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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Hunting Sketches by Trollope**
+#2 in our series by Anthony Trollope
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+Hunting Sketches
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+by Anthony Trollope
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+February, 1997  [Etext #814]
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+
+
+Hunting Sketches
+
+by Anthony Trollope
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+The Man who Hunts and Doesn't Like it
+The Man who Hunts and Does Like it
+The Lady who Rides to Hounds
+The Hunting Farmer
+The Man who Hunts and Never Jumps
+The Hunting Parson
+The Master of Hounds
+How to Ride to Hounds
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND DOESN'T LIKE IT.
+
+It seems to be odd, at first sight, that there should be any such
+men as these; but their name and number is legion. If we were to
+deduct from the hunting-crowd farmers, and others who hunt
+because hunting is brought to their door, of the remainder we
+should find that the "men who don't like it" have the
+preponderance. It is pretty much the same, I think, with all
+amusements. How many men go to balls, to races, to the theatre,
+how many women to concerts and races, simply because it is the
+thing to do? They have perhaps, a vague idea that they may
+ultimately find some joy in the pastime; but, though they do the
+thing constantly, they never like it. Of all such men, the
+hunting men are perhaps the most to be pitied.
+
+They are easily recognized by any one who cares to scrutinize the
+men around him in the hunting field. It is not to be supposed
+that all those who, in common parlance, do not ride, are to be
+included among the number of hunting men who don't like it. Many
+a man who sticks constantly to the roads and lines of
+gates, who, from principle, never looks at a fence, is much
+attached to hunting. Some of those who have borne great names as
+Nimrods in our hunting annals would as life have led a forlorn-
+hope as put a horse at a flight of hurdles. But they, too, are
+known; and though the nature of their delight is a mystery to
+straight-going men, it is manifest enough, that they do like it.
+Their theory of hunting is at any rate plain. They have an
+acknowledged system, and know what they are doing. But the men
+who don't like it, have no system, and never know distinctly what
+is their own aim. During some portion of their career they
+commonly try to ride hard, and sometimes for a while they will
+succeed. In short spurts, while the cherry-brandy prevails, they
+often have small successes; but even with the assistance of a
+spur in the head they never like it.
+
+Dear old John Leech! What an eye he had for the man who hunts and
+doesn't like it ! But for such, as a pictorial chronicler of the
+hunting field he would have had no fame. Briggs, I fancy, in his
+way did like it. Briggs was a full-blooded, up-apt, awkward,
+sanguine man, who was able to like anything, from gin and water
+upwards. But with how many a wretched companion of Briggs' are we
+not familiar? men as to whom any girl of eighteen would swear
+from the form of his visage and the carriage of his legs as he
+sits on his horse that he was seeking honour where honour was not
+to be found, and looking for pleasure in places where no pleasure
+lay for him.
+
+But the man who hunts and doesn't like it, has his moments of
+gratification, and finds a source of pride in his penance. In the
+summer, hunting does much for him. He does not usually take much
+personal care of his horses, as he is probably a town man and his
+horses are summered by a keeper of hunting stables; but he talks
+of them. He talks of them freely, and the keeper of the hunting
+stables is occasionally forced to write to him. And he can run
+down to look at his nags, and spend a few hours eating bad mutton
+chops, walking about the yards and paddocks, and, bleeding
+halfcrowns through the nose. In all this there is a delight which
+offers some compensation for his winter misery to our friend who
+hunts and doesn't like it.
+
+He finds it pleasant to talk of his horses especially to young
+women, with whom, perhaps, the ascertained fact of his winter
+employment does give him some credit. It is still something to be
+a hunting man even yet, though the multiplicity of railways and
+the existing plethora of money has so increased the number of
+sportsmen, that to keep a nag or two near some well-known
+station, is nearly as common as to die. But the delight of these
+martyrs is at the highest in the presence of their tailors; or,
+higher still, perhaps, in that of their bootmakers. The hunting
+man does receive some honour from him who makes his breeches;
+and, with a well-balanced sense of justice, the tailor's foreman
+is, I think, more patient, more admiring, more demonstrative in
+his assurances, more ready with his bit of chalk, when handling
+the knee of the man who doesn't like the work, than he ever is
+with the customer who comes to him simply because he wants some
+clothes fit for the saddle. The judicious conciliating tradesman
+knows that compensation should be given, and he helps to give it.
+But the visits to the bootmaker are better still. The tailor
+persists in telling his customer how his breeches should be made,
+and after what fashion they should be worn; but the bootmaker
+will take his orders meekly. If not ruffled by paltry objections
+as to the fit of the foot, he will accede to any amount of
+instructions as to the legs and tops. And then a new pair of top
+boots is a pretty toy; Costly, perhaps, if needed only as a toy,
+but very pretty, and more decorative in a gentleman's dressing-
+room than any other kind of garment. And top boots, when
+multiplied in such a locality, when seen in a phalanx  tell such
+pleasant lies on their owner's behalf. While your breeches are as
+dumb in their retirement as though you had not paid for them,
+your conspicuous boots are eloquent with a thousand tongues!
+There is pleasure found, no doubt, in this.
+
+As the season draws nigh the delights become vague, and still
+more vague; but, nevertheless, there are delights. Getting up at
+six o'clock in November to go down to Bletchley by an early train
+is not in itself pleasant, but on the opening morning, on the
+few first opening mornings, there is a promise about the thing
+which invigorates and encourages the early riser. He means to
+like it this year if he can. He has still some undefined notion
+that his period of pleasure will now come. He has not, as yet,
+accepted the adverse verdict which his own nature has given
+against him in this matter of hunting, and he gets into his early
+tub with acme glow of satisfaction. And afterwards it is nice to
+find himself bright with mahogany tops, buff-tinted breeches, and
+a pink coat. The ordinary habiliments of an English gentleman are
+so sombre that his own eye is gratified, and he feels that he has
+placed himself in the vanguard of society by thus shining in his
+apparel. And he will ride this year! He is fixed to that purpose.
+He will ride straight; and, if possible, he will like it.
+
+But the Ethiop cannot change his skin, nor can any man add a
+cubit to his stature. He doesn't like it, and all around him in
+the field know how it is with him; he himself knows how it is
+with others like himself, and he congregates with his brethren.
+The period of his penance has come upon him. He has to pay the
+price of those pleasant interviews with his tradesmen. He has to
+expiate the false boasts made to his female cousins. That row of
+boots cannot be made to shine in his chamber for nothing. The
+hounds have found, and the fox is away. Men are fastening on
+their flat-topped hats and feeling themselves in their stirrups.
+Horses are hot for the run, and the moment for liking it has
+come, if only it were possible!
+
+But at moments such as these something has to be done. The man
+who doesn't like it, let him dislike it ever so much, Cannot
+check his horse and simply ride back to the hunting stables. He
+understands that were he to do that, he must throw up his cap at
+once and resign. Nor can he trot easily along the roads with the
+fat old country gentleman who is out on his rough cob, and who,
+looking up to the wind and remembering the position of adjacent
+coverts, will give a good guess as to the direction in which the
+field will move. No; he must make an effort. The time of his
+penance has come, and the penance must be borne. There is a spark
+of pluck about him, though unfortunately he has brought it to
+bear in a wrong direction. The blood still runs at his heart, and
+he resolves that he will ride, if only he could tell which way.
+
+The stout gentleman on the cob has taken the road to the left
+with a few companions; but our friend knows that the stout
+gentleman has a little game of his own which will not be suitable
+for one who intends to ride. Then the crowd in front has divided
+itself. Those to the right rush down a hill towards a brook with
+a ford. One or two, men whom he hates with an intensity of
+envy, have jumped the brook, and have settled to their work.
+Twenty or thirty others are hustling themselves through the
+water. The time for a judicious start on that side is already
+gone. But others, a crowd of others, are facing the big ploughed
+field immediately before them. That is the straightest riding,
+and with them he goes. Why has the scent lain so hot over the up-
+turned heavy ground? Why do they go so fast at this the very
+first blush of the morning ? Fortune is always against him, and
+the horse is pulling him through the mud as though the brute
+meant to drag his arm out of the socket. At the first fence, as
+he is steadying himself, a butcher passes him roughly in the jump
+and nearly takes away the side of his top boot. He is knocked
+half out of his saddle, and in that condition scrambles through.
+When he has regained his equilibrium he sees the happy butcher
+going into the field beyond. He means to curse the butcher when
+he catches him, but the butcher is safe. A field and a half
+before him he still sees the tail hounds, and renews his effort.
+He has meant to like it to-day, and he will. So he rides at the
+next fence boldly, where the butcher has left his mark, and does
+it pretty well, with a slight struggle. Why is it that he can
+never get over a ditch without some struggle in his saddle, some
+scramble with his horse? Why does he curse the poor animal so
+constantly, unless it be that he cannot catch the butcher? Now
+he rushes at a gate which others have opened for him, but rushes
+too late and catches his leg. Mad with pain, he nearly gives it
+up, but the spark of pluck is still there, and with throbbing
+knee he perseveres. How he hates it! It is all detestable now. He
+cannot hold his horse because of his gloves, and he cannot get
+them off. The sympathetic beast knows that his master is unhappy,
+and makes himself unhappy and troublesome in consequence. Our
+friend is still going, riding wildly, but still keeping a grain
+of caution for his fences. He has not been down yet, but has
+barely saved himself more than once. The ploughs are very deep,
+and his horse, though still boring at him, pants heavily. Oh,
+that there might come a check, or that the brute of a fox might
+happily go to ground ! But no! The ruck of the hunt is far away
+from him in front, and the game is running steadily straight for
+some well known though still distant protection. But the man who
+doesn't like it still sees a red coat before him, and perseveres
+in chasing the wearer of it. The solitary red coat becomes
+distant, and still more distant from him, but he goes on while he
+can yet keep the line in which that red coat has ridden. He must
+hurry himself, however, or he will be lost to humanity, and will
+be alone. He must hurry himself, but his horse now desires to
+hurry no more. So he puts his spurs to the brute savagely, and
+then at some little fence, some ignoble ditch, they come down
+together in the mud, and the question of any further effort is
+saved for the rider. When he arises the red coat is out of sight,
+and his own horse is half across the field before him. In such a
+position, is it possible that a man should like it ?
+
+About four o'clock in the afternoon, when the other men are
+coming in, he turns up at the hunting stables, and nobody asks
+him any questions. He may have been doing fairly well for what
+anybody knows, and, as he says nothing of himself, his disgrace
+is at any rate hidden. Why should he tell that he had been nearly
+an hour on foot trying to catch his horse, that he had sat
+himself down on a bank and almost cried, and that he had drained
+his flask to the last drop before one o'clock ? No one need know
+the extent of his miseries. And no one does know how great is the
+misery endured by those who hunt regularly, and who do not like it.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND DOES LIKE IT.
+
+The man who hunts and does like it is an object of keen envy to
+the man who hunts and doesn't; but he, too, has his own miseries,
+and I am not prepared to say that they are always less
+aggravating than those endured by his less ambitious brother in
+the field. He, too, when he comes to make up his account, when
+he brings his hunting to book and inquires whether his whistle
+has been worth its price,  is driven to declare that vanity and
+vexation of spirit have been the prevailing characteristics of
+his hunting life. On how many evenings has he returned contented
+with his sport ? How many days has he declared to have been
+utterly wasted ? How often have frost and snow, drought and rain,
+wind and sunshine, impeded his plans ?  for to a hunting man
+frost, snow, drought, rain, wind and sunshine, will all come
+amiss. Then, when the one run of the season comes, he is not
+there! He has been idle and has taken a liberty with the day; or
+he has followed other gods and gone with strange hounds. With
+sore ears and bitter heart he hears the exaggerated boastings of
+his comrades, and almost swears that he will have no more of it.
+At the end of the season he tells himself that the season's
+amusement has cost him five hundred pounds;  that he has had one
+good day, three days that were not bad, and that all the rest
+have been vanity and vexation of spirit. After all, it may be a
+question whether the man who hunts and doesn't like it does not
+have the best of it.
+
+When we consider what is endured by the hunting man the wonder is
+that any man should like it. In the old days of Squire Western,
+and in the old days too since the time of Squire Western, the
+old days of thirty years since,  the hunting man had his hunting
+near to him. He was a country gentleman who considered himself to
+be energetic if he went out twice a week, and in doing this he
+rarely left his house earlier for that purpose than he would
+leave it for others. At certain periods of the year he
+if ho went out twice a he rarely left his house than he would
+leave it periods of the year he would, perhaps, be out before
+dawn; but then the general habits of his life conduced to early
+rising; and his distances were short. If he kept a couple of
+horses for the purpose he was well mounted, and these horses were
+available for other uses. He rode out and home, jogging slowly
+along the roads, and was a martyr to no ambition. All that has
+been changed now. The man who hunts and likes it, either takes a
+small hurting seat away from the comforts of his own home, or he
+locates himself miserably at an inn, or he undergoes the
+purgatory of daily journeys up and down from London,  doing that
+for his hunting which no consideration of money-making would
+induce him to do for his business. His hunting requires from him
+everything, his time, his money, his social hours, his rest, his
+sweet morning sleep; nay, his very dinners have to be sacrificed
+to this Moloch!
+
+Let us follow him on an ordinary day. His groom comes to his bed-
+chamber at seven o'clock, and tells him that it has frozen during
+the night. If he be a London man, using the train for his
+hunting, he knows nothing of the frost, and does not learn
+whether the day be practicable or not till he finds himself down
+in the country. But we will suppose our friend to be located in
+some hunting district, and accordingly his groom visits him with
+tidings. "Is it freezing now?" he asks from under the bedclothes.
+And even the man who does like it at such moments almost wishes
+that the answer should be plainly in the affirmative. Then
+swiftly again to the arms of Morpheus he might take himself, and
+ruffle his temper no further on that morning! He desires, at any
+rate, a decisive answer. To be or not to be as regards that day's
+hurting is what he now wants to know. But that is exactly what
+the groom cannot tell him. " It's just a thin crust of frost,
+sir, and the s'mometer is a standing at the pint." That is the
+answer which the man makes, and on that he has to come to a
+decision! For half an hour he lies doubting while his water is
+getting cold, and then sends for his man again. The thermometer
+is still standing at the point, but the man has tried the crust
+with his heel and found it to be very thin. The man who hunts and
+likes it scorns his ease, and resolves that he will at any rate
+persevere. He tumbles into his tub, and a little before nine
+comes out to his breakfast, still doubting sorely whether or no
+the day "will do." There he, perhaps, meets one or two others
+like himself, and learns that the men who hunt and don't like it
+are still warm in their beds. On such mornings as these, and
+such mornings are very many, the men who hunt and do not like it
+certainly have the best of it. The man who hunts and does like it
+takes himself out to some kitchen-garden or neighbouring paddock,
+and kicks at the ground himself. Certainly there is a crust, a
+very manifest crust. Though he puts up in the country, he has to
+go sixteen miles to the meet, and has no means of knowing whether
+or no the hounds will go out. " Jorrocks always goes if there's a
+chance," says one fellow, speaking of the master. " I don't
+know," says our friend; " he's a deal slower at it than he used
+to be. For my part, I wish Jorrocks would go; he's getting too
+old." Then he bolts a mutton chop and a couple of eggs hurriedly,
+and submits himself to be carried off in the trap.
+
+Though he is half an hour late at the meet, no hounds have as yet
+come, and he begins to curse his luck. A non-hunting day, a day
+that turns out to be no day for hunting purposes, begun in this
+way, is of all days the most melancholy. What is a man to do with
+himself who has put himself into his boots and breeches, and who
+then finds himself, by one o'clock, landed back at his starting-
+point without employment ? Who under such circumstances can apply
+himself to any salutary employment ? Cigars and stable-talk are
+all that remain to him; and it is well for him if he can refrain
+from the additional excitement of brandy and water.
+
+But on the present occasion we will not presume that our friend
+has fallen into so deep a bathos of misfortune. At twelve o'clock
+Tom appears, with the hounds following slowly at his heels; and a
+dozen men, angry with impatience, fly at him with assurances that
+there has been no sign of frost since ten o'clock. " Ain't there
+?" says Tom; " you look at the north sides of the banks, and see
+how you'd like it." Some one makes an uncivil remark as to the
+north sides of the banks, and wants to know when old Jorrocks is
+coming. " The squire 'll be here time enough," says Tom. And then
+there takes place that slow walking up and down of the hounds,
+which on such mornings always continues for half an hour. Let him
+who envies the condition of the man who hunts and likes it,
+remember that a cold thaw is going on, that our friend is already
+sulky with waiting, that to ride up and down for an hour and a
+half at a walking pace on such a morning is not an exhilarating
+pastime, and he will understand that the hunting man himself may
+have doubts as to the wisdom of his course of action.
+
+But at last Jorrocks is there, and the hounds trot off to cover.
+So dull has been everything on this morning that even that is
+something, and men begin to make themselves happier in the warmth
+of the movement. The hounds go into covert, and a period of
+excitement is commenced. Our friend who likes hunting remarks to
+his neighbour that the ground is rideable. His neighbour who
+doesn't like it quite so well says that he doesn't know. They
+remain standing close together on a forest ride for twenty
+minutes, but conversation doesn't go beyond that. The man who
+doesn't like it has lit a cigar, but the man who does like it
+never lights a cigar when hounds are drawing.
+
+And now the welcome music is heard, and a fox has been found. Mr.
+Jorrocks, gallopping along the ride with many oaths, implores
+those around him to hold their tongues and remain quiet. Why he
+should trouble himself to do this, as he knows that no one will
+obey his orders, it is difficult to surmise. Or why men should
+stand still in the middle of a large wood when they expect a fox
+to break, because Mr. Jorrocks swears
+at them, is also not to be understood. Our friend pays no
+attention to Mr. Jorrocks, but makes for the end of the
+ride, going with ears erect, and listening to the distant hounds
+as they turn upon the turning fox. As they turn, he returns; and,
+splashing through the mud of the now softened ground, through
+narrow tracks, with the boughs in his face, listening
+always, now hoping, now despairing, speaking to no one, but
+following and followed, he makes his way backwards and forwards
+through the wood, till at last, weary with wishing and working,
+he rests himself in some open spot, and begins to eat his
+luncheon. It is now past two, and it would puzzle him to say what
+pleasure he has as yet had out of his day's amusement.
+
+But now, while the flask is yet at his mouth, he hears from some
+distant corner a sound that tells him that the fox is away. He
+ought to have persevered, and then he would have been near them.
+As it is, all that labour of riding has been in vain, and he has
+before him the double task of finding the line of the hounds and
+of catching them when he has found it. He has a crowd of men
+around him; but he knows enough of hunting to be aware that the
+men who are wrong at such moments are always more numerous than
+they who are right. He has to choose for himself,  and chooses
+quickly, dashing down a ride to the right, while a host of those
+who know that he is one of them who like it, follow closely at
+his heels, too closely, as he finds at the first fence out of
+the woods, when one of his young admirers almost jumps on the top
+of him. " Do you want to get into my pocket, sir?" he says,
+angrily. The young admirer is snubbed, and, turning away,
+attempts to make a line for himself.
+
+But though he has been followed, he has great doubt as to his own
+course. To hesitate is to be lost, so he goes on, on rapidly,
+looking as he clears every fence for the spot at which he is to
+clear the next; but he is by no means certain of his course.
+Though he has admirers at his heels who credit him implicitly,
+his mind is racked by an agony of ignorance. He has got badly
+away, and the hounds are running well, and it is going to be a
+good thing; and he will not see it. He has not been in for
+anything good this year, and now this is his luck! His eye
+travels round over the horizon as he is gallopping, and though he
+sees men here and there, he can catch no sign of a hound; nor can
+he catch the form of any man who would probably be with them. But
+he perseveres, choosing his points as he goes, till the tail of
+his followers becomes thinner and thinner. He comes out upon a
+road, and makes the pace as good as he can along the soft edge of
+it. He sniffs at the wind, knowing that the fox, going at such a
+pace as this, must run with it. He tells himself from outward
+signs where he is, and uses his dead knowledge to direct him. He
+scorns to ask a question as he passes countrymen in his course,
+but he would give five guineas to know exactly where the hounds
+are at that moment. He has been at it now forty minutes, and is
+in despair. His gallant nag rolls a little under him, and he
+knows that he has been going too fast. And for what; for what ?
+What good has it all done him ? What good will it do him, though
+he should kill the beast ? He curses between his teeth, and
+everything is vanity and vexation of spirit.
+
+"They've just run into him at Boxall Springs, Mr. Jones," says a
+farmer whom he passes on the road. Boxall Springs is only a
+quarter of a mile before him, but he wonders how the farmer has
+come to know all about it. But on reaching Boxall Springs he
+finds that the farmer was right, and that Tom is already breaking
+up the fox. "Very good thing, Mr. Jones," says the squire in good
+humour. Our friend mutters something
+between his teeth and rides away in dudgeon from the triumphant
+master. On his road home he hears all about it from everybody. It
+seems to him that he alone of all those who are anybody has
+missed the run, the run of the season! " And killed him in the
+open as you may say," says Smith, who has already twice boasted
+in Jones's hearing that he had seen every turn the hounds had
+made. " It wasn't in the open," says Jones, reduced in his anger
+to diminish as far as may be the triumph of his rival.
+
+Such is the fate, the too frequent fate of the man who hunts and
+does like it.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY WHO RIDES TO HOUNDS.
+
+Among those who hunt there are two classes of hunting people who
+always like it, and these people are hunting parsons and hunting
+ladies. That it should be so is natural enough. In the life and
+habits of parsons and ladies there is much that is antagonistic
+to hunting, and they who suppress this antagonism do so because
+they are Nimrods at heart. But the riding of these horsemen under
+difficulties, horsemen and horsewomen, leaves a strong
+impression on the casual observer of hunting; for to such an one
+it seems that the hardest riding is forthcoming exactly where no
+hard riding should be expected. On the present occasion I will,
+if you please, confine myself to the lady who rides to hounds,
+and will begin with an assertion, which will not be contradicted,
+that the number of such ladies is very much on the increase.
+
+Women who ride, as a rule, ride better than men. They, the women,
+have always been instructed; whereas men have usually come to
+ride without any instruction. They are put upon ponies when they
+are all boys, and put themselves upon their fathers' horses as
+they become hobbledehoys: and thus they obtain the power of
+sticking on to the animal while he gallops and jumps, and even
+while he kicks and shies; and, so progressing, they achieve an
+amount of horsemanship which answers the purposes of life. But
+they do not acquire the art of riding with exactness, as women
+do, and rarely have such hands as a woman has on a horse's mouth.
+The consequence of this is that women fall less often than men,
+and the field is not often thrown into the horror which would
+arise were a lady known to be in a ditch with a horse lying on her.
+
+I own that I like to see three or four ladies out in a field, and
+I like it the better if I am happy enough to count one or more
+of them among my own acquaintances. Their presence tends to
+take off from hunting that character of horseyness, of both
+fast horseyness and slow horseyness, which has become, not
+unnaturally, attached to it, and to bring it within the category
+of gentle sports. There used to prevail an idea that the hunting
+man was of necessity loud and rough, given to strong drinks, ill
+adapted for the poetries of life, and perhaps a little prone to
+make money out of his softer friend. It may now be said that this
+idea is going out of vogue, and that hunting men are supposed to
+have that same feeling with regard to their horses, the same and
+no more, which ladies have for their carriage or soldiers for
+their swords. Horses are valued simply for the services that they
+can render, and are only valued highly when they are known to be
+good servants. That a man may hunt without drinking or swearing,
+and may possess a nag or two without any propensity to sell it or
+them for double their value, is now beginning to be understood.
+The oftener that women are to be seen "out," the more will such
+improved feelings prevail as to hunting, and the pleasanter will
+be the field to men who are not horsey, but who may nevertheless
+be good horsemen.
+
+There are two classes of women who ride to hounds, or, rather,
+among many possible classifications, there are two to which I
+will now call attention. There is the lady who rides, and demands
+assistance; and there is the lady who rides, and demands none.
+Each always, I may say always, receives all the assistance that
+she may require; but the difference between the two, to the men
+who ride with them, is very great. It will, of course, be
+understood that, as to both these samples of female Nimrods, I
+speak of ladies who really ride, not of those who grace the
+coverts with, and disappear under the auspices of, their papas or
+their grooms when the work begins.
+
+The lady who rides and demands assistance in truth becomes a
+nuisance before the run is over, let her beauty be ever so
+transcendent, her horsemanship ever- so perfect, and her battery
+of general feminine artillery ever so powerful. She is like the
+American woman, who is always wanting your place in a railway
+carriage, and demanding it, too, without the slightest idea of
+paying you for it with thanks; whose study it is to treat you as
+though she ignored your existence while she is appropriating your
+services. The hunting lady who demands assistance is very
+particular about her gates, requiring that aid shall be given to
+her with instant speed, but that the man who gives it shall never
+allow himself to be hurried as he renders it. And she soon
+becomes reproachful, oh, so soon ! It is marvellous to watch the
+manner in which a hunting lady will become exacting, troublesome,
+and at last imperious, deceived and spoilt by the attention
+which she receives. She teaches herself to think at last that a
+man is a brute who does not ride as though he were riding as her
+servant, and that it becomes her to assume indignation if every
+motion around her is not made with some reference to her safety,
+to her comfort, or to her success. I have seen women look as
+Furies look, and heard them speak as Furies are supposed to
+speak, because men before them could not bury themselves and
+their horses out of their way at a moment's notice, or because
+some pulling animal would still assert himself while they were
+there, and not sink into submission and dog-like obedience for
+their behoof.
+
+I have now before my eyes one who was pretty, brave, and a good
+horse-woman; but how men did hate her! When you were in a line
+with her there was no shaking her off. Indeed, you were like
+enough to be shaken off yourself, and to be rid of her after that
+fashion. But while you were with her you never escaped her at a
+single fence, and always felt that you were held to be
+trespassing against her in some manner. I shall never forget her
+voice, " Pray, take care of that gate." And yet it was a pretty
+voice, and elsewhere she was not given to domineering more than is
+common to pretty women in general; but she had been taught badly
+from the beginning, and she was a pest. It was the same at every
+gap. " Might I ask you not to come too near me ? " And yet it was
+impossible to escape her. Men could not ride wide of her, for she
+would not ride wide of them. She had always some male escort with
+her, who did not ride as she rode, and consequently, as she chose
+to have the advantage of an escort, of various escorts, she was
+always in the company of some who did not feel as much joy in the
+presence of a pretty young woman as men should do under all
+circumstances. "Might I ask you not to come too near me?" If she
+could only have heard the remarks to which this constant little
+request of hers gave rise. She is now the mother of children, and
+her hunting days are gone, and probably she never makes that
+little request. Doubtless that look, made up partly of offence
+and partly of female dignity, no longer clouds her brow. But I
+fancy that they who knew her of old in the hunting field never
+approach her now without fancying that they hear those
+reproachful words, and see that powerful look of injured feminine
+weakness.
+
+But there is the hunting lady who rides hard and never asks for
+assistance. Perhaps I may be allowed to explain to embryo
+Dianas, to the growing huntresses of the present age, that she
+who rides and makes no demand receives attention as close as is
+ever given to her more imperious sister. And how welcome she is !
+What a grace she lends to the day's sport! How pleasant it is to
+see her in her pride of place, achieving her mastery over the
+difficulties in her way by her own wit, as all men, and all
+women also, must really do who intend to ride to hounds; and
+doing it all without any sign that the difficulties are too great
+for her!
+
+The lady who rides like this is in truth seldom in the way. I
+have heard men declare that they would never wish to see a side-
+saddle in the field because women are troublesome, and because
+they must be treated with attention let the press of the moment
+be ever so instant. From this I dissent altogether. The small
+amount of courtesy that is needed is more than atoned for by the
+grace of her presence, and in fact produces no more impediment in
+the hunting-field than in other scenes of life.
+But in the hunting-field, as in other scenes, let assistance
+never be demanded by a woman. If the lady finds that she cannot
+keep a place in the first flight without such demands on the
+patience of those around her, let her acknowledge to herself that
+the attempt is not in her line, and that it should be abandoned.
+If it be the ambition of a hunting lady to ride straight, and
+women have very much of this ambition, let her use her eyes but
+never her voice; and let her ever have a smile for those who help
+her in her little difficulties. Let her never ask any one " to
+take care of that gate," or look as though she expected the
+profane crowd to keep aloof from her. So shall she win the hearts
+of those around her, and go safely through brake and brier, over
+ditch and dyke, and meet with a score of knights around her who
+will be willing and able to give her eager aid should the chance
+of any moment require it.
+
+There are two accusations which the more demure portion of the
+world is apt to advance against hunting ladies, or, as I should
+better say, against hunting as an amusement for ladies. It leads
+to flirting, they say, to flirting of a sort which mothers would
+not approve; and it leads to fast habits, to ways and thoughts
+which are of the horse horsey,  and of the stable, strongly
+tinged with the rack and manger. The first of these accusations
+is, I think, simply made in ignorance. As girls are brought up
+among us now-a-days, they may all flirt, if they have a mind to
+do so; and opportunities for flirting are much better and much
+more commodious in the ball-room, in the drawing-room, or in the
+park, than they are in the hunting-field. Nor is the work in hand
+of a nature to create flirting tendencies,  as, it must be
+admitted, is the nature of the work in hand when the floors are
+waxed and the fiddles are going. And this error has sprung from,
+or forms part of, another, which is wonderfully common among non
+- hunting folk. It is very widely thought by many, who do not, as
+a rule, put themselves in opposition to the amusements of the
+world, that hunting in itself is a wicked thing; that hunting men
+are fast, given to unclean living and bad ways of life; that they
+usually go to bed drunk, and that they go about the world roaring
+hunting cries, and disturbing the peace of the innocent
+generally. With such men, who could wish that wife, sister, or
+daughter should associate? But I venture to say that this
+opinion, which I believe to be common, is erroneous, and that men
+who hunt are not more iniquitous than men who go out fishing, or
+play dominoes, or dig in their gardens. Maxima debetur pueris
+reverentia, and still more to damsels; but if boys and girls will
+never go where they will hear more to injure them than they will
+usually do amidst the ordinary conversation of a hunting field,
+the maxima reverentia will have been attained.
+
+As to that other charge, let it be at once admitted that the
+young lady who has become of the horse horsey has made a fearful,
+almost a fatal mistake. And so also has the young man who falls
+into the same error. I hardly know to which such phase of
+character may be most injurious. It is a pernicious vice, that of
+succumbing to the beast that carries you, and making yourself, as
+it were, his servant, instead of keeping him ever as yours. I
+will not deny that I have known a lady to fall into this vice
+from hunting; but so also have I known ladies to marry their
+music-masters and to fall in love with their footmen. But not on
+that account are we to have no music-masters and no footmen.
+
+Let the hunting lady, however, avoid any touch of this blemish,
+remembering that no man ever likes a woman to know as much about
+a horse as he thinks he knows himself.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUNTING FARMER.
+
+Few hunting men calculate how much they owe to the hunting
+farmer, or recognize the fact that hunting farmers contribute
+more than any other class of sportsmen towards the maintenance of
+the sport. It is hardly too much to say that hunting would be
+impossible if farmers did not hunt. If they were inimical to
+hunting, and men so closely concerned must be friends or
+enemies, there would be no foxes left alive; and no fox, if
+alive, could be kept above ground. Fences would be impracticable,
+and damages would be ruinous; and any attempt to maintain the
+institution of hunting would be a long warfare in which the
+opposing farmer would certainly be the ultimate conqueror. What
+right has the hunting man who goes down from London, or across
+from Manchester, to ride over the ground which he treats as if it
+were his own, and to which he thinks that free access is his
+undoubted privilege ? Few men, I fancy, reflect that they have no
+such right, and no such privilege, or recollect that the very
+scene and area of their exercise, the land that makes hunting
+possible to them, is contributed by the farmer. Let any one
+remember with what tenacity the exclusive right of entering upon
+their small territories is clutched and maintained by all
+cultivators in other countries; let him remember the enclosures
+of France, the vine and olive terraces of Tuscany, or the
+narrowly-watched fields of Lombardy; the little meadows of
+Switzerland on which no stranger's foot is allowed to come, or
+the Dutch pastures, divided by dykes, and made safe from all
+intrusions. Let him talk to the American farmer of English
+hunting, and explain to that independent, but somewhat prosaic
+husbandman, that in England two or three hundred men claim the
+right of access to every man's land during the whole period of
+the winter months ! Then, when he thinks of this, will he realize
+to himself what it is that the English farmer contributes to
+hunting in England ? The French countryman cannot be made to
+understand it. You cannot induce him to believe that if he held
+land in England, looking to make his rent from tender young
+grass-fields and patches of sprouting corn, he would be powerless
+to keep out intruders, if those intruders came in the shape of a
+rushing squadron of cavalry, and called themselves a hunt. To
+him, in accordance with his existing ideas, rural life under such
+circumstances would be impossible. A small pan of charcoal, and
+an honourable death-bed, would give him relief after his first
+experience of such an invasion.
+
+Nor would the English farmer put up with the invasion, if the
+English farmer were not himself a hunting man. Many farmers,
+doubtless, do not hunt, and they bear it, with more or less
+grace; but they are inured to it from their infancy, because it
+is in accordance with the habits and pleasures of their own race.
+Now and again, in every hunt, some man comes up, who is, indeed,
+more frequently a small proprietor new to the glories of
+ownership, than a tenant farmer, who determines to vindicate his
+rights and oppose the field. He puts up a wire-fence round his
+domain, thus fortifying himself, as it were, in his citadel, and
+defies the world around him. It is wonderful how great is the
+annoyance which one such man may give, and how thoroughly he may
+destroy the comfort of the coverts in his neighbourhood. But,
+strong as such an one is in his fortress, there are still the
+means of fighting him. The farmers around him, if they be hunting
+men, make the place too hot to hold him. To them he is a thing
+accursed, a man to be spoken of with all evil language, as one
+who desires to get more out of his land than Providence, that
+is, than an English Providence, has intended. Their own wheat is
+exposed, and it is abominable to them that the wheat of another
+man should be more sacred than theirs.
+
+All this is not sufficiently remembered by some of us when the
+period of the year comes which is trying to the farmer's
+heart, when the young clover is growing, and the barley has been
+just sown. Farmers, as a rule, do not think very much of their
+wheat. When such riding is practicable, of course they like to
+see men take the headlands and furrows; but their hearts are not
+broken by the tracks of horses across their wheat-fields. I
+doubt, indeed, whether wheat is ever much injured by such usage.
+But let the thoughtful rider avoid the new-sown barley; and,
+above all things, let him give a wide berth to the new-laid
+meadows of artificial grasses. They are never large, and may
+always be shunned. To them the poaching of numerous horses is
+absolute destruction. The surface of such enclosures should be as
+smooth as a billiard-table, so that no water may lie in holes;
+and, moreover, any young plant cut by a horse's foot is trodden
+out of existence. Farmers do see even this done, and live through
+it without open warfare; but they should not be put to such
+trials of temper or pocket too often.
+
+And now for my friend the hunting farmer in person, the
+sportsman whom I always regard as the most indispensable adjunct
+to the field, to whom I tender my spare cigar with the most
+perfect expression of my good will. His dress is nearly always
+the same. He wears a thick black coat, dark brown breeches, and
+top boots, very white in colour, or of a very dark mahogany,
+according to his taste. The hunting farmer of the old school
+generally rides in a chimney-pot hat; but, in this particular,
+the younger brethren of the plough are leaving their old habits,
+and running into caps, net hats, and other innovations which, I
+own, are somewhat distasteful to me. And there is, too, the
+ostentatious farmer, who rides in scarlet, signifying thereby
+that he subscribes his ten or fifteen guineas to the hunt fund.
+But here, in this paper, it is not of him I speak. He is a man
+who is so much less the farmer, in that he is the more an
+ordinary man of the ordinary world. The farmer whom we have now
+before us shall wear the old black coat, and the old black hat,
+and the white top boots,  rather daubed in their whiteness;  and
+he shall be the genuine farmer of the old school.
+
+My friend is generally a modest man in the field, seldom much
+given to talking unless he be first addressed; and then he
+prefers that you shall take upon yourself the chief burden of the
+conversation. But on certain hunting subjects he has his opinion,
+indeed, a very strong opinion, and if you can drive him from
+that, your eloquence must be very great. He is very urgent about
+special coverts, and even as to special foxes; and you will often
+find smouldering in his bosom, if you dive deep enough to search
+for it, a half-smothered fire of indignation against the master
+because the country has, according to our friend's views, been
+drawn amiss. In such matters the farmer is generally right; but
+he is slow to communicate his ideas, and does not recognize the
+fact that other men have not the same opportunities for
+observation which belong to him. A master, however, who understands
+his business will generally consult a farmer;  and he
+will seldom, I think, or perhaps never, consult any one else.
+
+Always shake hands with your friend the farmer. It puts him at
+his ease with you, and he will tell you more willingly after that
+ceremony what are his ideas about the wind, and what may be
+expected of the day. His day's hunting is to him a solemn thing,
+and he gives to it all his serious thought. If any man can
+predicate anything of the run of a fox, it is the farmer.
+
+I had almost said that if any one knew anything of scent, it is
+the farmer; but of scent I believe that not even the farmer knows
+anything. But he knows very much as to the lie of the country,
+and should my gentle reader by chance have taken a glass or two
+of wine above ordinary over night, the effect of which will
+possibly be a temporary distaste to straight riding, no one's
+knowledge as to the line of the lanes is so serviceable as that
+of the farmer.
+
+As to riding, there is the ambitious farmer and the unambitious
+farmer; the farmer who rides hard, that is, ostensibly hard, and
+the farmer who is simply content to know where the hounds are,
+and to follow them at a distance which shall maintain him in that
+knowledge. The ambitious farmer is not the hunting farmer in his
+normal condition; he is either one who has an eye to selling his
+horse, and, riding with that view, loses for the time his
+position as farmer; or he is some exceptional tiller of the soil
+who probably is dangerously addicted to hunting as another man is
+addicted to drinking; and you may surmise respecting him that
+things will not go well with him after a year or two. The friend
+of my heart is the farmer who rides, but rides without
+sputtering; who never makes a show of it, but still is always
+there; who feels it to be no disgrace to avoid a run of fences
+when his knowledge tells him that this may be done without danger
+of his losing his place. Such an one always sees a run to the
+end. Let the pace have been what it may, he is up in time to see
+the crowd of hounds hustling for their prey, and to take part in
+the buzz of satisfaction which the prosperity of the run has
+occasioned. But the farmer never kills his horse, and seldom
+rides him even to distress. He is not to be seen loosing his
+girths, or looking at the beast's flanks, or examining his legs
+to ascertain what mischances may have occurred. He takes it all
+easily, as men always take matters of business in which they are
+quite at home. At the end of the run he sits mounted as quietly
+as he did at the meet, and has none of that appearance of having
+done something wonderful, which on such occasions is so very
+strong in the faces of the younger portion of the pink brigade.
+To the farmer his day's hunting is very pleasant, and by habit is
+even very necessary; but it comes in its turn like market-day,
+and produces no extraordinary excitement. He does not rejoice
+over an hour and ten minutes with a kill in the open, as he
+rejoices when he has returned to Parliament the candidate who is
+pledged to repeal of the malt-tax; for the farmer of whom we are
+speaking now, though he rides with constancy, does not ride with
+enthusiasm.
+
+O fortunati sua si bona norint farmers of England! Who in the
+town is the farmer's equal?  What is the position which his
+brother, his uncle, his cousin holds? He is a shopkeeper, who
+never has a holiday, and does not know what to do with it when it
+comes to him;  to whom the fresh air of heaven is a stranger;
+who lives among sugars and oils, and the dust of shoddy, and the
+size of new clothing. Should such an one take to hunting once a
+week, even after years of toil, men would point their fingers at
+him and whisper among themselves that he was as good as ruined.
+His friends would tell him of his wife and children; and,
+indeed, would tell him truly, for his customers would fly from
+him. But nobody grudges the farmer his day's sport! No one thinks
+that he is cruel to his children and unjust to his wife because
+he keeps a nag for his amusement, and can find a couple of days
+in the week to go among his friends. And with what advantages he
+does this ! A farmer will do as much with one horse, will see as
+much hunting, as an outside member of the hunt will do with
+four, and, indeed, often more. He is his own head-groom, and has
+no scruple about bringing his horse out twice a week. He asks no
+livery-stable keeper what his beast can do, but tries the powers
+of the animal himself, and keeps in his breast a correct record.
+When the man from London, having taken all he can out of his
+first horse, has ridden his second to a stand-still, the farmer
+trots up on his stout, compact cob, without a sign of distress.
+He knows that the condition of a hunter and a greyhound should
+not be the same, and that his horse, to be in good working
+health, should carry nearly all the hard flesh that he can put
+upon him. How such an one must laugh in his sleeve at the five
+hunters of the young swell who, after all, is brought to grief in
+the middle of the season, because he has got nothing to ride! A
+farmer's horse is never lame, never unfit to go, never throws out
+curbs, never breaks down before or behind. Like his master, he is
+never showy. He does not paw, and prance, and arch his neck, and
+bid the world admire his beauties; but, like his master, he is
+useful; and when he is wanted, he can always do his work.
+
+O fortunatus nimium agricola, who has one horse, and that a good
+one, in the middle of a hunting country !
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND NEVER JUMPS.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUNTING PARSON.
+
+I feel some difficulty in dealing with the character I am now
+about to describe. The world at large is very prone to condemn
+the hunting parson, regarding him as a man who is false to his
+profession; and, for myself, I am not prepared to say that the
+world is wrong. Had my pastors and masters, my father and mother,
+together with the other outward circumstances of my early life,
+made a clergyman of me, I think that I should not have hunted, or
+at least, I hope that I might have abstained; and yet, for the
+life of me, I cannot see the reason against it, or tell any man
+why a clergyman should not ride to hounds. In discussing the
+subject, and I often do discuss it, the argument against the
+practice which is finally adopted, the argument which is intended
+to be conclusive, simply amounts to this, that a parish
+clergyman who does his duty cannot find the time. But that
+argument might be used with much more truth against other men of
+business, against those to whose hunting the world takes no
+exception. Indeed, of all men, the ordinary parish clergyman, is,
+perhaps, the least liable to such censure. He lives in the
+country, and can hunt cheaper and with less sacrifice of time
+than other men. His professional occupation does not absorb all
+his hours, and he is too often an idle man, whether he hunt or
+whether he do not. Nor is it desirable that any man should work
+always and never play. I think it is certainly the fact that a
+clergyman may hunt twice a week with less objection in regard to
+his time than any other man who has to earn his bread by his
+profession. Indeed, this is so manifestly the case, that I am
+sure that the argument in question, though it is the one which is
+always intended to be conclusive, does not in the least convey
+the objection which is really felt. The truth is, that a large
+and most respectable section of the world still regards hunting
+as wicked. It is supposed to be like the Cider Cellars or the
+Haymarket at twelve o'clock at night. The old ladies know that
+the young men go to these wicked places, and hope that no great
+harm is done; but it would be dreadful to think that clergymen
+should so degrade themselves. Now I wish I could make the old
+ladies understand that hunting is not wicked.
+
+But although that expressed plea as to the want of time really
+amounts to nothing, and although the unexpressed feeling of old
+ladies as to the wickedness of hunting does not in truth amount
+to much, I will not say that there is no other impediment in the
+way of a hunting parson. Indeed, there have come up of late years
+so many impediments in the way of any amusement on the part of
+clergymen, that we must almost presume them to be divested at
+their consecration of all human attributes except hunger and
+thirst. In my younger days,  and I am not as yet very old, an
+elderly clergyman might play his rubber of whist whilst his
+younger reverend brother was dancing a quadrille; and they might
+do this without any risk of a rebuke from a bishop, or any
+probability that their neighbours would look askance at them.
+Such recreations are now unclerical in the highest degree, or if
+not in the highest, they are only one degree less so than
+hunting. The theatre was especially a respectable clerical
+resource, and we may still occasionally see heads of colleges in
+the stalls, or perhaps a dean, or some rector, unambitious of
+further promotion. But should a young curate show himself in the
+pit, he would be but a lost sheep of the house of Israel. And
+latterly there went forth, at any rate in one diocese, a firman
+against cricket !  Novels, too, are forbidden; though the fact
+that they may be enjoyed in solitude saves the clergy from
+absolute ignorance as to that branch of our national literature.
+All this is hard upon men who, let them struggle as they may to
+love the asceticisms of a religious life, are only men; and it
+has a strong tendency to keep out of the Church that very
+class, the younger sons of country gentlemen, whom all Churchmen
+should wish to see enter it. Young men who think of the matter
+when the time for taking orders is coming near, do not feel
+themselves qualified to rival St. Paul in their lives; and they
+who have not thought of it find themselves to be cruelly used
+when they are expected to make the attempt.
+
+But of all the amusements which a layman may follow and a
+clergyman may not, hunting is thought to be by much the worst.
+There is a savour of wickedness about it in the eyes of the old
+ladies which almost takes it out of their list of innocent
+amusements even for laymen. By the term old ladies it will be
+understood, perhaps, that I do not allude simply to matrons and
+spinsters who may be over the age of sixty, but to that most
+respectable portion of the world which has taught itself to abhor
+the pomps and vanities. Pomps and vanities are undoubtedly bad,
+and should be abhorred; but it behooves those who thus take upon
+themselves the duties of censors to be sure that the practices
+abhorred are in truth real pomps and actual vanities,  not pomps
+and vanities of the imagination. Now as to hunting, I maintain
+that it is of itself the most innocent amusement going, and that
+it has none of that Cider-Cellar flavour with which the old
+ladies think that it is so savoury. Hunting is done by a crowd;
+but men who meet together to do wicked things meet in small
+parties. Men cannot gamble in the hunting-field, and drinking
+there is more difficult than in almost any other scene of life.
+Anonyma, as we were told the other day, may show herself; but if
+so, she rides alone. The young man must be a brazen sinner, too
+far gone for hunting to hurt him, who will ride with Anonyma in
+the field. I know no vice which hunting either produces or
+renders probable, except the vice of extravagance; and to that,
+if a man be that way given, every pursuit in life will equally
+lead him A seat for a Metropolitan borough, or a love of
+ortolans, or a taste even for new boots will ruin a man who puts
+himself in the way of ruin. The same may be said of hunting, the
+same and no more.
+
+But not the less is the general feeling very strong against the
+hunting parson; and not the less will it remain so in spite of
+anything that I may say. Under these circumstances our friend the
+hunting parson usually rides as though he were more or less under
+a cloud. The cloud is not to be seen in a melancholy brow or a
+shamed demeanour; for the hunting parson will have lived down
+those feelings, and is generally too forcible a man to allow
+himself to be subjected to such annoyances; nor is the cloud to
+be found in any gentle tardiness of his motions, or an attempt at
+suppressed riding; for the hunting parson generally rides hard.
+Unless he loved hunting much he would not be there. But the cloud
+is to be perceived and heard in the manner in which he speaks of
+himself and his own doings. He is never natural in his self-talk
+as is any other man. He either flies at his own cloth at once,
+marring some false apology for his presence, telling you that he
+is there just to see the hounds, and hinting to you his own know
+ledge that he has no business to ride after them; or else he
+drops his profession altogether, and speaks to you in a tone
+which makes you feel that you would not dare to speak to him
+about his parish. You can talk to the banker about his banking,
+the brewer about his brewing, the farmer about his barley, or the
+landlord about his land; but to a hunting parson of this latter
+class, you may not say a word about his church.
+
+There are three modes in which a hunting parson may dress himself
+for hunting, the variations having reference solely to the
+nether man. As regards the upper man there can never be a
+difference. A chimney-pot hat, a white neckerchief, somewhat
+broad in its folds and strong with plentiful starch, a stout
+black coat, cut rather shorter than is common with clergymen, and
+a modest, darksome waistcoat that shall attract no
+attention, these are all matters of course. But the observer, if
+he will allow his eye to descend below these upper garments, will
+perceive that the clergyman may be comfortable and bold in
+breeches, or he may be uncomfortable and semi-decorous in black
+trowsers. And there is another mode of dress open to him, which I
+can assure my readers is not an unknown costume, a tertium quid,
+by which semi-decorum and comfort are combined. The hunting
+breeches are put on first, and the black trowsers are drawn over
+them.
+
+But in whatever garb the hunting parson may ride, he almost
+invariably rides well, and always enjoys the sport. If he did
+not, what would tempt him to run counter, as he does, to his
+bishop and the old ladies ? And though, when the hounds are first
+dashing out of covert, and when the sputtering is beginning and
+the eager impetuosity of the young is driving men three at a time
+into the same gap, when that wild excitement of a fox just away
+is at its height, and ordinary sportsmen are rushing for
+places,  though at these moments the hunting parson may be able
+to restrain himself, and to declare by his momentary tranquillity
+that he is only there to see the hounds, he will ever be found,
+seeing the hounds also, when many of that eager crowd have lagged
+behind, altogether out of sight of the last tail of them. He will
+drop into the running, as it were out of the clouds, when the
+select few have settled down steadily to their steady work; and
+the select few will never look upon him as one who, after that,
+is likely to fall out of their number. He goes on certainly to
+the kill, and then retires a little out of the circle, as though
+he had trotted in at that spot from his ordinary parochial
+occupations, just to see the hounds.
+
+For myself I own that I like the hunting parson. I generally find
+him to be about the pleasantest man in the field, with the most
+to say for himself, whether the talk be of hunting, of politics,
+of literature, or of the country. He is never a hunting man
+unalloyed, unadulterated, and unmixed, a class of man which is
+perhaps of all classes the most tedious and heavy in hand. The
+tallow-chandler who can talk only of candles, or the barrister
+who can talk only of his briefs, is very bad; but the hunting man
+who can talk only of his runs, is, I think, worse even than the
+unadulterated tallow-chandler, or the barrister unmixed. Let me
+pause for a moment here to beg young sportsmen not to fall into
+this terrible mistake. Such bores in the field are, alas, too
+common; but the hunting parson never sins after that fashion.
+Though a keen sportsman, he is something else besides a
+sportsman, and for that reason, if for no other, is always a
+welcome addition to the crowd.
+
+But still I must confess at the end of this paper, as I hinted
+also at the beginning of it,  that the hunting parson seems to
+have made a mistake. He is kicking against the pricks, and
+running counter to that section of the world which should be his
+section. He is making himself to stink in the nostrils of his
+bishop, and is becoming a stumbling-block, and a rock of offence
+to his brethren. It is bootless for him to argue, as I have here
+argued, that his amusement is in itself innocent, and that some
+open-air recreation is necessary to him. Grant him that the
+bishops and old ladies are wrong and that he is right in
+principle, and still he will not be justified. Whatever may be
+our walk in life, no man can walk well who does not walk with the
+esteem of his fellows. Now those little walks by the covert
+sides, those pleasant little walks of which I am writing, are
+not, unfortunately, held to be estimable, or good for themselves,
+by English clergymen in general.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASTER OF HOUNDS.
+
+The master of hounds best known by modern description is the
+master of the Jorrocks type. Now, as I take it, this is not the
+type best known by English sportsmen, nor do the Jorrocks ana,
+good though they be, give any fair picture of such a master of
+hounds as ordinarily presides over the hunt in English counties.
+Mr. Jorrocks comes into a hunt when no one else can be found to
+undertake the work; when, in want of any one better, the
+subscribers hire his services as those of an upper
+servant; when, in fact, the hunt is at a low ebb, and is
+struggling for existence. Mr. Jorrocks with his carpet-bag then
+makes his appearance, driving the hardest bargain that he can,
+purposing to do the country at the lowest possible figure,
+followed by a short train of most undesirable nags, with
+reference to which the wonder is that Mr. Jorrocks should be able
+to induce any hunting servant to trust his neck to their custody.
+Mr. Jorrocks knows his work, and is generally a most laborious
+man. Hunting is his profession, but it is one by which he can
+barely exist. He hopes to sell a horse or two during the season,
+and in this way adds something of the trade of a dealer to his
+other trade. But his office is thankless, ill-paid, closely
+watched, and subject to all manner of indignities. Men suspect
+him, and the best of those who ride with him will hardly treat
+him as their equal. He is accepted as a disagreeable necessity,
+and is dismissed as soon as the country can do better for itself.
+Any hunt that has subjected itself to Mr. Jorrocks knows that it
+is in disgrace, and will pass its itinerant master on to some
+other district as soon as it can suit itself with a proper master
+of the good old English sort.
+
+It is of such a master as this, a master of the good old English
+sort, and not of an itinerant contractor for hunting, that I
+here intend to speak. Such a master is usually an old resident in
+the county which he hunts; one of those country noblemen or
+gentlemen whose parks are the glory of our English landscape, and
+whose names are to be found in the pages of our county records;
+or if not that, he is one who, with a view to hunting, has
+brought his family and fortune into a new district, and has found
+a ready place as a country gentleman among new neighbours. It has
+been said that no one should become a member of Parliament unless
+he be a man of fortune. I hold such a rule to be much more true
+with reference to a master of hounds. For his own sake this
+should be so, and much more so for the sake of those over whom he
+has to preside. It is a position in which no man can be popular
+without wealth, and it is a position which no man should seek to
+fill unless he be prepared to spend his money for the
+gratification of others. It has been said of masters of hounds
+that they must always have their hands in their pockets, and must
+always have a guinea to find there; and nothing can be truer than
+this if successful hunting is to be expected. Men have hunted
+countries, doubtless, on economical principles, and the sport has
+been carried on from year to year; but under such circumstances
+it is ever dwindling and becoming frightfully less. The foxes
+disappear, and when found almost instantly sink below ground.
+Distant coverts, which are ever the best because less frequently
+drawn, are deserted, for distance of course adds greatly to
+expense. The farmers round the centre of the county become
+sullen, and those beyond are indifferent; and so, from bad to
+worse, the famine goes on till the hunt has perished of atrophy.
+Grease to the wheels, plentiful grease to the wheels, is needed
+in all machinery; but I know of no machinery in which everrunning
+grease is so necessary as in the machinery of hunting.
+
+Of such masters as I am now describing there are two sorts, of
+which, however, the one is going rapidly and, I think, happily
+out of fashion. There is the master of hounds who takes a
+subscription, and the master who takes none. Of the latter class
+of sportsman, of the imperial head of a country who looks upon
+the coverts of all his neighbours as being almost his own
+property, there are, I believe, but few left. Nor is such
+imperialism fitted for the present age. In the days of old of
+which we read so often, the days of Squire Western, when fox-
+hunting was still young among us, this was the fashion in which
+all hunts were maintained. Any country gentleman who liked the
+sport kept a small pack of hounds, and rode over his own lands or
+the lands of such of his neighbours as had no similar
+establishments of their own. We never hear of Squire Western that
+he hunted the county, or that he went far afield to his meets.
+His tenants joined him, and by degrees men came to his hunt from
+greater distances around him. As the necessity for space
+increased, increasing from increase of hunting ambition, the
+richer and more ambitious squires began to undertake the
+management of wider areas, and so our hunting districts were
+formed. But with such extension of area there came, of course,
+necessity of extended expenditure, and so the fashion of
+subscription lists arose. There have remained some few great
+Nimrods who have chosen to be magnanimous and to pay for
+everything, despising the contributions of their followers. Such
+a one was the late Earl Fitzhardinge, and after such manner in,
+as I believe, the Berkeley hunt still conducted. But it need
+hardly be explained, that as hunting is now conducted in England,
+such a system is neither fair nor palatable. It is not fair that
+so great a cost for the amusement of other men should fall upon
+any one man's pocket; nor is it palatable to others that such
+unlimited power should be placed in any one man's hands. The
+ordinary master of subscription hounds is no doubt autocratic,
+but he is not autocratic with all the power of tyranny which
+belongs to the despot who rules without taxation. I doubt whether
+any master of a subscription pack would advertise his meets for
+eleven, with an understanding that the hounds were never to move
+till twelve, when he intended to be present in person. Such was
+the case with Lord Fitzhardinge, and I do not know that it was
+generally thought that he carried his power too far. And I think,
+too, that gentlemen feel that they ride with more pleasure when
+they themselves contribute to the cost of their own amusement.
+
+Our master of hounds shall be a country gentleman who takes a
+subscription, and who therefore, on becoming autocratic, makes
+himself answerable to certain general rules for the management of
+his autocracy. He shall hunt not less, let us say, than three
+days a week; but though not less, it will be expected probably
+that he will hunt oftener. That is, he will advertise three days
+and throw a byeday in for the benefit of his own immediate
+neighbourhood; and these byedays, it must be known, are the cream
+of hunting, for there is no crowd, and the foxes break sooner and
+run straighter. And he will be punctual to his time, giving
+quarter to none and asking none himself. He will draw fairly
+through the day, and indulge no caprices as to coverts. The laws,
+indeed, are never written, but they exist and are understood; and
+when they be too recklessly disobeyed, the master of hounds falls
+from his high place and retires into private life,  generally
+with a broken heart. In the hunting field, as in all other
+communities, republics, and governments, the power of the purse
+is everything. As long as that be retained, the despotism of the
+master is tempered and his rule will be beneficent.
+
+Five hundred pounds a day is about the sum which a master should
+demand for hunting an average country, that is, so many times
+five hundred pounds a year as he may hunt days in the week. If
+four days a week be required of him, two thousand a year will be
+little enough. But as a rule, I think masters are generally
+supposed to charge only for the advertised days, and to give the
+byedays out of their own pocket. Nor must it be thought that the
+money so subscribed will leave the master free of expense. As I
+have said before, he should be a rich man. Whatever be the
+subscription paid to him, he must go beyond it, very much beyond
+it, or there will grow up against him a feeling that he is mean,
+and that feeling will rob him of all his comfort. Hunting men in
+England wish to pay for their own amusement; but they desire that
+more shall be spent than they pay. And in this there is a rough
+justice, that roughness of justice which pervades our English
+institutions. To a master of hounds is given a place of great
+influence, and into his hands is confided an authority the
+possession of which among his fellow-sportsmen is very pleasant
+to him. For this he is expected to pay, and he does pay for it. A
+Lord Mayor is, I take it, much in the same category. He has a
+salary as Lord Mayor, but if he do not spend more than that on
+his office he becomes a byword for stinginess among Lord Mayors
+To be Lord Mayor is his whistle, and he pays for it.
+
+For myself, if I found myself called upon to pay for one whistle
+or the other, I would sooner be a master of hounds than a Lord
+Mayor. The power is certainly more perfect, and the situation, I
+think, more splendid. The master of hounds has no aldermen, no
+common council, no liverymen. As long as he fairly performs his
+part of  the compact, he is altogether without control. He is not
+unlike the captain of a man-of-war; but, unlike the captain of a
+man-of-war, he carries no sailing orders. He is free to go where
+he lists, and is hardly expected to tell any one whither he
+goeth. He is enveloped in a mystery which, to the young, adds
+greatly to his grandeur; and he is one of those who, in spite of
+the democratic tenderness of the age, may still be said to go
+about as a king among men. No one contradicts him. No one speaks
+evil of him to his face; and men tremble when they have whispered
+anything of some half-drawn covert, of some unstopped earth, some
+fox that should not have escaped, and, looking round, see that
+the master is within earshot. He is flattered, too, if that be of
+any avail to him. How he is flattered ! What may be done in this
+way to Lord Mayors by common councilmen who like Mansion-house
+crumbs, I do not know; but kennel crumbs must be very sweet to a
+large class of sportsmen. Indeed, they are so sweet that almost
+every man will condescend to flatter the master of hounds. And
+ladies too,  all the pretty girls delight to be spoken to by the
+master ! He needs no introduction, but is free to sip all the
+sweets that come. Who will not kiss the toe of his boots, or
+refuse to be blessed by the sunshine of his smile ?
+
+But there are heavy duties, deep responsibilities, and much true
+heart-felt anxiety to stand as makeweight against all these
+sweets. The master of hounds, even though he take no part in the
+actual work of hunting his own pack, has always his hands full of
+work. He is always learning, and always called upon to act on his
+knowledge suddenly. A Lord Mayor may sit at the Mansionhouse, I
+think, without knowing much of the law. He may do so without
+discovery of his ignorance. But the master of hounds who does not
+know his business is seen through at once. To say what that
+business is would take a paper longer than this, and the precept
+writer by no means considers himself equal to such a task. But it
+is multifarious, and demands a special intellect for itself. The
+master should have an eye like an eagle's, an ear like a thief's,
+and a heart like a dog's that can be either soft or ruthless as
+occasion may require. How he should love his foxes, and with what
+pertinacity he should kill them! How he should rejoice when his
+skill has assisted in giving the choice men of his hunt a run
+that they can remember for the next six years ! And how heavy
+should be his heart within him when he trudges home with them,
+weary after a blank day, to the misery of which his incompetency
+has, perhaps, contributed ! A master of hounds should be an
+anxious man; so anxious that the privilege of talking to pretty
+girls should be of little service to him.
+
+One word I will say as to the manners of a master of hounds, and
+then I will have done. He should be an urbane man, but not too
+urbane; and he should certainly be capable of great austerity. It
+used to be said that no captain of a man-of-war could hold his
+own without swearing. I will not quite say the same of a master
+of hounds, or the old ladies who think hunting to be wicked will
+have a handle against me. But I will declare that if any man
+could be justified in swearing, it would be a master of hounds.
+The troubles of the captain are as nothing to his. The captain
+has the ultimate power of the sword, or at any rate of the
+fetter, in his hands, while the master has but his own tongue to
+trust,  his tongue and a certain influence which his position
+gives him. The master who can make that influence suffice without
+swearing is indeed a great man. Now-a-days swearing is so
+distasteful to the world at large, that great efforts are made to
+rule without it, and some such efforts are successful; but any
+man who has hunted for the last twenty years will bear me out in
+saying that hard words in a master's mouth used to be considered
+indispensable. Now and then a little irony is tried.  "I wonder,
+sir, how much you'd take to go home ?" I once heard a master ask
+of a red-coated stranger who was certainly more often among the
+hounds than he need have been.  "Nothing on earth, sir, while you
+carry on as you are doing just at present," said the stranger.
+The master accepted the compliment, and the stranger sinned no
+more.
+
+There are some positions among mankind which are so peculiarly
+blessed that the owners of them seem to have been specially
+selected by Providence for happiness on earth in a degree
+sufficient to raise the malice and envy of all the world around.
+An English country gentleman with ten thousand a year must have
+been so selected. Members of Parliament with seats for counties
+have been exalted after the same unjust fashion. Popular masters
+of old-established hunts sin against their fellows in the same
+way. But when it comes to a man to fill up all these positions in
+England, envy and malice must be dead in the land if he be left
+alive to enjoy their fruition.
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO RIDE TO HOUNDS
+
+Now attend me, Diana and the Nymphs, Pan, Orion, and the Satyrs,
+for I have a task in hand which may hardly be accomplished
+without some divine aid. And the lesson I would teach is one as
+to which even gods must differ, and no two men will ever hold
+exactly the same opinion. Indeed, no written lesson, no spoken
+words, no lectures, be they ever so often repeated, will teach
+any man to ride to hounds. The art must come of nature and of
+experience; and Orion, were he here, could only tell the tyro of
+some few blunders which he may avoid, or give him a hint or two
+as to the manner in which he should begin.
+
+Let it be understood that I am speaking of fox-hunting, and let
+the young beginner always remember that in hunting the fox a pack
+of hounds is needed. The huntsman, with his servants, and all the
+scarlet-coated horsemen in the field, can do nothing towards the
+end for which they are assembled without hounds. He who as yet
+knows nothing of hunting will imagine that I am laughing at him
+in saying this; but, after a while, he will know how needful it
+is to bear in mind the caution I here give him, and will see how
+frequently men seem to forget that a fox cannot be hunted without
+hounds.  A fox is seen to break from the covert, and men ride
+after it; the first man, probably, being some cunning sinner, who
+would fain get off alone if it were possible, and steal a march
+upon the field. But in this case one knave makes many fools; and
+men will rush, and ride along the track of the game, as though
+they could hunt it, and will destroy the scent before the hounds
+are on it, following, in their ignorance, the footsteps of the
+cunning sinner. Let me beg my young friend not to be found among
+this odious crowd of marplots. His business is to ride to hounds;
+and let him do so from the beginning of the run, persevering
+through it all, taking no mean advantages, and allowing himself
+to be betrayed into as few mistakes as possible; but let him not
+begin before the beginning. If he could know all that is inside
+the breast of that mean man who commenced the scurry, the cunning
+man who desires to steal a march, my young friend would not wish
+to emulate him. With nine-tenths of the men who flutter away
+after this ill fashion there is no design of their own in their
+so riding. They simply wish to get away, and in their impatience
+forget the little fact that a pack of hounds is necessary for the
+hunting of a fox.
+
+I have found myself compelled to begin with this preliminary
+caution, as all riding to hounds hangs on the fact in question.
+Men cannot ride to hounds if the hounds be not there. They may
+ride one after another, and that, indeed, suffices for many a
+keen sportsman; but I am now addressing the youth who is
+ambitious of riding to hounds. But though I have thus begun,
+striking first at the very root of the matter, I must go back
+with my pupil into the covert before I carry him on through the
+run. In riding to hounds there is much to do before the straight
+work commences. Indeed, the straight work is, for the man, the
+easiest work, or the work, I should say, which may be done with
+the least previous knowledge. Then the horse, with his qualities,
+comes into play; and if he be up to his business in skill,
+condition, and bottom, a man may go well by simply keeping with
+others who go well also. Straight riding, however, is the
+exception and not the rule. It comes sometimes, and is the cream
+of hunting when it does come; but it does not come as often as
+the enthusiastic beginner will have taught himself to expect.
+
+But now we will go back to the covert, and into the covert if it
+be a large one. I will speak of three kinds of coverts, the
+gorse, the wood, and the forest. There are others, but none other
+so distinct as to require reference. As regards the gorse covert,
+which of all is the most delightful, you, my disciple, need only
+be careful to keep in the crowd when it is being drawn. You must
+understand that if the plantation which you see before you, and
+which is the fox's home and homestead, be surrounded, the owner
+of it will never leave it. A fox will run back from a child among
+a pack of hounds, so much more terrible is to him the human race
+even than the canine. The object of all men of course is that the
+fox shall go, and from a gorse covert of five acres he must go
+very quickly or die among the hounds. It will not be long before
+he starts if there be space left for him to creep out, as he will
+hope, unobserved.  Unobserved he will not be, for the accustomed
+eye of some whip or servant will have seen him from a corner. But
+if stray horsemen roaming round the gorse give him no room for
+such hope, he will not go. All which is so plainly intelligible,
+that you, my friend, will not fail to understand why you are
+required to remain with the crowd. And with simple gorse coverts
+there is no strong temptation to move about. They are drawn
+quickly, and though there be a scramble for places when the fox
+has broken, the whole thing is in so small a compass that there
+is no difficulty in getting away with the hounds. In finding your
+right place, and keeping it when it is found, you may have
+difficulty; but in going away from a gorse the field will be open
+for you, and when the hounds are well out and upon the scent,
+then remember your Latin; Occupet extremum scabies.
+
+But for one fox found in a gorse you will, in ordinary countries,
+see five found in woods; and as to the place and conduct of a
+hunting man while woods are being drawn, there is room for much
+doubt. I presume that you intend to ride one horse throughout the
+day, and that you wish to see all the hunting that may come in
+your way. This being so, it will be your study to economize your
+animal's power, and to keep him fresh for the run when it comes.
+You will hardly assist your object in this respect by seeing the
+wood drawn, and galloping up and down the rides as the fox
+crosses and recrosses from one side of it to another. Such rides
+are deep with mud, and become deeper as the work goes on; and
+foxes are very obstinate, running, if the covert be thick, often
+for an hour together without an attempt at breaking, and being
+driven back when they do attempt by the horsemen whom they see on
+all sides of them. It is very possible to continue at this work,
+seeing the hounds hunt, with your ears rather than your
+eyes, till your nag has nearly done his day's work. He will
+still carry you perhaps throughout a good run, but he will not do
+so with that elasticity which you will love; and then, after
+that, the journey home is, it is occasionally something almost
+too frightful to be contemplated. You can, therefore, if it so
+please you, station yourself with other patient long-suffering,
+mindful men at some corner, or at some central point amidst the
+rides, biding your time, consoling yourself with cigars, and not
+swearing at the vile perfidious, unfoxlike fox more frequently
+than you can help. For the fox on such occasions will be abused
+with all the calumnious epithets which the ingenuity of angry men
+can devise, because he is exercising that ingenuity the
+possession of which on his part is the foundation of fox-hunting.
+There you will remain, nursing your horse, listening to chaff,
+and hoping. But even when the fox does go, your difficulties may
+be but beginning.
+
+It is possible he may have gone on your side of the wood; but
+much more probable that he should have taken the other. He loves
+not that crowd that has been abusing him, and steals away from
+some silent distant corner. You, who are a beginner, hear nothing
+of his going; and when you rush off, as you will do with others,
+you will hardly know at first why the rush is made. But some one
+with older eyes and more experienced ears has seen signs and
+heard sounds, and knows that the fox is away. Then, my friend,
+you have your place to win, and it may be that the distance shall
+be too great to allow of your winning it. Nothing but experience
+will guide you safely through these difficulties.
+
+In drawing forests or woodlands your course is much clearer.
+There is no question, then, of standing still and waiting with
+patience, tobacco, and chaff for the coming start. The area to be
+drawn is too large to admit of waiting, and your only duty is to
+stay as close to the hounds as your ears and eyes will
+permit, remembering always that your ears should serve you much
+more often than your eyes. And in woodland hunting that which you
+thus see and hear is likely to be your amusement for the day.
+There is "ample room and verge enough" to run a fox down without
+any visit to the open country, and by degrees, as a true love of
+hunting comes upon you in place of a love of riding, you will
+learn to think that a day among the woodlands is a day not badly
+spent. At first, when after an hour and a half the fox has been
+hunted to his death, or has succeeded in finding some friendly
+hole, you will be wondering when the fun is going to begin. Ah
+me! how often have I gone through all the fun, have seen the fun
+finished, and then have wondered when it was going to begin; and
+that, too, in other things besides hunting !
+
+But at present the fun shall not be finished, and we will go back
+to the wood from which the fox is just breaking. You, my pupil,
+shall have been patient, and your patience shall be rewarded by a
+good start. On the present occasion I will give you the exquisite
+delight of knowing that you are there, at the spot, as the hounds
+come out of the covert. Your success, or want of success,
+throughout the run will depend on the way in which you may now
+select to go over the three or four first fields. It is not
+difficult to keep with hounds if you can get well away with them,
+and be with them when they settle to their running. In a long and
+fast run your horse may, of course, fail you. That must depend on
+his power and his condition. But, presuming your horse to be able
+to go, keeping with hounds is not difficult when you are once
+free from the thick throng of the riders. And that thick throng
+soon makes itself thin. The difficulty is in the start, and you
+will almost be offended when I suggest to you what those
+difficulties are, and suggest also that such as they are even
+they may overcome you. You have to choose your line of riding. Do
+not let your horse choose it for you instead of choosing it for
+yourself. He will probably make such attempts, and it is not at
+all improbable that you should let him have his way. Your horse
+will be as anxious to go as you are, but his anxiety will carry
+him after some other special horse on which he has fixed his
+eyes. The rider of that horse may not be the guide that you would
+select. But some human guide you must select. Not at first will
+you, not at first does any man, choose for himself with serene
+precision of confident judgment the line which he will take. You
+will be flurried, anxious, self-diffident, conscious of your own
+ignorance, and desirous of a leader. Many of those men who are
+with you will have objects at heart very different from your
+object. Some will ride for certain points, thinking that they can
+foretell the run of the fox. They may be right; but you, in your
+new ambition, are not solicitous to ride away to some other
+covert because the fox may, perchance, be going there. Some are
+thinking of the roads. Others are remembering that brook which is
+before them, and riding wide for a ford. With none such, as I
+presume, do you wish to place yourself. Let the hounds be your
+mark; and if, as may often be the case, you cannot see them, then
+see the huntsman; or, if you cannot see him, follow, at any rate,
+some one who does. If you can even do this as a beginner, you
+will not do badly.
+
+But, whenever it be possible, let the hounds themselves be your
+mark, and endeavour to remember that the leading hounds are those
+which should guide you. A single hound who turns when he is
+heading the pack should teach you to turn also. Of all the hounds
+you see there in the open, probably not one-third are hunting.
+The others are doing as you do, following where their guides lead
+them. It is for you to follow the real guide, and not the
+followers, if only you can keep the real guide in view. To keep
+the whole pack in view and to ride among them is easy enough when
+the scent is slack and the pace is slow. At such times let me
+counsel you to retire somewhat from the crowd, giving place to
+those eager men who are breaking the huntsman's heart. When the
+hounds have come nearer to their fox, and the pace is again good,
+then they will retire and make room for you.
+
+Not behind hounds, but alongside of them,  if only you can
+achieve such position, it should be your honour and glory to
+place yourself; and you should go so far wide of them as in no
+way to impede them or disturb them, or even to remind them of
+your presence. If thus you live with them, turning as they turn,
+but never turning among them, keeping your distance, but losing
+no yard, and can do this for seven miles over a grass country in
+forty-five minutes, then you can ride to hounds better than
+nineteen men out of every twenty that you have seen at the meet,
+and will have enjoyed the keenest pleasure that hunting, or
+perhaps, I may say, that any other amusement, can give you.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Hunting Sketches by Trollope
+
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