"MoveON,Sir?" says Charles Payne, in his sharp, quick tone, touching his cap to the master, who slightly nods to him. "Now-then,-gentlemen!" he adds, "ware HOUNDS, if you please!" and accordingly, surrounded by them, onwards he, his two whips, and about two hundred horsemen, proceed at a walk to cross for nearly half a mile magnificent fields of grass of from eighty to a hundred acres. As the Pytchley and Quorn men are, for the reasons we have explained, each mounted on the very best of their stud, it need hardly be stated that the lot of horses before us are an accumulation of the finest specimens in the world; and yet with the highest breeding, courage, and condition, with magnificent figures, and with bone and substance sufficient to carry, through deep ground, from twelve to eighteen stone, there is a calm, unassuming demeanour in their walk, which it seems almost impossible sufficiently to admire. In like manner, among the riders, nobody appears to have the smallest disposition to talk about what he is going to do, or apparently even to think of where he is proceeding. A man from Warwickshire will perhaps describe the run he had there on Thursday; while another will fashionably say to a Leicestershire friend—"Did you do anything on Friday?"—but most of the field are conversing as they ride along, not at all about foxes, but about Lords Palmerston, Derby, Italy, the Pope, &c.
On arriving close to Waterloo Gorse, Charles Payne pulls up to remain stationary for a couple of minutes, surrounded by his hounds, who, instead of gazing at his face, are all looking most eagerly at the covert, until the two whips, getting round it, have each taken up a position on the other side. "Now-then-little-bitches!" says Charles, as, with a twitch corresponding with his voice, he waves forwards his right hand, in which is grasped the silver horn presented to him by the farmers. Without taking the smallest offence at the appellation (which after all is a just one, for, as they are the fastest of his two packs, Charles does not object to bringing them to "Waterloo"), in they dash; and in a second Charles and his horse are over the low flight of rails, to gallop along a briary path which conducts them to a small open space in the centre of the covert. The greater portion of the field, in coats of many colours, congregate on its right.
But "quanto sono insensibili questi Inglesi!" Instead of evincing the smallest degree of anxiety, the conversations we have described are renewed; and though certainly nobody seems to care the hundred-thousandth part of a farthing about what his lips are saying, and though the countenance of every man appears to acknowledge that, on the whole, he is well enough satisfied with this world, yet men and horses remain perfectly cool, and occasionally cold, until it might be fancied by any old soldier standing a mile off that a shell had suddenly burst in the middle of them. "Pray, don't holla!" exclaims an old sportsman in a loud whisper. "By Jove, He's Away!" screams a very young one in pink, pointing to a shepherd who, grasping a struggling dog with one hand, is holding up his hat with the other. Half a dozen loud, slow, decisive, monotonous blasts from Charles Payne's horn are instantly heard, while his hounds, tumbling over each other, jump almost together over a small hedge and ditch out of the covert, with their beautiful heads all pointing towards Leicestershire. As they and reynard take the opposite side of the large grass field in which the riders had assembled, the start of the latter is very nearly as sudden as that of the former. Packed together almost as closely as the wild young creatures that on Epsom course run for the Derby, the best men and the best horses belonging to the Pytchley, Quorn, Cottesmore, and Warwickshire hounds start together over turf down a gentle declivity, at the bottom of which runs an insignificant stream. Steady horsemanship in every rider is necessary to prevent treading on those immediately before, or jostling those on each side. Many a horse, by shaking his head, clearly enough shows how unwelcome to him is the restraint. From this conglomeration nearly a dozen men extricate themselves by the superior speed and management of their horses. Before them[G] is a well-known broad and strong fence, which, without competing against each other, they most gallantly charge, "magnâ comitante catervâ," followed by the great ruck. One,—two,—three,—four,—five,—six men and horses take it almost together in their stride, and, to the astonishment of the remainder, all disappear! Every horse had well cleared the broad ditch on the other side, but all nearly simultaneously had landed in an artificial bog beyond it, made for draining purposes only a few days before, and in which the six men and the six horses, each perfectly unhurt, are now as prostrate and as "comfortable" as if they had, to use the old nurse's expression, "just been put to bed." The Hon. Fred. Villiers and Harry Everard are the first over and down. As they lie together in the mud, looking upwards, they see coming over the stakes of the hedge the Fitzwilliam girths of the horses of Henry Forrester and Thomas Atkinson (Vive L'Empereur!), followed almost instantly by two strangers. However, nearly as quickly as they all fell, they severally arise, mount their horses, and gallantly regain the hounds. The field of riders, unable to comprehend what has happened, and moreover unable as well as unwilling to stop their horses, as it were by word of command, all gracefully swerve together in a curve to the right to take two stiff fences instead of one. About half a dozen, on perfect timber-jumpers, cross a ditch overhung by a stout ash rail, firmly fixed between two trees; the remainder break their way through a bull-finch, and then, throwing their right shoulders forward, at a very honest pace, all make every proper effort to catch Charles Payne and the few others who with him had followed the line of the hounds.
We should certainly tire and jolt our readers very grievously were we to presume to hustle them through the well-known and splendid run that ensued. Not only, however, do our limits forbid us to do so, but as we shall shortly have to quote hunting-anecdotes from a very superior pen, we willingly pull up to make, in cool blood instead of in hot, a very few remarks.
[G] This scene we happened to witness.
Effects Caused by the Sight of Hounds.
A description of a fox-hunt is not very agreeable either to read or to write,—firstly, because it records a series of events of no very great importance when they are over; and secondly, because the picture generally bears the appearance of exaggeration; the reason being, that it is composed of two parts, one of which it is almost impossible accurately to delineate. The danger or difficulty which a man and horse incur in taking any particular leap depends on the one hand upon the size of the fence, and on the other upon the combined amount of weight, strength, and activity which the horse can bring up to it. In trade, if a given weight, whether small or great, be put into one scale, it can be at once over-balanced by putting a still greater weight into the other scale. But while the dimensions of a fence can accurately be measured, it would be not only very difficult to determine the physical powers of a hunter, but, even if the statement could be made, ninety-nine people out of every hundred would most certainly disbelieve it; for, as the old proverb says, "seeing is believing;" so when a man has ridden a horse across his farm for many years, he is fully persuaded that,—to use another common expression,—"he knows what he is made of." But the truth is, he only knows what he has done, and what he can do under the maximum of excitement he hitherto has ever experienced; what he does not know, and indeed what without trial he can have no idea of, is the enormous amount of latent physical power in his horse which even the sight of hounds will develop.
For instance, in riding a hack along the road, the confidence or, as it may be termed, the courage of the rider depends not on himself, but on the strength and action of the animal he is bestriding. If the nag picks up his feet quickly, and pops them down firmly—if he goes stout in his canter and strong in his gallop, his owner rides boldly. If, however, the very same hero crosses a poor, weak, weedy animal, with strait action, tripping in all his paces, and with his toes sending almost every loose stone rolling on before him, he declares the instant he dismounts that he has been frightened; which difference, in truth, only means that, on trial, he has satisfactorily and unsatisfactorily ascertained the physical powers of the first horse to be amply sufficient, and those of the last totally insufficient, to perform the given amount of work he requires. Now it is really no exaggeration to say, that the excitement to a horse caused by the presence of hounds creates in his physical powers as wide a difference as exists between those of the two nags just described. The old, jaded, worn-out, "groggy" hunter, who came hobbling out of his stable, and who has been fumbling and blundering under his groom along the road, no sooner reaches the covert side than, like a lion "shaking the dew-drops from his shaggy mane," he in a moment casts away the ills which flesh is heir to—in short, his prostrated powers suddenly revive; and accordingly it is on record, that in one of the severest runs with stag-hounds ever known in Essex, the leading horse was aged, twenty-two. Again, on the road, when a horse has travelled thirty or forty miles, he usually becomes more or less tired; whereas, during the ten or twelve hours that a hunter is out of his stable, he will, with the utmost cheerfulness, besides trotting more than that distance on the road, follow the hounds for many hours across a heavy country and large fences; and as it is well known that, in harness, a horse is less fatigued by trotting before a carriage on a hard macadamized road for forty miles than in dragging it through an earth road for ten, it would appear almost fabulous to state how many miles on the road, or especially on dry turf, could be performed by the amount of excitement, activity, and strength expended by a hunter during a long and severe day's work.