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
succumb 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 assistance 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 grass 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-class 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.
[Illustration: Page 225.]
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 cluster 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 peacocks 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 grass--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 grass, 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.
"It began to get very interesting, I was near enough to watch each hound
doing his work, eighteen couple, all dogs, three and four season
hunters, for I hadn't a single puppy out. I wish you had been there, my
boy. It was a real lesson in hunting, and I'll tell you what I thought
of them, one by ----. Hulloh! Yes. You'd better ring for coffee--Hanged
if I don't believe you've been fast asleep all the time!"
But such runs as these, though wearisome to a listener, are most
enjoyable for those who can appreciate the steadiness and sagacity of
the hound, no less than the craft and courage of the animal it pursues.
There is an indescribable charm too, in what I may call the _romance_ of
hunting,--the remote scenes we should perhaps never visit for their own
sake, the broken sunlight glinting through copse and gleaming on fern,
the woodland sights, the woodland sounds, the balmy odours of nature,
and all the treats she provides for her votaries, tasted and enjoyed,
with every faculty roused, every sense sharpened in the excitement of
our pursuit. These delights are better known in the provinces than the
shires, and to descend from flights of fancy to practical matters of L
_s._ _d._, we can hunt in the former at comparatively trifling expense.
In the first place, particularly if good horsemen, we need not be
nearly so well-mounted. There are few provincial countries in which a
man who knows how to ride, cannot get from one field to another, by hook
or by crook, with a little creeping and scrambling and blundering, that
come far short of the casualty we deprecate as "a rattling fall!" His
horse must be in good condition of course, and able to gallop; also if
temperate, the more willing at his fences the better, but it is not
indispensable that he should possess the stride and power necessary to
cover some twenty feet of distance, and four or five of height, at every
leap, nor the blood that can alone enable him to repeat the exertion,
over and over again, at three-quarter speed in deep ground. To jump, as
it is called, "from field to field," tries a horse's stamina no less
severely than his courage, while, as I have already observed, there is
no such economy of effort, and even danger, as to make two small fences
out of a large one.
I do not mean to say that there are any parts of England where, if
hounds run hard, a hunter, with a workman on his back, has not enough to
do to live with them, but I do consider that, _caeteris paribus_, a good
rider may smuggle a moderate horse over most of our provincial
countries, whereas he would be helpless on the same animal in
Leicestershire or Northamptonshire. There, on the other hand, an
inferior horseman, bold enough to place implicit confidence in the
first-class hunter he rides, may see a run, from end to end, with
considerable credit and enjoyment, by the simple process of keeping a
good hold of his bridle, while he leaves everything to the horse. But he
must not have learned a single letter of the noble word "Funk." Directly
his heart fails, and he interferes, down they both come, an _imperial
crowner_, and the game is lost!
Many of our provincial districts are also calculated, from their very
nature, to turn out experienced sportsmen no less than accomplished
riders. In large woods, amongst secluded hills, or wild tracts of moor
intersected by impracticable ravines, a lover of the chase is compelled
by force of circumstances to depend on his own eyes, ears, and general
intelligence for his amusement.
He finds no young Rapid to pilot him over the large places, if he
_means going_; no crafty band of second-horsemen to guide him in safety
to the finish, if his ambition is satisfied with a distant and
occasional view of the stirring pageant; no convenient hand-gate in the
corner, no friendly bridge across the stream; above all, no hurrying
cavalcade drawn out for miles, amongst which to hide, and with whom
pleasantly to compare notes hereafter in those self-deceiving moments,
when
"Dined, o'er our claret, we talk of the merit,
Of every choice spirit that rode in the run.
But here the crowd, Sir, can talk just as loud, Sir,
As those who were forward enjoying the fun!"
No. In the provinces our young sportsman must make up his mind to take
his own part, to study the coverts drawn, and find out for himself the
points where he can see, hear, and, so to speak, command hounds till
they go away; must learn how to rise the hill with least labour, and
descend it with greatest dispatch, how to thread glen, combe, or dale,
wind in and out of the rugged ravine, plunge through a morass, and make
his way home at night across trackless moor, or open storm-swept down.
By the time he has acquired these accomplishments, the horsemanship will
have come of itself. He will know how to bore where he cannot jump, to
creep where he must not fly, and so manage his horse that the animal
seems to share the intentions and intelligence of its rider.
If he can afford it, and likes to spend a season or two in the shires
for the last superlative polish, let him go and welcome! He will be
taught to get clear of a crowd, to leap timber at short notice, to put
on his boots and breeches, and that is about all there is left for him
to learn!
In the British army, though more than a hundred regiments constitute the
line, each cherishes its own particular title, while applying that
general application indiscriminately to the rest.
I imagine the same illusion affects the provinces, and I should offend
an incalculable number of good fellows and good sportsmen, were I to
describe as _provincial_ establishments, the variety of hunts, north,
south, east, and west, with which I have enjoyed so much good company
and good fun. Each has its own claim to distinction, some have collars,
all have sport.
Grass, I imagine, is the one essential that constitutes pre-eminence in
a hunting country, and for this the shires have always boasted they bear
away the palm, but it will surprise many of my readers to be told that
in the south and west there are districts where this desideratum seems
now more plentiful than in the middle of England. The Blackmoor Vale
still lies almost wholly under pasture, and you may travel to-day forty
miles by rail, through the counties of Dorset and Somerset, in general
terms nearly from Blandford to Bath, without seeing a ploughed field.
What a country might here be made by such an enthusiast as poor "Sam
Reynell," who found Meath without a gorse-covert, and drew between
thirty and forty "sure finds" in it before he died!
Independently of duty, which ought to be our first consideration, there
is also great convenience in hunting from home. We require no large
stud, can choose our meets, and, above all, are indifferent to weather.
A horse comes out so many times in a season; if we don't hunt to-day we
shall next week. Compare this equable frame of mind with the irritation
and impatience of a man who has ten hunters standing at the sign of "The
Hand-in-Pocket," while he inhabits the front parlour, without his books,
deprived of his usual society and occupations, the barometer at set
fair, and the atmosphere affording every indication of a six-weeks'
frost!
Let us see in what the charm consists that impels people to encounter
bad food, bad wine, bad lodgings, and above all, protracted boredom, for
a campaign in those historical hunting-grounds, that have always seemed
to constitute the rosiest illusion of a sportsman's dream.