It was ordained that I should be the first of my race born out of Devon, and there was perhaps allotted to me lacking that birthright a keener relish for all that Devon yields, so that a certain home-sickness will often befall me, which that sweet air and homely speech and hospitable fare only may cure. It is then I go west, go where merrie England is merrie England still, remote from stir and traffic of modern life, forgotten of civilization and the so-called march of mind. Cathay within three hundred miles of Paddington Station!
Not many years ago there came over me the old longing. As summer merged into autumn it got into my blood and there being no help for it, ere September waned I packed my bag and set out for Exmoor. There, descendants of the tall deer whom the Conqueror "loved as if he were their father," were to be found in plenty, hunted with horn and hound, captured and slain.
As much in the spirit of the pilgrim as of the sportsman, I made my way to where the river Exe and its big brother Barle have union. To Dulverton I fared, even as John Ridd had fared two hundred years before, and as I crossed the threshold of the Red Lion, recalled John Fry's striding into the hostel, "with the air and grace of a short-legged man, and shouting as loud as if he were calling sheep upon Exmoor."
"Hot mootton pasty for twoo trarv'lers, at number vaive, in vaive minnits! Dish un up in the tin with the grahvy, zame as I hardered last Tuesday."
In these days Dulverton may be said to exist for one purpose only, that of hunting the stag—with perhaps a little fishing thrown in. The oldest inhabitant will meet you upon the bridge, and with true Devonshire garrulity discourse of stag. Sauntering alongside you the length of its single street, he will point out the abode of the tailor (who makes hunting garments), of the cobbler (who makes riding boots). A saddler's shop is almost an appanage of the inn under whose portico, on the day of my arrival, a fuming sportsman and a well "done" horse were eloquent of stag. In the town there was suppressed excitement, and what passes in those parts for bustle and stir. The traffic had a way of suddenly disappearing down an alley which led to the banks of the Barle, and so to Exford. Needless to say, the attraction at Exford was Mr Bisset's kennels, nor would any peace or comfort reign in Dulverton until such time as news should arrive of the find and the kill.
That evening we sat in the stone-floored parlour of the inn and drank cider out of blue pint mugs—no true son of Devon drinks from a tumbler—and by my side was the warped old man who had weathered eighty Exmoor winters, and who told of the season of bitter frost when the red deer would come by the score of a morning to the farmers' ricks of corn and hay and clover, and some of them so tame that they would present themselves at the back door for a drink of water.
On the following day, things had quieted down. The staghounds were in kennel; and although the Exmoor foxhounds met in the neighbourhood for cub-hunting, heedless people went their way and took no notice of a pursuit only distantly connected with stag.
At last the eventful or stag-hunting day is ushered in, and as usual one's preparations are discovered at the last moment to be incomplete. A refractory boot causes delay and consequent anguish to a small party who have to travel with me on wheels from Dulverton to the meet at Venniford Cross; for eighteen Devonshire miles are before us, and it is conceivable that the day would have ended before our journey, had our coachman been other than a native Jehu. A man must live in the west of England to get used to driving horses at a hand-gallop up and down hills of which the gradient is sometimes less than 1 in 4 and sometimes more. And so we go on, our driver singing—
"When the wind whistles cold on the moors of a night,
All along, down along, out along lee,