Riding Recollections, 5th ed. Part 10

At first you may be somewhat puzzled on entering a field to find your way out. I will suppose that in other countries you have been accustomed to select the easiest place at once in the fence you are approaching, and to make for it without delay, but across these large fields the nature of an obstacle deceives your eye. The two contiguous hedges that form one boundary render it very difficult to determine at a distance where the easiest place _is_, so you will find it best to follow the hounds, and take your chance. The deer, like your horse, is a large quadruped, and, except under unusual circ.u.mstances, where one goes the other can probably follow.

This, I fear, is a sad temptation to ride on the line of hounds. If you give way to it, let the whole pack be at least two or three hundred yards in front, and beware, even then, of tail hounds coming up to join their comrades.

Be careful also, never to jump a fence in your stride, till you see the pack well into the next field. A deer is very apt to drop lightly over a wall or upright hedge just high enough to conceal it, and then turn short at a right angle under this convenient screen. It would be painful to realise your feelings, poised in air over eight or ten couple of priceless hounds, with a chorus of remonstrances storming in the rear!

It is no use protesting you "Didn't touch them," you "Didn't mean it,"

you "Never knew they were there." Better ride doggedly on, over the largest places you can find, and apologise humbly to everybody at the first check.

When a fox goes down to water he means crossing, not so the deer. If at all tired, or heated, it may stay there for an hour. On such occasions, therefore, you can take a pull at your horse and your flask too if you like, while you look for the best way to the other side. When induced to leave it, however, the animal seems usually so refreshed by its bath, as to travel a long distance, and on this, as on many other occasions in stag-hunting, the run seems only beginning, when you and your horse consider it ought to be nearly over.

Directly you observe a deer, that has. .h.i.therto gone straight, describing a series of circles, you may think about going home.

It is tired at last, and will give you no more fun for a month. You should offer a.s.sistance to the men, and, even if it be not accepted, remain, as a matter of courtesy, to see your quarry properly taken, and sent back to the paddock in its cart.

With all stag-hounds, the same rules would seem to apply. Never care to view it, and above all, unless expressly requested to do so for a reason, avoid the solecism of "riding the deer." On the mode in which this sport is conducted depends the whole difference between a wild exhilarating pastime and a tame uninteresting parade. Though prejudice will not allow it is the _real_ thing, we cannot but admit the excellence of the imitation, and a man must possess a more logical mind, a less excitable temperament, than is usually allotted to sportsmen, who can remember, while sailing along with hounds running hard over a flying country, that he is only "trying to catch what he had already," and has turned a handsome hairy-coated quadruped out of a box for the mere purpose of putting it in again when the fun is over!

Follow every turn then, religiously, and with good intent. You came out expressly to enjoy a gallop, do not allow yourself to be disappointed.

If nerve and horse are good enough, go into every field with them, but, I intreat you, ride like a sportsman, and give the hounds plenty of room.

This last injunction more especially applies to that handsome pack of black-and-tans with which Lord Wolverton, during the last five or six seasons, has shown extraordinary sport for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his neighbours on the uplands of Dorset and in the green pastures that enrich the valley of the Stour. These blood-hounds, for such they are, and of the purest breed, stand seven or eight-and-twenty inches, with limbs and frames proportioned to so gigantic a stature. Their heads are magnificent, solemn sagacious eyes, pendent jowls, and flapping ears that brush away the dew. Thanks to his Lordship's care in breeding, and the freedom with which he has drafted, their feet are round and their powerful legs symmetrically straight. A spirited and truly artistic picture of these hounds in chase, sweeping like a whirlwind over the downs, by Mr. G.o.ddard, the well-known painter, hangs on Lord Wolverton's staircase in London, and conveys to his guests, particularly after dinner, so vivid an idea of their picturesque and even sporting qualities as I cannot hope to represent with humble pen and ink.

One could almost fancy, standing opposite this masterpiece, that one heard _the cry_. Full, sonorous, and musical, it is not extravagant to compare these deep-mouthed notes with the peal of an organ in a cathedral.

Yet they run a tremendous pace. Stride, courage, and _condition_ (the last essential requiring constant care) enable them to sustain such speed over the open as can make a good horse look foolish! While, amongst enclosures, they charge the fences in line, like a squadron of heavy dragoons.

Yet for all this fire and mettle in chase, they are sad cowards under pressure from a crowd. A whip cracked hurriedly, a horse galloping in their track, even an injudicious _rate_, will make the best of them shy and sulky for half the day. Only by thorough knowledge of his favourites, and patient deference to their prejudices, has Lord Wolverton obtained their confidence, and it is wonderful to mark how his perseverance is rewarded. While he hunts them they are perfectly handy, and turn like a pack of harriers; but if an outsider attempts to "cap them on," or otherwise interfere, they decline to acknowledge him from the first; and should they be left to his guidance, are quite capable of going straight home at once, with every mark of contempt.

In a run, however, their huntsman is seldom wanting. His lordship has an extraordinary knack of _galloping_, getting across a field with surprising quickness on every horse he rides, and is not to be turned by the fence when he reaches it, so that his hounds are rarely placed in the awkward position of a pack at fault with no one to look to for a.s.sistance. He has acquired, too, considerable familiarity with the habits of his game, and has a holy horror of going home without it, so perseveres, when at a loss, through many a long hour of cold hunting, slotting, scouring the country for information, and other drawbacks to enjoyment of his chase. As he says himself, "The worst of a deer is, you can't leave off when you like. n.o.body will believe you if you swear it went to ground!"

Part of the country in his immediate neighbourhood seems made for stag-hunting. Large fields, easy slopes, light fences, and light land, with here and there a hazel copse, bordering a stretch for three or four miles of level turf, like Launceston Down, or Blandford race-course, must needs tempt a deer to go straight no less than a horseman, but the animal, as I have said, is unaccountably capricious, and if we could search his lordship's diary I believe we should find his best runs have taken place over a district differing in every respect from the above.

As soon as the leaves are fallen sufficiently to render the Blackmoor Vale rideable, it is his greatest pleasure to take the blood-hounds down to those deep, level, and strongly-enclosed pastures, over which, notwithstanding the size and nature of the fences, he finds his deer (usually hinds) run remarkably well, and make extraordinary points. Ten miles, on the ordnance map, is no unusual distance, and is often accomplished in little more than an hour. For men who enjoy _riding_ I can conceive no better fun. Not an acre of plough is to be seen. The enclosures, perhaps, are rather small, but this only necessitates more jumping, and the fences may well satisfy the hungriest, or as an Irishman would say, the _thirstiest_, of compet.i.tors! They are not, however, _quite_ so formidable as they look. To accomplish two blind ditches, with a bank between, and a hedge thereon, requires indeed discretion in a horse, and cool determination in its rider, but where these exist the large leap is divided easily by two, and a good man, who _means going_, is not often to be _pounded_, even in the Blackmoor Vale.

Nothing is _quite_ perfect under the sun, not your own best hunter, nor your wife's last baby, and the river Stour, winding through them in every direction, somewhat detracts from the merit of these happiest of hunting-grounds. A good friend to the deer, and a sad hindrance to its pursuers, it has spoilt many a fine run; but even with this drawback there are few districts in any part of England so naturally adapted to the pleasures of the chase. The population is scanty, the countrymen are enthusiasts, the farmers the best fellows on earth, the climate seems unusually favourable; from the kindness and courtesy of Sir Richard Glynn and Mr. Portman, who pursue the _legitimate_ sport over the same locality, and his own personal popularity, the normal difficulties of his undertaking are got over in favour of the n.o.ble master, and everybody seems equally pleased to welcome the green plush coats and the good grey horses in the midst of the black-and-tans.

If I were sure of a fine morning and a _safe mount_, I would ask for no keener pleasure than an hour's gallop with Lord Wolverton's blood-hounds over the Blackmoor Vale.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PROVINCES.

A distinguished soldier of the present day, formerly as daring and enthusiastic a rider as ever charged his "oxers" with the certainty of a fall, was once asked in my hearing by a mild stranger, "Whether he had been out with the Crawley and Horsham?" if I remember right.

"No, sir!" was the answer, delivered in a tone that somewhat startled the querist, "I have never hunted with any hounds in my life but the Quorn and the Pytchley, and I'll take d----d good care I never do!"

Now I fancy that not a few of our "golden youth," who are either born to it, or have contrived in their own way to get the "silver spoon" into their mouths, are under the impression that all hunting must necessarily be dead slow if conducted out of Leicestershire, and that little sport, with less excitement, is to be obtained in those remote regions which they contemptuously term the provinces.

There never was a greater fallacy. If we calculate the number of hours hounds are out of kennel (for we must remember that the Quorn and Belvoir put two days into one), we shall find, I think, that they run hard for fewer minutes, in proportion, across the fashionable countries than in apparently less-favoured districts concealed at sundry out-of-the-way corners of the kingdom.

Nor is this disparity difficult to understand. Fox-hunting at its best is a wild sport; the wilder the better. Where coverts are many miles apart, where the animal must travel for its food, where agriculture is conducted on primitive principles that do not necessitate the huntsman's horror, "a man in every field," the fox retains all his savage nature, and is prepared to run any distance, face every obstacle, rather than succ.u.mb to his relentless enemy, the hound. He has need, and he seems to know it, of all his courage and all his sagacity, as compelled to fight alone on his own behalf, without a.s.sistance from that invaluable ally, the crowd.

A score of hard riders, nineteen of whom are jealous, and the twentieth determined not to be beat, forced on by a hundred comrades all eager for the view and its stentorian proclamation, may well save the life of any fox on earth, with scarce an effort from the animal itself. But that hounds are creatures of habit, and huntsmen in the flying countries miracles of patience, no less than their masters, not a nose would be nailed on the kennel-door, after cub-hunting was over, from one end of the shires to the other.

Nothing surprises me so much as to see a pack of hounds, like the Belvoir or the Quorn, come up _through_ a crowd of horses and stick to the line of their fox, or fling gallantly forward to recover it, without a thought of personal danger or the slightest misgiving that not one man in ten is master of the two pair of hoofs beneath him, carrying death in every shoe. Were they not bred for the make-and-shape that gives them speed no less than for fineness of nose, but especially for that _dash_ which, like all victorious qualities, leaves something to chance, they could never get a field from the covert. It does happen, however, that, now and again, a favourable stroke of fortune puts a couple of furlongs between the hounds and their pursuers. A hundred-acre field of well saturated gra.s.s lies before them, down go their noses, out go their sterns, and away they scour, at a pace which makes a precious example of young Rapid on a first-cla.s.s steeple-chase horse with the wrong bridle in its mouth.

But how differently is the same sport being carried out in his father's country, perhaps by the old gentleman's own pack, with which the young one considers it slow to hunt.

Let us begin at the beginning and try to imagine a good day in the provinces, about the third week in November, when leaves are thin and threadbare on the fences, while copse and woodland glisten under subdued shafts of sunlight in sheets of yellow gold.

What says Mr. Warburton, favoured of Diana and the Muses?

"The dew-drop is clinging To whin-bush and brake, The sky-lark is singing, Merry hunters, awake!

Home to the cover, Deserted by night, The little red rover Is bending his flight--"

Could words more stirringly describe the hope and promise, the joy, the vitality, the buoyant exhilaration of a hunting morning?

So the little red rover, who has travelled half-a-dozen miles for his supper, returns to find he has "forgotten his latch-key," and curls himself up in some dry, warm nook amongst the brushwood, at the quietest corner of a deep, precipitous ravine.

Here, while sleep favours digestion, he makes himself very comfortable, and dreams, no doubt, of his own pleasures and successes in pursuit of prey. Presently, about half-past eleven, he wakes with a start, leaps out of bed, shakes his fur, and stands to listen, a perfect picture, with one pad raised and his cunning head aslant. Yes, he recognized it from the first. The "Yooi, wind him, and rouse him!" of old Matthew's mellow tones, not unknown in a gin-and-water chorus when occasion warrants the convivial brew, yet clear, healthy, and resonant as the very roar of Challenger, who has just proclaimed his consciousness of the drag, some five hours old.

'Tis an experienced rover, and does not hesitate for an instant.

Stealing down the ravine, he twists his agile little body through a tangled growth of blackthorn and brambles, crosses the stream dry-footed with a leap, and, creeping through the fence that bounds his stronghold, peers into the meadow beyond. No smart and busy whip has "clapped forward" to view and head him. Matthew, indeed, brings out but one, and swears he could do better without _him_. So the rover puts his sharp nose straight for the solitude he loves, and whisking his brush defiantly, resolves to make his point.

He has been gone five minutes when the clamour of the find reaches his ears, twice that time ere the hounds are fairly out of covert on his line; so, with a clear head and a bold heart, he has leisure to consider his tactics and to remember the main earth at Crag's-end in the forest, twelve miles off as the crow flies.

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Challenger, and Charmer his progeny, crash out of the wood together, fairly howling with ecstasy as their busy noses meet the rich tufted herbage, dewy, dank, and tainted with the maddening odour that affords such uncontrolled enjoyment. "_Harve art_ him, my _lards_!" exclaims old Matthew, in Doric accents, peculiar to the kennel. "Come up, horse!"

and, having admonished that faithful servant with a dig in the ribs from his horn, blows half-a-dozen shrill blasts in quick succession, sticks the instrument, I shudder to confess it, in his boot, and proceeds to hustle his old white nag at the best pace he can command in the wake of his favourites. "Dang it! they're off," exclaims a farmer, who had stationed himself on the crest of the hill, diving, at a gallop, down a stony darkling lane, overgrown with alder, brambles, honeysuckle, all the garden produce of uncultivated nature, lush and steaming in decay.

The field, consisting of the Squire, three or four strapping yeomen, a parson, and a boy on a pony, follow his example, and making a good turn in the valley, find themselves splashing through a glittering, shallow streamlet, still in the lane, with the hounds not a bowshot from them on the right.

"And pace?" inquires young Rapid, when his father describes the run to him on Christmas-eve. "Of course you had no pace with so good a point?"

"Pace, sir!" answers the indignant parent; "my hounds _run_ because they can _hunt_. I tell you, they were never off the line for an hour and three-quarters! Matthew _would_ try to cast them once, and very nearly lost his fox, but Charmer hit it off on the other side of the combe and put us right. He's as like old Challenger as he can stick; a deal more like than _you_ are to _me_."

Young Rapid concedes the point readily, and the Squire continues his narrative: "I had but eighteen couple out, because of a run the week before--I'll tell you about it presently,--five-and-thirty minutes on the hills, and a kill in the open, that lamed half the pack amongst the flints. You talk of pace--they went fast enough to have settled the best of you, I'll warrant! but I'm getting off the line--I've not done with the other yet. I never saw hounds work better. They came away all together, they hunted their fox like a cl.u.s.ter of bees; swarming over every field, and every fence, they brought him across Tinglebury Tor, where it's always as dry as that hearth-stone, through a flock of five hundred sheep, they rattled him in and out of Combe-Bampton, though the Lower Woods were alive with riot--hares, roe, fallow-deer, hang it! apes and peac.o.c.ks if you like; had old Matthew not been a fool they would never have hesitated for a moment, and when they ran into him under Crag's-end, there wasn't a man-jack of them missing. Not one--that's what I call a pack of hounds!

"The best part of it? So much depends on whether you young fellows go out to hunt, or to ride. For the first half-hour or so we were never off the gra.s.s--there's not a ploughed field all the way up the valley till you come to Shifner's allotments, orchard and meadow, meadow and orchard, fetlock-deep in gra.s.s, even at this time of year. Why, it carries a side-scent, like the heather on a moor! I suppose you'd have called _that_ the best part. I didn't, though I saw it _well_ from the lane with Matthew and the rest of us, all but the Vicar, who went into every field with the hounds--I thought he was rather hard on them amongst those great blind, tangled fences; but he's such a good fellow, I hadn't the heart to holloa at him--it's very wrong though, and a man in his profession ought to know better.

"I can't say they checked exactly in the allotments, but the manure and rubbish, weeds burning, and whatnot, brought them to their noses. That's where Matthew made such a fool of himself; but, as I told you, Charmer put us all right. The fox had crossed into Combe-Bampton and was rising the hill for the downs.

"I never saw hounds so patient--they could but just hold a line over the chalk--first one and then another puzzled it out, till they got on better terms in Hazlewood Hanger, and when they ran down into the valley again between the cliffs there was a cry it did one's heart good to hear.

"I had a view of him, crossing Parker's Piece, the long strip of waste land, you know, under Craven Clump; and he seemed as fresh as you are now--I sat as mute as a mouse, for six-and-thirty noses knew better where he'd gone than I did, and six-and-thirty-tongues were at work that never told a lie. The Vicar gave them plenty of room by this time, and all our horses seemed to have had about enough!

"'I wish we mayn't have changed in the Hanger,' said Matthew, refreshing the old grey with a side-binder, as they blundered into the lane, but I knew better--he had run the rides, every yard, and that made me hope we should have him in hand before long.