And the Earl has gone back by the five o’clock train.
How well I remember some of those illegitimate days, and at this distance of time I can do no harm in telling tales of those with whom I was a post facto accomplice. Not only I, but the very hounds knew what was “up” when we met at Liverton. Hounds’ heads all one way; ears cocked and sterns waving, and every now and again a dash of the wilder members of the pack, followed by cracking whips and hunt servants galloping round the paddock. Such days remain clear in my memory. The fox generally had been procured overnight from the great sea-cliffs of Boulby, where it was dangerous for hounds to draw, and where many a leading hound has met his end with a last fearful fall of 600 feet into the North Sea. I recollect a particularly long and trying run, when, after a fast twenty minutes over the stiff enclosures between Moorsholm and Grinkle, and after crossing two of the deep gills that run up inland from the sea, our fox took the open moor, with some seven or eight survivors of the field in hot pursuit. His first point was Danby Beacon, and, keeping the high ridge of the moor for awhile, he turned south into the valley of the Esk. A very excellent specimen of the Cleveland hunting farmer, George Codling, senior, who will after this lapse of time forgive me for naming him, had now the best of it, and beat me to Castleton Park, being clearly first up when hounds pulled down their fox on the very edge of the Esk River. I was there a moment after Codling, and struggled with him to reach the fox, now in deep water, in the midst of the swimming pack, for these were the days when men turned their horses adrift, and almost fought for the honour of the brush, which fell to him who took the fox from the hounds. In our scuffle at the water’s edge, while we were using our hunting-crops as boat-hooks, I unintentionally knocked Codling’s hat into the river, thinking little of such a trivial accident at such a moment; but not so Mr. Codling, who was hot with excitement, and annoyed by my efforts, which so far had only resulted in boat-hooking the fox into deeper waters. To lose the brush and his hat was too much, and though it was sleeting and bitterly cold, we both of us had difficulty in keeping our language at a decent temperature. I was too intent on my fishing, being up to the waist and having a tug of war with the hounds over the disputed trophy, to much heed the noise of my companion. When, at last, after a successful dive for the remains, I regained the bank with the head, backbone, and brush, I thought that he would be appeased when I handed him the brush, for by this time I was cool enough, dripping and shaking all over; but not a bit of it: the brush, of course, was his before, so there was nothing generous in my handing it to him. It was only adding insult to injury, to hand him a brush as if I was presenting a testimonial. Well, anything for peace and quietness, so in I went again for his hat, but still all efforts to make myself agreeable were in vain. What was the use to him of a hat full of mud and water on a coarse day like that? As we were wet through, and covered with bog mud, I thought a wet and muddy tile was all that any reasonable man had a right to expect, but I think I promised him a new hat; if I have never given him one (and my memory fails me on this point), I shall be most happy to do so now. I am certain of this, that he demanded a new hat all the way homewards. What opportunities artists miss! I can imagine no more comical scene for a looker-on. Codling, in hatless wrath, with the draggled brush so hardly earned and rescued, pouring curses on me, whilst I stood open-mouthed, blue, and shaking, with the dripping head in my hands, the hounds crouching and shivering and wretched around us, and the backbone of the fox lying between us—our horses disappearing on the horizon! I think what has stamped this day on my memory was the awful journey home in a blizzard with a tired horse. I hardly knew what I did, but in those days the head at my saddle, and the thought of the run, were ample compensation for all I had endured from the water, the weather, and the wrath of my successful competitor. I think that the disrespect I showed to Mr. Codling’s hat rather increased in the end the friendly relationship between him and myself. It formed a fresh link in our hunting association, and he was far too keen a sportsman himself not to forgive an excess of zeal on the part of another, even when it had gone the length of nearly putting him in after his hat.
Footnotes
[1] Vide Turton’s “The Honor and Forest of Pickering,” North Riding Records.
[2] Foumart, foulmart, or polecat.
[3] The “gent” named in verse six was a great speculator in railway shares.