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
