Market Harborough, and Inside the Bar

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

“There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,

To take care of the life of poor Jack.”

Tips, then, began his career as a chimney-sweeper’s boy, and to this appointment in tender years, may perhaps be attributed the physical development of his upper man, and the malformation of his lower limbs. His promotion, or rather I should perhaps say, his descent into the saddle, originated in a manner as alarming as it was unexpected. The master chimney-sweeper’s wife was attacked with that malady which peoples this world and the next. The doctor lived three miles off, in the nearest market town. The pony that carried the soot was dead. Under such a concatenation of unfavourable circumstances, it is needless to observe that the master-sweep had taken refuge in inebriety. Beyond blessing the unborn, and cursing everything else above an inch high, he was incapable of any decided effort, and little Tips was started off in a hurry, on the back of a well-bred chestnut filly of the baker’s, to go for the doctor. The boy was fall of pluck, but deficient in practice. The filly full of corn, and quite well aware of the five stone of inexperience she carried on her back. It was not unnatural that her shambling trot should soon become a canter, which a desperate shy at a drove of pigs converted into a gallop under the most unfavourable circumstances. Little Tips, when she swerved, held on manfully by the bridle; the baker’s tackle was old and frayed; the head-band broke, and the bit came out of the filly’s mouth; no pleasant predicament for an urchin of nine years old, careering along a turnpike-road, on market-day, at top speed. He stuck to her, however, like a monkey, and devoutly hoped the gate at the town-end might not be shut.

Now it happened fortunately for Tips, that a certain old veterinary surgeon, the kindliest and best of sportsmen, was jogging into this very town on his thorough-bred mare, half a mile ahead of the runaway. The old man heard the clattering of hoofs, and looked back to see a child in imminent danger of its life. Quick-witted, cool, and sagacious, he bethought him at once of the winding streets, the slippery pavement, and the crowded vehicles. To enter the town at that pace would be certain death, and the child must be stopped somehow at all risks. There was a grass siding to the high-road, and nearly a mile farther to go.

The old man was not long making up his mind. Putting his own mare into a gallop, he allowed the filly to come alongside of him, and encouraged her little rider with voice and gesture. The child gathered confidence immediately, and sat cool and collected, as if racing. Edging him by degrees off the road, the old man at last jostled his companion into the fence, where the filly attempting to take it sideways, of course remained, pitching little Tips over her head into a soft grass-field.

“Be’ant hurt a mossel!” exclaimed the child in high glee, scrambling once more through the hedge, to assist his preserver in righting the filly, on whom, after properly securing the bridle, he again mounted to proceed on his errand, with unshaken nerve. The old man was so pleased with the coolness of the urchin that he begged him of his master, and took him into his own service, where Tips learned all of horses and horsemanship that he ever knew, and where he might have remained for life but that his employer died, and he was thrown upon the world once more, with nothing but his natural abilities to depend upon.

And here let me lift up my voice, to correct a very erroneous notion, rife amongst the unsporting portion of the community, to the effect that rough-riders and that class of persons are men of dissipated habits. Except in some rare instances, the very contrary is necessarily the case. No man can preserve that cool, clear-headed daring which we call nerve, if he addicts himself habitually to the use of stimulants. The sensitive fibres of the human interior, which when injured and irritated by alcohol, react upon the courage, spirits, and temper, exist equally in the rudest day-labourer as in the most delicate fine lady. When these are affected, the nerve begins to fail, and no man without that quality can pretend to tame unbroken, or to ride ungovernable horses. Practice will do much, and unquestionably the alarm created in the biped, by the hostility of the quadruped, is somewhat disproportioned to the real danger incurred; nevertheless, our own sensations and our daily observation of others cannot but prove to us, that there is much truth in the proverb which says, “He who would venture nothing, must not get on horseback!” However drunk some of these dare-devil equestrians may be willing to get on occasion, they are habitually men of temperate and abstemious habits; almost invariably early risers, and consequently sound sleepers during the night.

That a hardy, healthy habit of body is indispensable to such persons is obvious, when we consider the muscular exertion they have to go through, and the many hard knocks they are likely to sustain in their daily avocations. We all know that a prize-fighter, in training, is capable of receiving an amount of punishment without inconvenience, of which a tithe would knock the same man “out of time” were he not toughened and hardened against it by the severity of his preparation. The cutting blow that would raise a swelled and angry sore on the face or person of a man who had been indulging in gluttony and idleness, leaves but a slight red mark on the clear skin of the thoroughly purified athlete; and the latter rises rather refreshed than otherwise from a fall “over the ropes,” that would have stunned and stupefied the former for an hour, and given him a bilious attack for a fortnight.

Now the same argument holds good with men who are liable to be thrown and kicked by horses, or exposed to the disagreeable contingency of being rolled over or laid upon by their pupils, in that early education at their fences, which all young hunters must go through. A rider in perfect training, with his muscles developed into the elasticity and toughness of gutta-percha, without a pound of superfluous flesh on his ribs or an ounce of undigested food in his stomach, not only rides with coolness, quickness, and confidence—the mental result of this physical condition—but rises uninjured from the severe falls and violent concussions to which his daring must occasionally subject him; and should he even be unfortunate enough in some more than usually complicated “cropper” to break a bone or strain a sinew, is cured by dame Nature in so short a space of time as to astonish the attending doctor, who has sufficient presence of mind, nevertheless, to take the whole credit of the recovery on himself. Tips seemed to be made of iron. According to his own account, he never was hurt but once, and that was out of a gig. The circumstances were a little singular, and I had them from his own lips on the first evening of my convalescence, whilst he sipped his gin-and-water, by permission of Miss Lushington, inside the bar.

Mr. Naggett, whom I gathered, from his order of “Port-wine-negus, with a scrape of nutmeg and a slice of lemon in it,” to be of the genus “swell,” was summoned away in a hurry to a “gent who wished to see him on business,” as the waiter said, before he could put his own lips to the fragrant mixture or burst on my astonished sight from behind the wooden screen. Tips, accordingly, with the utmost diffidence, and at Miss Lushington’s earnest entreaty, came alongside of my arm-chair, where he remained standing, with his glass in his hand, shifting from one leg to the other, and stirring his gin-and-water with an unnecessary tea-spoon the while. He was dressed in wide cord breeches, leather gaiters, a brown cut-away coat, the thickest worsted waistcoat I ever saw, and the blue-spotted neckerchief, in which I believe he was born, and I am quite sure he will die.