Most men have a sunny spot to which they look back in their existence, as most have an impossible future, to attain which all their energies are exerted, and their resources employed. The difference between these visionary scenes is this, that they think a good deal of the latter, but talk a good deal of the former.
With some fellows the golden age seems to have been passed at Eton, with others at the Universities. Here a quiet, mild clergyman gloats over the roistering days he spent as a Cornet in the Hussars; there an obese old gentleman prates of the fascinations of London, and his own successes as a slim young dandy about town. Everybody believes he liked that rosy past better than he did. Just as we fancy that the hounds never run nowadays as they used, when we had lungs to holloa and nerves to ride; and that even if they could go the same pace hunters are not now to be got of the stamp of our old chestnut horse, concerning whose performances we think no shame to lie, year by year, with increasing audacity; there is nobody left to contradict us, and why should we not?
Now, Mr. Sawyer, too, will descend into the vale of years, with a landmark on which to fix his failing eyes, an era which shall serve as a date for his reminiscence, and a starting-point for his after-dinner yarns. This shall be the season when Mr. Sawyer went to the Shires. It is not yet very long ago. Perhaps it may be well to relate a few of his adventures and doings in those localities ere they lapse into the realms of fiction under the romantic colouring with which he will himself begin to paint them, when their actual freshness has worn off.
Touching Mr. Sawyer’s early history, I have collected but few particulars, not enjoying the advantage of that gentleman’s acquaintance till he had arrived at years of maturity. I gather, however, that he matriculated at Oxford, and was rusticated from that pleasant University for some breach of college discipline, sufficiently venial in itself, but imbued with a scarlet tinge in the eyes of the authorities. I have heard that he rode an Ayrshire bull across Peckwater in broad daylight, having previously attired himself in a red coat, with leathers, &c., complete, and clad the patient animal in a full suit of academicals. Also that he endeavoured to mollify his judges by apostrophising the partner of his trespass, in the words Horace puts into the mouth of Europa,
“Si quis infamem mihi nunc juvencum;”
and so on to the end of the stanza. As, although Mr. Sawyer’s fluency in all Saxon expletives is undeniable, I never heard him make use of any language but his own, I confess to my mind this story bears upon the face of it the stamp of improbability, and that perversion of the truth from which Oxonian annals are not entirely free.
It is a good old fashion to commence a narrative by a personal description of its hero; such as you would see in the Hue and Cry, or the advertisements for that missing gentleman in the Times who has never been found yet, and whose humble costume of half-boots, tweed trousers, and an olive surtout, with a bunch of keys and three-halfpence in the pockets, denotes neither affluence nor display. Upon this principle let me endeavour to bring before the mind’s eye of my readers the outward semblance of my worthy friend, John Standish Sawyer, a man of mark, forsooth, in his own parish, “and justice of peace in his county, simple though he stand here.”
Mr. Sawyer is a well-built, able-bodied personage, standing five feet eight in the worsted stockings he usually affects, with a frame admirably calculated to resist fatigue, to perform feats of strength rather than agility, and to put on beef: the last tendency he keeps down with constant and severe exercise, so that the twelve stone which he swings into his saddle is seldom exceeded by a pound. “As long as I ride thirteen stone,” quoth Mr. Sawyer to his intimates after dinner, “no man alive can take the shine out of me over a country. Mason! Mason’s all very well for a spurt! but where is he at the end of two hours and forty minutes, through woodlands, in deep clay? Answer me that! and pass the bottle.”
Our friend’s admirers term his person square: his enemies, and he has a few, call it “clumsy:” certainly his hands and feet are large, his limbs robust, but not well-turned; and though it would make him very angry to hear me, I confess his is not my beau idéal of the figure for a horseman. Nevertheless, he has an honest English face, round and rosy, light-grey eyes, such as usually belong to an energetic and persevering temperament, with thin sandy hair, and a good deal of stiff red whisker.
Altogether, he looks like a man you would rather drink with than fight with, any day. Perhaps, if very fastidious, you might prefer letting him alone, to doing either. Of his costume, I shall only say that it partakes on everyday occasions of the decidedly sporting, with a slight tendency towards the slang. Its details are those of a dress in which the owner is ready to get on horseback at a moment’s notice; nay, in which he is qualified, without further preparation, to ride four miles straight-on-end, over a stiff country; so enduring are its materials, and so suggestive of equestrian exercise is its general fit. Also, on Sundays, as on week-days, in town or country, he delights in a “five to two” sort of hat, with a flat brim and backward set, which denote indisputable knowledge of horseflesh, and a sagacity that almost amounts to dishonesty.