It seems to me that our local Hunt wants waking up. In some places, I
believe, there are still people who "cheerily rouse the slumbering morn"
by hunting the fox or the fox-cub, and, if one cannot let slumbering
morns lie, there is no jollier way of rousing them. But in our village
we hunt the 8.52. Morning after morning, if you watch from a high place,
you can see our bowlers and squash hats just above the hedgerows bobbing
down to the covert side. That one bobbing last is me.
As we trudge homeward under the star-lit skies all our racy anecdotes
are of the fine fast runs we have had with the 8.52, the brave swinging
of the tail carriage, the heavy work over the points, the check and find
again at East Croydon main.... Those who arrive early at the meet in the
morning (but, as I have hinted, I am not one of these) stroll about the
platform, I am told, talking of the rare old times when the 8.52 used to
be the 8.51, pulling out their watches every now and then and saying to
the station-master, "She's twenty-five seconds late," for all season
ticket-holders have special permission from the railway company to put
trains into the feminine gender. This is a slight compensation for
having to pay again when they are challenged and can only pull out a
complimentary pass to the Chrysanthemum Show.
As for myself, no one can say that I lack the sporting spirit, and if I
am late in the field it is because there is not enough noise and bustle
about our Hunt. It needs, I submit, the romantic colour and pageantry
that fire an Englishman's blood and rouse him irrevocably from his
marmalade.
In this connection, as we say so charmingly at our office, I have laid
certain preliminary proposals before Enderby and Jackson. A lot of the
sportsmen who hunt the 8.52 in our village do so in motor-cars, which is
hardly playing the game. Of the stout-hearted fellows who follow on
foot, both Enderby and Jackson pass in front of my house and may be
discerned dimly through a gap in the hedge, which was probably made for
that purpose by the previous tenant. Or it may have been because the
gate-latch sticks and he did not jump well. Enderby asserts that my
house is nine minutes from the station, and Jackson says it is six, and
therein lies the whole difference between optimism and pessimism. All I
know is that, if I gather my hat, coat, _Times_, stick, pipe, tobacco
and matches and put as many as possible of them in appropriate places
just after Enderby has passed the gap, I catch the 8.52 nicely. If I do
these things just after Jackson has passed I catch it nastily, just
about the rear buffers. My proposal is that Enderby and Jackson should
encourage me a little by wearing scarlet coats, so that I can see them
twinkling more brightly through the gap in my hedge, and if they will do
this I will promise to provide them both with hunting horns. I have
pointed out that a "View halloo" from Enderby, followed by a stirring
"Tantivvy, Tantivvy, Tantivvy;
Tra-la, Tra-la, Tra-la"
from Jackson, will, if any power on earth can do it, bring me from my
toast in time for my train in the morning.
I have explained to them that nothing can be pleasanter or more
beautiful for the baker, the butcher and the grocer to look at every
morning than Enderby and Jackson dressed in pink, with a despatch-case
in one hand and a hunting-horn in the other. There must be other
sportsmen situated as I am, and I should like to see all the little
lanes streaming with pink coats; and it would be very nice too if they
all brought their dogs to see them off, as some do already.
I am quite prepared to admit that neither Enderby nor Jackson sees eye
to eye with me in this matter. They argue that ample notice is given of
the imminent arrival of the 8.52 by the express train which passes
through the cutting at 8.43, and is popularly known as "the warner." I
have replied that I cannot hear express trains when I am eating toast,
and that the only warner I recognise is PLUM WARNER, who cannot by any
stretch of language be called an express train. There the matter rests
at present, and I suppose in a few days I shall miss the 8.52 again.
Happily I have now found out what to do when this occurs. Enderby and
Jackson believe that the next train is the 10.15; but that is their
narrow-minded parochialism. They are quite wrong. About ten minutes
after the 8.52 has gone away another perfectly good train steals panting
from the undergrowth. When one has missed the 8.52 one cannot wait on
the platform till 10.15, nor, on the other hand, having waved an airy
good morning to the butcher, the baker and the grocer as I trotted
along, can I very well go back and undo it. And then the derision at
home, the half-drunk stirrup-cup of coffee standing tepid and forlorn.
But, as I say, the 9.5 is a perfectly sound train. It is quite true that
it goes to Brighton, but the weather has been very warm of late. I hate
these splits in the local Hunt, but there it is.