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The sun had gone, and above the dreamy blue of the far-lying woods, the early evening had hung the sky with mellow, summery, twilight loveliness.
The casements of the old house at Whittington glowed ruddy and warm through their marvellous clustering ivy, and it was the idlest luxury to hang over the crumbling road-wall, peopling its suggestive chambers with the spirits of their long-gone tenants. It is a farm-house now, and there is no available record to tell the stranger the story of its more glorious days. No rigid history hampers the fancy, and the strolling lover of the by-ways and roadsides of our dear Mother England may let his imagination run with flowing rein, sweeping away the hayricks and marigold beds, and calling back the peacocks and bagwigs of the halcyon days.
Perhaps for the last time in my life I was taking the breath of an English twilight,—sweetest to those whose childhood and youth have fed on the rhyme and tale the green old land has sent to her world-wide brood, and who come, in riper life, to find the fancies of early years warm and living on every side, in hedge and field, in cowslip and primrose, in nightingale and lark. The thick-coming impressions such musing brings are vague and dreamy, so that there seemed a shade of unreality in the quiet voice that bade me “Good evening,” and added, “Yes, it is an engaging old house, and it has a story that you may be glad to hear.”
It was not from perversity that I turned the subject, but no tale of real life could have added interest to the fancies with which the old manse had clad itself in the slowly waning day. Wayside impressions lose their charm if too much considered, and, as my new companion was walking toward Lichfield, I was glad to turn away and join him,—ending a long day’s tramp with the slow and quiet gait that his age compelled. There was the least shade of the uncanny in his bearing, and his speech was timorous and gentle. His threadbare and seedy look betokened a native unthrift, but there was an undercurrent of refinement in his mien and in his manner, and a trusting outlook from his large blue eyes that made him the fittest of companions for a summer evening’s walk in a country filled with the mingled flavor of history and romance.
He was a man of the intensest local training. To him “the County of the City of Lichfield” was of more consequence than all Staffordshire besides, and far more than all England and all that vague entity called the World. Even the County of the City of Lichfield was large for his concentrated attachment: he knew it as one must know a small town in which he has passed the whole of a long life; but his heart lay within the cathedral close, and the cathedral close lay deep within his heart,—deep and warm, with its history and its traditions, its romance and its reality, so interlaced that he had long since ceased to ask what was real and what unreal. All was unreal in the sense of being of more than worldly consequence in his estimation, and all real as a part of the training of his whole life.
To him Lichfield Cathedral was no mere pile of sculptured stone, built round with the facts of recorded history; it was the fairy handiwork of times and scenes long past, its walls raised by the hand of pious enthusiasm, shattered and cemented by the strife and blood of the civil war, hallowed by the returning glory of the Restoration, blessed by the favor of royal presence, and now made admirable in his daily sight by the dignity and grace of those holy men its dean and chapter.
As it was the cathedral I had come to see, and as I had come for no architect’s measurements, for no student’s lore, only to bathe in the charmed atmosphere of its storied past, I had fallen upon a guide after my own heart, and it was as pleasant as it was easy to lend full credence to all he so honestly believed and told.
In early life he had had gentler training, but he had long been a Poor Brother of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist in Lichfield, and had, for many years, held, by seniority, the right of presenting a rose, on St. John’s nativity day, to the heirs of William Juvenis (goldsmith), who, by grants made in consideration of this ceremony, had secured perennial prayers for the souls of his ancestors and a fragrant memory for his own.
Hedged about by the traditionary customs and quaint observances of an ancient charitable foundation, deadened in a way, if you please, by the aristocratic pauperism of his condition, my gentle companion had grown to his present dreamy estate.
As we reached Stow Pool, near the old parish church of St. Chad, he pointed out the spring of pure water where, twelve hundred years ago, this future Bishop of Lichfield—who during his hermit life supported himself on the milk of a doe—was wont to pray naked in the water, standing upon the stone still seen at the bottom of the well, and where St. Ovin heard the angels sing as his good soul passed away.
Then, with the trusting look of a little child, the Poor Brother went on to tell of the virtues and good deeds of this holy life;—how even the King of the Mercians, struck with remorse for the crimes he had committed, visited the saint in person, yielded to his eloquent persuasion, became a convert to the true faith, and banished all idolatry from his realm; how he became the head of the church of Lichfield and laid its strong foundations of piety and faith; and how his virtues so outlived him that his very tomb swallowed the ill-humors of diseased minds resorting to its serene presence, that the dust from his grave healed all ills of man and beast, and that the shrine built in his honor after his canonization was so sought by numberless devotees that Lichfield itself began thereupon to increase and flourish.
To our left, as he ceased, the evening’s lingering glow gilded the silent pool, where lay the unrippled reflection of the three spires of the cathedral, hardly more unsubstantial than the fairy silhouette that stood clean-cut against the sky, and dividing with the reality the rapt admiration of the Poor Brother of St. John’s.
We stood by the water’s edge, and he turned toward the phantom spires reversed within it, his talk wandering back to the days of the church’s troubles,—when the cathedral close was a fortress, with strong walls and well-filled moat; when the beautiful west gate, which only our own age was vile enough to destroy, kept stout ward against the outer world, and protected the favored community who formed within the walls a county independent of Lichfield and of Staffordshire. Within the sacred pale no law had force save that of the Ecclesiastical Court, and then, as now, none could there be taken for debt or crime save on the warrant of the dean and chapter.
He knew by heart the long list of bishops, and would gladly have held me to hear of the good deeds of Langton and Hackett. He was fairly launched in his favorite enthusiasm, and told warmly the more striking features of the church’s history, but he told them rapidly lest I should reach the storied pile with less than a full appreciation of its traditional interest.
From his nervous lips I learned how King Richard II. kept Christmas revels here with a splendor that lavished two hundred tuns of wine, and roasted two thousand oxen, whose bones are still found in Oxenbury field hard by; how Elizabeth passed three whole days in the close; and how the solidity of its fortification, the consummate grace and finish of its architecture, the richness of its sculpture, and the surpassing beauty and magnificence of the nine windows of its lady chapel marked it as the crowning glory of the Western Church, until the dark days of the Revolution lowered. Then its sore trials were recounted, and I learned of the fanatical attack of Lord Brooke, “with his horde of impious Roundheads,” made by strange fatality on St. Chad’s day; of the shooting of Lord Brooke by “Dumb Dyott,” who was perched in the steeple with a fowling-piece that now hangs over the fireplace of Colonel Dyott’s house; of the surrender of the close by Lord Chesterfield; of the sack and bout that followed; of the recapture by Prince Rupert.
He told of the foul desecration by the Roundheads, who used every species of havoc, plunder, and profanation,—pulling down the sacred effigies which were the glory of the western front, hacking to pieces the curious carvings of the choir, mashing the noses of the monumental statues, destroying the valuable evidences and records of the church and the city, shattering the glass of the costly windows,—save only that of the marvellous nine of the lady chapel, which a pious care was said to have removed to a place of safety. They kept courts of guard in the cross aisles, broke up the pavements, and every day hunted a cat with hounds throughout the church, delighting in the echoes from the vaulted roof; they wrapped a calf in linen, and “in derision and scorn of the sacrament of baptism,” sprinkled it at the font and gave it a name.
How the King, after the defeat of Naseby, came from Ashby-de-la-Zouche, and passed the night in the close,—how Cromwell’s defaming crew completed the work of demolition and desecration, and smashed the old bell called “Jesus,” with its legend “I am the bell of Jesus, and Edward is our King; Sir Thomas Heywood first causéd me to ring,”—how, finally, the chapter-house alone had a roof under which service might be said,—how the good Hackett on the first day of his bishopric set his own servants and his own coach-horses at work removing the rubbish, and never tired until in eight years’ time the magnificence of the cathedral was restored, except for the forever irreparable loss of the decorations, and especially of the lady chapel windows, which all the cost of the restoration would not have sufficed to renew,—how the church was reconsecrated with great pomp and solemnity,—all this he told me in detail, and he would gladly have told more, for this Poor Brother had made these few rich historic acres nearly his whole world, and had peopled it with all who throughout the long ages had marred it or had made it. To have given “two good trees” for the rebuilding of the church was a title to his lasting and grateful recognition.
But the light was fast waning, and the cathedral must be seen now or perhaps never. It was already past the hour for closing, but one of the vergers had formerly been a Poor Brother of St. John’s, and my companion went to him to secure our admission.
I stood before the west front of the cathedral, which was then bathed in the lingering light of the after-day, its great central window gleaming as though the altar lamps were still burning behind it, and the western spires almost losing themselves in the sky. The quaint effigies that fill the niches across the whole façade lost their grotesqueness in the dusk, and seemed really the sacred sculptures they were meant to be. Fair though this rich front must be at high midday, it needs for its full beauty the half-light of a Northern evening. As seen on that rarest of all evenings, it was a fit introduction to the subdued glory which greeted us in the dim religious light to which we entered as the great central door closed behind us.
We stood, uncovered and reverent, beneath the vaulted nave, looking down the long curved aisle, bordered by the majesty of the clustered columns, through the light illuminated screen of the choir, full upon the sculptured and gem-set alabaster reredos, above and beyond which stood the famed group of windows of the lady chapel, mellowed by the light of the streaming full moon.
Rich in the blended mosaic of the floor, in the dimmed canopy overhead, in the lightly arched gallery of the triforium, in the mellow cross-lights of the side windows, in the sombre carvings of the choir, and above all in the marvellous glass of the chapel, it was the very perfection of a worshipful church.
It was too nearly dark to examine the details of the decoration, and we wandered down the aisles, remarking here and there the bruised statues of the tombs, and halting before the sleeping children of Chantrey to marvel how much somnolent repose can be cut in chiselled stone.
“But come,” said the gentle Brother, “we have only light enough left for the storied glass which alone of all the richness of the old church outlived its desecration, and, as by a miracle, was preserved to tell these later generations of the higher art our forefathers’ sons forgot.”
As he spoke, we stood within the charmed light of the nine windows of the apse,—windows which have perhaps no remaining equals in the world, and before which one can only bow in admiration and regret for an art that seems forever lost. Holding me fast by the arm, he went on:—
“In the restoration of the church, the spandrels of the old windows were rebuilt, and the frames were set with plain glass, to the sad defacement of the edifice; and so they stood for nigh two hundred years, no art being equal to their worthy replacement, and no ancient store to the supplying of so large a demand.
“But listen, now, how the hand of Heaven sheltered its own, and how true servants of the Church are ever guided to reclaim its lost splendor.
“A few years ago, a canon of the cathedral, travelling in Flanders, wishing to contribute to the renewed work of restoration, visited the dismantled convent of Herkenrode in the ancient bishopric of Liege. Here he sought among the rubbish of the lumber-room for wood-carvings which might be used in the rebuilding of the prebendal stalls. His search discovered many boxes of colored glass, the origin of which no one knew, and whose existence even had been forgotten. Thinking to embellish some of the curious triangular windows above the triforium, he purchased the whole store for two hundred pounds of our money, and presented it to the dean and chapter as a tribute of affectionate devotion to the cathedral. There was more than he had supposed, and the large figures of some of the fragments indicated a coherent design.
“This chapel was fenced off from the aisles, and here the canon’s wife and daughter, devoting themselves to the solution of the puzzle, slowly pieced out the varying connections. They worked patiently for weeks, with a steadily increasing excitement of success, until [and here his grasp grew tremulous and close], lying collated on this pavement where we stand, only a bit wanting here and there, marking the exact sizes of the varied openings, the grand old Lichfield windows, perfect as you see them now in this softened moonlight, had come back to enrich forevermore the dear old church to whose glory they had shone in the bygone centuries, and whose sore trials their absence had so long recalled.
“Kind stranger,” said he, “this is a true tale. Sceptics have questioned it, but it is true! true! And I thank Heaven that it has been permitted to me, who have grown old in the love of this sacred pile, to live to see, in this crowning act of its restoration, the higher help the hand of man has had in performing its holy work.”
His upturned blue eyes were moistened with tears, and his voice trembled with emotion. I led him gently away and to the doorstep of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, where we parted in silence, and forever.
Supping at the Swan Inn, I took the late train for Liverpool and home, bringing with me an ideal Lichfield, to which it would perhaps have been rash to hold the light of a Lichfield day.
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On entering the Regent Hotel at Leamington the first object that attracts attention, after the stuffy old porter who hobbles about to see some one else handle the luggage, is a small frame, over the smoking coal-fire, which contains the following notice, decorated with an old cut of a fox’s mask:—
MERRY & CO.’S HUNTING APPOINTMENTS, AND GUIDE TO THE DIFFERENT COVERTS.
December 30, 1872.Warwickshire,—at 10.45.Days.Meet atMiles.To go throughM.Goldicote House.11.Wellerbourne and Loxley.Tu.Radway Grange.12.Tachbrook and Kineton.W.Snitterfield.7.Warwick and Stratford Road.Th.Red Hill.13.Warwick and Snitterfield.F.Pebworth.16.Warwick and Stratford.North Warwickshire,—at 11.M.Solihull.14.Warwick and Hatton.Tu.Cubbington Gate.2.Lillington.Th.Stoneleigh Abbey.4.On Kenilworth Road.F.Tile Hill.9.By Kenilworth Castle.Pytchley,—at 10.45.M.Naseby.26.Princethorpe and Rugby.Tu.Hazlebeach.31.Dunchurch and Crick.W.Dingley.33.Rugby and Swinford.F.Cransley.36.Maidwell.S.Swinford.19.Princethorpe and Rugby.Atherstone,—at 11.M.Coombe.12.Bubbenhall and Wolston.W.Harrow Inn Gate.20.Coventry and Nuneaton.F.Brinklow Station.12.Bubbenhall and Wolston.S.Corley.14.Stoneleigh and Coventry.Bicester,—at 10:45.M.Fenny Compton.12.Radford and Ladbrook.Tu.Trafford Bridge.19.Southam and Wormleighton.Th.Hellidon.14.Southam and Priory Marston.S.Steeple Claydon.40.Gaydon and Banbury.
December 30, 1872.Warwickshire,—at 10.45.Days.Meet atMiles.To go throughM.Goldicote House.11.Wellerbourne and Loxley.Tu.Radway Grange.12.Tachbrook and Kineton.W.Snitterfield.7.Warwick and Stratford Road.Th.Red Hill.13.Warwick and Snitterfield.F.Pebworth.16.Warwick and Stratford.North Warwickshire,—at 11.M.Solihull.14.Warwick and Hatton.Tu.Cubbington Gate.2.Lillington.Th.Stoneleigh Abbey.4.On Kenilworth Road.F.Tile Hill.9.By Kenilworth Castle.Pytchley,—at 10.45.M.Naseby.26.Princethorpe and Rugby.Tu.Hazlebeach.31.Dunchurch and Crick.W.Dingley.33.Rugby and Swinford.F.Cransley.36.Maidwell.S.Swinford.19.Princethorpe and Rugby.Atherstone,—at 11.M.Coombe.12.Bubbenhall and Wolston.W.Harrow Inn Gate.20.Coventry and Nuneaton.F.Brinklow Station.12.Bubbenhall and Wolston.S.Corley.14.Stoneleigh and Coventry.Bicester,—at 10:45.M.Fenny Compton.12.Radford and Ladbrook.Tu.Trafford Bridge.19.Southam and Wormleighton.Th.Hellidon.14.Southam and Priory Marston.S.Steeple Claydon.40.Gaydon and Banbury.
Twenty-two meets in the week, all within easy reach, by road or rail. Let us dine and decide. At table we will leave themenuto the waiter; but let him bring for consideration during the meal the list ofmeets. “Brinklow Station, twelve miles”; that seems the most feasible thing in the catalogue for the morrow, and who has not heard that the Atherstone is a capital pack? But then the Pytchley is even better known, and the train reaches Rugby in time for the meet. Let the choice be decided with the help of coffee and cigars and possible advice, during the soothing digestive half-hour in the smoking-room. Dinner over, wander away through the tortuous, dim passage that leads to the sombre hall where alone in English inns the twin crimes of billiards and smoking are permitted, and, while writhing under the furtive glances of the staid and middle-aged East-Indian who evidently knows you for an American, and who is your only companion, decide, with your nation’s ability to reach conclusions without premises, whether it shall be Pytchley or Atherstone. Don’t ask your neighbor: he is an Englishman, and have we not been told that Englishmen are gruff, reticent men, who wear thick shells, and whose warm hearts can be reached only with the knife of a regular introduction? However, you must make up your mind what to do, and you need help which neither the waiter nor the porter can give; the “gentlemanly clerk” does not exist in England (thank Heaven!) and you have not yet learned what an invaluable mine of information “Boots” is,—faithful, useful, helpful, and serviceable to the last degree. I salute him with gratitude for all he has done to make life in English hotels almost easier and more home-like than in one’s own house. It is safe to advise all travellers to make him an early ally, to depend on him, to use him, almost to abuse him, and, finally, on leaving, to “remember” him. Not yet having come to know the Boots, I determined to throw myself on the tender mercies of my stern, silent companion, and I very simply stated my case. My stern, silent companion was an exception to the rule, and he told me all I wanted to know (and more than I knew I needed to know) with a cordiality and frankness not always to be found among the genial smokers of our own hotels. His voice was in favor of the Atherstone as being the most acceptable thing for the next day.
Ford, the veterinary surgeon of Leamington, had, on several occasions, done good service for friends who had gone before me over the hedges of North Warwickshire, and I went to him for advice about a mount. Here I found that I had made a mistake in not engaging horses in advance. To get a “hunter” for the next day would be impossible, but he would do what he could for a few days hence. All he could promise for the morning would be to lend me a horse of his own, a thoroughbred mare, not up to my weight, but tough and wiry, and good for any amount of road-work. He kindly volunteered to arrange for our going by the first train to Coventry, only a couple of miles from Brinklow (it turned out to be nine miles), so that we should arrive fresh on the ground. At seven o’clock in the morning he came to my room to say that everything was arranged, and that I should find the mare at the station in an hour. Swallowing a glass of milk as a stay-stomach,—my usual habit,—I put myself, for the first time since the war ended, into breeches and boots, and drove to the station. On a turn-out stood a “horse-box,” one of the institutions of England,—a three-stabled freight-car for the transportation of horses. Paying five shillings for a horse-ticket to Coventry (only twice the cost of my own seat), I saw the mare snugly packed into one of the narrow stalls and made fast for the journey. Passing through a beautiful farming country, we came in due time to the quaint old town of Coventry, where several horse-boxes, coming from Birmingham and other stations, were discharging their freight of well-bred hunters. As we rode from this station another hard-shelled Englishman in brown top-boots and spotless white leather breeches accosted me pleasantly, reminding me that we had come from London together the day before, and asking, as he had recognized me for an American, if he could be of service to me.
“Pray how did you know that I am from America?”
“Only by your asking if you should change ‘cars’ at Rugby. An Englishman would have said ‘carriages.’”
“Very well; I am glad my ear-mark was no greater. Can you direct me to a hotel where I can get a bite before I go on?”
“Certainly: you will find the Angel very comfortable; take the next street to the right, and you will soon reach it. Good morning; it is nine miles to the meet, and I will move on slowly. Command me if I can help you when you come up.”
I did find the Angel comfortable, (as what English inn is not?) and soon fortified myself with cold pheasant and sherry,—a compact and little-burdensome repast to ride upon,—served in a cosey old coffee-room by the neatest and most obliging of handmaidens.
On the road I fell in with straggling groups of horsemen, in red coats and black coats, leather breeches and cords, white tops and black; all neat and jaunty, and all wearing the canonical stove-pipe hat. My little mare was brisk, and I had no hard riding to save her for, so I passed a dozen or more of the party, getting from each one some form or other of pleasant recognition, and finally from a handsome young fellow on a very spicy mount, “Excuse me, are you going to Brinklow? You must turn to the right.”
Confound these Englishmen, thought I, where is their traditional coldness and reserve? And I reined up for a chat.
My companion came from the vicinity of Birmingham. Like so many of his class, he devotes three days a week to systematic hunting, and he was as enthusiastic as an American boy could have been in telling me all I wanted to know about the sport. To get hold of a grown man who had never seen a foxhound seemed an event for him, and my first instructions were very agreeably taken. Our road ran past the beautiful deer-stocked park of Coombe Abbey, where the green grass of a moist December and the thick clustering growth of all-embracing ivy carried the fresh hues of our summer over the wide lawn and to the very tops of the trees about the grand old house. The few villages on our way were neither interesting nor pleasant, but the thatched farm-houses and cottages, and the wonderful ivy, and the charming fields and hedges were all that could have been asked.
And then the roadsides! and the stiles and the foot-paths, and the look of age and the richness of the well-kept farms; and again and everywhere the ivy clinging fast to each naked thing, and clothing it with luxuriant beauty!
There is in all our hearts an inherited chord that thrills in the presence of this dear old home of our race. Not this spot and not these scenes, but the air, the tone, the spirit of it all,—these are as familiar to our instincts as water to the hen-brooded duckling.
Brinklow Station has the modern hideousness and newness of railroad stations everywhere in country neighborhoods, and it was pleasant to leave it behind and follow the gay crowd down a sloping and winding road into the real country again, and into a handsome and well-kept park, beyond which there stood a fine old house of some pretension, and well set about with terraced lawn and shrubbery,—a charming English country-seat.
Here my eyes were greeted with the glory of my first “meet,” and a glory it was indeed! Pictures and descriptions had suggested it, but they had only suggested it. This was the reality, and it far exceeded my anticipation. The grounds were fairly alive with a brilliant company of men and women,—happy and hearty, and just gathered for the day’s sport. Red coats, white breeches, and top-boots were plenty, and the neat holiday air of the whole company was refreshing and delightful. Scattered about singly and in groups, mounted, on foot, and in carriages, were a couple of hundred people of all ages and of all conditions. Chatting from the saddle and over carriage-doors, lounging up and down the Drive, or looking over the hounds, the company were leisurely awaiting the opening of the ball. They had come from a circuit of twenty miles around, and they appeared to be mainly people who habitually congregate at the cover-side throughout the hunting-season, and to be generally more or less acquainted with each other. The element of coquetry was not absent; but coquetry is apparently not a natural product of the English soil, and that sort of intercourse was not conspicuous. The same number of handsome young men and women would be more demonstrative at a similar gathering in America. A similar gathering, however, would not be possible in America. We have no occasion on which people of all sorts come so freely and so naturally together, interested in a traditional and national sport, which is alike open to rich and poor, and meeting, not for the single occasion only, but several times a week, winter after winter, often for many years. Noblemen, gentlemen, farmers, manufacturers, professional men, snobs, cads, errand-boys,—everybody, in short, who cared to come seemed to have the right to come, and, so far as the hunt was concerned, seemed to be on an equal footing. Of course the poorer element was comparatively small, and mainly from the immediate neighborhood. Thehabituésof a hunt are seldom below the grade of well-to-do farmers. Servants from the house were distributing refreshments, riders were mounting their hunters, grooms were adjusting saddle-girths, too fiery animals were being quieted, and there was generally an air of preparation about the whole assemblage.
A little at one side, kept well together by the huntsman and a couple of whippers-in, were the hounds (the Atherstone pack), about forty of them, or, technically, “twenty couples,” strong-limbed, large-eared, party-colored, wholesome-looking fellows. They attracted much attention and elicited frequent commendation, for they were said to be the very finest pack in England,—as was also each of the three other packs that I saw. To the unskilled eye, and simply viewed as dogs, they were not remarkable; but it was a case in which the judgment of an unskilled person could have no value.
The horses appealed to me much more strongly. Certainly I had never before seen together the same number of the same average excellence; and some of them were fit to drive one wild with envy. There was, on the whole, less of the “blood” look than would be expected by a man who had got his ideas of the hunting-field from Leech’s drawings, but there was a good deal of it, nevertheless, and in its perfection too; and where it was wanting there was plenty of bone to make up for it.
At eleven the hounds were led out to the cover, and the whole field followed slowly and irregularly and at some distance. There were about one hundred and fifty mounted for the hunt. Perhaps one third of these wore scarlet coats, white breeches, and top-boots; another third had black coats and some of them black boots; and the remainder of the field was made up of half a dozen ladies, a few stout old gentlemen of seventy or so on stout old cobs of discreet age, little boys on smart ponies, farmers and tradesmen and their clerks mounted on whatever they could get, and men of every intermediate grade, and with all sorts of horses. A certain amount of riff-raff, not mounted at all, but good on their pins and ready for a run, were hanging about for a chance to pick up a whip or a hat, or to catch a horse, or brush a muddy coat, or turn an honest shilling in any way that might offer in the chances of the day. Some of these fellows, rigged out with the cast-off clothing of their betters, sported red coats, black velvet caps, and leather leggings. One added to all this gorgeousness the refinement of bare feet.
The hounds were taken into the cover, a brambly, tangled wood near by, which had probably been planted and made a little wilderness to serve as a cover for foxes.
They soon found a fox, drove him to the open, and followed him out of the wood with a whimpering sort of cry which was disappointing after the notion that the “full cry” of the books had given, and which is heard in the very different fox-hunting of our Southern woods. The run lay up a steepish hill, several fields wide and across an open country. One bold rider (not a light one), mounted on a staving black horse, went to the right of the cover, and made a splendid leap up hill, over a stiff-looking hedge, and landed at the tail of the pack. The “master” and his assistants had got away with the hounds. The rest of the field went to the left, waiting their turns, through a farm-gate. Once through, some twenty of them dashed up the hill, cleared a clever hedge, and kept the pack in sight. The rest took an easier place, where a farm laborer had pulled away the stakes by which a gap had been filled. Here there was much very light jumping, and much more of waiting until predecessors had made it lighter. In the mean time other gaps were found, and it was not many minutes before all were through; but during these minutes the fox, the hounds, and the harder riding men were putting a wide space between themselves and us, who were at the tail of the field. Yet there were some in the party who did not look like laggards, and whose horses were good enough for any work such a country could give them.
Even when across the gap, these men went with the rest of us, by gates and lanes, toward a point to which it was thought by the knowing ones that the fox would double,—and the knowing ones were right. Gradually, as their judgment indicated, they left the roads and took to the fields. This course was taken by three well-mounted young ladies. I followed the gate-openers for about half an hour, when, coming out on a high-road, I concluded that, with seventeen miles to ride home, it was only just to my little mare to give the thing up and head for Leamington. The hounds were far away on my right and quite out of sight.
Having come to look on and learn, I had probably seen and heard all that day had in store for me,—surely enough for one’s first day at fox-hunting. When I had ridden for a few minutes I saw, far across the fields, that the hounds had turned to the left and were making for my road. Pressing forward, I came up in time to see them cross to the front, and go scurrying away over the grass, nosing out the scent as they ran. There had been a check, and “the field” was well up. The road was lower than the fields, and was bordered by a ditch at each side. From this the ground rose a little, and on each bank stood a three-and-a-half-foot thorn hedge. Neither leap was difficult, but the one out of the road was not easy. Here I sat and saw fully a hundred horsemen, dressed in the gay colors of the hunting-field and mounted as men rarely are mounted out of England, all, horses as well as men, eager and excited in the chase, flying over hedge and ditch into the carriage-way and over ditch and hedge into the higher field, beyond and away, headlong after the hounds, every man for himself, and every man for the front, and on they went over another hedge, and out of sight. In the thick of the flight were two ladies, riding as well and as boldly as the men, and two men were brushing their hats in the road, their empty saddles keeping well up with the run. More than satisfied with this climax of my first day’s experience, I trotted out for home. The result of the run I never heard, and I leave its description where I lost sight of it. A mile farther on I did see a fagged-looking fox making his rapid way across my road again, and sneaking off under the hedge toward a thicket, and I halted to listen to what sounded like the horn of a huntsman at check over the hill to the left; but possibly the conclusion I drew was not a correct one.
I wish that words could give an idea of the life and action of the headlong flight I had just seen; but the inadequacy of all I had read to convey it to me makes it seem useless to try. Photography and description may, in a measure, supply the place of travel; but he who would realize the most thrilling intensity of eager horsemanship must stand in a hedge-bound English lane, and see with his own eyes, and for the first time in his life, a hundred gayly dressed and splendidly mounted fox-hunters flashing at full speed across his path; and it is worth the while to see.
Rain never fell on a more lovely country than that part of Warwickshire through which my wet way lay. For ten miles of the seventeen it rained, gently as it rains with us in April; nor is our grass more green in April than this was in Christmas week. The all-prevailing ivy was filled with berries, and the laurustinus was already in bloom.
No born Englishman could have cared less for the soaking rain; and, wet to the skin, tired to the bone, and stiff to the marrow, I have rarely been more exuberant than when I gradually regained the use of my legs in the half-mile walk to the hotel, resolving that not even the glories of American citizenship should ever keep me away from England in winter were I only able to afford the luxury of regular hunting. But the exuberance was moral rather than physical. I had not been so tired for years,—stiff as an old horse, after over thirty miles of really hard riding (the last seventeen miles in two hours). The cure was a hot bath and a dish of hot soup, followed by a log-like sleep of two hours on a sofa before a blazing hot fire, a sharp half-hour’s walk, a very plain dinner, and a couple of hours’ chat with my interested East-Indiaman in the smoking-room: the cure was complete; and all that was left of the day’s sport was its brilliant recollection.
My second day was near Stratford-on-Avon,—onAy-von, the misguided English call it. The meet was to be at Goldicote House, one of the “fixtures” of the Warwickshire Hunt. There were about a hundred persons, including a few ladies, and one little bareheaded “blue-coat” school-boy (from Charles Lamb’s school), who, with his folded umbrella, long skirt, low shoes, and yellow hose, was in for as much sport as his Christmas holiday could give him. As a farther penalty for want of forethought, I was reduced to riding a friend’s coach-horse. However, the reduction was not great, for whether by early instruction or by inheritance, he was more than half a hunter, and gave me a capital look at the whole day’s chase; while his owner, on a most charming black blood mare, being out of condition for hard riding, kindly applied himself to urging me to severer work than one likes to do with a borrowed horse. He introduced me to a venerable old gentleman in a time-and-weather-stained red coat, velvet cap, and well-used nether gear, mounted on a knowing-looking old gray, and attended by his granddaughter. He could not have been less than eighty years old, and his days of hard riding were over; but constant hunting exercise every winter for over sixty years had protected him wonderfully well against the ravages of time, and it is rare to see an American of sixty so hale and hearty, and so cheerful and jolly. I was told that if I would take him for my leader, I would see more of the run than I could in any other way with such a mount as I had. He seemed to know the habits of the foxes of South Warwickshire as thoroughly as he did every foot-path and gate of the country, and he led us by cross-cuts to the various points to which Reynard circled, so that we often had the whole field in sight. It was not an especially interesting day, and the fox got away at last, among a tangle of railway lines that blocked our passage. My old mentor, who had given me much valuable instruction in the details of hunting, was vastly disgusted at the result, and broke out with, “Ah! it’s all up with old England, I doubt; these confounded railways have killed sport. There’s no hunting to be had any longer, for their infernal cutting up the country in this way. I’ve hunted with these hounds under fifteen different masters, but I’ve about done, and I sha’n’t lose much,—it’s all up. However, I suppose we could never pay the interest on the national debt without the railways; but it’s all up with hunting.” At that, he called away the young lady, bade me a melancholy “good-by,” and rode half sadly home. I galloped back to Stratford with my handsome old host,—a little more knowing in the ways of the field, but without yet having had a fair taste of the sport.
Seven miles from Peterborough, in the dismal little village of Wansford, near the borders of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, is, perhaps, the only remaining old posting-inn in England that is kept up in the unchanged style of the ante-railroad days. The post-horses are gone, but the posting-stables are filled with hunters; the travelling public have fled to the swifter lines, and Wansford is forever deserted of them; but the old Haycock keeps up its old cheer, and Tom Percival, who boasts that he has had the Princess Victoria for a guest, and has slept five dukes in one night, has little occasion to complain of neglect. The good wine that needs no bush still makes his cellar known, and no one should criticise English cooking until he has dined once at the Haycock. Nowhere is the inn-maid of whom we have read so much to be found in such simple, tidy, and courtesying perfection; and nowhere, in short, can one find so completely the solid comfort of hostelry life. Half old farm-house and half wayside-inn; with a marvellous larder, through whose glass-closed side the guest sees visions of joints and jams and pastry in lavish profusion; backed by a stable-yard where boys are always exercising good horses; and flanked by a yardful of quaint clipped yews,—the old house at Wansford (in spite of its dull-looking road front) is worth a visit from those who would get out of the sight and sound of steam, and see the old, old country life of England. The visitor is not numbered and billeted and pigeon-holed, as in the modern hotel; but the old fiction of host and guest is well kept up. Your coming should be announced in advance; and you are received as in some sort a member of the family, whose ways are made to conform more or less to the wishes of yourself and your convives, mainly young swells from London, who are few, and who are there, as you are, not for business, but for rest, good living, and regular sport. Three packs of hounds are within reach; and on the days when none of the meets is near, there is always the “larking”—the training of young horses—to supply a good substitute, so far as the riding goes. One who cares for hunting pure and simple, rather than for the gayer life of Leamington and Cheltenham, cannot do better than to make the season, or a part of it, at the Haycock, with regularly engaged horses for as many days in the week as he may choose to ride. It costs,—but it pays. One is none the less welcome among the guests for being an American.
I there had a day with the George Fitz William hounds. Not being, as yet, quite at home in the field, I took a wise old horse, “Cock Robin,” who was well up to my weight, and who, as Percival told me, would teach me more than I could teach him. He was sent on early with the other hunters, and I took a “hack” to ride to cover. We were a party of four, and we went through the fields and the lawns and the rain, to where the meet was fixed for eleven o’clock, at Barnwell Castle, a fine old Norman ruin,—square and low, with four large corner towers draped in magnificent ivy. It was a dreary morning, and not more than sixty were out; but among these, as always, there were ladies, and there was more than the usual proportion of fine horses. One cover was drawn blank, and we moved to another, where a fox was found, and whence the run was sharp and too straight for a prudent novice to see very much of it; and it was some minutes before Cock Robin and his rider came up with the hounds, who had come to a check in a large wood. Throughout the day there was a good deal of waiting about different covers, between which the fox ran back and forth. Finally he broke away for a long, quick burst over the fields, which lay to the left of a farm-road down which we were riding, and which was flanked by a high and solid-looking hedge. Near the head of the party was a well-mounted blonde of seventeen, who had hitherto seemed to avoid the open country and to keep prudently near to her mother and her groom. The sight of the splendid run, fast leaving us behind, was too much for her, and she turned straight for the hedge, clearing it with a grander leap than I had seen taken that day, and flying on over hedges and ditches in the direct wake of the hounds. A young German who followed her said, as we rode back to the Haycock, “It is vort to come from America or from Owstria to see zat lofely Lady —— go over ze cowntry”; and it was.
Luck often favors the timid; Cock Robin and I were quite alone—he disgusted, and I half ashamed with my prudence—when the fox, who had found straight running of no avail, came swerving to the right over the crest of a distant hill, closely followed by the hounds, and, in splendid style, by the first flight of the field. Soon he crossed a brook which was fenced in with rails, and the horsemen all had to make a long détour, so that I, who had been last, now became first. I had the fox and the hounds all to myself; my horse was fresh, and the way was easy. My monopoly lasted only a moment, but it was not a moment of tranquillity. Finding an open gate and bridge, I followed the pack into a large low field, surrounded on three sides by the wide brook. The fox was turned by this and ran to the right along the bank; at the corner of the field he turned again to the right, still keeping by the edge of the stream; this gave the hounds an immense advantage, and cutting off the angle, they came so closely upon him that with still another turn of the brook ahead of him, he had but one chance for his life, and that was a desperate one for a tired fox to consider. He did not consider, but went slap at the brook, and cleared it with a leap of nearly twenty feet. The foremost hounds whimpered for a moment on the bank before they took to the water, and when they were across Reynard was well out of sight, and they had to nose out his trail afresh. He brought them again to a check, and finally, after half an hour’s skirmishing, he ran down a railway cutting in the wake of a train, and got away.
Incidentally, here was an opportunity for an English gentleman to show more good temper and breeding than it is one’s daily lot to see. He was one of a bridgeful of horsemen watching the hounds as they vainly tried to unravel the fox’s scent from the bituminous trail of the locomotive, when, full of eager curiosity, one of the ladies, middle-aged and not “native and to the manner born,” but not an American, rode directly on to his horse’s heels. To the confusion of my lady, the horse, like a sensible horse as he was, resented the attack with both his feet. His rider got him at once out of the way, and then returned, bowing his venerable head in regretful apology, and trusting that no serious harm had been done. “How can you ride such a kicking brute!” was the gracious acknowledgment of his forbearance.
In this storied little island one is never for long out of the presence of places on the traditions of which our life-long fancies have been fed. Our road home lay past the indistinct mass of rubbish, clustered round with ivy and with the saddest associations, which was once Fotheringay Castle; and as we turned into the village my companions pointed out the still serviceable but long-unused “stocks” where the minor malefactors of the olden time expiated their offences.
We reached the Haycock at three, a moist but far from unpleasant body of tired and dirty men, having ridden, since nine in the morning, over fifty-five miles, mostly in the rain, and often in a shower of mud splashed by galloping hoofs. By six o’clock we were in good trim for dinner, and after dinner for a long, cosey talk over the events of the day, and horses and fox-hunting in general. My own interest in the sport is confined mainly to its equestrian side, and I am not able to give much information as to its details. Any stranger must be impressed with the firm hold it has on the affections of the people, and with the little public sympathy that is shown for the rare attempts that are made to restrict its rights.
It would seem natural that the farmers should be its bitter opponents. It can hardly be a cheerful sight, in March, for a thrifty man to see a crowd of mad horsemen tearing through his twenty acres of well-wintered wheat, filling the air with a spray of soil and uprooted plants. But let a non-riding reformer get up after the annual dinner of the local Agricultural Association and suggest that the rights of tenant-farmers have long enough lain at the mercy of their landlord and his fox-hunting friends, with the rabble of idle sports and ruthless ne’er-do-weels who follow at their heels, and that it is time for them to assert themselves and try to secure the prohibition of a costly pastime, which leads to no good practical result, and the burdens of which fall so heavily on the producing classes,—and then see how his brother farmers will second his efforts. The very man whose wheat was apparently ruined will tell him that in March one would have said the whole crop was destroyed, but that the stirring up seemed to do it good, for he had never before seen such an even stand on that field. Another will argue that while hunting does give him some extra work in the repair of hedges and gates, and while he sometimes has his fields torn up more than he likes, yet the hounds are the best neighbors he has; they bring a good market for hay and oats, and, for his part, he likes to get a day with them himself now and then. Another raises a young horse when he can, and if he turns out a clever fencer, he gets a much larger price for him than he could if there were no hunting in the country. Another has now and then lost poultry by the depredations of foxes, but he never knew the master to refuse a fair claim for damages; for his part, he would scorn to ask compensation; he likes to see the noble sport, which is the glory of England, flourishing, in spite of modern improvements. At this point, and at this stage of the convivial cheer, they bring in the charge at Balaklava, and other evidences that the noble sport, which is the glory of old England, breeds a race of men whose invincible daring always has won and always shall win her honor in the field;—and Long live the Queen, and Here’s a health to the Handley Cross Hunt, and Confusion to the mean and niggardly spirit that is filling the country with wire fences and that would do away with the noble sport which is the glory of old England! Hear! hear!! And so it ends, and half the company, in velvet caps, scarlet coats, leathers and top-boots, will be early on the ground at the first meet of the next autumn, glad to see their old cover-side friends once more, and hoping for a jolly winter of such healthful amusements and pleasant intercourse as shall put into their heads and their hearts and into their hearty frames and ruddy faces a tenfold compensation for the trifling loss they may sustain in the way of broken gates and trampled fields.
I saw too little to be able to form a fair opinion as to the harm done; but when once the run commences no more account is made of wheat, which is carefully avoided when going at a slow pace, than if it were so much sawdust; fences are torn down, and there is no time to replace them; if gates are locked, they are taken off the hinges or broken; if sheep join the crowd in an enclosure and follow them into the road, no one stops to see that they are returned: we are after the hounds, and sheep must take care of themselves. I saw one farmer, in an excited manner, open the gates of his kitchen-garden and turn the hounds and twenty horsemen through it as the shortest way to where he had seen the fox go; his womenfolk eagerly calling “Tally-ho!” to others who were going wrong. I have never seen a railroad train stopped because of the conductor’s interest in a passing hunt, but I fancy that is the only thing in England that does not stop when the all-absorbing interest is once awakened.
Whatever may be the effect on material interests, the benefit of this eager, vigorous, outdoor life on the health and morals of the people is most unmistakable. Such a race of handsome, hale, straight-limbed, honest, and simple-hearted men can nowhere else be found as in the wide class that passes as much of every winter as is possible in regular fox-hunting; and to make an application of their example, we could well afford to give over many of our fertile fields to ruthless destruction, and many of our fertile hours to the most senseless sport, if it would only replace our dyspeptic stomachs, sallow cheeks, stooping shoulders, and restless eagerness with the hale and hearty and easy-going life and energy of our English cousins. Hardly enough women hunt in England to constitute an example; but those who do are such models of health and freshness as to make one wish that more women had the benefit of such amusement both there and here. It is very common to see men of over sixty following the hounds in the veryéliteof the field; they seem still in the vigor of youth. At seventy many are yet regular at their work; and it is hardly remarkable when one finally hangs up his red coat only at the age of eighty. Considering all this, it almost becomes a question whether, patriotism to the contrary notwithstanding, it would not be a good thing for a prosperous American, instead of settling down at the age of forty-five to a special partnership and a painful digestion, to take a smaller income where it would bring more comfort, and by a judicious application of the pig-skin to rehabilitate his enfeebled alimentation.
Fox-hunting is a costly luxury if one goes well mounted and well appointed. It can hardly be made cheap, even when one lives in his own house and rides his own horses. With hotel bills and horse-hire, it costs still more. As an occasional indulgence it is always a good investment. My own score at the Haycock was as follows,—by way of illustration, and because actual figures are worth more than estimates. (I was there from Thursday afternoon until Sunday morning, went out with a shooting-party on Friday, dined out on Friday night, and hunted on Saturday.)