The British public who do not hunt believe too much in the jumping of
those who do. It is thought by many among the laity that the hunting
man is always in the air, making clear flights over five-barred gates,
six-foot walls, and double posts and rails, at none of which would the
average hunting man any more think of riding than he would at a small
house. We used to hear much of the Galway Blazers, and it was supposed
that in County Galway a stiff-built wall six feet high was the sort of
thing that you customarily met from field to field when hunting in that
comfortable county. Such little impediments were the ordinary food of a
real Blazer, who was supposed to add another foot of stonework and a sod
of turf when desirous of making himself conspicuous in his moments of
splendid ambition. Twenty years ago I rode in Galway now and then, and
I found the six-foot walls all shorn of their glory, and that men whose
necks were of any value were very anxious to have some preliminary
knowledge of the nature of the fabric, whether for instance it might
be solid or built of loose stones, before they trusted themselves to
an encounter with a wall of four feet and a half. And here, in England,
history, that nursing mother of fiction, has given hunting men honours
which they here never fairly earned. The traditional five-barred gate
is, as a rule, used by hunting men as it was intended to be used by the
world at large; that is to say, they open it; and the double posts and
rails which look so very pretty in the sporting pictures, are thought to
be very ugly things whenever an idea of riding at them presents itself.
It is well that mothers should know, mothers full of fear for their boys
who are beginning, that the necessary jumping of the hunting field is
not after all of so very tremendous a nature; and it may be well also to
explain to them and to others that many men hunt with great satisfaction
to themselves who never by any chance commit themselves to the peril of
a jump, either big or little.
And there is much excellent good sense in the mode of riding adopted by
such gentlemen. Some men ride for hunting, some for jumping, and some
for exercise; some, no doubt, for all three of these things. Given a
man with a desire for the latter, no taste for the second, and some
partiality for the first, and he cannot do better than ride in the
manner I am describing. He may be sure that he will not find himself
alone; and he may be sure also that he will incur none of that ridicule
which the non-hunting man is disposed to think must be attached to such
a pursuit. But the man who hunts and never jumps, who deliberately makes
up his mind that he will amuse himself after that fashion, must always
remember his resolve, and be true to the conduct which he has laid down
for himself. He must jump not at all. He must not jump a little, when
some spurt or spirit may move him, or he will infallibly find himself in
trouble. There was an old Duke of Beaufort who was a keen and practical
sportsman, a master of hounds, and a known Nimrod on the face of the
earth; but he was a man who hunted and never jumped. His experience was
perfect, and he was always true to his resolution. Nothing ever tempted
him to cross the smallest fence. He used to say of a neighbour of his,
who was not so constant, "Jones is an ass. Look at him now. There he is,
and he can't get out. Jones doesn't like jumping, but he jumps a little,
and I see him pounded every day. I never jump at all, and I'm always
free to go where I like." The Duke was certainly right, and Jones was
certainly wrong. To get into a field, and then to have no way of getting
out of it, is very uncomfortable. As long as you are on the road you
have a way open before you to every spot on the world's surface, open,
or capable of being opened; or even if incapable of being opened, not
positively detrimental to you as long as you are on the right side. But
that feeling of a prison under the open air is very terrible, and is
rendered almost agonizing by the prisoner's consciousness that his
position is the result of his own imprudent temerity, of an audacity
which falls short of any efficacious purpose. When hounds are running,
the hunting man should always, at any rate, be able to ride on, to ride
in some direction, even though it be in a wrong direction. He can then
flatter himself that he is riding wide and making a line for himself.
But to be entrapped into a field without any power of getting out of it;
to see the red backs of the forward men becoming smaller and smaller in
the distance, till the last speck disappears over some hedge; to see the
fence before you and know that it is too much for you; to ride round and
round in an agony of despair which is by no means mute, and at last to
give sixpence to some boy to conduct you back into the road; that is
wretched: that is real unhappiness. I am, therefore, very persistent in
my advice to the man who purposes to hunt without jumping. Let him not
jump at all. To jump, but only to jump a little, is fatal. Let him think
of Jones.
The man who hunts and doesn't jump, presuming him not to be a duke or
any man greatly established as a Nimrod in the hunting world, generally
comes out in a black coat and a hat, so that he may not be specially
conspicuous in his deviations from the line of the running. He began his
hunting probably in search of exercise, but has gradually come to add a
peculiar amusement to that pursuit; and of a certain phase of hunting he
at last learns more than most of those who ride closest to the hounds.
He becomes wonderfully skillful in surmising the line which a fox may
probably take, and in keeping himself upon roads parallel to the ruck
of the horsemen. He is studious of the wind, and knows to a point of
the compass whence it is blowing. He is intimately conversant with every
covert in the country; and, beyond this, is acquainted with every earth
in which foxes have had their nurseries, or are likely to locate them.
He remembers the drains on the different farms in which the hunted
animal may possible take refuge, and has a memory even for rabbit-holes.
His eye becomes accustomed to distinguish the form of a moving horseman
over half-a-dozen fields; and let him see but a cap of any leading man,
and he will know which way to turn himself. His knowledge of the country
is correct to a marvel. While the man who rides straight is altogether
ignorant of his whereabouts, and will not even distinguish the woods
through which he has ridden scores of times, the man who rides and never
jumps always knows where he is with the utmost accuracy. Where parish is
divided from parish and farm from farm, has been a study to him; and he
has learned the purpose and bearing of every lane. He is never thrown
out, and knows the nearest way from every point to point. If there be a
line of gates across from one road to another he will use them, but he
will commit himself to a line of gates on the land of no farmer who uses
padlocks.
As he trots along the road, occasionally breaking into a gallop when he
perceives from some sign known to him that the hunt is turning from him,
he is generally accompanied by two or three unfortunates who have lost
their way and have straggled from the hounds; and to them he is a
guide, philosopher, and friend. He is good-natured for the moment, and
patronizes the lost ones. He informs them that they are at last in the
right way, and consoles them by assurances that they have lost nothing.
"The fox broke, you know, from the sharp corner of Granby-wood," he
says; "the only spot that the crowd had left for him. I saw him come
out, standing on the bridge in the road. Then he ran up-wind as far
as Green's barn." "Of course he did," says one of the unfortunates
who thinks he remembers something of a barn in the early part of the
performance. "I was with the three or four first as far as that." "There
were twenty men before the hounds there," says our man of the road, who
is not without a grain of sarcasm, and can use it when he is strong
on his own ground. "Well, he turned there, and ran back very near the
corner; but he was headed by a sheep-dog, luckily, and went to the left
across the brook." "Ah, that's where I lost them," says one unfortunate.
"I was with them miles beyond that," says another. "There were five or
six men rode the brook," continues our philosopher, who names the four
or five, not mentioning the unfortunate who had spoken last as having
been among the number. "Well; then he went across by Ashby Grange,
and tried the drain at the back of the farmyard, but Bootle had had it
stopped. A fox got in there one day last March, and Bootle always stops
it since that. So he had to go on, and he crossed the turnpike close
by Ashby Church. I saw him cross, and the hounds were then full five
minutes behind him. He went through Frolic Wood, but he didn't hang a
minute, and right up the pastures to Morley Hall." "That's where I was
thrown out," says the unfortunate who had boasted before, and who is
still disposed to boast a little. But our philosopher assures him that
he has not in truth been near Morley Hall; and when the unfortunate one
makes an attempt to argue, puts him down thoroughly. "All I can say is,
you couldn't have been there and be here too at this moment. Morley Hall
is a mile and a half to our right, and now they're coming round to the
Linney. He'll go into the little wood there, and as there isn't as much
as a nutshell open for him, they'll kill him there. It'll have been a
tidy little thing, but not very fast. I've hardly been out of a trot
yet, but we may as well move on now." Then he breaks into an easy canter
by the side of the road, while the unfortunates, who have been rolling
among the heavy-ploughed ground in the early part of the day, make vain
efforts to ride by his side. They keep him, however, in sight, and are
comforted; for he is a man with a character, and knows what he is about.
He will never be utterly lost, and as long as they can remain in his
company they will not be subjected to that dreadful feeling of absolute
failure which comes upon an inexperienced sportsman when he finds
himself quite alone, and does not know which way to turn himself.
A man will not learn to ride after this fashion in a day, nor yet in
a year. Of all fashions of hunting it requires, perhaps, the most
patience, the keenest observation, the strongest memory, and the
greatest efforts of intellect. But the power, when achieved, has its
triumph; it has its respect, and it has its admirers. Our friend, while
he was guiding the unfortunates on the road, knew his position, and rode
for a while as though he were a chief of men. He was the chief of men
there. He was doing what he knew how to do, and was not failing. He had
made no boasts which stern facts would afterwards disprove. And when
he rode up slowly to the wood-side, having from a distance heard the
huntsman's whoop that told him of the fox's fate, he found that he had
been right in every particular. No one at that moment knows the line
they have all ridden as well as he knows it. But now, among the crowd,
when men are turning their horses' heads to the wind, and loud questions
are being asked, and false answers are being given, and the ambitious
men are congratulating themselves on their deeds, he sits by listening
in sardonic silence. "Twelve miles of ground !" he says to himself,
repeating the words of some valiant youngster; "if it's eight, I'll eat
it." And then when he hears, for he is all ear as well as all eye, when
he hears a slight boast from one of his late unfortunate companions, a
first small blast of the trumpet which will become loud anon if it be
not checked, he smiles inwardly, and moralizes on the weakness of human
nature. But the man who never jumps is not usually of a benevolent
nature, and it is almost certain that he will make up a little story
against the boaster.
Such is the amusement of the man who rides and never jumps. Attached to
every hunt there will be always one or two such men. Their evidence is
generally reliable; their knowledge of the country is not to be doubted;
they seldom come to any severe trouble; and have usually made for
themselves a very wide circle of hunting acquaintances by whom they
are quietly respected. But I think that men regard them as they do the
chaplain on board a man-of-war, or as they would regard a herald on
a field of battle. When men are assembled for fighting, the man who
notoriously does not fight must feel himself to be somewhat lower than
his brethren around him, and must be so esteemed by others.