'HANBY HOUSE, SWILLINGFORD.
'DEAR BRICK,
'If your old man is done daffling with your draft, I should like to have the pick of it. I'm with one Mr. Puffington, a city gent. His father was a great confectioner in the Poultry, just by the Mansion House, and made his money out of Lord Mares. I shall only stay with him till I can get myself suited in the rank of life in which I have been accustomed to move; but in the meantime I consider it necessary for my own credit to do things as they should be. You know my sort of hound; good shoulders, deep chests, strong loins, straight legs, round feet, with plenty of bone all over. I hate a weedy animal; a small hound, light of bone, is only fit to hunt a kat in a kitchen.
'I shall also want a couple of whips—not fellows like waiters from Crawley's hotel, but light, active men, not boys. I'll have nothin' to do with boys; every boy requires a man to look arter him. No; a couple of short, light, active men—say from five-and-twenty to thirty, with bow-legs and good cheery voices, as nearly of the same make as you can find them. I shall not give them large wage, you know; but they will have opportunities of improving themselves under me, and qualifying themselves for high places. But mind, they must be steady—I'll keep no unsteady servants; the first act of drunkenness, with me, is the last.
'I shall also want a second horseman; and here I wouldn't mind a mute boy who could keep his elbows down and never touch the curb; but he must be bred in the line; a huntsman's second horseman is a critical article, and the sporting world must not be put in mourning for Dick Bragg. The lad will have to clean my boots, and wait at table when I have company—yourself, for instance.
'This is only a poor, rough, ungentlemanly sort of shire, as far as I have seen it; and however they got on with the things I found that they called hounds I can't for the life of me imagine. I understand they went stringing over the country like a flock of wild geese. However, I have rectified that in a manner by knocking all the fast 'uns and slow 'uns on the head; and I shall require at least twenty couple before I can take the field. In your official report of what your old file puts back, you'll have the kindness to cobble us up good long pedigrees, and carry half of them at least back to the Beaufort Justice. My man has got a crochet into his head about that hound, and I'm dimmed if he doesn't think half the hounds in England are descended from the Beaufort Justice. These hounds are at present called the Mangeysternes, a very proper title, I should say, from all I've seen and heard. That, however, must be changed; and we must have a button struck, instead of the plain pewter plates the men have been in the habit of hunting in.
'As to horses, I'm sure I don't know what we are to do in that line. Our pastrycook seems to think that a hunter, like one of his pa's pies, can be made and baked in a day. He talks of going over to Rowdedow Fair, and picking some up himself; but I should say a gentleman demeans himself sadly who interferes with the just prerogative of the groom. It has never been allowed I know in any place I have lived; nor do I think servants do justice to themselves or their order who submit to it. Howsomever the crittur has what Mr. Cobden would call the "raw material" for sport—that is to say, plenty of money—and I must see and apply it in such a way as will produce it. I'll do the thing as it should be, or not at all.
'I hope your good lady is well—also all the little Bricks. I purpose making a little tower of some of the best kennels as soon as the drafts are arranged, and will spend a day or two with you, and see how you get on without me. Dear Brick,
'Yours to the far end,
'RICHARD BRAGG.