September 1.
Giles.
This popular patron of the London district, which furnishes the “Mornings at Bow-street” with a large portion of amusement, is spoken of in vol. i. col. 1149.
Until this day partridges are protected by act of parliament from those who are “privileged to kill.”
Application for a License.
In the shooting season of 1821, a fashionably dressed young man applied to sir Robert Baker for a license to kill—not game, but thieves. This curious application was made in the most serious and business-like manner imaginable. “Can I be permitted to speak a few words to you, sir?” said the applicant. “Certainly, sir,” replied sir Robert. “Then I wish to ask you, sir, whether, if I am attacked by thieves in the streets or roads, I should be justified in using fire-arms against them, and putting them to death?” Sir Robert Baker replied, that every man had a right to defend himself from robbers in the best manner he could; but at the same time he would not be justified in using fire-arms, except in cases of the utmost extremity. “Oh! I am very much obliged to you, sir; and I can be furnished at this office with a license to carry arms for that purpose?” The answer, of course, was given in the negative, though not without a good deal of surprise at such a question, and the inquirer bowed and withdrew.
The first of September.
Here the rude clamour of the sportsman’s joy,
The gun fast-thundering, and the winded horn,
Would tempt the muse to sing the rural game:
How, in his mid-career, the spaniel struck,
Stiff, by the tainted gale, with open nose,
Out-stretched, and finely sensible, draws full,
Fearful, and cautious, on the latent prey;
As in the sun the circling covey bask
Their varied plumes, and watchful every way
Through the rough stubble turn the secret eye.
Caught in the meshy snare, in vain they beat
Their idle wings, entangled more and more:
Nor on the surges of the boundless air,
Though borne triumphant, are they safe; the gun,
Glanc’d just, and sudden, from the fowler’s eye,
O’ertakes their sounding pinions; and again,
Immediate brings them from the towering wing,
Dead to the ground: or drives them wide-dispers’d,
Wounded, and wheeling various, down the wind.
These are not subjects for the peaceful muse,
Nor will she stain with such her spotless song;
Then most delighted, when she social sees
The whole mix’d animal creation round
Alive, and happy. ’Tis not joy to her,
This falsely-cheerful barbarous game of death
This rage of pleasure, which the restless youth
Awakes impatient, with the gleaming morn;
When beasts of prey retire, that all night long,
Urg’d by necessity, had rang’d the dark,
As if their conscious ravage shunn’d the light,
Asham’d. Not so the steady tyrant man,
Who with the thoughtless insolence of power
Inflam’d, beyond the most infuriate wrath
Of the worst monster that e’er roam’d the waste,
For sport alone pursues the cruel chase,
Amid the beamings of the gentle days.
Upbraid, ye ravening tribes, our wanton rage,
For hunger kindles you, and lawless want;
But lavish fed, in nature’s bounty roll’d,
To joy at anguish, and delight in blood,
Is what your horrid bosoms never knew.
So sings the muse of “The Seasons” on the one side; on the other, we have “the lay of the last minstrel” in praise of “Fowling,” the “rev. John Vincent, B. A. curate of Constantine, Cornwall,” whose “passion for rural sports, and the beauties of nature,” gave birth to “a poem where nature and sport were to be the only features of the picture,” and wherein he thus describes.
Full of th’ expected sport my heart beats high,
And with impatient step I haste to reach
The stubbles, where the scatter’d ears afford
A sweet repast to the yet heedless game.
How my brave dogs o’er the broad furrows bound,
Quart’ring their ground exactly. Ah! that point
Answers my eager hopes, and fills my breast
With joy unspeakable. How close they lie!
Whilst to the spot with steady pace I tend.
Now from the ground with noisy wing they burst,
And dart away. My victim singled out,
In his aërial course falls short, nor skims
Th’ adjoining hedge o’er which the rest unhurt
Have pass’d. Now let us from that lofty hedge
Survey with heedful eye the country round;
That we may bend our course once more to meet
The scatter’d covey: for no marker waits
Upon my steps, though hill and valley here,
With shrubby copse, and far extended brake
Of high-grown furze, alternate rise around.
Inviting is the view,—far to the right
In rows of dusky green, potatoes stretch,
With turnips mingled of a livelier hue.
Towards the vale, fenc’d by the prickly furze
That down the hill irregularly slopes,
Upwards they seem’d to fly; nor is their flight
Long at this early season. Let us beat,
With diligence and speed restrain’d, the ground,
Making each circuit good.
Near yonder hedge-row where high grass and ferns
The secret hollow shade, my pointers stand.
How beautiful they look! with outstretch’d tails,
With heads immovable and eyes fast fix’d,
One fore-leg rais’d and bent, the other firm,
Advancing forward, presses on the ground!
Convolv’d and flutt’ring on the blood stain’d earth,
The partridge lies:—thus one by one they fall,
Save what with happier fate escape untouch’d,
And o’er the open fields with rapid speed
To the close shelt’ring covert wing their way.
When to the hedge-rows thus the birds repair,
Most certain is our sport; but oft in brakes
So deep they lie, that far above our head
The waving branches close, and vex’d we hear
The startled covey one by one make off.
Now may we visit some remoter ground;
My eager wishes are insatiate yet,
And end but with the sun.
Yet happy he,
Who ere the noontide beams inflame the skies,
Has bagg’d the spoil; with lighter step he treads,
Nor faints so fast beneath the scorching ray.
The morning hours well spent, should mighty toil
Require some respite, he content can seek
Th’ o’er-arching shade, or to the friendly farm
Betake him, where with hospitable hand
His simple host brings forth the grateful draught
Of honest home-brew’d beer, or cider cool.
Such friendly treatment may each fowler find
Who never violates the farmer’s rights,
Nor with injurious violence, invades
His fields of standing corn. Let us forbear
Such cruel wrong, though on the very verge
Of the high waving field our days should point.
The pen of a country gentleman communicates an account of a remarkable character created by “love of the gun.”
THE LOSCOE MISER.
For the Every-Day Book.
About sixty years ago, at Loscoe, a small village in Derbyshire, lived James Woolley, notorious for three things, the very good clocks he made, his eccentric system of farming, and the very great care he took of his money. He was, like Elwes and Dancer, an old bachelor, and for the same reason, it was a favourite maxim with him, and ever upon his lips, that “fine wives and fine gardens are mighty expensive things:” he consequently kept at a very respectful distance from both. He had, indeed, an unconquerable dread of any thing “fine,” or that approached in any way that awful and ghost-like term “expensive.”
It would seem that Woolley’s avaricious bias, was not, as is generally the case, his first ruling passion, though a phrenologist, might entertain a different opinion. “When young,” says Blackner in his History of Nottinghamshire, “he was partial to shooting; but being detected at his sport upon the estate of the depraved William Andrew Horne, Esq. of Butterly (who was executed on the 11th of December, 1759, at Nottingham, for the murder of a child) and compelled by him to pay the penalty, he made a vow never to cease from labour, except when nature compelled him, till he had obtained sufficient property to justify him in following his favourite sport, without dreading the frowns of his haughty neighbour. He accordingly fell to work, and continued at it till he was weary, when he rested, and “to it again,”—a plan which he pursued without any regard to night or day. He denied himself the use of an ordinary bed, and of every other comfort, as well as necessary, except of the meanest kind. But when he had acquired property to qualify him to carry a gun, he had lost all relish for the sport; and he continued to labour at clock-making, except when he found an opportunity of trafficking in land, till he had amassed a considerable fortune, which he bequeathed to one of his relations. I believe he died about 1770.”
It must have been a singular spectacle to any one except Woolley’s neighbours, who were the daily observers of his habits, to have seen a man worth upwards of 20,000l. up at five in the morning brushing away with his bare feet the dew as he fetched up his cows from the pasture, his shoes and stockings carefully held under his arm to prevent them from being injured by the wet; though, by the by, a glance at them would have satisfied any one they had but little to fear from the dew or any thing else. A penny loaf boiled in a small piece of linen, made him an excellent pudding; this with a halfpenny worth of small beer from the village alehouse was his more than ordinary dinner, and rarely sported unless on holydays, or when he had a friend or tenant to share the luxury.
Once in his life Woolley was convicted of liberality. He had at great labour and expense of time made, what he considered, a clock of considerable value, and, as it was probably too large for common purposes, he presented it to the corporation of Nottingham, for the exchange. In return he was made a freeman of the town. They could not have conferred on him a greater favour: the honour mattered not—but election-dinners were things which powerfully appealed through his stomach to his heart. The first he attended was productive of a ludicrous incident. His shabby and vagrant appearance nearly excluded him from the scene of good-eating, and even when the burgesses sat down to table, no one seemed disposed to accommodate the miserly old gentleman with a seat. The chairs were quickly filled: having no time to lose, he crept under the table and thrusting up his head forced himself violently into one, but not before he had received some heavy blows on the bare skull.
The most prominent incident in his history, was a ploughing scheme of his own invention. He had long lamented that he kept horses at a great expense for the purposes of husbandry. To have kept a saddle-horse would have been extravagant—and at last fancying he could do without them, they were sold, and the money carefully laid by. This was a triumph—a noble saving! The winter passed away, and his hay and corn-stacks stood undiminished; ploughing time however arrived, and his new plan must be carried into effect. The plough was drawn from its inglorious resting-place, and a score men were summoned from the village to supply the place of horses. At the breakfast-table he was not without fears of a famine—he could starve himself, but a score of brawny villagers, hungry, and anticipating a hard day’s work, would eat, and drink too, and must be satisfied. They soon proceeded to the field, where a long continued drought had made the ground almost impenetrable; the day became excessively hot, and the men tugged and puffed to little purpose; they again ate heartily, and drank more good ale than the old man had patience to think of; and difficult as it was, to force the share through the unyielding sward, it was still more difficult to refrain from laughing out at the grotesque figure their group presented. They made many wry faces, and more wry furrows, and spoiled with their feet what they had not ploughed amiss. But this was not all. Had a balloon been sent up from the field it could scarcely have drawn together more intruders; he tried, but in vain, to keep them off; they thronged upon him from all quarters; his gates were all set open or thrown off the hooks; and the fences broken down in every direction. Woolley perceived his error; the men, the rope traces, and the plough were sent home in a hurry, and with some blustering, and many oaths, the trespassers were got rid of. The fences were mended, and the gates replaced, and having to his heart’s content gratified his whim, he returned to the old-fashioned custom of ploughing with horses, until in his brains’ fertility he could discover something better and less “expensive!”