Hunting Jaunts and Jollities Handley Cross. 13y R-. S. Surtees,

with illustrations by John

. Leech and Hablot K. Browne (" Phiz ") (2 Vols.)

HawbriCk-Gfange. By R. S. Surtees, with illustrations by Hablot K. Browne.

Ask Mamma. By R. S. Surtees, with illustrations by John Leech- (2 Vols.) And another five volumes : Hillingdon Hall, Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour (2 vols.), Plain or Ringlets, Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds : to be published early in the New Year. (The ten volumes sold only as a set by Messrs. Eyre & Spottis- woode. f17 10s.) I Am tempted to embark on a task for which I am not qualified :

a comparison between Surtees and Galsworthy. Personally I End the introductory chapters of Ask Mamma, for instance, with the genealogy of the Pringles, more exciting than that of the Forsytes. In my_ private imaginary world there are no people vivider than Jorrocks, " Soapey," Lucy Glitters, Miss de Glancy, and, of course, Pigg, Svith tobacco-juice streaming from the corners of his mouth, " like a Chinese mandarin," and lank hair tumbling over his eyes as he cheers hounds forward after a check, muttering, " Arl be the death of a shilling."

Surtees is a caricaturist : Mr. Galsworthy a successful portrait painter : their similarity lies in their genius for types that are English to the backbone, shrewd, virile, hearty. Yet I see flaws in my comparison : I shall leave this unpro- mising line of country and make another cast, forrard, like old Pigg.

Surtees is a master of the English language. No one doubts that now, although he has been long in coming into his own. But it is curious to observe that with him, as with a greater writer, Bunyan, there is a decline and fall after early middle- age. Surtees never wrote anything so good as Handley Cross, which was his first full-length book, published in 1843 ; although he was a vivid writer thirteen years earlier when des- cribing for the New Sporting Magazine a series of visits to hunts in the Home Counties. In 1865, when Facey Rumford was published, he had lost in high spirits anything he may have gained in deeper knowledge of human nature. After that he wrote a serial which was left unfinished, and begun, but never completed, his autobiography : there was a sad falling-off : he became liable to divagations and meanderings, like a club bore. It was in his youth, long before he wrote Handley Cross, that he invented the old twenty-stone grocer of Coram Street who said that huntin' was the sport of kings, the image of war with half its guilt and twenty-five per cent.

of its danger.

Every schoolboy knows, or should know, how Mr. Jorrocks accepted Miserrimus Doleful's invitation to Handley Cross Spa, and how he arrived by the Lilywhite Sand Railway

(just opened) with Mrs. Jorrocks, and Belinda, his niece, and Betsay, the maid, and Binjamin, the smart boy ; and horses, sugar loaves, Dundee marmalade, Copenhagen cherry-brandy, Westphalian hams, hanging from the shoe of his carriage, taken off the train : it is a perfect picture of life and manners at the opening of the industrial age. Belinda's clear com- plexion was flushed by " the late rapid movement through the air, joined with the warmth of the station house." Patent leather shoes " embraced well-turned ankles," she wore white silk stockings, " a drab silk pelisse displayed the symmetry of her well-rounded figure." A black veil hid her big, blue eyes, -" her shining brown hair was confined by a narrow band of blue velvet." Mrs. Jorrocks wore scarlet brocade, " like a full-blown peony " Jorrocks him- self, driving Xerxes and Artaxerxes in tandem, we may see (through Leech's eyes) with his " woolly, broad-brimmed lowish-crowned hat " sitting jauntily upon a brown wig, and his canary waistcoat and his red cravat, waving to the -Populace, joking with Miserrimus, winking at Betsay.

" Blow me tight, if it were'nd for the bright colours there would'nd be many fox-'unters," says Jorrocks in one of his " sportin' lectors." This was the age of England's greatest Prosperity. Farmers had made fortunes in the Napoleonic wars.. The railways were opening the gates of a new world. Men rode hard, drank hard, dressed well. The opening meet at Tantivy Castle, described in Ask Mamma, where Lord LadYtbilme,stands welcoming the guests before a huge fire, -

dressed in pink, with a " heartsease embroidered blue satin cravat," is typical of many other gatherings and hunt break- fasts, beginning with champagne and ending with bumpers of port, and speeches. Indeed, for descriptions of country life, reflections on the state of agriculture, and very shrewd studies of love, Ask Mamma has more material, or at any rate, more diverse material, than Handley Cross. Miss de Glancy's handling of Lord Ladythorne's advances is a masterpiece, as is her discomfiture in the thunderstorm which incited away her ringlets and bustle. But Jorrocks carries a whole world on his shoulders : where he is there must be good fellowship and gaiety : it is in the pages in which he appears that the Surtees' novice should make his debut into this jolly early-Victorian age. (In Hillingdon Hall there is a moving scene of Jorrocks's old age, when he tries to follow the harriers, and stumbles and bursts into tears; he will have been a very old man then, for he was already past sixty while hunting the Handley Cross hounds, although then he could still eat and drink with boyish zest, and ride hard when he couldn't find gates, and there was a breast-high scent.) The best hunting is in Handley Cross : probably the best hunting in any book :-

" Get forrard, I say,' repeated he, with redoubled energy. ' Confound your unbelieving souls,' added he, as they went to cry. ' Now they're all on him again ! Oh, beautiful, beautiful,' exclaimed Mr. Jorroeks, in ecstasies : I'll lay five pounds to a fiddler's farthin' they kill him. Mischief is their cry—a rare scent—can wind him myself.' So saying, he gathered up his reins again, thrust his feet home in the stirrups, crammed spurs to his horse, and rolled back on the ride he had just come up. ' Hark,' now cried our master . . . Whoay, 'oss, whoay !'—trying to get Artaxerxes to stand still and lot him listen. ' Now, fool, vot are you champing the bit for ? Wheay, I say. He's turned short again. Hoick back ! Hoick back ! They've overrun the scent,' continued he, listening, as the chorus gradually died out . . . ' Tally ho ! ' now screamed Jorrocks, as a magnificent fellow in a spotless suit of ruddy fur crossed the ride before him at a quiet, stealing, listening sort of pace, and gave a whisk of his well-tagged brush on entering tho copse-wood across."

Who then has ever seen a fox break from covert, but does not see this one ? This was the great hunt where Pigg and Charley Stobbs lost the Master, who found his way to Ongar Castle (" in an instant, two tall, highly-powdered footmen, in rich scarlet and white lace-bedaubed liveries, threw wide the folding doors, as if they expected Daniel Lambert or the Durham ox "), was shown into the bedroom belonging to Captain Widowfield, bathed in his tub, dressed in his clothes, and was served with " a long-necked bottle of white brandy on a massive silver tray, accompanied with hot-water, lemon, sugar, nutmeg, and a plate of biscuits " :—

" Wonder if Pigg's killed the fox,' observed Mr. Jorrocks to himself, pouring out half a tumbler of brandy and filling the glass up with hot water. ' Capital fun 'unting, to be sure,' said he, sipping away—' specially von one gets into a good quarter like this ' . . . and thereupon, after a few more preliminary sips, ho drained off the tumbler. ' May as well vet both eyes,' observed ho, as he felt the grateful influence of the brandy on his nearly exhausted frame . . . 'Worry considerate this,' said he, ' worry considerate indeed,' he repeated, taking a largo Turkey sponge out of the handle of a hip-bath of warm water, shaded from the fire by a glass screen, inside of which upon a rail, hung a row of baked towels. ' Kettle, too,' said he, now attracted by its simmering, ' may as well have a boil '—so saying he emptied the contents into tho bath, and pulling off his wig, proceeded to wash and disport himself therein, using the sponge as if it was his own. In the midst of his ablutions the door opened—."

But if the reader doesn't know what happened, he should find out for himself as soon as possible.

This is an expensive edition and there should not have been a misplaced line on page 524 of Handley C'ross ; the back title- slips might have been better gummed ; and it is a pity that a complete Surtees was not issued, containing all he wrote, not the novels only. But it is a beautiful production, and the plates which are coloured by hand are reproduced by a special process which preserves the delicacy of the original steel engravings. Surtees is the ideal bedside author, neither too light nor too heavy. In this edition he makes a splendid and most sensible present for the right man—and may there be many of him ! These volumes will be an abiding joy to the reviewer, as their lesser predecessors were : in their company he will go for many jaunts in the watches of the night and make

many a fox cry " Capevi " with J. J. F. Y.-B.