I
Stopping at every station, a local train conveyed me sedately into Sussex. Local and sedate, likewise, were the workings of my brain, as I sat in an empty compartment with the Southern Daily News on my knees. I had bought that unpretentious paper in order to read about the Ringwell Hounds, whose doings were regularly reported therein. And sure enough the previous day’s sport was described in detail, and “Among the large field out” was the name, with many others, of “Mr. Colwood, junr.” Although I had yet to become acquainted with the parishes through which Reynard had made his way, I read with serious attention how he had “crossed the Downfield and Boffham road, borne right-handed into Hooksworth Wood, turned sharply back, and worked his way over the country to Icklesfield,” etc., etc., until “hounds ran into him after a woodland hunt of nearly three hours.” The account ended with the following word: “If ever hounds deserved blood they did this time, as they had to work out nearly every yard of their fox’s line.”
Having read this through twice I allowed my thoughts to dally with the delightful prospect of my being a participator in similar proceedings next day. Occasionally I glanced affectionately at the bulging kit-bag containing those masterpieces by Craxwell and Kipward which had cost me more than one anxious journey to London. Would Stephen approve of my boots, I wondered, staring out of the window at the reflective monochrome of flooded meadows and the brown gloom of woodlands in the lowering dusk of a heavily clouded December afternoon.
Whatever he might think of my boots, there was no doubt that he approved of my arrival when the fussy little train stopped for the last time and I found him waiting for me on the platform. I allowed him to lug my bag out of the station, and soon he had got it stowed away in the old yellow-wheeled buggy, had flicked his father’s favourite hunter into a trot (“a nailing good jumper, but as slow as a hearse”), and was telling me all about the clinking hunt they’d had the day before, and how he’d enjoyed my account of the Potford gallop. “You’ve got a regular gift for writing, you funny old cock! You might make a mint of money if you wrote for Horse and Hound or The Field!” he exclaimed, and we agreed that I couldn’t write worse than the man in the Southern Daily, whose “Reynard then worked his way across the country” etc. afterwards became one of our stock jokes.
In describing my friendship with Stephen I am faced by a difficulty which usually arises when one attempts to reproduce the conversational oddities of people who are on easy terms. We adopted and matured a specialized jargon drawn almost exclusively from characters in the novels of Surtees; since we knew these almost by heart, they provided us with something like a dialect of our own, and in our carefree moments we exchanged remarks in the mid-Victorian language of such character-parts as Mr. Romford, Major Yammerton, and Sir Moses Mainchance, while Mr. Jorrocks was an all-pervading influence. In our Surtees obsession we went so far that we almost identified ourselves with certain characters on appropriate occasions. One favourite role which Stephen facetiously imposed on me was that of a young gentleman named Billy Pringle who, in the novel which he adorns, is reputed to be very rich. My £600 a year was thus magnified to an imaginary £10,000, and he never wearied of referring to me as “the richest commoner in England.” The stress was laid on my great wealth and we never troubled to remember that the Mr. Pringle of the novel was a dandified muff and “only half a gentleman.” I cannot remember that I ever succeeded in finding a consistent role for Stephen, but I took the Surtees game for granted from the beginning, and our adaptation of the Ringwell Hunt to the world created by that observant novelist was simplified by the fact that a large proportion of the Ringwell subscribers might have stepped straight out of his pages. To their idiosyncrasies I shall return in due course: in the meantime I am still on my way to Hoadley Rectory, and Stephen is pointing out such foxhunting features of the landscape as are observable from the high road while we sway companionably along in the old-fashioned vehicle. …
“That’s Basset Wood—one of our werry best Wednesday coverts,” he remarked, indicating with the carriage-whip a dark belt of trees a couple of miles away under the level cloud-bars of a sallow sunset. He eyed the dimly undulating pastures which intervened, riding over them in his mind’s eye as he had so often ridden over them in reality.
“We’ll be there on Monday,” he went on, his long, serious face lighting up as his gaze returned to the road before him. “Yes, we’ll be drawing there on Monday,” he chuckled, “and if we can but find a straight-necked old dog-fox, then I’ll be the death of a fi’-pun’-note—dash my wig if I won’t!”
I said that it looked quite a nice bit of country and asked whether they often ran this way. Stephen became less cheerful as he informed me that there was precious little reason for them to run this way.
“There’s not a strand of wire till you get to the road,” he exclaimed, “but over there”—(pointing to the left) “there’s a double-distilled blighter who’s wired up all his fences. And what’s more, his keeper shoots every fox who shows his nose in the coverts. And will you believe me when I tell you, George my lad, that the man who owns those coverts is the same ugly mugged old sweep who persuaded the Guv’nor to get me trained as a chartered accountant! And how much longer I’m going to stick it I don’t know! Seven months I’ve been worriting my guts out in London, and all on the off-chance of getting a seat in the office of that sanctimonious old vulpicide.”
I consoled him with a reminder that he’d spent most of August and September shooting and fishing in Scotland. (His father rented a place in Skye every summer.) And during the remainder of the drive we debated the deeply desirable and not impossible eventuality of Stephen’s escape from chartered accountancy. His one idea was to “get into the Army by the back door.” If only he could get into the Gunners he’d be happy. His elder brother Jack was in the Gunners, and was expecting to be moved from India to Ireland. And Ireland, apparently, was a foxhunting Elysium.
“I really must have a chat with Colonel Hesmon about it. By the way, the dear old boy’s asked us both to lunch tomorrow.”
This led to a rhapsody about that absolutely top-hole performer Jerry, who had been given him by the Colonel after he’d won the Heavyweight Race. My Harkaway, on the other hand, was more a subject for solicitude, and I reluctantly confessed that he didn’t seem up to my weight. It was a thousand pities, said Stephen, that I couldn’t have bought that six-year-old of young Lewison’s. “Given him for his twenty-first birthday by his uncle, who’d forked out £170 for him. But young Lewison couldn’t ride a hair of the horse, though he was a nailing fine ‘lepper’ and a rare good sort to look at. They sent him up to Tatts last week and he went for £90, according to the paper. Gosh, what a bit of luck for the cove who got him so cheap!”
My appetite for horseflesh was stimulated by this anecdote, but I wondered what Mr. Pennett would say if I wrote and told him that I’d bought another ninety pounds’ worth! For Mr. Pennett still refused to allow me more than £450 of my £600. The balance, he said, must be “invested for a rainy day.”
Stephen’s visionary contemplations of “being stationed at the Curragh and riding at Punchestown Races” were interrupted by our arrival at the Rectory. I had stayed there more than once in the summer, so I received a surly but not unfriendly salute from Abel, the grim little old groom with iron-grey whiskers who led our conveyance soberly away to the stable-yard. This groom was an old-fashioned coachman, and he had never been heard to utter a sentence of more than six words. His usual reply, when asked about the health of one of the horses, was either, “Well enough” or “Not over-bright.” Stephen now reminded him (quite unnecessarily, and probably not for the first time) that two of the horses would be going out hunting on Monday. Abel grunted, “Got ’em both shod this afternoon,” and disappeared round the corner of the shrubbery with the buggy.
There was only one thing against him, said Stephen, and that was that he hadn’t a ghost of an idea how to trim their tails, which were always an absolute disgrace. “I’ve told him again and again to pull the hair out,” he remarked, “but he goes on just the same, cutting them with scissors, and the result is that they come out at the opening meet with tails like chrysanthemums!”
From this it may be inferred that there were many things in the Rectory stable which fell short of Stephen’s ideal. He and his brothers were always trying to bring “the old guv’nor” into line with what they believed to be the Melton Mowbray standard of smartness. There was also the question of persuading him to buy a motorcar. But Parson Colwood was a Sussex man by birth and he valued his native provincialism more than the distant splendours of the Shires toward which his offspring turned their unsophisticated eyes. The Rectory, as I knew it then, had the charm of something untouched by modernity.
The Rev. Harry Colwood, as I remember him, was a composite portrait of Charles Kingsley and Matthew Arnold. This fanciful resemblance has no connection with literature, toward which Mr. Colwood’s disposition was respectful but tepid. My mental semi-association of him with Arnold is probably due to the fact that he had been in the Rugby eleven somewhere in the ’sixties. And I have, indeed, heard him speak of Arnold’s poem, “Rugby Chapel.” But the Kingsley affinity was more clearly recognizable. Like Kingsley, Mr. Colwood loved riding, shooting, and fishing, and believed that such sports were congruous with the Christian creed which he unobtrusively accepted and lived up to. It is questionable, however, whether he would have agreed with Kingsley’s Christian Socialism. One of his maxims was “Don’t marry for money but marry where money is,” and he had carried this into effect by marrying, when he was over forty, a sensible Scotch lady with a fortune of £1,500 a year, thereby enabling his three sons to be brought up as keen fox-hunters, game-shooters, and salmon-fishers. And however strongly the Author of his religion might have condemned these sports, no one could deny him the Christian adjectives gentle, patient, and just.
At first I had been intimidated by him, for the scrutinizing look that he gave me was both earnest and stern. His were eyes which looked straight at the world from under level brows, and there was strictness in the lines of his mouth. But the kindliness of his nature emerged in the tone of his voice, which was pitched moderately low. In his voice a desire for gaiety seemed to be striving to overmaster an inherent sadness. This undertone of sadness may have been accentuated as the result of his ripened understanding of a world which was not all skylarking and sport, but Stephen (who was a lankier and less regular-featured edition of his father) had inherited the same quality of voice. Mr. Colwood was a naturally nervous man with strong emotions, which he rigidly repressed at all times.
When I arrived that afternoon both the Rector and his wife were attending some parochial function in the village. So Stephen took me up to the schoolroom, where we had our tea and he jawed to me about horses and hunting to his heart’s content. He ended by asserting that he’d “sooner cheer a pack of Pomeranians after a weasel from a bath-chair than waste his life making money in a blinking office.”