perhaps, at Oxford, is the custom so universal, and nowhere do such odd, strange people venture to exhibit themselves "a-horseback." As Dublin is said to be the car-drivingest, so is Brighton the horse-ridingest city in creation; and it is this most healthy, mental and physical exercise, with the summer-sea yacht excursions, which const.i.tute the difference and establishes the superiority of this marine offshoot of London over any foreign bathing-place. Under French auspices we should have had something infinitely more magnificent, gay, gilded, and luxurious in architecture, in shops, in restaurants, cafes, theatres, and ball-rooms; but pleasure-boat sails would have been utterly unknown, and the horse-exercise confined to a few daring cavaliers and theatrical ladies.
It is doubtless the open Downs that originally gave the visitors of Brighton (when it was Brighthelmstone, the little village patronised by the Prince, by "the Burney," and Mrs. Thrale) the habit of const.i.tutional canters to a degree unknown in other pleasure towns; and the traditional custom has been preserved in the face of miles of brick and stucco. With horses in legions, and Downs at hand, a pack of hounds follows naturally; hares of a rare stout breed are plentiful; and the tradesmen have been acute enough to discover that a plentiful and varied supply of hunting facilities is one of the most safe, certain, and profitable attractions they can provide. Cheltenham and Bath has each its stag-hounds; Brighton does better, less expensively, and pleases more people, with two packs of harriers, hunting four days (and, by recent arrangements, a pack of fox-hounds filling up the other two days) of the week; so that now it may be considered about the best place in the country for making sure of a daily const.i.tutional gallop from October to March at short notice, and with no particular attention to costume and a very moderate stud, or no stud at all.
With these and a few other floating notions of air, exercise, and change of scene in my head--having decided that, however tempting to the caricaturist, the amus.e.m.e.nt of hundreds was not to be despised--I took my place at eight o"clock, at London-bridge station, in a railway carriage--the best of hacks for a long distance--on a bright October morning, with no other change from ordinary road-riding costume than one of Callow"s long-lashed, instead of a straight-cutting, whips, so saving all the impediments of baggage. By ten o"clock I was wondering what the "sad sea waves" were saying to the strange costumes in which it pleases the fair denizens of Brighton to deck themselves. My horse, a little, wiry, well-bred chestnut, had been secured beforehand at a dealer"s, well known in the Surrey country.
The meet was the race-course, a good three miles from the Parade. The Brighton meets are stereotyped. The Race-course, Tels...o...b.. Tye, the Devil"s d.y.k.e, and Thunders Barrow are repeated weekly. But of the way along the green-topped chalk cliffs, beside the far-spreading sea, or up and down the moorland hills and valleys, who can ever weary? Who can weary of hill and dale and the eternal sea?
To those accustomed to an inclosed country there is something extremely curious in mile after mile of open undulating downs lost in the distant horizon. My day was bright. About eleven o"clock the hors.e.m.e.n and _amazones_ arrived in rapidly-succeeding parties, and gathered on the high ground. Pleasure visitors, out for the first time--distinguished by their correct costume and unmistakably hired animals--caps and white breeches, spotless tops and shining Napoleons--were mounted on hacks battered about the legs, and rather rough in the coat, though hard and full of go; but trousers were the prevailing order of the day. Medical men were evident, in correct white ties, on neat ponies and superior cobs; military in mufti, on pulling steeplechasers; some farmers in leggings on good young nags for sale, and good old ones for use. London lawyers in heather mixture shooting-suits and Park hacks; lots of little boys and girls on ponies--white or cream-coloured being the favourites; at least one master of far distant fox-hounds pack, on a blood-colt, master and horse alike new to the country and to the sport.
Riding-masters, with their lady pupils t.i.ttupping about on the live rocking-horses that form the essential stock of every riding-master"s establishment, with one or two papas of the pupils--"worthy" aldermen, or authorities of the Stock Exchange, expensively mounted, gravely looking on, with an expression of doubt as to whether they ought to have been there or not; and then a crowd of the nondescripts, bankers and brewers trying to look like squires, neat and grim, among the well and ill dressed, well and ill mounted, who form the staple of every watering-place,--with this satisfactory feature pervading the whole gathering, that with the exception of a few whose first appearance it was in saddle on any turf, and the before-mentioned grim brewers, all seemed decidedly jolly and determined to enjoy themselves.
The hounds drew up; to criticise them elaborately would be as unfair, under the circ.u.mstances, as to criticise a pot-luck dinner of beans and bacon put before a hungry man. They are not particularly handsome--white patches being the prevailing colour; and they certainly do not keep very close; but they are fast enough, persevering, and, killing a fair share of hares, show very good sport to both lookers-on and hard riders. The huntsman Willard, who has no "whip" to help him, and often more a.s.sistance than he requires, is a heavy man, but contrives, in spite of his weight, to get his hounds in the fastest runs.
The country, it may be as well to say for the benefit of the thousands who have never been on these famous mutton-producing "South Downs," is composed of a series of table-lands divided by basin-like valleys, for the most part covered with short turf, with large patches of gorse and heather, in which the hares, when beaten, take refuge. Of late years, high prices and Brighton demand, with the new system of artificial agriculture, have pushed root crops and corn crops into sheltered valleys and far over the hills, much to the disgust of the ancient race of shepherds.
It is scarcely necessary to observe, that on Brighton Downs there are no blank days, but the drawing is a real operation performed seriously until such a time as the company having all a.s.sembled, say at half-past seven o"clock, when, if the unaided faculties of the pack have not brought them up to a form, a shepherd appears as the _Deus ex machina_.
In spite of all manner of precautions, the hounds will generally rush up to the point without hunting; loud rises the joyful cry; and, if it is level ground, the whole meet--hacks, hobbie-horses, and hunters--look as if their riders meant to go off in a whirlwind of trampling feet. There is usually a circle or two with the stoutest hare before making a long stretch; but, on lucky days like that of our first and last visit, the pace mends the hounds settle, the riding-masters check their more dashing pupils, the crowd gets dispersed, and rides round, or halts on the edges, or crawls slowly down the steep-sided valleys; while the hard riders catch their nags by the head, in with the spurs, and go down straight and furious, as if they were away for ever and a day; but the pedestrians and const.i.tutional cob-owners are comforted by a.s.surances that the hare is sure to run a ring back. But, on our day, p.u.s.s.y, having lain _perdu_ during a few minutes" check, started up suddenly amid a full cry, and rather too much hallooing. A gentleman in large mustachios and a velvet cap rode at her as if he meant to catch her himself. Away we all dashed, losing sight of the dignity of fox-hunters--all mad as hatters (though why hatters should be madder than cappers it would be difficult to say). The pace becomes tremendous; the pack tails by twos and threes; the valleys grow steeper; the field lingers and halts more and more at each steeper comb; the lads who have hurried straight up the hillsides, instead of creeping up by degrees blow their horses and come to a full stop; while old hands at Devonshire combs and Surrey steeps take their nags by the head, rush down like thunder, and slily zigzag up the opposite face at a trot; and so, for ten minutes, so straight, that a stranger, one of three in front, cried, "By Jove, it must be a fox!"
But at that moment the leading hounds turned sharp to the right and then to the left--a shrill squeak, a cry of hounds, and all was over. The sun shone out bright and clear; looking up from the valley on the hills, nine-tenths of the field were to be seen a mile in the distance, galloping, trotting, walking, or standing still, scattered like a pulk of pursuing Cossacks. The sight reminded me that, putting aside the delicious excitement of a mad rush down hill at full-speed, the lookers-on, the young ladies on ponies, and old gentlemen on cobs, see the most of the sport in such a country as the Brighton Downs; while in a flat inclosed, or wooded country, those who do not ride are left alone quite deserted, five minutes after the hounds get well away.
We killed two more hares before retiring for the day, but as they ran rings in the approved style, continually coming back to the slow, prudent, and const.i.tutional riders, there was nothing to distinguish them from all other hare-hunts. After killing the last hare there was ample time to get back to Brighton, take a warm bath, dress, and stroll on the Esplanade for an hour in the midst of as gay and brilliant crowd, vehicular, equestrian, and pedestrian, as can be found in Europe, before sitting down to a quiet dinner, in which the delicious Southdown haunch was not forgotten. So ended a day of glorious weather and pleasant sport, jolly--if not in the highest degree genteel.