Читать книгу Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man - Siegfried Sassoon - Страница 5

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Now that I come to think about it, it seems to me to be quite on the cards, that, had my Aunt Evelyn employed an unpretentious groom-gardener (who would really have suited her original requirements far better than jaunty young Dixon) I should never have earned the right to call myself a fox-hunting man. Dixon’s predecessor was a stolid old coachman who disliked riding. One of my earliest recollections is the advent of Dixon, who lost no time in persuading my aunt to pension off her pair of worn-out carriage horses, which he replaced by two comparatively juvenile animals ‘warranted quiet to ride or drive.’ Dixon dearly loved to do a deal, and my aunt was amenable to his influence. She even went so far as to sanction the purchase of a side-saddle, and although a timid and incompetent horsewoman, she came to the conclusion that riding was good for her health. Two or three times a week, then, on fine days, shepherded by the dignified and respectful groom, she was to be seen ambling along the lanes in a badly cut brown habit. She never attended a meet of the hounds however, for we lived in an unhunted part of the country, and the nearest meet was more than eight miles away.

So far as I was concerned, for several years ‘the hounds’ remained a remote and mysteriously important rumour, continually talked about by Dixon, who never ceased to regret the remoteness of their activities. Foxes were few in our part of the country, and the farmers made no secret of shooting them. In fact ours was a thoroughly unsporting neighbourhood. There wasn’t so much as a pack of beagles in the district. But Dixon was deeply imbued with sporting instincts. From the age of fourteen he had worked in stables, and had even shared, for a few months, the early rising rigours of a racing-stable. He had been ‘odd man’ to a sporting farmer in the Vale of Aylesbury, and had spent three years as under-groom to a hard-riding squire who subscribed handsomely to Lord Dumborough’s Hounds. Dumborough Park was twelve miles from where my aunt lived, and in those days twelve miles meant a lot, from a social point of view. My aunt was fully two miles beyond the radius of Lady Dumborough’s ‘round of calls.’ Those two miles made all the difference, and the aristocratic yellow-wheeled barouche never entered our unassuming white gate. I never heard my aunt express any regret for her topographical exclusion from the centre of county society. But for Dixon it was one of the lesser tragedies of life; he would have given anything to be able to drive ‘the mistress’ over to Dumborough Park now and again, for the Kennels were there, and to him the Kennels were the centre of the local universe. As it was, he had to be content with a few garden-parties, where he could hob-nob with a crowd of garrulous grooms, and perhaps get a few words with that great man, Lord Dumborough’s head coachman.

Nevertheless, as the slow seasons of my childhood succeeded one another, he rattled my aunt along the roads in her four-wheeled dog-cart at an increasingly lively pace. He must have been very adroit in his management of my gentle relative and guardian, since he perpetually found some plausible excuse for getting rid of one of the horses. Invariably, and by gentle gradations toward his ideal ‘stamp of hunter,’ he replaced each criticizable quadruped with one that looked more like galloping and jumping. The scope of these manœuvrings was, of course, restricted by my aunt’s refusal to pay more than a certain price for a horse, but Dixon always had his eyes open for a possible purchase from any sporting farmer or country gentleman within riding distance; he also assiduously studied the advertisements of the London horse-sales, and when he had finally established his supremacy ‘the mistress’ unprotestingly gave him permission to ‘go up to Tattersalls,’ whence he would return, sedately triumphant, accompanied by the kindly countenance of what he called ‘a perfect picture of an old-fashioned sort.’ (A ‘sort,’ as I afterwards learned, was a significant word in the vocabulary of hunting-men.)

How vividly I remember Dixon’s keen-featured face, as he proudly paraded his latest purchase on the gravel in front of the house, or cantered it round the big paddock at the back of the stables, while my aunt and I watched, from a safe distance, the not infrequent symptoms of a sprightliness not altogether to her taste.

“Yes, ’m,” he would say, in his respectful voice, as he pulled up and leant forward to clap the neck of the loudly snorting animal, “I think this mare’ll suit you down to the ground.”

‘Fling you to the ground’ would, in one or two cases, have been a more accurate prophecy, as Aunt Evelyn may have secretly surmised while she nervously patted the ‘new carriage horse’ which was waltzing around its owner and her small nephew! And there was, indeed, one regrettable occasion, when a good-looking but suspiciously cheap newcomer (bought at Tattersalls without a warrant) decided to do his best to demolish the dog-cart; from this expedition my aunt returned somewhat shaken, and without having left any of the cards which she had set out to distribute on “old Mrs. Caploss, and those new people over at Amblehurst Priory.” So far as I remember, though, the unblenching Dixon soon managed to reassure her, and the ‘funny tempered horse’ was astutely exchanged for something with better manners.

“He looked a regular timber-topper, all the same,” remarked Dixon, shaking his head with affectionate regret for the departed transgressor. He had a warm heart for any horse in the world, and, like every good groom, would sit up all night with a hunter rather than risk leaving a thorn in one of its legs after a day’s hunting.

So far as I know, Dixon never made any attempt to get a better place. Probably he was shrewd enough to realize that he was very well off where he was. And I am certain that my aunt would have been much upset if he had given notice. The great thing about Dixon was that he knew exactly where to draw the line. Beyond the line, I have no doubt, lay his secret longing to have an occasional day with the Dumborough Hounds on one of his employer’s horses. Obviously there was no hope that ‘the mistress’ could ever be manipulated into a middle-aged enthusiasm for the hazards of the chase. Failing that, his only possible passport into the distant Dumborough Elysium existed in the mistress’s nephew. He would make a sportsman of him, at any rate!