Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands

These people, too, have always a consequential, self-satisfied look about them; they seem to say they know a ‘thing or two’ others have no wot of – as though the day, more confidential when few were by, told them some capital secrets the sleepers never heard of, and they made this pestilential habit a reason for eating the breakfast of a Cossack, as if the consumption of victuals was a cardinal virtue. Civilised differs from savage life as much by the regulation of time as by any other feature. I see no objection to your red man, who probably can’t go to breakfast till he has caught a bear, being up betimes; but for the gentleman who goes to bed with the conviction that hot rolls and coffee, tea and marmalade, bloaters and honey, ham, muffins, and eggs await him at ten o’clock – for him, I say, these absurd vagabondisms are an insufferable affectation, and a most unwarrantable liberty with the peace and privacy of a household.

Meanwhile, old Colonel Muddleton is parading below; and here we must leave him for another chapter.

CHAPTER XIV. THE CHASE

I wish any one would explain to me why it is that the tastes and pursuits of nations are far more difficult of imitation than their languages or institutions. Nothing is more common than to find Poles and Russians speaking half the tongues of Europe like natives. Germans frequently attain to similar excellence; and some Englishmen have the gift also. In the same way it would not be difficult to produce many foreigners well acquainted with all the governmental details of the countries they have visited – the policy, foreign and domestic; the statistics of debt and taxation; the religious influences; the resources, and so forth. Indeed, in our days of universal travel, this kind of information has more or less become general, while the tastes and habits, which appear so much more easily acquired, are the subjects of the most absurd mistakes, or the most blundering imitation. To instance what I mean, who ever saw any but a Hungarian dance the mazurka with even tolerable grace? Who ever saw waltzing except among the Austrians? Who ever beheld ‘toilette’ out of France? So it is, however. Some artificial boundary drawn with a red line on a map by the hand of Nesselrode or Talleyrand, some pin stuck down in the chart by the fingers of Metternich, decides the whole question, and says, ‘Thus far shalt thou dance and no farther. Beyond this there are no pâtés de Perigord. Here begin pipes and tobacco; there end macaroni and music.’

Whatever their previous tastes, men soon conform to the habits of a nation, and these arbitrary boundaries of the gentlemen of the red tape become like Nature’s own frontiers of flood or mountain. Not but it must have been somewhat puzzling in the good days of the Consulate and the Empire to trim one’s sails quick enough for the changes of the political hurricane. You were an Italian yesterday, you are a Frenchman to-day; you went to bed a Prussian, and you awoke a Dutchman. These were sore trials, and had they been pushed much further, must have led to the most strange misconceptions and mistakes.

Now, with a word of apology for the digression, let me come back to the cause of it – and yet why should I make my excuses on this head? These ‘Loiterings’ of mine are as much in the wide field of dreamy thought as over the plains and valleys of the material world. I never promised to follow a regular track, nor did I set out on my journey bound, like a king’s messenger, to be at my destination in a given time. Not a bit of it. I ‘ll take ‘mine ease in mine inn.’ I’ll stay a week, a fortnight – ay, a month, here, if I please it. You may not like the accommodation, nor wish to put up with a ‘settle and stewed parsnips.’ Be it so. Here we part company then. If you don’t like my way of travel, there’s the diligence, or, if you prefer it, take the extra post, and calculate, if you can, how to pay your postillion in kreutzers – invented by the devil, I believe, to make men swear – and for miles, that change with every little grand-duchy of three acres in extent. I wish you joy of your travelling companions – the German who smokes, and the Frenchman who frowns at you; the old vrau who falls asleep on your shoulder, and the bonne who gives you a baby to hold in your lap. But why have I put myself into this towering passion? Heaven knows it’s not my wont. And once more to go back, and find, if I can, what I was thinking of. I have it. This same digression of mine was apropos to the scene I witnessed, as our breakfast concluded at the château.

All the world was to figure on horseback – the horses themselves no bad evidence of the exertions used to mount the party. Here was a rugged pony from the Ardennes, with short neck and low shoulder, his head broad as a bull’s, and his counter like the bow of a Dutch galliot; there, a great Flemish beast, seventeen hands high, with a tail festooned over a straw ‘bustle,’ and even still hanging some inches on the ground – straight in the shoulder, and straighter in the pasterns, giving the rider a shock at every motion that to any other than a Fleming would lead to concussion of the brain. Here stood an English thoroughbred, sadly ‘shook’ before, and with that tremulous quivering of the forelegs that betokens a life of hard work; still, with all his imperfections, and the mark of a spavin behind, he looked like a gentleman among a crowd of low fellows – a reduced gentleman it is true, but a gentleman still; his mane was long and silky, his coat was short and glossy, his head finely formed, and well put on his long, taper, and well-balanced neck. Beside him was a huge Holsteiner, flapping his broad flanks with a tail like a weeping ash – a great massive animal, that seemed from his action as if he were in the habit of ascending stairs, and now and then got the shock one feels when they come to a step too few. Among the mass there were some ‘Limousins’ – pretty, neatly formed little animals, with great strength for their appearance, and showing a deal of Arab breeding – and an odd Schimmel or two from Hungary, snorting and pawing like a war-horse; but the staple was a collection of such screws as every week are to be seen at Tattersall’s auction, announced as ‘first-rate weight-carriers with any foxhounds, fast in double and single harness, and “believed” sound by the owner.’

Well, what credulous people are the proprietors of horses! These are the great exports to the Low Countries, repaid in mock Van Dycks, apocryphal Rembrandts, and fabulous Hobbimas, for the exhibition of which in our dining-rooms and libraries we are as heartily laughed at as they are for their taste in manners equine. And in the same way exactly as we insist upon a great name with our landscape or our battle, so your Fleming must have a pedigree with his hunter. There must be ‘dam to Louisa,’ and ‘own brother to Ratcatcher’ and Titus Oates, that won the ‘Levanter Handicap’ in – no matter where. Oh dear, oh dear! when shall we have sense enough to go without Snyders and Ostade? And when will Flemings be satisfied to ride on beasts which befit them – strong of limb, slow of gait, dull of temper, and not over-fastidious in feeding; whose parentage has had no registry, and whose blood relations never were chronicled?

Truly, England is the land of ‘turn-out.’ All the foreign imitations of it are most ludicrous – from Prince Max of Bavaria, who brought back with him to Munich a lord-mayor’s coach, gilding, emblazonry, wigs, and all, as the true type of a London equipage, down to those strange merry-andrew figures in orange-plush breeches and sky-blue frocks, that one sees galloping after their masters along the Champs Élysées, like insane comets taking an airing on horseback. The whole thing is absurd. They cannot accomplish it, do what they will; there’s no success in the endeavour. It is like our miserable failures to get up a petit dîner or a soirée. If, then, French, Italians, and Germans fail so lamentably, only think, I beseech you, of Flemings – imagine Belgium à cheval! The author of Hudibras discovered years ago that these people were fish; that their land-life was a little bit of distraction they permitted themselves to take from time to time, but that their real element was a dyke or a canal. What would he have said had he seen them on horseback?

Now, I am free to confess that few men have less hope to win the world by deeds of horsemanship than Arthur O’Leary. I have ever looked upon it as a kind of presumption in me to get into the saddle. I have regarded my taking the reins as a species of duplicity on my part – a tacit assumption that I had any sort of control oyer the beast. I have appeared to myself guilty of a moral misdemeanour – the ‘obtaining a ride under false pretences.’ Yet when I saw myself astride of the ‘roan with the cut on her knee,’ and looked around me at the others, I fancied that I must have taken lessons from Franconi without knowing it; and even among the moustached heroes of the evening before, I bore myself like a gallant cavalier.

‘You sit your horse devilish like your father; he had just the same easy dégagé way in his saddle,’ said the old colonel, tapping his snuff-box, and looking at me with a smile of marked approval; while he continued in a lower tone, ‘I ‘ve told Laura to get near you if the mare becomes troublesome. The Flemings, you know, are not much to boast of as riders.’

I acknowledged the favour as well as I could, for already my horse was becoming fidgety – every one about me thinking it essential to spur and whip his beast into the nearest approach to mettle, and caper about like so many devils, while they cried out to one another —

‘Regardez, Charles, comment il est vif ce “Tear away.” C’est une bête du diable. Ah, tiens, tiens, vois donc “Albert.” Le voilà, c’est, “All-in-my-eye,” fils de “Charles Fox,” frère de “Sevins-de-main.”’

‘Ah, marquis, how goes it? Il est beau votre cheval.’

‘Oui, parbleu; he is frère aîné of “Kiss-mi-ladi,” qui a gagné le handicap à l’Ile du Dogs.’

And thus did these miserable imitators of Ascot and Doncaster, of Leamington and the Quorn, talk the most insane nonsense, which had been told to them by some London horse-dealer as the pedigree of their hackneys.

It was really delightful amid all this to look at the two English girls, who sat their horses so easily and so gracefully. Bending slightly with each curvet, they only yielded to the impulse of the animal as much as served to keep their own balance; the light but steady finger on the bridle, the air of quiet composure, uniting elegance with command. What a contrast to the distorted gesture, the desperate earnestness, and the fearful tenacity of their much-whiskered companions! And yet it was to please and fascinate these same pinchbeck sportsmen that these girls were then there. If they rode over everything that day – fence or rail, brook or bank – it was because the chasse to them was less au cerf than au mari.

Such was the case. The old colonel had left England because he preferred the Channel to the fleet; the glorious liberty which Englishmen are so proud of would have been violated in his person had he remained. His failing, like many others, was that he had lived ‘not wisely, but too well’; and, in short, however cold the climate, London would have proved too hot for him had he stayed another day in it.

What a deluge of such people float over the Continent, living well and what is called ‘most respectably’; dining at embassies and dancing at courts; holding their heads very high, too – most scrupulous about acquaintances, and exclusive in all their intimacies! They usually prefer foreign society to that of their countrymen, for obvious reasons. Few Frenchmen read the Gazette. I never heard of a German who knew anything about the list of outlaws. Of course they have no more to say to English preserves, and so they take out a license to shoot over the foreign manors; and though a marquis or a count are but ‘small deer,’ it’s the only game left, and they make the best of it.

At last the host appeared, attired in a scarlet frock, and wearing a badge at his button-hole something about the shape and colour of a new penny-piece. He was followed by above a dozen others, similarly habited, minus the badge; and then came about twenty more, dressed in green frocks, with red collars and cuffs – a species of smaller deities, who I learned were called ‘Aspirants,’ though to what they aspired, where it was, or when they hoped for it, nobody could inform me. Then there were piqueurs and grooms and whippers-in without number, all noisy and all boisterous – about twenty couple of fox-hounds giving tongue, and a due proportion of the scarlet folk blowing away at that melodious pipe, the cor de chasse.

With this goodly company I moved forward, ‘alone, but in a crowd’; for, unhappily, my want of tact as a sporting character the previous evening had damaged me seriously with the hunting youths, and Mademoiselle Laura showed no desire to accept the companionship her worthy father had selected for her. ‘No matter,’ thought I, ‘there’s a great deal to see here, and I can do without chatting in so stirring a scene as this.’

Her companion was the Comte d’Espagne, an admirable specimen of what the French call ‘Tigre’; for be it known that the country which once obtained a reputation little short of ludicrous for its excess of courtesy and the surplusage of its ceremony, has now, in the true spirit of reaction, adopted a degree of abruptness we should call rudeness, and a species of cold effrontery we might mistake for insolence. The disciples of this new school are significantly called ‘Young France,’ and are distinguished for length of hair and beard, a look of frowning solemnity and mock preoccupation, very well-fitting garments and yellow gloves. These gentlemen are sparing of speech, and more so of gesture. They give one to understand that some onerous deed of regeneration is expected at their hands, some revival of the old spirit of the nation; though in what way it is to originate in curled moustaches and lacquered boots is still a mystery to the many. But enough of them now; only of these was the Comte d’Espagne.

I had almost forgotten to speak of one part of our cortége, which should certainly not be omitted. This was a wooden edifice on wheels, drawn by a pair of horses at a brisk rate at the tail of the procession. At first it occurred to me that it might be an ambulant dog-kennel, to receive the hounds on their return. Then I suspected it to be a walking hospital for wounded sportsmen; and certainly I could not but approve of the idea, as I called to mind the position of any unlucky chasseur, in the event of a fall, with his fifteen feet of ‘metal main’ around him, and I only hoped that a plumber accompanied the expedition. My humanity, however, led me astray; the pagoda was destined for the accommodation of a stag, who always assisted at the chasse, whenever no other game could be started. This venerable beast, some five-and-twenty years in the service, was like a stock piece in the theatres, which, always ready, could be produced without a moment’s notice. Here was no rehearsal requisite if a prima donna was sulky or a tenor was drunk; if the fox wouldn’t show or the deer were shy, there was the stag, perfectly prepared for a pleasant canter of a few miles, and ready, if no one was intemperately precipitate, to give a very agreeable morning’s sport. His perfections, however, went further than this; for he was trained to cross the highroad at all convenient thoroughfares, occasionally taking the main streets of a village or the market-place of a bourg, swimming whenever the water was shallow enough to follow him on horseback, and giving up the ghost at the blast of a grand maître’s bugle with an accuracy as unerring as though he had performed at Franconi’s.

Unhappily for me, I was not fated to witness an exhibition of his powers; for scarcely had we emerged from the wood when the dogs were laid on, and soon after found a fox.

For some time the scene was an animated one, as every Fleming seemed to pin his faith on some favourite dog; and it was rather amusing to witness the eagerness with which each followed the movements of his adopted animal, cheering him on, and encouraging him to the top of his bent. At last the word ‘Away’ was given, and suddenly the dogs broke cover, and made across the plain in the direction of a great wood, or rather forest, above a mile off. The country, happily for most of us (I know it was so for me), was an open surface of gentle undulation, stubble and turnips the only impediments, and clay soft enough to make a fall easy.

The sight was so far exhilarating that red coats in a gallop have always a pleasant effect; besides which, the very concourse of riders looks well. However, even as unsportsmanlike an eye as mine could detect the flaws in jockeyship about me – the fierce rushings of the gentlemen who pushed through the deepest ground with a loose rein, flogging manfully the while; the pendulous motions of others between the mane and the haunches, with every stride of the beast.

But I had little time for such speculations; the hour of my own trial was approaching. The roan was getting troublesome, the pace was gradually working up her mettle; and she had given three or four preparatory bounds, as though to see whether she’d part company with me before she ran away or not. My own calculations at the moment were not very dissimilar; I was meditating a rupture of the partnership too. The matrix of a full-length figure of Arthur O’Leary in red clay was the extent of any damage I could receive, and I only looked for a convenient spot where I might fall unseen. As I turned my head on every side, hoping for some secluded nook, some devil of a hunter, by way of directing the dogs, gave a blast of his brass instrument about a hundred yards before me. The thing was now settled; the roan gave a whirl of her long vicious tail, plunged fearfully, and throwing down her head and twisting it to one side, as if to have a peep at my confusion, away she went. From having formed one of the rear-guard, I now closed up with the main body – ‘aspirants’ all – through whom I dashed like a catapult, and notwithstanding repeated shouts of ‘Pull in, sir!’ ‘Hold back!’ etc, I continued my onward course; a few seconds more and I was in the thick of the scarlet coats, my beast at the stretch of her speed, and caring nothing for the bridle. Amid a shower of sacrés that fell upon me like hail, I sprang through them, making the ‘red ones’ black with every stroke of my gallop. Leaving them far behind, I flew past the grand maître himself, who rode in the van, almost upsetting him by a side spring, as I passed – a malediction reaching me as I went; but the forest soon received me in its dark embrace, and I saw no more.

It was at first a source of consolation to me to think that every stride removed me from the reach of those whose denunciations I had so unfortunately incurred; grand maître, chasseurs, and ‘aspirants’ – they were all behind me. Ay, for that matter, so were the dogs and the piqueurs, and, for aught I knew, the fox with them. When I discovered, however, that the roan continued her speed still unabated, I began to be somewhat disconcerted. It was true the ground was perfectly smooth and safe – a long allée of the wood, with turf shorn close as a pleasure-ground. I pulled and sawed the bit, I jerked the bridle, and performed all the manual exercise I could remember as advised in such extremities, but to no use. It seemed to me that some confounded echo started the beast, and incited her to increased speed. Just as this notion struck me, I heard a voice behind cry out —

‘Do hold in! Try and hold in, Mr. O’Leary!’ I turned my head, and there was Laura, scarce a length behind, her thoroughbred straining every sinew to come up. No one else was in sight, and there we were, galloping like mad, with the wood all to ourselves.

I can very well conceive why the second horse in a race does his best to get foremost, if it were only the indulgence of a very natural piece of curiosity to see what the other has been running for; but why the first one only goes the faster because there are others behind him, that is a dead puzzle to me. But so it was; my ill-starred beast never seemed to have put forth her full powers till she was followed. Ventre à terre, as the French say, was now the pace; and though from time to time Laura would cry out to me to hold back, I could almost swear I heard her laughing at my efforts. Meanwhile the wood was becoming thicker and closer, and the allée narrower and evidently less travelled. Still it seemed to have no end or exit; scarcely had we rounded one turn when a vista of miles would seem to stretch away before us, passing over which, another, as long again, would appear.

After about an hour’s hard galloping, if I dare form any conjecture as to the flight of time, I perceived with a feeling of triumph that the roan was relaxing somewhat in her stride; and that she was beginning to evince, by an up-and-down kind of gait, what sailors call a ‘fore-and aft’ motion, that she was getting enough of it. I turned and saw Laura about twenty yards behind – her thoroughbred dead beat, and only able to sling along at that species of lobbing canter blood-cattle can accomplish under any exigency. With a bold effort I pulled up short, and she came alongside of me; and before I could summon courage to meet the reproaches I expected for having been the cause of her runaway, she relieved my mind by a burst of as merry and good-tempered laughter as ever I listened to. The emotion was contagious, and so I laughed too, and it was full five minutes before either of us could speak.

‘Well, Mr. O’Leary, I hope you know where we are,’ said she, drying her eyes, where the sparkling drops of mirth were standing, ‘for I assure you I don’t.’

‘Oh, perfectly,’ replied I, as my eye caught a board nailed against a tree, on which some very ill-painted letters announced ‘La route de Bouvigne’ – ‘we are on the highroad to Bouvigne, wherever that may be.’

‘Bouvigne!’ exclaimed she, in an accent of some alarm; ‘why, it’s five leagues from the château! I travelled there once by the highroad. How are we ever to get back?’

That was the very question I was then canvassing in my own mind, without a thought of how it was to be solved. However, I answered with an easy indifference, ‘Oh, nothing easier; we ‘ll take a calèche at Bouvigne.’

‘But they ‘ve none.’

‘Well, then, fresh horses.’

‘There’s not a horse in the place; it’s a little village near the Meuse, surrounded with tall granite rocks, and only remarkable for its ruined castle, the ancient schloss of Philip de Bouvigne.’

‘How interesting!’ said I, delighted to catch at anything which should give the conversation a turn; ‘and who was Philip de Bouvigne?’

‘Philip,’ said the lady, ‘was the second or third count, I forget which, of the name. The chronicles say that he was the handsomest and most accomplished youth of the time. Nowhere could he meet his equal at joust or tournament; while his skill in arms was the least of his gifts – he was a poet and a musician. In fact, if you were only to believe his historians, he was the most dangerous person for the young ladies of those days to meet with. Not that he ran away with them, sur la grande route.’ As she said this, a burst of laughing stopped her; and it was one I could really forgive, though myself the object of it. ‘However,’ resumed she, ‘I believe he was just as bad. Well, to pursue my story, when Philip was but eighteen, it chanced that a party of warriors bound for the Holy Land came past the Castle of Bouvigne, and of course passed the night there. From them, many of whom had already been in Palestine, Philip heard the wondrous stories the crusaders ever brought back of combats and encounters, of the fearful engagements with the infidels and the glorious victories of the Cross. And at length, so excited did his mind become by the narrations, that he resolved on the spot to set out for the Holy Land, and see with his own eyes the wonderful things they had been telling him.

‘This resolution could not fail of being applauded by the rest, and by none was it met with such decided approval as by Henri de Bethune, a young Liégeois, then setting out on his first crusade, who could not help extolling Philip’s bravery, and above all his devotion in the great cause, in quitting his home and his young and beautiful wife; for I must tell you, as indeed I ought to have told you before, he had been but a few weeks married to the lovely Alice de Franchemont, the only daughter of the old Graf de Franchemont, of whose castle you may see the ruins near Chaude Fontaine.’