THE YORKSHIREMAN AND THE SURREY
IT is an axiom among fox-hunters that the hounds they individually hunt with are the best—compared with them all others are ‘slow.’
Of this species of pardonable egotism, Mr. Jorrocks —who in addition to the conspicuous place he holds in the Surrey Hunt, as shown in the preceding chapter, we should introduce to our readers as a substantial grocer in St. Botolph’s Lane, with an elegant residence in Great Coram Street, Russell Square—has his full, if not rather more than his fair share. Vanity, however, is never satisfied without display, and Mr. Jorrocks longed for a customer before whom he could exhibit the prowess of his1 pack.
Chance threw in his way a young Yorkshireman who, frequently appearing in subsequent pages, we may introduce as a looseish sort of hand, up to anything in the way of a lark, but rather deficient in cash—a character so common in London as to render further description needless.
Now it is well known that a Yorkshireman, like a dragoon, is nothing without his horse, and if he does understand anything better than racing—it is hunting. Our readers will therefore readily conceive that a Yorkshireman is more likely to be astonished at the possibility of fox-hunting from London, than captivated by the country, or style of turn-out; and in truth, looking at it calmly and dispassionately, in our easy-chair drawn to a window which overlooks the cream of the grazing grounds in the Vale of Whitehorse, it does strike us with astonishment that such a thing as a fox should be found within a day’s ride of the suburbs. The very idea seems preposterous, for one cannot but associate the charms of a ‘find’ with the horrors of ‘going to ground’ in an omnibus, or the fox being headed by a great Dr. Eady placard, or some such monstrosity. Mr. Mayne,2 to be sure, has brought racing home to every man’s door, but fox-hunting is not quite so tractable a sport. But to our story.
It was on a nasty, cold, foggy, dark drizzling morning in the month of February that the Yorkshireman, having been offered a ‘mount’ by Mr. Jorrocks, found himself shivering under the Piazza in Covent Garden about seven o’clock, surrounded by cabs, cabbages, carrots, ducks, dollys, and drabs of all sorts, waiting for his horse and the appearance of the friend who had seduced him into the extraordinary predicament of attiring himself in top-boots and breeches in London. After pacing up and down some minutes, the sound of a horse’s hoofs were heard turning down from Long Acre, and reaching the lamp-post at the corner of James Street, his astonished eyes were struck with the sight of a man in a capacious, long, full-tailed, red frock coat reaching nearly to his spurs, with mother-of-pearl buttons with sporting devices,—which afterwards proved to be foxes, done in black,—brown shag breeches, that would have been spurned by the late worthy master of the Hurworth,3 and boots that looked for all the world as if they were made to tear up the very land and soil, tied round the knees with pieces of white tape, the flowing ends of which dangled over the mahogany-coloured tops. Mr. Jorrocks—whose dark collar, green, to his coat, and tout-ensemble, might have caused him to be mistaken for a mounted general postman—was on a most becoming steed,—a great raking, raw-boned chestnut, with a twisted snaffle in his mouth, decorated with a faded yellow silk front, a nose-band, and an ivory ring under his jaws, for the double purpose of keeping the reins together and Jorrocks’s teeth in his head,— the nag having flattened the noses and otherwise damaged the countenances of his two previous owners, who had not the knack of preventing him tossing his head in their faces. The saddle—large and capacious —made on the principle of the impossibility of putting a round of beef upon a pudding-plate—was ‘spick and span new,’ as was an enormous hunting-whip, whose iron-headed hammer he clenched in a way that would make the blood curdle in one’s veins, to see such an instrument in the hands of a misguided man.
‘Punctuality is the politeness of princes,’ said Mr. Jorrocks, raising a broad-brimmed, lowish-crowned hat, as high as a green hunting-cord which tackled it to his yellow waistcoat by a fox’s tooth would allow, as he came upon the Yorkshireman at the corner, ‘My soul’s on fire and eager for the chase! By heavens, I declare I’ve dreamt of nothing else all night, and the worst of it is, that in a par-ox-ism of delight, when I thought I saw the darlings running into the warmint, I brought Mrs. J. such a dig in the side as knocked her out of bed, and she swears she’ll go to Jenner and the court for the protection of injured ribs! But come—jump up—where’s your nag? Binjimin, you blackguard, where are you? The fog is blinding me, I declare! Binjimin, I say! Binjimin! you willain, where are you?’
‘Here, sir! coming!’ responded a voice from the bottom of one of the long mugs at a street breakfast stall, which the fog almost concealed from their view, and presently an urchin in a drab coat and blue collar came towing a wretched, ewe-necked, hungry-looking roan rosinante along from where he had been regaling himself with a mug of undeniable bohea, sweetened with a composition of brown sugar and sand.
‘Now be after getting up,’ said Jorrocks, ‘for time and the Surrey ’ounds wait for no man. That’s not a werry elegant tit, but still it’ll carry you to Croydon well enough, where I’ll put you on a most undeniable bit of ’orse flesh—a reg’lar clipper. That’s a hack,—what they calls three-and-sixpence a side, but I only pays half a crown. Now, Binjimin, cut away home, and tell Batsay to have dinner ready at half-past five to a minute, and to be most particular in doing the lamb to a turn.’
The Yorkshireman having adjusted himself in the old flat-flapped hack saddle, and got his stirrups let out from ‘Binjimin’s’ length to his own, gathered up the stiff weather-beaten reins, gave the animal a touch with his spurs, and fell into the rear of Mr. Jorrocks. The morning appeared to be getting worse. Instead of the grey day-dawn of the country, when the thin transparent mist gradually rises from the hills, revealing an unclouded landscape, a dense, thick, yellow fog came rolling in masses along the streets, obscuring the gas lights, and rendering every step one of peril. It could be both eat and felt, and the damp struck through their clothes in the most summary manner. ‘This is bad,’ said Mr. Jorrocks, coughing as he turned the corner by Drury Lane, making for Catherine Street, and upsetting an early breakfast and periwinkle stall, by catching one corner of the fragile fabric with his toe, having ridden too near to the pavement. ‘Where are you for now? and bad luck to ye, ye boiled lobster!’ roared a stout Irish wench, emerging from a neighbouring gin-palace, on seeing the dainty viands rolling in the street. ‘Cut away!’ cried Jorrocks to his friend, running his horse between one of George Stapleton’s dust-carts and a hackney-coach, ‘or the Philistines will be upon us.’ The fog and crowd concealed them, but ‘Hulloa! mind where you’re going, you great haw-buck,’ from a buy-a-hearthstone boy, whose stock-in-trade Jorrocks nearly demolished as he crossed the corner of Catherine Street before him, again roused his vigilance. ‘The deuce be in the fog,’ said he, ‘I declare I can’t see across the Strand. It’s as dark as a wolf’s mouth.—Now, where are you going to with that measly-looking cab of yours? —you’ve nearly run your shafts into my ’oss’s ribs!’ cried he to a cabman who nearly upset him. The Strand was kept alive by a few slip-shod housemaids, on their marrow-bones, washing the doorsteps or ogling the neighbouring pot-boy on his morning errand for the pewters. Now and then a crazy jarvey passed slowly by, while a hurrying mail, with a drowsy driver and sleeping guard, rattled by, to deliver their cargo at the post office. Here and there appeared one of those beings, who, like the owl, hide themselves by day and are visible only in the dusk. Many of them appeared to belong to the other world. Poor, puny, ragged, sickly-looking creatures, that seemed as though they had been suckled and reared with gin. ‘How different,’ thought the Yorkshireman to himself, ‘to the fine, stout, active labourer one meets at an early hour on a hunting morning in the country!’ His reverie was interrupted on arriving opposite The Morning Chronicle Office, by the most discordant yells that ever issued from human beings, and on examining the quarter from whence they proceeded, a group of fifty or a hundred boys, or rather little old men, were seen with newspapers in their hands and under their arms, in all the activity of speculation and exchange. ‘A clean Post for Tuesday’s Times!’ bellowed one. ‘I want the Hurl (Herald) for the Satirist!’ shouted another. ‘Bell’s Life for the Bull! The Spectator for the Sunday Times!’
The approach of our sportsmen was the signal for a change of chorus, and immediately Jorrocks was assailed with ‘A hunter! a hunter! crikey, a hunter! My eyes! there’s a gamecock for you! Vot a beauty! Vere do you turn out to-day? Vere’s the stag? Don’t tumble off, old boy! ’Ave you got ever a rope in your pocket? Take Bell’s Life in London, vot contains all the sporting news of the country! Vot a vip the gemman’s got! vot a precious basternadering he could give us—my eyes, vot a swell!—vot a shocking bad hat!4—vot shocking bad breeches!’
The fog, which became denser at every step, by the time they reached St. Clement’s Danes rendered their further progress almost impossible.—‘Oh dear! oh dear! how unlucky,’ exclaimed Jorrocks. ‘I would have given twenty pounds of best Twankay for a fine day—and see what a thing we’ve got! Hold my ’oss,’ said he to the Yorkshireman, ‘while I run into the Angel and borrow an argand burner, or we shall be endorsed5 to a dead certainty.’ Off he got and ran to the inn. Presently he emerged from the yard—followed by horse-keepers, coach-washers, porters, cads, waiter, and others, amid loud cries of ‘flare up, flare up, old cock! tallyho fox-hunter!’—with a bright mail-coach foot-board lamp strapt to his middle, which, lighting up the whole of his broad back, now cased in scarlet, gave him the appearance of a gigantic red-and-gold insurance office badge, or an elderly cherub without wings.
The hackney-coach and cab-men, along whose lines they passed, could not make him out at all. Some thought he was a mail-coach guard riding post with the bags; but, as the light was pretty strong, he trotted on regardless of observation. The fog, however, abated none of its denseness even on the ‘Surrey side,’ and before they reached the Elephant and Castle, Jorrocks had run against two trucks, three water-cress women, one pies-all-ot! all-ot! man, dispersed a whole covey of Welsh milk-maids, and rode slap over one end of a buy ’at (hat) box! bonnet box! man’s pole, damaging a dozen paste-boards, and finally upsetting Balham Hill Joe’s ‘Barcelona come, crack ’em and try ’em’ stall at the door of the inn, for all whose benedictions, the Yorkshireman, as this great fox-hunting knighterrant’s ‘Esquire,’ came in.
Here the Yorkshireman would fain have persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to desist from his Quixotic undertaking, but he turned a deaf ear to his entreaties. ‘We are getting fast into the country, and I hold it to be utterly impossible for this fog to extend beyond Kennington Common—’twill ewaporate, you’ll see, as we approach the open. Indeed, if I mistake not, I begin to sniff the morning air already, and hark! there’s a lark carolling before us!’ ‘Now, spooney! where are you for?’ bellowed a carter, breaking off in the middle of his whistle, as Jorrocks rode slap against his leader, the concussion at once dispelling the pleasing pastoral delusion, and nearly knocking Jorrocks off his horse.
As they approached Brixton Hill, a large red ball of lurid light appeared in the firmament, and just at the moment up rode another member of the Surrey hunt, in uniform, whom Jorrocks hailed as Mr. Crane. ‘By Jave, ’ow beautiful the moon is,’ said the latter, after the usual salutations. ‘Moon!’ said Mr. Jorrocks, ‘that’s not never no moon—I reckon it’s Mrs. Graham’s balloon.’ ‘Come, that’s a good un,’ said Crane; ‘perhaps you’ll lay me an ’at about it.’ ‘Done!’ said Mr. Jorrocks, ‘a guinea one—and we’ll ax my friend here.—Now, what’s that?’ ‘Why, judging from its position and the hour, I should say it is the sun!’ was the reply.
We have omitted to mention that this memorable day was a Saturday, one on which civic sportsmen exhibit. We may also premise that the particular hunt we are about to describe took place when there were very many packs of hounds within reach of the Metropolis, all of which boasted their respective admiring subscribers. As our party proceeded, they overtook a gentleman perusing a long bill of the meets for the next week, of at least half a dozen packs, the top of the list being decorated with a cut of a stag-hunt, and the bottom containing a notification that hunters were ‘carefully attended to by Charles Morton,6 at the Derby Arms, Croydon,’ a snug, rural auberge, near the barrack. On the hunting bill of fare were Mr. Jolliffe’s fox-hounds, Mr. Meager’s harriers, the Derby stag-hounds, the Sanderstead harriers, the Union fox-hounds, the Surrey fox-hounds, rabbit beagles on Epsom Downs, and dwarf fox-hounds on Woolwich Common. What a list to bewilder a stranger! The Yorkshireman left it all to Mr. Jorrocks.
‘You’re for Jolliffe, I suppose,’ said the gentleman with the bill, to another with a blue coat and buff lining; ‘he’s at Chipstead church—only six miles from Croydon, a sure find and good country.’ ‘What are you for, Mr. Jorrocks?’ inquired another in green, with black velvet breeches, Hessian boots, and a red waistcoat, who just rode up. ‘My own, to be sure,’ said Jorrocks, taking hold of the green collar of his coat, as much as to say, ‘How can you ask such a question?’ ‘Oh no,’ said the gentleman in green, ‘come to the stag—much better sport—sure of a gallop—open country—get it over soon—back in town before the post goes out.’ Before Mr. Jorrocks had time to make a reply to this last interrogatory, they were overtaken by another horseman, who came hopping along at a sort of butcher’s shuffle, on a worn-out, three-legged, four-cornered hack, with one eye, a rat-tail, and a head as large as a fiddle-case—‘Who’s for the blue mottles?’ said he, casting a glance at their respective coats, and at length fixing it on the Yorkshireman. ‘Why, Dickens, you’re not going thistle-whipping with that nice ’orse of yours,’ said the gentleman in the velvets; ‘come and see the stag turned out—sure of a gallop—no hedges—soft country —plenty of publics—far better sport, man, than pottering about looking for your foxes and hares, and wasting your time; take my advice, and come with me.’ ‘But,’ says Dickens, ‘my ’orse won’t stand it; I had him in the shay till eleven last night, and he came forty-three mile with our traveller the day before, else he’s a “good un to go,” as you know. Do you remember the ow-dacious leap he took over the tinker’s tent, at the Epping ’unt, last Easter? How he astonished the natives within!’ ‘Yes; but then, you know, you fell head-foremost through the canvas, and no wonder that your ugly mug frightened them,’ replied he of the velvets. ‘Ay; but that was in consequence of my riding by balance, instead of gripping with my legs,’ replied Dickens; ‘you see, I had taken seven lessons in riding at the school in Bidborough Street, Burton Crescent, and they always told me to balance myself equally on the saddle, and harden my heart, and ride at whatever came in the way; and the tinker’s tent coming first, why, naturally enough, I went at it. But I have had some practice since then, and, of course, can stick on better. I have ’unted regularly ever since, and can “do the trick” now.’ ‘What, summer and winter?’ said Jorrocks. ‘No,’ replied he, ‘but I have ’unted regularly every fifth Saturday since the ’unting began.’
After numerous discourses similar to the foregoing, they arrived at the end of the first stage on the road to the hunt, namely, the small town of Croydon, the rendezvous of London sportsmen. The whole place was alive with red coats, green coats, blue coats, black coats, brown coats—in short, coats of all the colours of the rainbow. Horsemen were mounting, horsemen were dismounting, one-horse ‘shays’ and two-horse chaises were discharging their burthens, grooms were buckling on their masters’ spurs, and others were pulling off their overalls. Eschewing the Greyhound, they turn short to the right, and make for the Derby Arms’ hunting stables.
Charley Morton, a fine old boy of his age, was buckling on his armour for the fight; his soul, too, was ‘on fire, and eager for the chase.’ He was for the ‘venison’; and having mounted his ‘deer-stalker,’ was speedily joined by divers perfect ‘swells,’ in beautiful leathers, beautiful coats, beautiful tops, beautiful everything, except horses, and off they rode to cut in for the first course,—a stag-hunt on a Saturday being usually divided into three.
The ride down had somewhat sharpened Jorrocks’s appetite; and feeling, as he said, quite ready for his dinner, he repaired to Mr. Morton’s house,—a kind of sporting snuggery, everything in apple-pie order, and very good,—where he baited himself on sausages and salt herrings, a basin of new milk, with some ‘sticking-powder,’ as he called it, alias rum, infused into it; and having deposited a half-quartern loaf in one pocket, as a sort of balance against a huge bunch of keys which rattled in the other, he pulled out his watch, and, finding they had a quarter of an hour to spare, proposed to chaperone the Yorkshireman on a tour of the hunting stables. Jorrocks summoned the ostler, and with great dignity led the way. ‘Humph,’ said he, evidently disappointed at seeing half the stalls empty, ‘no great show this morning—pity—gentleman come from a distance—should like to have shown him some good nags.—What sort of a devil’s this?’ ‘Oh, sir, he’s a good un, and nothing but a good un!—Leap! Lord love you, he’ll leap anything. A railway cut, a windmill with the sails going, a navigable river with ships— anything in short. This is the ’orse wot took the line of houses down at Beddington the day they had the tremendous run from Reigate Hill.’ ‘And wot’s the grey in the far stall?’ ‘Oh, that’s Mr. Pepper’s old nag— Pepper-Castor, as we call him, since he threw the old gemman, the morning they met at the Leg-of-Mutton at Ashstead. But he’s good for nothing. Bless ye! his tail shakes for all the world like a pepper-box afore he’s gone half a mile. Those be yours in the far stalls, and since they were turned round I’ve won a bob of a gemman who I bet I’d show him two ’osses with their heads vere their tails should be.7 I always says,’ added he, with a leer, ‘that you rides the best ’osses of any gemman vot comes to our governor’s.’ This flattered Jorrocks, and sidling up, he slipped a shilling into his hand, saying, ‘Well, bring them out, and let’s see how they look this morning.’ The stall reins are slipped, and out they step with their hoods on their quarters. One was a large, fat, full-sized chestnut, with a wide ratch down the full extent of his face, a long square tail, bushy mane, with untrimmed heels. The other was a brown, about fifteen-two, coarse-headed, with a rat tail, and collar-marked. The tackle was the same as they came down with. ‘You’ll do the trick on that, I reckon,’ said Jorrocks, throwing his leg over the chestnut, and looking askew at the Yorkshireman as he mounted. ‘Tatt., and old Tatt., and Tatt. sen. before him, all agree that they never knew a bad ’oss with a rat tail. But, let me tell you, you must be werry lively, if you mean to live with our ’ounds. They go like the wind. But come! touch him with the spur, and let’s do a trot.’ The Yorkshireman obeyed, and getting into the main street, onwards they jogged, right through Croydon, and struck into a line of villas of all sorts, shapes, and sizes, which extend for several miles along the road, exhibiting all sorts of architecture—Gothic, Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, Dutch, and Chinese. These gradually diminished in number, and at length they found themselves on an open heath, within a few miles of the meet of the ‘Surrey fox-hounds.’ ‘Now,’ says Mr. Jorrocks, clawing up his smalls, ‘you will see the werry finest pack of hounds in all England; I don’t care where the next best are; and you will see as good a turn-out as ever you saw in your life, and as nice a country to ride over as ever you were in.’
They reach the meet,—a wayside public-house on a common, before which the hounds with their attendants and some fifty or sixty horsemen, many of them in scarlet, were assembled. Jorrocks was received with the greatest cordiality, and whoops and halloas, and cries of, ‘Now Twankay! now Sugar!—now Figs!’ Waving his hand in token of recognition, he passed on and made straight for Tom Hill, with a face full of importance, and nearly rode over a hound in his hurry. ‘Now, Tom,’ said he, with the greatest energy, ‘do, my good fellow, strain every nerve to show sport to-day. A gentleman has come all the way from the north-east side of the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to see our excellent ’ounds, and I would fain have him galvanized. Do show us a run, and let it end with blood, so that he may have something to tell the natives when he gets back to his own parts. That’s him, see, sitting under the yew-tree, in a bottle-green coat with basket buttons, just striking a light on the pommel of his saddle to indulge in a fumigation.—Keep your eye on him all day, and if you can lead him over an awkward place, and get him a purl, so much the better.—If he’ll risk his neck, I’ll risk my oss’s.’
The Yorkshireman, having lighted his cigar and tightened his girths, rode leisurely among the horsemen, many of whom were in eager council, and a gentle breeze wafted divers scraps of conversation to his ear.
What is that hound got by? No. How is that horse bred? No. What sport had you on Wednesday? No. Is it a likely find to-day? No, no, no; it was not where the hounds, but what the consols, left off at; what the four per cents., and not the four horses, were up to; what the condition of the money, not the horse, market. ‘Anything doing in Danish bonds, sir?’ said one. ‘You must do it by lease and release, and levy a fine,’ replied another. Scott v. Brown, crim. con., to be heard by the Chief Justice on or before Wednesday next.— Barley thirty-two to forty-two.—Fine upland meadow and rye-grass hay, seventy to eighty.—The last pocket of hops I sold brought seven pounds fifteen shillings. Sussex bags six pounds ten shillings. There were only twenty-eight and a quarter ships at market, ‘and coals are coals.’ ‘Glad to hear it, sir, for half the last you sent me were slates.’—‘Best qualities of beef four shillings and eightpence a stone—mutton three shillings and eightpence to four shillings and sixpence.—He was exceedingly ill when I paid my last visit; I gave him nearly a stone of Epsom salts, and bled him twice.— This horse would suit you to a T, sir, but my skip-jack is coming out on one at two o’clock that can carry a house.—See what a bosom this one’s got.—Well, Gunter, old boy, have you iced your horse to-day?—Have you heard that Brown and Co. are in the Gazette? No, which Brown—not John Brown? No, William Brown. What, Brown of Goodman’s Fields? No, Brown of ——of Street—Browne with an e; you know the man I mean.—Oh! Lord, ay, the man wot used to be called nosey Browne.’ A general move ensued, and they left ‘the meet.’
‘Vere be you going to turn out, pray, sir, may I inquire?’ said a gentleman in green to the huntsman, as he turned into a field. ‘Turn out,’ said he, ‘why, ye don’t suppose we be coming calf-hunting, do ye? We throws off some two stones’ throw from here, if so be you mean what cover we are going to draw.’ ‘No,’ said the green-coat, ‘I mean, where do you turn out the stag?’ —‘D—n the stag, we know nothing about such matters,’ replied the huntsman. ‘Ware wheat! ware wheat! ware wheat!’ was now the general cry, as a gentleman in nankeen pantaloons and Hessian boots, with long brass spurs, commenced a navigation across a sprouting crop. ‘Ware wheat, ware wheat!’ replied he, considering part of the ceremony of hunting, and continuing his forward course. ‘Come to my side,’ said Mr.——to the whipper-in, ‘and meet that gentleman as he arrives at yonder gate; and keep by him while I scold you.’— ‘Now, sir, most particularly d—n you, for riding slapdash over the young wheat, you most confounded insensible ignorant tinker, isn’t the headland wide enough both for you and your horse, even if your spurs were as long again as they are?’ Shouts of ‘Yooi over, over, over hounds—try for him—yoicks—wind him! good dogs—yoicks!—stir him up—have at him there!’ —here interrupted the jawbation, and the whip rode off shaking his sides with laughter. ‘Your horse has got a stone in each fore-foot, and a thorn in his near hock,’ observed a dentist to a wholesale haberdasher from Ludgate Hill, ‘allow me to extract them for you—no pain, I assure—over before you know it.’ ‘Come away, hounds! come away!’ was heard, and presently the huntsman, with some of the pack at his horse’s heels, issued from the wood playing ‘Rule Britannia’ on a key bugle, while the cracks of heavy-thonged whips warned the stragglers and loiterers to follow. ‘Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast,’ observed Jorrocks, as he tucked the laps of his frock over his thighs, ‘and I hope we shall find before long, else that quarter of house-lamb will be utterly ruined. Oh dear, they are going below him, I do believe! why, we shall never get home to-day, and I told Mrs. Jorrocks half-past five to a minute, and I invited old Fleecy, who is a most punctual man.’
Jorrocks was right in his surmise. They arrived on the summit of a range of steep hills commanding an extensive view over the neighbouring country—almost, he said, as far as the seacoast. The huntsman and hounds went down, but many of the field held a council of war on the top. ‘Well! who’s going down?’ said one. ‘I shall wait for the next turn,’ said Jorrocks, ‘for my horse does not like collar work.’ ‘I shall go this time,’ said another, ‘and the rest next.’ ‘And so will I,’ said a third, ‘for mayhap there will be no second turn.’ ‘Ay,’ added a fourth, ‘and he may go the other way, and then where shall we all be?’ ‘Poh!’ said Jorrocks, ‘did you ever know a Surrey fox not to take to the hills?—If he does not, I’ll eat him without mint sauce,’ again harping on the quarter of lamb. ‘Facilis descensus Averni’;—two-thirds of the field went down, leaving Jorrocks, two horse-dealers in scarlet, three chicken-butchers, half a dozen swells in leathers, a whip, and the Yorkshireman on the summit. ‘Why don’t you go with the hounds?’ inquired the latter of the whip. ‘Oh, I wait here, sir,’ said he, ‘to meet Tom Hills as he comes up, and to give him a fresh horse.’ ‘And who is Tom Hills?’ inquired the Yorkshireman. ‘Oh, he’s our huntsman,’ replied he; ‘you know Tom, don’t you?’ ‘Why, I can’t say I do, exactly’; ‘but tell me, is he called Hills because he rides up and down these hills, or is that his real name?’ ‘Hought! you know as well as I do,’ said he, quite indignantly, ‘that Tom Hills is his name.’
The hounds, with the majority of the field, having effected the descent of the hills, were now trotting on in the valley below, sufficiently near, however, to allow our hill party full view of their proceedings. After drawing a couple of osier-beds blank, they assumed a line parallel to the hills, and moved on to a wood of about ten acres, the west end of which terminated in a natural gorse. ‘They’ll find there to a certainty,’ said Mr. Jorrocks, pulling a telescope out of his breeches’ pocket, and adjusting the sight. ‘Never saw it blank but once, and that was the werry day the commercial panic of twenty-five commenced—I remember making an entry in my ledger when I got home to that effect. Humph!’ continued he, looking through the glass, ‘they are through the wood, though, without a challenge.—Now, my booys, push him out of the gorse! Let’s see vot you’re made of.—There goes the first ’ound in.—It’s Galloper, I believe.—I can almost see the bag of shot round his neck.—Now they all follow.—One—two—three —four—five—all together, my beauties. Oh, vot a sight! Peckham’s cap’s in the air, and it’s a find, by heavens!’ Mr. Jorrocks is right.—The southerly wind wafts up the fading notes of the Huntsman’s Chorus in Der Freischütz, and confirms the fact.—Jorrocks is in ecstasies.—‘Now,’ said he, clawing up his breeches (for he dispenses with the article of braces when out hunting), ‘that’s what I calls fine. Oh, beautiful! beautiful!—Now, follow me if you please, and if yon gentleman in drab does not shoot the fox, he will be on the hills before long.’ Away they scampered along the top of the ridge, with a complete view of the operations below. At length Jorrocks stopped, and, pulling the telescope out, began making an observation. ‘There he is, at last,’ cried he, ‘just crossed the corner of yon green field—now he creeps through the hedge by the fir-tree, and is in the fallow one. Yet stay—that’s no fox—it’s a hare: and yet Tom Hills makes straight for the spot—and did you hear that loud tallyho? Oh! gentlemen, gentlemen, we shall be laughed to scorn— what can they be doing?—see, they take up the scent, and the whole pack have joined in chorus. Great heavens, it’s no more a fox than I am!—No more brush than a badger! Oh dear! oh dear! that I should live to see my old friends, the Surrey fox-’ounds, ’unt hare, and that too in the presence of a stranger.’ The animal made direct for the hills;—whatever it was, the hounds were on good terms with it, and got away in good form. The sight was splendid—all the field got well off, nor between the cover and the hills was there sufficient space for tailing. A little elderly gentleman, in a pepper-and-salt coat, led the way gallantly—then came the scarlets, then the darks—and then the fustian-clad countrymen. Jorrocks was in a shocking state, and rolled along the hill-tops, almost frantic. The field reached the bottom, and the foremost commenced the steep ascent.
‘O Tom Hills!—Tom Hills!—what are you at? what are you arter?’ demanded Jorrocks, as he landed on the top; ‘here’s a gentleman come all the way from the north-east side of the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to see our excellent ’ounds, and here you are running a hare. O Tom Hills! Tom Hills! ride forward, ride forward, and whip them off, ere we eternally disgrace ourselves.’ ‘Oh,’ says Tom, laughing, ‘he’s a fox! but he’s so tarnation frightened of our hounds, that his brush dropped off through very fear, as soon as ever he heard us go into the wood; if you go back, you’ll find it somewhere, Mr. Jorrocks; haw, haw, haw! No fox, indeed!’ said he, ‘forrard, hounds, forrard!’ and away he went—caught the old whipper-in, dismounted him in a twinkling, and was on a fresh horse with his hounds in full cry. The line of flight was still along the hill-tops, and all eagerly pressed on, making a goodly rattle over the beds of flint. A check ensued. ‘The guard on yonder nasty Brighton coach has frightened him with his horn,’ said Tom; ‘now we must make a cast up to yonder garden, and see if he’s taken shelter among the geraniums in the green-house. As little damage as possible, gentlemen, if you please, in riding through the nursery grounds. Now, hold hard, sir—pray do—there’s no occasion for you to break the kale pots; he can’t be under them. Ah, yonder he goes, the tail-less beggar; did you see him as he stole past the corner out of the early-cabbage bed? Now bring on the hounds, and let us press him towards London.’
‘See the conquering hero comes,’ sounded through the avenue of elms as Tom dashed forward with the merry, merry pack. ‘I shall stay on the hills,’ said one, ‘and be ready for him as he comes back! I took a good deal of the shine out of my horse in coming up this time.’ ‘I think I will do the same,’ said two or three more. ‘Let’s be doing,’ said Jorrocks, ramming his spurs into his nag to seduce him into a gallop, who, after sending his heels in the air a few times in token of his disapprobation of such treatment, at last put himself into a round-rolling sort of canter, which Jorrocks kept up by dint of spurring and dropping his great bastinaderer of a whip every now and then across his shoulders. Away they go pounding together!
The line lies over flint fallows occasionally diversified with a turnip-field or market-garden, and every now and then a ‘willa’ appears, from which emerge footmen in jackets, and in yellow, red, and green plush breeches, with no end of admiring housemaids, governesses, and nurses with children in their arms.
Great was the emulation when any of these were approached, and the rasping sportsmen rushed eagerly to the ‘fore.’ At last they approach ‘Miss Birchwell’s finishing and polishing seminary for young ladies,’ whose great flaring blue and gold sign, reflecting the noon-day rays of the sun, had frightened the fox, and caused him to alter his line and take away to the west. A momentary check ensued, but all the amateur huntsmen being blown, Tom, who is well up with his hounds, makes a quick cast round the house, and hits off the scent like a workman.8 A private road and a line of gates through fields now greet the eyes of our M‘Adamizers. A young gentleman on a hired hunter, very nattily attired, here singles himself out and takes place next to Tom, throwing the pebbles and dirt back in the eyes of the field. Tom crams away, throwing the gates open as he goes, and our young gentleman very coolly passes through without a touch, letting them bang-to behind him. The Yorkshireman, who has been gradually creeping up until he has got the third place, having opened two or three, and seeing another likely to close for want of a push, cries out to our friend as he approaches, ‘Put out your hand, sir!’ The gentleman immediately extends his limb like the arm of a telegraph, and rides over half the next field with his hand in the air! The gate, of course, falls to.
A stopper appears—a gate locked and spiked, with a downward hinge to prevent its being lifted. To the right is a rail, and a ha-ha beyond it—to the left a quick fence. Tom glances at both, but turns short, and, backing his horse, rides at the rail. The Yorkshireman follows, but Jorrocks, who espies a weak place in the fence a few yards from the gate, turns short, and, jumping off, prepares to lead over. It is an old gap, and the farmer has placed a sheep-hurdle on the far side. Just as Jorrocks has pulled that out, his horse, who is a bit of a rusher, and has now got his ‘monkey’ completely up, pushes forward while his master is yet stooping—and hitting him in the rear, knocks him clean through the fence, head-foremost into a squire-trap beyond! 9— ‘Non redolet sed olet!’ exclaims the Yorkshireman, who dismounts in a twinkling, lending his friend a hand out of the unsavoury cesspool. ‘That’s what comes of hunting in a new10 saddle, you see,’ added he, holding his nose. Jorrocks scrambles upon terra firma, and exhibits such a spectacle as provokes the shout of the field. He has lost his wig, his hat hangs to his back, and one side of his person and face is completely japanned with black, odoriferous mixture. ‘My vig!’ exclaims he, spitting and spluttering, ‘but that’s the nastiest hole I ever was in; Fleet ditch is lavender-water compared to it! Hooi yonder!’ hailing a lad; ‘catch my ’oss, boouy!’ Tom Hills has him; and Jorrocks, pocketing his wig, remounts, rams his spurs into the nag, and again tackles with the pack, which had come to a momentary check on the Eden Bridge road. The fox had been headed by a party of gipsies, and, changing his point, bends southward and again reaches the hills, along which some score of horsemen have planted themselves in the likeliest places to head him. Reynard, however, is too deep for them, and has stolen down unperceived. Poor Jorrocks, what with the violent exertion of riding, his fall, and the souvenir of the cesspool that he still bears about him, pulls up fairly exhausted. ‘Oh dear,’ says he, scraping the thick of the filth off his coat with his whip, ‘I’m reglarly blown; I carn’t go down with the ’ounds this turn; but, my good fellow,’ turning to the Yorkshireman, who was helping to purify him, ‘don’t let me stop you; go down by all means, but mind, bear in mind the quarter of house-lamb—at half-past five to a minute.’
Many of the cits now gladly avail themselves of the excuse of assisting Mr. Jorrocks to clean himself for pulling up, but as soon as ever those that are going below the hill are out of sight, and they have given him two or three wipes, they advise him to let it ‘dry on,’ and immediately commence a different sort of amusement— each man dives into his pocket and produces the eatables.
Part of Jorrocks’s half-quartern loaf was bartered with the captain of an East Indiaman for a slice of buffalo-beef. The dentist exchanged some veal sandwiches with a Jew for ham ones; a lawyer from the Borough offered two slices of toast for a hard-boiled egg; in fact, there was a pretty market ‘ouvert’ held. ‘Now, Tomkins, where’s the bottle?’ demanded Jenkins. ‘Vy, I thought you would bring it out to-day,’ said he, ‘I brought it last time, you know.’ ‘Take a little of mine, sir,’ said a gentleman, presenting a leather-covered flask—‘real Thomson and Fearon, I assure you.’ ‘I wish some one would fetch an ocean of porter from the nearest public,’ said another. ‘Take a cigar, sir?’ ‘No; I feel werry much obliged, but they always make me womit.’ ‘Is there any gentleman here going to Halifax, who would like to make a third in a new yellow barouche, with lavender-coloured wheels, and pink lining?’ inquired Mr.——, the coachmaker. ‘Look at the hounds, gentlemen sportsmen, my noble sportsmen!’ bellowed out an Epsom Dorling’s correct-listseller—and, turning their eyes in the direction in which he was looking, our sportsmen saw them again making for the hills. Pepper-and-salt first, and oh, what a goodly tail was there!—three quarters of a mile in length, at the least. Now up they come—the ‘corps de reserve’ again join, and again a party halt upon the hills. Again Tom Hills exchanges horses; and again the hounds go on in full cry. ‘I must be off,’ said a gentleman in balloon-like leathers to another tiger; ‘we have just time to get back to town, and ride round by the park before it is dark—much better than seeing the end of this brute. Let us go’;—and away they went to canter through Hyde Park11 in their red coats. ‘I must go and all,’ said another gentleman; ‘my dinner will be ready at five, and it is now three.’ Jorrocks was game; and, forgetting the quarter of house-lamb, again tackled with the pack. A smaller sweep sufficed this time, and the hills were once more descended, Jorrocks the first to lead the way. He well knew the fox was sinking, and was determined to be in at the death. Short running ensued—a check—the fox had lain down, and they had overrun the scent. Now they were on him, and Tom Hills’s whoop confirmed the whole.
‘Ah! Tom Hills, Tom Hills!’ exclaimed Jorrocks, as the former took up the fox, ‘’ow splendid, ’ow truly brilliant—by Jove, you deserve to be Lord Hill—oh, had he but a brush that we might present it to this gentleman from the north-east side of the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to show the gallant doings of the men of Surrey.’ ‘Ay,’ said Tom, ‘but Squire——’s keeper has been before us for it.’12
‘Now,’ said a gentleman in a cap, to another in a hat, ‘if you will ride up the hill and collect the money there, I will do so below—half a crown, if you please, sir;— half a crown, if you please, sir.—Have I got your half a crown, sir?’—‘Here’s three shillings if you will give me sixpence.’ ‘Certainly, sir—certainly.’ ‘We have no time to spare,’ said Jorrocks, looking at his watch, ‘good afternoon, gentlemen, good afternoon,’—muttering as he went, ‘a quarter of house-lamb at half-past five—Mrs. Jorrocks werry punctual—old Fleecy werry particular.’ They cut across country to Croydon, and as they approached the town innumerable sportsmen came flocking in from all quarters. ‘What sport have you had?’ inquired Jorrocks of a gentleman in scarlet, ‘have you been with Jolliffe?’ ‘No, with the stag-hounds! three beautiful runs; took him once in a millpond, once in a barn, and once in a brickfield—altogether the finest day’s sport I ever saw in my life.’ ‘What have you done, Mr. J.?’ ‘Oh, we have had a most gallant thing! a brilliant run indeed—three hours and twenty minutes without a check—over the finest country imaginable.’ ‘And who got the brush?’ inquired the stag-man. ‘Oh, it was a gallant run,’ said Jorrocks, ‘by far the finest I ever remember.’ ‘But did you kill?’ demanded his friend. ‘Kill! to be sure we did. When don’t the Surrey kill, I should like to know?’ ‘And who got his brush, did you say?’ ‘I can’t tell,’ said he; ‘didn’t hear the gentleman’s name.’ ‘What sport has Mr. Meager had to-day?’ inquired he of a gentleman in trousers who issued from a side lane into the high road. ‘I have been with the Sanderstead, sir, a very capital day’s sport;—run five hares and killed three. We should have killed four—only—we didn’t.’ ‘I don’t think Mr. Meager has done anything to-day.’ ‘Yes, he has,’ said a gentleman who just joined, with a hare buckled on in front of his saddle, and his white cords all stained with blood. ‘We killed this chap after an hour and forty-five minutes’ gallop; and accounted for another by losing her after upwards of three-quarters of an hour.’ ‘Well, then, we have all had sport,’ said Jorrocks, as he spurred his horse into a trot, and made for Morton’s stables—‘and if the quarter of house-lamb is but right, then indeed am I a happy man.’
