the ground, Sir Bellingham rode up to him, and said-«Now, I tell you what, Stanhope, you are a good one, bnt by G-d you shall ride no more to day! Go to Leicester and put yourself into your carriage, and get to town as quick as you can, and get cured! » He took his friend's advice, and when he arrived there Mr. Heaviside found that he had two ribs broken, and his breast-bone beaten in!! This, we may also say, is not a bad sort of man to breed from.' (') It would seem that Sir Bellingham was much more likely to give such advice than to follow it: 'As is the case with most hard-riding men, Sir Bellingham Graham has had some severe falls; but on two occasions he very narrowly escaped destruction. The following rare instance of pluck, however, should not be lost to the sporting world: He was killing his fox at the end of a sharp thing, when an ox fence presented itself. Three first-rate performers were going in the same line, but they would not have it. Sir Bellingham never turned his horse, and cleared all but the rail on the opposite side, which probably his weight would have broken; but unfortunately his horse alighted on one of the posts, and was turned over on his rider's chest. Strange as it may appear, Sir Bellingham remounted his horse, and rode on; but he had not proceeded many yards when he was observed by Sir Harry Goodricke to be in the act of falling to the ground, but which he was fortunate enough to prevent. From that period-about twelve o'clock at noon till nine o'clock the next night-Sir Bellingham never knew what had happened to him; and as he lay under the haystack -whither his friends removed him at the time of the accidentevery moment was expected to be his last. The pith of the story, however, is yet to come. He was bled three times the first day, and confined to his bed five. On the seventh, to the utter surprise, and indeed annoyance, of his friends, he was seen in his carriage at Scraptoff, merely, as he said, «to see his hounds throw off. » The carriage not being able to get up to the spinney, Sir Bellingham mounted a quiet old horse, (placed there, no doubt, for the purpose,) muffled up in a rough great-coat and a shawl, and looked ou. The fox was found; and, unfortunately for Sir Bellingham, took a short ring, but returned, and his hounds came to a check close to where he was sitting upon his horse. Will Beck, the huntsman pro tempore, not being up with his hounds, the baronet cast them and recovered his fox. In three fields they checked again, and Beck made a slow but by no means a brilliant cast. Sir Bellingham saw all this from the hill; and, no longer a looker-on, he cantered down to his pack, and hit off his fox again. Things still went on but awkwardly. Another error was observed; when Sir Bellingham () Nimrod's Hunting Tour. annoyed that a large field should be disappointed of their sport when there was a possibility of having it-taking a horn from a whipperin (for he could not speak to them) got to work again. The hounds mended their pace: down went the shawl in the middle of a field. They improved upon it: down went the rough great-coat in another field. He then stuck to his hounds in a long hunting run of an hour and a half over a very strongly-fenced country, and had gotten his fox dead beat before him, when he was halloo'ed away by one of his own men to a fresh fox under the Newton hills. 'Now, what was to be done? The excitement that had carried him thus far was gone, and it was all but who-whoop. With every appearance of exhaustion, and a face as pale as if he were dead, he sat himself down on a bank, and faintly exclaimed, «How I am to get home, heaven only knows! » Mr. Henry Kingscote was riding a horse with one eye. The eye inflamed in the course of the run, and the horse became incapable of seeing any but upright objects: so that, whenever the ditch was on his side of the fence, he was certain to be down, as his master soon became perfectly aware. He had eleven bad falls, yet got to the end of the run before the hounds had worried their fox. Mr. Assheton Smith (the Tom Smith of the sporting circles) was a perfect glutton in this line. It was computed that he had from sixty to one hundred falls a-year. He was once riding against Mr. John White, who arrived first at the only practicable place in a fence, but being unable to clear it, got what is called well bulfinched, and stuck fast. 'Get on,' said Mr. Smith. I can't,' said Mr. White. Ram the spurs into him,' exclaimed Mr. Smith, and pray get out of the way.' 'D-n it,' said Mr. White, if you are in such a hurry why don't you charge me?' Mr. Smith did charge him, and sent him and his horse into the next field, when away they went again as if nothing had happened. 6 It seems that Mr. Smith's horses are trained to stop at nothing, for once, when he was turning round in the act of encouraging his dogs, his gallant steed carried him into the middle of a deep pond. Like master like man-Jack Shirley, Mr. Smith's whipper-in, was once seen galloping over a piece of broken ground, downhill, and with the horse's head quite loose, whilst busily engaged in putting a new lash to his whip, and holding a large open claspknife between his teeth! Another of these gentlemen had met with a good many falls in his time, but was never hurt in any of them one unlucky day his horse fell with him, and rolling him (to borrow Nimrod's expression) as a cook would a pie-crust, nearly flattened all the prominences of his body. Getting up, and limping after his steed, he was heard muttering to himself—'Well, now I be hurt!' A third described his horse as a dunghill brute, because, not content with tumbling, he lies on me for half an hour when he is down.' 6 A fourth had the following colloquy with Nimrod:-'Why, sir, I have been very roughly handled. I have broke three ' ribs on one side, and two on t'other; both collar bones; one thigh; and been scalped. You remember Sir Watkin's Valentine?'-To be sure, as vicious a brute as ever had a saddle on.'-' Well, sir, he tumbled me down just as we were coming away with a fox from Marchviel gorse, and 'kicked me on the head till the skin hung down all over my eyes and face; and do you know, sir, when I gets to Wrex'ham, I faints from loss of blood.' It has been remarked, that nothing tends so much to make a field select as good rasping brook,' like the Whissendine; for, if the horse falls, he falls backwards with his master under him; and the prospect of a good ducking is enough to cool the courage of all but the most ardent. It is, notwithstanding, by no means an uncommon occurrence for sportsmen to clear a brook five or six yards broad; and Mr. Mytton, the most dare-devil rider of his day, once leaped one measuring more than seven yards the space actually covered being nine yards and a quarter. What makes this exploit the more extraordinary, it was performed in cold blood on his return from hunting. afterwards backed the same horse, Baronet, to clear nine yards over hurdles; but he performed the task so often before the appointed time, that he refused it then, and lost his master the bet. He It stands recorded amongst the annals of Melton, that a wager of a hundred guineas was made between Lord Alvanley and Mr. Maher, that each did not leap over a brook, without disturbing the water, but Lord Alvanley's horse threw back a bit of dirt into the water, and he thereby lost the bet. This is a curious exemplification of the verbal nicety to which the members of the Jockey Club, far exceeding special pleaders, restrict themselves. Like Mrs. Battle at whist, they invariably insist on the rigour of the game. Mr. Blaine says, that he himself saw a huntsman of the late Sir William Rowley clear twenty-four feet across a stream. The best bit in Nimrod's spirited sketch of a run at Melton, is the crossing of that far-famed brook the Whissendine, the Rubicon of the Cæsars of the chase : Yooi, over he goes!-halloos the squire (Mr. Osbaldistone) as he perceives Marmion and Maida plunging into the stream, and Red Rose shaking herself on the opposite bank. Seven men out of thirteen take it in their stride; three stop short, their horses refusing the first time, but come well over the second; and three find themselves in the middle of it. The gallant « Frank Forester » is among the latter; and having been requested that morning to wear a friend's new red coat to take off the gloss and glare of the shop, he accomplishes the task to perfection in the bluish-black mud of the Whissendine, only then subsiding after a three days' flood. «Who is that under his horse in the brook?» enquires that good sportsman and fine rider, Mr. Greene of Rolleston, whose noted old mare has just skimmed over the water like a swallow on a summer's evening. —« It's Middleton Biddulph,» says one. -«Pardon me, » cries Mr. Middleton Biddulph; «Middleton Biddulph is here, and here he means to be!» -Only Dick Christian,» answers Lord Forester, «and it is nothing new to him »-«But he'll be drowned!» exclaims Lord Kinnaird."I shouldn't wonder,» observes Mr. William Coke; but the pace is too good to enquire.»' (') The Dick Christian, whose probable fate gave so little concern, is a celebrated rough-rider, who rides young horses with hounds, at the very moderate rate of fifteen shillings a-day. Walls, to common apprehensions, are still more dangerous than brooks; but Irish horses and riders face them with the (') The Chase, the Turf, and the Road, p. 56. The great mistake of this sketch is the designation given to the supposed provincial. Surely the high-bred members of the Melton Club are not in the habit of calling every well mounted stranger, Snob. most perfect indifference. At the great horse fairs of Ballinasloe, the parish pound, six feet in height, forms the trial leap for the high-priced horses; and Mr. Blaine mentions an Irish half-bred mare that leaped a wall of seven feet high, built for the purpose, in the Phoenix Park. In 1792, an Irish horse, the property of Mr. Bingham, cleared the wall of Hyde Park at a place where it was six feet and a half high on the inside, and eight without. This was a standing leap, and was performed twice, a few bricks being displaced the second time. Mr. Mytton is said to have once leaped a gate seven feet in height, on a horse purchased of Nimrod for five hundred guineas. In enumerating the dangers of fox-hunting, that of fording or swimming rivers well deserves a place. By a strange coincidence, three gentlemen were drowned on the same day in different parts of the country, whilst gallantly endeavouring to get to hounds-Mr. Edwards, Mr. Walbram, and the Rev. Marmaduke Theakstone. The safest, though hardly the pleasantest, mode of crossing a river, is to follow the example of a Staffordshire gentleman when hunting with the late Mr. Meynell; 'the great Mr. Meynell,' as he is still designated in the sporting world. He pulled off his coat and waistcoat before taking water. Lord Forester, who had got round by a bridge, asked a countryman whether he had seen the hounds, 'Oh, yes, I see'd 'em ; 'but you will never see 'em no more; they have been gone 'this quarter of an hour.' Who was with them?' said his lordship. No one but the miller,' was the reply, and he 'was riding most 'nation hard, to be sure.' This proved to be Mr. G. in his shirt. Lord Byron makes Don Juan no mean performer : And now in this new field, with some applause, VOL. I. 68 |