How the bricks and mortar fiend has been working his wicked will with the place since last we saw it! The trots out to the several meets get longer and longer as season after season rolls by. What was once almost our best line, and where for two or three years the annual point-to-point race was held, is now an unwieldy mass of buildings, prominent amongst which stands that gigantic fraud on the long-suffering ratepayers, the Fever Hospital, with its staff of 350 to wait on a maximum of 450 patients!
At last we emerge from the region of building and railway "enterprise" (save the mark!) and see glimpses of the country ahead of us. A winding lane traversed, and we find a gate propped open on our left: here a halt is called. The Master rides into the field, whilst the Whips remain where they are in charge of the pack. Two minutes later our worthy chief returns and addresses the assembled company, not in the studied beauty of language employed by Cicero, nor in the perfervid oratory of Demosthenes, but in a manner very much more to the point than most of the harangues of those somewhat long-winded classics. "Let 'em get over the first fence: then you can ride like blazes!" he says.
The Whips move forward gently: hounds are all bristling with excitement, for they seem to know as well as we that the moment for action has arrived. "Gently there, Safety! have a care, then!" Yow, yow, yow! from the hounds. Toot, toot, from the Master's horn, and away they go. "Do wait, you dev—— fellows! You'll be bang into the middle of 'em! There, now, you can go and be blessed to you!" Amid a confused rush of horses, clatter of hoofs, and babel of tongues, we are away, and thundering down to the first fence, a big quickset. With a crash the first Whip is over or through; it doesn't matter which so long as he finds himself "all standing" on the right side. Half-a-dozen men make for the same place and great is the thrusting thereunto. The first and second get over: the third man falls: the next alights almost on top of him: now comes a gallant "just joined" one, who does not jump when his horse does, and then that first fence becomes of no further interest to us, for are we not over it, and speeding along at our best sprinting pace towards a line of post and rails, where, the Powers be praised! there is plenty of room for the whole field to have it abreast, if they wished. Two refuse at this: it is a pretty big one, and worse still the timber is new: but the next comer smashes the top rail and lets everyone through: then for three or four fields all is plain sailing—brush fences that our steeds almost gallop through, form the only obstacles. We jump into a park, and "Ware hole!" is the cry: we pull off to the right of where hounds are running in order to avoid the home of the ubiquitous bunny, but not soon enough, unluckily, to save one youngster from a tumble: the horse puts his foot in a rabbit hole and rolls over as if he is shot. "Not hurt a bit! Go on," calls out the rider, pluckily. Yes, no doubt about it, this is the game for the making of young soldiers. On we go, now descending a gentle slope to where an ominous little crowd of yokels and loafers are lining a narrow strip of green on each side: a second glance, as we rise in our stirrups for inspection purposes, shows us that this is evidently looked upon as the sensation "lep" of the run: a good sized brook, in front of which have been placed some stout, well furze-bushed hurdles. The scent has been thoughtfully laid a little on one side of this, so there is no fear of stray hounds getting in one's way. One look shows us that it will take a bit of doing, and hats are crammed on, and horses "taken by the head" in earnest, as the three leading men come along at it. A quick glance round and a lightning calculation as to where you'll go to, should your neighbour whip round or fall just in front of you, and then a vigorous hoist over the hurdles carries you just clear—and no more than just clear—of the frowning and muddy stream just beyond. The man on your left gets over also, but with one hind leg dropped in: three come slashing over, all right: then little Miffkins, in an agony of incertitude, takes a pull at his horse when within three lengths of where he should take off. Fatal mistake! for he merely succeeds in putting the break on: the horse jumps short, and just clearing the hurdles drops helplessly into the turbid stream amid the ribald jeers and laughter of the crowd assembled. Baulked by this contretemps the next horse refuses, and though ridden at the obstacle again and again, resolutely persists in remaining on the wrong side of the water. But "forrard on, forrard on!" Miffkins will get dry again—he is not hurt, in the least—and his horse will be taught an invaluable lesson in swimming. The pack is still racing away half a field ahead, but they are beginning to "string" a good deal now, from the severity of the pace. And by the same token, most of our good nags are obviously feeling that this sort of fun can't go on for ever. My own musical steed is, in especial, making the most appalling observations on the subject as we breast the next sharp slope. I feel, somehow, that he is using the equinese for "Hang it all, you know, I'm not a steam roundabout, my dear chap!" and my heart smites me. Before, however, I can make up my wavering mind as to whether conscience imperatively demands of me "a pull," or not, to my great joy, hounds suddenly throw up their heads where the drag has evidently been lifted, and we find ourselves at the ever welcome check. Most of us slip off our smoking steeds, whose shaking tails and sweat-lathered coats attest the rate at which these three miles have been covered. By twos and threes, the stragglers, and those whose luck is "out," arrive. One man has broken the cantle of his saddle, another has managed to pull his horse's bridle off in the floundering of a fall: here is a rider whose spur has been dragged off his boot: there one who has broken his girths: two men are hatless and another has lost his cigarette case, presumably whilst standing on his head after trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a stile without jumping it. However, these are but common incidents of the chase, and "all in the day's work." The troubles are taken good humouredly, and in the true spirit of philosophy. The men who have second horses out, have now mounted them, whilst the rest of us who intend riding the concluding half of the line, resume acquaintance with our splashed saddles and mud-stained steeds. Trotting off across a road, we again lay on, and have a gallop of quite five hundred yards before coming to anything in the way of an obstacle. Over a piece of timber, to the tune of a most unholy cracking of top rails, we go, and soon find ourselves approaching the far boundary which offers us the choice of a blind, hairy place, with a big ditch on the far side, a gate securely nailed up, and a greasy-looking foot-bridge adorned with several dangerous-looking holes. This last we all—as I think, wisely—eschew. Some make for the gate: the rest of us try the first-named place. One of the whips goes at it "hell for leather," and gets over. I, following him, I blush to say, rather—just a very little—too closely, utter a silent prayer that my leader may not fall, and somewhat to my astonishment feel "the musician" apparently disappearing into the bowels of the earth beneath me whilst I shoot over his head and sprawl, spread-eagled, on my hands and face into the ploughed field beyond. He has jumped short and paid the penalty by dropping into the ditch. I shout back "No" to a kindly enquiry as to whether I am hurt, and the questioner gallops on, leaving me to wrestle with the problem of how I am to extract the hog-maned one from his present retreat. As I take him by the rein and wonder how deeply his hind legs are imbedded in the sticky clay, he makes a wild flounder, plunges up the bank, rams his big, bony head into my chest and causes me to take up a most undignified position, for nothing can look much more aimless than to see the ardent sportsman attired in boots and breeches, seated involuntarily in the wet furrow of a ploughed field, his horse standing over him in an apparently menacing attitude. However, although I felt damped—and was—the animal was out of what might have been "a tight place," and I climbed into the saddle again with muddy breeches, but a cheerful heart. To catch hounds after this was, of course, out of the question, but I jogged slowly across the field I was in, and felt, I humbly confess, a thrill of unholy joy, as from the farther side of the thick hedge there, I heard a plaintive voice saying:
"Come through the gap and give us a hand, old fellow; I've come down, busted both girths and a stirrup leather, lost my curb chain and split my br—waistcoat!"
I was happy again. I had a companion in misfortune, and, better still, one in sorrier plight than my own. By the time we had (as far as a piece of string, two torn handkerchiefs and a necktie, the thongs of both hunting crops, and a pair of braces would allow) repaired damages, lighted and smoked a couple of cigars, and talked the day's doings over as we rode back to the cheery lights shining from the barrack windows, I for one felt just as happy as if I had managed to live through the whole, instead of only part, of that invigorating gallop with the Woolwich Drag.
STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR
We sons of Devon are, I doubt not, too prone to dwell and enlarge upon the fact that we are not quite as other men, that when all things were made none was made better than this, our land of sunny skies and mystic moors, of lane and hedgerow, of sea and river, where the balmy fragrance of Torbay invites the winter, and the chill grandeur of Exmoor repels the summer's heat; with goodness overflowing from Porlock to Penzance; the home of traditions and folkspeech that mark us out a people meet to enjoy the wholesomest clime under the canopy of heaven.
I say we are too apt to allow these matters to weigh with us, and breed a smiling contentment and ease of living perhaps not good for those who shall come after us—for those who may be forced to quit their native soil and sojourn among aliens of sharper wits and noisier mode of life. Soft as a Dartmoor bog the South Devon man has been found by those of northern blood, who in mean ways despoil him. Yet if history doth not lie, there have been sundry occasions when, for stoutness of heart and a kind of obstinacy of courage, the men of the west of England had no need to suffer by comparison with any. To many of us now, alas, the home of our fathers, the haunts of our boyhood, are no longer daily present; but the exile's memory is strong and vivid, and, aided as is natural by not infrequent visits to them, yields abundant pleasure in the contemplation of spots hallowed to us by fond associations, the tombs of our sires, the scenes of early passion, and perhaps above all, to him of man's estate, the otter bank and Exmoor.
Stronger than death, more lasting than love of woman, is the passion for the chase, and of all those who ride to hounds, the hunter of the wild deer of Devon must surely bear the palm for all the qualities that go to make up the sportsman; and as I have been challenged to show that this at least is no empty boast, nor figment of the brain, I proceed to tell, for all but those who know it better than I, how the men of Devon hunt the wild red deer.