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Updated: May 26, 2025
But the Count, apparently, sees nothing ridiculous in the amazing contrast between his colossal self and his frail little pets. He would blandly kiss his white mice and twitter to his canary-birds amid an assembly of English fox-hunters, and would only pity them as barbarians when they were all laughing their loudest at him.
But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d'Orsays, which, from all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen. Alas!
There are some good-natured, well-meaning people in this world who think that fox-hunters can talk of nothing but hunting, and who put themselves to very serious inconvenience in endeavouring to get up a little conversation for them.
Crowdey assured me you were in the habit of receivin' fox-hunters at short notice; and so I have taken him at his word, you see, and come. Mrs. Jogglebury, who was still out of wind from her run after the carriage, assured him that she was extremely happy to see him, though she couldn't help thinking what a noodle Jog was to bring a stranger on a washing-day.
Next moment the riders spurred after, each shouting in his own fashion. Soon the line was broken, and a confused spread of horsemen, like a "field" of fox-hunters, was seen scouring over the plain. Each moment the troop became elongated, until what had started in line was now strung out in double and single file to a length of several hundred yards.
I don't complain of them, though; Puritanism has interdicted to them all art, all excitement, all amusement except money-making. It is their dernier ressort, poor souls! 'But you must explain to us naughty fox-hunters how all this agrees with the good book. We see plainly enough, in the meantime, how it agrees with "poor human nature."
Of particular places, I recollected that Garval Hill was a famous piece of rough upland pasture for rearing young colts, and teaching them to throw their feet; that Minion Burn had the finest yellow trout in the country; that Seggy-cleugh was unequalled for woodcocks; that Bengibbert Moors afforded excellent moorfowl-shooting; and that the clear, bubbling fountain called the Harper's Well was the best recipe in the world on the morning after a HARD-GO with my neighbour fox-hunters.
Fox-hunting is a first-class sport; but one of the most absurd things in real life is to note the bated breath which certain excellent fox-hunters, otherwise quite healthy minds, speak of this admirable, but not over-important pastime.
We have seen them in all sorts of odd dresses, half fox-hunters half fishermen, half fox-hunters half sailors, with now and then a good sturdy cross of the farmer. Mr. Jawleyford was a cross between a military dandy and a squire.
It only remains to be said of this singular young man, whose character as yet was but half developed, that he had seen a great deal of the world, and could live at ease and in content with all tempers and ranks; fox-hunters or scholars, lawyers or poets, patricians or /parvenus/, it was all one to Lumley Ferrers.
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