Poor Colonel Leigh! I was very sorry when I heard of his death, and very grateful to him for the present he made me of the last riding-whip which Byron had used at Missolonghi.
A fellow-guest of mine was Lady S——, a woman nobly born, and of exceeding beauty, hair, complexion, eyes, features, in every way remarkable, and although not unusually tall, of stature naturally far exceeding mine. She went up to Colonel Leigh one day and reproached him for never paying her a single compliment (which she might well have felt her due), “yet you are always saying flattering things to Miss Boyle!”
Colonel Leigh was not in a very good humour that morning. Looking at the beautiful speaker with a supercilious expression, he hit the only blot he could find in that fair apparition: “No, no,” he said, “it won’t do; you sit too high and stand too low.”
Lord Southampton, the M.F.H., was most kind and generous to me in respect to “mounts,” and would apportion to me a fast hack or an easy jumper, frequently giving me a place in his phaeton, or letting me ride beside him to the place of meeting. Dear old friend! For how many days of intense enjoyment, of healthful exercise, of genial companionship, have I not been indebted to you!
He laughed when I told him that I considered it one of the proudest moments of my life when, riding quietly with him and another young lady, who complained that her horse was too fresh, he came up to me and asked the question, “How does Blanco carry you?”
“Like a lamb,” I replied.
“Then jump off directly, and I will change the saddles,” a compliment very flattering to my powers of horsemanship.
My ambition was always to be in the first flight, and the means I took to attain this end was as follows—
A SPORTING ECCLESIASTIC
At the first whimper of the first hound breaking the covert, I looked to see who rode beside me. I knew which were the best men, and one of those I chose as my guide, following as near as I could on his horse’s steps—most frequently Lord Charles Fitzroy, or the Reverend William Smith, rector of the parish—a sporting parson indeed, but one who never allowed his love for the chase to interfere with the fulfilment of more serious duties, or the constant care he bestowed on the poor and suffering. A very different personage was the Reverend Mr D—— E—— who had a living on the other side of the county, but who hunted with us one day. Both he and his curate were in the field, and coming to a blind bullfinch, at which several horsemen came to a dead stop, the curate in question gallantly offered to go and make a gap in the fence. His Rector called after him in his usual loud voice, “Hallo, I say, if you break your neck, who is to preach my second sermon next Sunday?”