Anthony Trollope - Marion Fay - A Novel

"Is he a friend of yours?"

"Oh dear, yes; – most intimate. We sit in the same room at the Post Office. And at the same desk, – as thick as thieves, as the saying is. We often have a crack about your lordship."

"I have a great esteem for George Roden. He and I are really friends. I know no one for whom I have a higher regard." This he said with an earnest voice, thinking himself bound to express his friendship more loudly than he would have done had the friend been in his own rank of life.

"That's just what I feel. Roden is a man that will rise."

"I hope so."

"He'll be sure to get something good before long. They'll make him a Surveyor, or Chief Clerk, or something of that kind. I'll back him to have £500 a year before any man in the office. There'll be a shindy about it, of course. There always is a shindy when a fellow is put up out of his turn. But he needn't care for that. They can laugh as win. Eh, my lord!"

"He would be the last to wish an injustice to be done for his own good."

"We've got to take that as it comes, my lord. I won't say but what I should like to go up at once to a senior class over other men's heads. There isn't a chance of that, because I'm independent, and the seniors don't like me. Old Jerningham is always down upon me just for that reason. You ask Roden, and he'll tell you the same thing, – my lord." Then came a momentary break in the conversation, and Lord Hampstead was seizing advantage of it to escape. But Crocker, who had taken enough wine to be bold, saw the attempt, and intercepted it. He was desirous of letting the lord know all that he knew. "Roden is a happy dog, my lord."

"Happy, I hope, though not a dog," said Hampstead, trusting that he could retreat gracefully behind the joke.

"Ha, ha, ha! The dog only meant what a lucky fellow he is. I have heard him speak in raptures of what is in store for him."

"What!"

"There's no happiness like married happiness; is there, my lord?"

"Upon my word, I can't say. Good night to you."

"I hope you will come and see me and Roden at the office some of these days."

"Good night, good night!" Then the man did go. For a moment or two Lord Hampstead felt actually angry with his friend. Could it be that Roden should make so little of his sister's name as to talk about her to the Post Office clerks, – to so mean a fellow as this! And yet the man certainly knew the fact of the existing engagement. Hampstead thought it impossible that it should have travelled beyond the limits of his own family. It was natural that Roden should have told his mother; but unnatural, – so Hampstead thought, – that his friend should have made his sister a subject of conversation to any one else. It was horrible to him that a stranger such as that should have spoken to him about his sister at all. But surely it was not possible that Roden should have sinned after that fashion. He soon resolved that it was not possible. But how grievous a thing it was that a girl's name should be made so common in the mouths of men!

After that he sauntered into the smoking-room, where were congregated the young men who were staying in the house. "That's a kind of thing that happens only once a year," said Hautboy, speaking to all the party; "but I cannot, for the life of me, see why it should happen at all."

"Your governor finds that it succeeds in the county," said one.

"He polishes off a whole heap at one go," said another.

"It does help to keep a party together," said a third.

"And enables a lot of people to talk of dining at Castle Hautboy without lying," said a fourth.

"But why should a lot of people be enabled to say that they'd dined here?" asked Hautboy. "I like to see my friends at dinner. What did you think about it, Hampstead?"

"It's all according to Hampstead's theories," said one.

"Only he'd have had the tinkers and the tailors too," said another.

"And wouldn't have had the ladies and gentlemen," said a third.

"I would have had the tailors and tinkers," said Hampstead, "and I would have had the ladies and gentlemen, too, if I could have got them to meet the tailors and tinkers; – but I would not have had that young man who got me out into the hall just now."

"Why, – that was Crocker, the Post Office clerk," said Hautboy. "Why shouldn't we have a Post Office clerk as well as some one else? Nevertheless, Crocker is a sad cad." In the mean time Crocker was walking home to Penrith in his dress boots.

The Braeside Harriers can hardly be called a "crack" pack of hounds. Lord Hautboy had been right in saying that they were always scrambling through ravines, and that they hunted whatever they could find to hunt. Nevertheless, the men and the hounds were in earnest, and did accomplish a fair average of sport under difficult circumstances. No "Pegasus" or "Littlelegs," or "Pigskin," ever sent accounts of wondrous runs from Cumberland or Westmoreland to the sporting papers, in which the gentlemen who had asked the special Pigskin of the day to dinner were described as having been "in" at some "glorious finish" on their well-known horses Banker or Buff, – the horses named being generally those which the gentlemen wished to sell. The names of gorses and brooks had not become historic, as have those of Ranksborough and Whissendine. Trains were not run to suit this or the other meet. Gentlemen did not get out of fast drags with pretty little aprons tied around their waists, like girls in a country house coming down to breakfast. Not many perhaps wore pink coats, and none pink tops. One horse would suffice for one day's work. An old assistant huntsman in an old red coat, with one boy mounted on a ragged pony, served for an establishment. The whole thing was despicable in the eyes of men from the Quorn and Cottesmore. But there was some wonderful riding and much constant sport with the Braeside Harriers, and the country had given birth to certainly the best hunting song in the language; —

Such as the Braeside Harriers were, Lord Hampstead determined to make the experiment, and on a certain morning had himself driven to Cronelloe Thorn, a favourite meet halfway between Penrith and Keswick. I hold that nothing is so likely to be permanently prejudicial to the interest of hunting in the British Isles as a certain flavour of tip-top fashion which has gradually enveloped it. There is a pretence of grandeur about that and, alas, about other sports also, which is, to my thinking, destructive of all sport itself. Men will not shoot unless game is made to appear before them in clouds. They will not fish unless the rivers be exquisite. To row is nothing unless you can be known as a national hero. Cricket requires appendages which are troublesome and costly, and by which the minds of economical fathers are astounded. To play a game of hockey in accordance with the times you must have a specially trained pony and a gaudy dress. Racquets have given place to tennis because tennis is costly. In all these cases the fashion of the game is much more cherished than the game itself. But in nothing is this feeling so predominant as in hunting. For the management of a pack, as packs are managed now, a huntsman needs must be a great man himself, and three mounted subordinates are necessary, as at any rate for two of these servants a second horse is required. A hunt is nothing in the world unless it goes out four times a week at least. A run is nothing unless the pace be that of a steeplechase. Whether there be or be not a fox before the hounds is of little consequence to the great body of riders. A bold huntsman who can make a dash across country from one covert to another, and who can so train his hounds that they shall run as though game were before them, is supposed to have provided good sport. If a fox can be killed in covert afterwards so much the better for those who like to talk of their doings. Though the hounds brought no fox with them, it is of no matter. When a fox does run according to his nature he is reviled as a useless brute, because he will not go straight across country. But the worst of all is the attention given by men to things altogether outside the sport. Their coats and waistcoats, their boots and breeches, their little strings and pretty scarfs, their saddles and bridles, their dandy knick-knacks, and, above all, their flasks, are more to many men than aught else in the day's proceedings. I have known girls who have thought that their first appearance in the ball-room, when all was fresh, unstained, and perfect from the milliner's hand, was the one moment of rapture for the evening. I have sometimes felt the same of young sportsmen at a Leicestershire or Northamptonshire meet. It is not that they will not ride when the occasion comes. They are always ready enough to break their bones. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that dandyism is antagonistic to pluck. The fault is that men train themselves to care for nothing that is not as costly as unlimited expenditure can make it. Thus it comes about that the real love of sport is crushed under a desire for fashion. A man will be almost ashamed to confess that he hunts in Essex or Sussex, because the proper thing is to go down to the Shires. Grass, no doubt, is better than ploughed land to ride upon; but, taking together the virtues and vices of all hunting counties, I doubt whether better sport is not to be found in what I will venture to call the haunts of the clodpoles, than among the palmy pastures of the well-breeched beauties of Leicestershire.