Tom Moody never rose above his post of whipper-in, but he had the honour of being at the top of his profession; and before proceeding further with our sketch of Squire Forester it may be well to dwell for a time upon this well-known character, whom Dibdin immortalised in his song, so familiar to all sportsmen. He was in fact, in many respects, what Mr. Forester had made him: Nature supplied the material, and Squire Forester did the rest. Tom had the advantage of entering the Squire’s service when a youth. Like most boys of that period, he had been thrown a good deal upon his own resources, a state of things not unfavourable to a development of self-reliance, and a degree of humble heroism, such as made life wholesome. Tom had no opportunities of obtaining a national-school education, nor of carrying away the prize now sometimes awarded to the best behaved lad in the village. But in the unorganized school of common intercourse, common suffering, and interest, was developed a pluck and daring which led him to perform a feat on the bare back of a crop-eared cob that gave birth to the after events of his life. It appears that he was apprenticed to a Mr. Adams, a maltster, who had sent him to deliver malt at the Hall. On his return he was seen by the Squire trying his horse at a gate, and repeating the attempt till he compelled him to leap it. It is said that—
“He who excels in what we prize,
Appears a hero in our eyes.”
And Squire Forester, struck by his pluck and perseverance, made up his mind to secure him. He sent to his master to ask if he were willing to give him up, adding that he would like to see him at the Hall. The message alarmed the mother, who was a widow, for, knowing her son’s froward nature, she at once imagined Tom had got into trouble. On learning the true state of the case, however, and thinking she saw the way open to Tom’s promotion, she consented to the change in his condition. His master, too, agreed to give him up, and Tom was transferred to the Willey stables, where, from his good nature and other agreeable qualities, he became a favourite, and from his daring courage quite a sort of little hero. It was Tom’s duty to go on errands from the Hall, and once outside the park, feeling he had his liberty, he did not fail to make use of opportunities for displaying his skill. In riding, it was generally up hill and down dale, at neck-or-nothing speed, stopping neither for gate nor hedge—his horse tearing away at a rate which would have given him three or four somersaults at a slip. He seldom turned his horse’s head if he could help it, and if he went down he was soon up again. Extraordinary tales are told of Tom’s adventures with the Squire’s buff-coloured chaise, in taking company from the Hall, and in fetching visitors from Shifnal, then the nearest place to reach a coach. Having a spite at a pike-keeper, who offended him by not opening the gate quick enough, “Tom tanselled his hide,” and resolved the next time he went that way not to trouble him. Driving up to the gate, he gave a spring, and touching his horse on the flanks, went straight over without starting a stitch or breaking a buckle. On another occasion he tried the same trick, but failed; the horse went clean over, but the gig caught the top rail, and Tom was thrown on his back. “That just sarves yo right,” said the pike-keeper. “So it does, and now we are quits,” added Tom; and they were friends ever after. This, however, did not prevent Tom trying it again; not that he wanted to defraud the pike-man, whom he generally paid another time, but for “the fun of the thing.” Indeed, with his old wild favourite, with or without the buff-coloured gig, there were no risks he was not prepared to run. “Ay, ay, sir,” said one of our aged informants, “you should have seen him on his horse, a mad, wild animal no one but Tom could ride. He could ride him though, with his eyes shut, savage as he was, and on a good road he would pass milestones as the clock measured minutes; but give him the green meadows, and Lord how I have seen him whip along the turf!” “He was like a winged Mercury, making light both of stone walls and five-feet six-inch gates. He was a regular centaur, for he and his horse seemed one,” said another. “I cannot tell you the height of his horse,” said a third, “but he was a big un; whilst Tom himself was a little one, and he used to be on horse-back all day long. If he got into the saddle in a morning he rarely left it till night.”
In giving the qualifications necessary for one aspiring to the post of whipper-in, a well-known authority on sporting subjects has laid it down that he should be light (not too young), with a quick eye and still quicker ear, and that he should be—what in fact he generally is—fond of the sport, or he seldom succeeds in his profession. Now Moody, or Muddy, as his name was pronounced, answered to these conditions.
“His conversation had no other course
Than that presented to his simple view
Of what concerned his saddle, groom, or horse;
Beyond this theme he little cared or knew:
Tell him of beauty and harmonious sounds,
He’d show his mare, and talk about his hounds.”
He was what was called Foxy all over—in his language, dress, and associations. He wore a pin with a knob, something smaller than a tea-saucer, of Caughley china, with the head of a fox upon it; and everything nearest his person, so far as he could manage it, had something to put him in mind of his favourite sport. His bed-room walls were hung with sporting prints, and on his mantelpiece were more substantial trophies of the hunt—as the brush of some remarkable victim of the pack, his boots and spurs, &c. His famous drinking-horn, which we have engraved together with his trencher in the trophy at the head of this chapter, was equally embellished with a representation of a hunt, very elaborately carved with the point of a pen-knife. At the top is a wind-mill, and below a number of horsemen and a lady, well mounted, in full chase, and with hounds in full cry after a fox, which is seen on the lower part of the horn. A fox’s brush forms the finis. The date upon the horn, which in size and shape resembles those in use in the mansions of the gentry in past centuries when hospitality was dispensed in their halls with such a free and generous hand, is 1663. It is a relic still treasured by members of the Wheatland Hunt, who look back to the time when the shrill voice of Moody cheered the pack over the heavy Wheatlands; and together with his cap, of which we also give a representation, is often made to do duty at annual social gatherings.
Tom was a small eight or nine stone man, with roundish face, marked with small pox, and a pair of eyes that twinkled with good humour. He possessed great strength as well as courage and resolution, and displayed an equanimity of temper which made him many friends. The huntsman was John Sewell, and under him he performed his duties in a way so satisfactory to his master and all who hunted with him, as to be deemed the best whipper-in in England. None, it was said, could bring up the tail end of a pack, or sustain the burst of a long chase, and be in at the death with every hound well up, like Tom. His plan was to allow his hounds their own cast without lifting, unless they showed wildness; and if young hounds dwelt on a stale drag behind the pack he whipped them on to those on the right line. He never aspired to be more than “a serving-man;” he wished, however, to be considered “a good whipper-in,” and his fame as such spread through the country. There was not a spark of envy in his composition, and he was one of the happiest fellows in the universe. The lessons he seemed to have learnt, and which appeared to have sunk deepest into his unsophisticated nature, were those of being honest and of ordering himself “lowly and reverently towards his betters,” for whom he had a reverence which grew profound if they happened to have added to their qualifications of being good sportsmen that of being “Parliament men.”
Tom’s voice was something extraordinary, and on one occasion when he had fallen into an old pit shaft, which had given way on the sides, and could not get out, it saved him. His halloo to the dogs brought him assistance, and he was extricated. It was capable of wonderful modulations, and to hear him rehearse the sports of the day in the big roomy servants’ kitchen at the Hall, and give his tally-ho, or who-who-hoop, was considered a treat. On one occasion, when Tom was in better trim than usual, the old housekeeper is said to have remarked, “La! Tom, you have given the who-who-hoop, as you call it, so very loud and strong to-day that you have set the cups and saucers a dancing;” to which a gentleman, who had purposely placed himself within hearing, replied, “I am not at all surprised—his voice is music itself. I am astonished and delighted, and hardly know how to praise it enough. I never heard anything so attractive and inspiring before in the whole course of my life; its tones are as fine and mellow as a French horn.”