There are many other terms in common use too plain to need explanation, and there are a good many slang phrases to be found in newspaper descriptions of runs, which are both vulgar and unnecessary. One of the finest descriptions of a fox-hunt ever written is to be found in the account of Jorrocks’ day with the “Old Customer,” disfigured, unfortunately, by an overload of impossible cockneyisms, put in the mouth of the impossible grocer. Another capitally-told story of a fox-hunt is to be found in Whyte Melville’s “Kate Coventry.” But the Rev. Charles Kingsley has, in his opening chapter of “Yeast,” and his papers in Fraser on North Devon, shown that if he chose he could throw all writers on hunting into the shade. Would that he would give us some hunting-songs, for he is a true poet, as well as a true sportsman!
Another clergyman, under the pseudonym of “Uncle Scribble,” contributed to the pages of the Sporting Magazine an admirable series of photographs—to adopt a modern word—of hunting and hunting men, as remarkable for dry wit and common sense, as a thorough knowledge of sport. But “Uncle Scribble,” as the head of a most successful Boarding School, writes no more.
I may perhaps be pardoned for concluding my hints on hunting, by re-quoting from Household Words an “Apology for Fox-hunting,” which, at the time I wrote it, received the approbation, by quotation, of almost every sporting journal in the country. It will be seen that it contains a sentence very similar to one to be found in Mr. Rarey’s “Horse Training”—“A bad-tempered man cannot be a good horseman.”
“TALLY-HO!
“Fox-hunting, I maintain, is entitled to be considered one of the fine arts, standing somewhere between music and dancing. For ‘Tally-ho!’ like the favourite evening gun of colonising orators, has been ‘carried round the world.’ The plump mole-fed foxes of the neutral ground of Gibraltar have fled from the jolly cry; it has been echoed back from the rocky hills of our island possessions in the Mediterranean; it has startled the jackal on the mountains of the Cape, and his red brother on the burning plains of Bengal; the wolf of the pine forests of Canada has heard it, cheering on fox-hounds to an unequal contest; and even the wretched dingoe and the bounding kangaroo of ‘Australia have learned to dread the sound.
“In our native land ‘Tally-ho!’ is shouted and welcomed in due season by all conditions of men; by the ploughman, holding hard his startled colt; by the woodman, leaning on his axe before the half-felled oak; by bird-boys from the tops of leafless trees; even Dolly Dumpling, as she sees the white-tipped brush flash before her market-cart in a deep-banked lane, stops, points her whip and in shrill treble screams ‘Tally-ho!'
“And when at full speed the pink, green, brown, and black-coated followers of any of the ninety packs which our England maintains, sweep through a village, with what intense delight the whole population turn out! Young mothers stand at the doors, holding up their crowing babies; the shopkeeper, with his customers, adjourns to the street; the windows of the school are covered with flattened noses; the parson, if of the right sort, smiles blandly, and waves his hand from the porch of the vicarage to half-a-dozen friends; while the surgeon pushes on his galloway and joins for half-an-hour; all the little boys holla in chorus, and run on to open gates without expecting sixpence. As for the farmers, those who do not join the hunt criticise the horseflesh, speculate on the probable price of oats, and tell ‘Missis’ to set out the big round of beef, the bread, the cheese, and get ready to draw some strong ale,—‘in case of a check, some of the gentlemen might like a bit as they come back.
“It is true, among the five thousand who follow the hounds daily in the hunting season, there are to be found, as among most medleys of five thousand, a certain number of fools and brutes—mere animals, deaf to the music, blind to the living poetry of nature. To such men hunting is a piece of fashion or vulgar excitement, but bring hunting in comparison with other amusements, and it will stand a severe test. Are you an admirer of scenery, an amateur or artist? Have you traversed Greece and Italy, Switzerland and Norway, in search of the picturesque? You do not know the beauties of your own country, until, having hunted from Northumberland to Cornwall, you have viewed the various counties under the three aspects of a fox-hunter’s day—the ‘morning ride,’ ‘the run,’ and ‘the return home.’
“The morning ride, slowly pacing, full of expectation, your horse as pleased as yourself; sharp and clear in the gray atmosphere the leafless trees and white farmhouses stand out, backed by a curtain of mist hanging on the hills in the horizon. With eager eyes you take all in; nothing escapes you; you have cast off care for the day. How pleasant and cheerful everything and everyone looks! Even the cocks and hens, scratching by the road-side, have a friendly air. The turnpike-man relaxes, in favour of your ‘pink,’ his usual grimness. A tramping woman, with one child at her back and two running beside her, asks charity; you suspect she is an impostor, but she looks cold and pitiful; you give her a shilling, and the next day you don’t regret your foolish benevolence. To your mind the well-cultivated land looks beautiful. In the monotony of ten acres of turnips, you see a hundred pictures of English farming life, well-fed cattle, good wheat crops, and a little barley for beer. Not less beautiful is the wild gorse-covered moor—never to be reclaimed, I hope—where the wiry, white-headed, bright-eyed huntsman sits motionless on his old white horse, surrounded by the pied pack—a study for Landseer.
“But if the morning ride creates unexecuted cabinet pictures and unwritten sonnets, how delightful ‘the find,’ ‘the run’ along brook-intersected vales, up steep hills, through woodlands, parks, and villages, showing you in byways little gothic churches, ivy-covered cottages, and nooks of beauty you never dreamed of, alive with startled cattle and hilarious rustics.