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Jtlfaca. ^tm Qork BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1691 ANECDOTES OF THE UPPER TEN THOUSAND: THEIE LEGENDS AND THEIR LIYES. (/^ BY THE HON. GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY, AVTUOA 07 "MT LJFE AND KBCOLLECIIONS," ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, Sublt^lier tn (^rUinarp to l^er ilHa)e£;t0. 18G7. LONDON: Priuted by Strangewats and Walden, 28 Castle St. Leicester Sq. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Life in the Country — Experiments in Natural History — " Yarrell," his Bimaculated Duck — The Hybrid and the Mule — The Bison and common Cow — The new Foreign Snake ofBuckland — Snake on her Eggs in the Regent's Park— The Gorilla .... 9 CHAPTER II. Part I. Haddon Hall — The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth — The Earl of Rutland — Sir John Manners — The "King of the Peak" — Sir George Vernon — His Daughter, Dorothy Vernon — The Masqued Ball — Elopement — Murder, and the last Execution that took place without Trial by Jury 17 CHAPTER III. A Legend of our Life — The Power to Tame Timid Creatures — Naturalists, Naturals, and Flats . . 42 IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. FAOE Ghost Stories — The Living and the Dead — The Blue Dressing-room — A Ghost in Wales — A Murder in Scotland — Mr. Strachan — Helen Bell and Strange Deeds 58 CHAPTER V. Presence of Mind, in Love and Money . . . - 70 CHAPTER VL Retrievers, Setters, and Pointers, and Dog- breaking . 80 CHAPTER VIL Paet I. The Packet between Dublin and Bristol — The Irishman, the Heir, the Berth, and the Dead alive . . .90 CHAPTER Vni. The Ghost of a Story — Shades of my Brother Sportsmen — The Roadside Inn at Liphook, and an Apparition . 101 CHAPTER IX. Paet IL Haddon Hall— Chatsworth— The Wye— The Derwent — and the Daughter of the "King of the Peak" — Sir Geoflfery Peverell, &c 119 CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PAGE Legend of Standon House, Essex — Mr. Jordan, the Fiend, the Abigail, and the Coffin h«ng in Chains . 141 CHAPTER XL Duel in the Ranks of "the Upper Ten Thousand" in Hyde Park in 1797— The Hon. Col. King— Col. Fitzgerald — Major Wood — Col. Stephens^H. R. H. the Duke of York 151 CHAPTER XII. Part IL The Packet between Dublin and Bristol — Sea-sickness and its effects ........ 161 CHAPTER XIII. Part I. A Legend believed in Sixty Years ago, and remembered now — Two Hawks — Two Tombstones — A Lover and a Ghost 184 CHAPTER XIV. The Distemper — The Scourge of the Sporting Kennel — Fidelity in Dogs — The late Mr. Davis of the Royal Kennels, and Homceopathy 197 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. Part III. PAGE Haddon Hall 220 CHAPTER XVI. Attempts on the Life of Greorge III. . . . .253 CHAPTER XVII. The Anecdote or Legend of Fair Helen — Love and terrible Revenge . 258 CHAPTER XVIII. On Shooting and Hunting — Noble Lords, their Dogs, their Methods, and their Men 267 CHAPTER XIX. A comfortable Dinner in the Ranks of " the Upper Ten Thousand" on a Friday in the year 1800 — Conver- sation, Wine, and Weapons 283 CHAPTER XX. PartL Essex in the Olden Time — The Heretic— The Fire, the Fagot, and the Love of Woman .... 288 CONTENTS. Vll CHAPTER XXI. Part IV. PAGE Haddon Hall— The Ball ..... 301 CHAPTER XXII. Legend of Wolverton House, Dorsetshire — Sir Thomas Trenchard — The Archduke of Austria — The Court in 1509 . . * 329 CHAPTER XXIII. Governor Wall (Governor and Commandant), Lord Camel> ford, and Governor Eyre contrasted . . 347 CHAPTER XXIV. Berkeley Castle in the year 1327 — Edward II. — Thomas Lord Berkeley — Gourlay — Maltravers — Lord Mor- timer — The Queen of Edward II. — Edward III. — The Castle of Bristol — The WarUke Barons — The Spencers — The Priestly Chancellor Baldoc, the Earl of Arundel, &c. — Murder and Burial of the King . 354 CHAPTER XXV. • Lord Camelford — Mr. Devereux — Mr. Best — Captain Barrie — Lord Grenville — Lady Grenville — Mr. Cockburne — Mr. Heaviside 378 FAQS Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVI. Part II. Essex in the Olden Time — A Surprise and Explanation . 387 CHAPTER XXVII. Part II. A Legend believed in Sixty Years ago, and remembered now — Hylda and the handsome Stranger . . 405 g^n^tid^s OF THE UPPEK TEN THOUSAND THEIR LEGENDS AND THEIR LIVES. INTRODUCTION. In again laying a new work before the public, I must be permitted to express my deep sense of gratitude for the way in which they have received the former volumes, and in very many instances for the flattering manner in which strangers to me personally have written to express their approbation. Since the last publication I have thrown myself broadcast — no, not broadcast; for my figure, strange to say, has not yet been dignified into a breadth of waistcoat, nor into that pro- jection likened by some irreverent reviewers unto the representation of a bay-window. I am not thin, though; so let it suflBce that I have simply VOL. I. B 11 INTRODUCTION. sought for brain, bone, and muscle, a relaxation by occasionally lying down in the woods among my pets, to delight myself in their single-pur- posed love and fidelity. We — I speak now in the collective sense, and as to my fellow-men — have not all of us a love of beasts and birds, nor a taste for the entire natural creation of Heaven's holy will : but, thank Heaven, I have an innate desire for research into the customs and manners^ habits and propensities, of the smallest insect up to the elephant ; and in that pursuit know not time but as it flies, and long to delay the passing of the too-fleeting hour. True historian as I am, I must, however, qualify this allusion as to the speed of time. The only time that time is slow is the period of a lady's promised approach ; then, had I a whip for that disagreeable old skeleton depicted as Time, with an efficient scythe in his heldless hand to mow down flowers, I regret to say, by choice, instead of the multitude of weeds (which in my opinion would be better made into hay, however scentless or unsweet), by my life I'd make the grinning monster skip, and bring my love at lightning speed to turn my " winter to a glorious summer!" Well, then, I have refreshed myself ; and thus renovated, presume once more to seek the INTRODUCTION. m public approbation, unharmed and unannoyed by the bitter criticism of some self-appointed re- viewers, and very well able to laugh at those vipers who grinned a bag of venom, but who lacked the tooth to give it pointed pain. Among these reviewers, one well known now by the name of Pecksniff ventured to assail me in regard to poor '* L. E. L.," having previously pretended to hold communion with her spirit — a spirit far above his now and for ever — though he had the audacity to give the following familiar answer to his questions, and to report it as genuine to his astonished audience. A wish having been expressed to know some- thing of the state in which the spirit of the de- ceased authoress was, the " science" 'guiding Pecksniff announced his willingness to invite her to communion. He, consequently, retired to another room, as I have been informed, and on his return assured his friends " that the spirit of ' L. E. L.' readily came to his call," and replied to his question in the following words — " Thank you, dear Mr. Pecksniff ; I am very happy." Spirit-rappings! I wonder her spirit — if souls could be so irreligiously summoned — did not rap his head instead of the table for his insolence and presumption ; though if a spirit had done IV INTRODUCTION. SO, people in this instance might truly have said that there was " nothing in it,'* and that *''- ex nihilo nihil fit:" his head being as empty as his assertions ; and really it makes one laugh to think of a soul happy in the other world "dealing'* such a man as PecksniiT. To those of the public press who have re- viewed me fairly and honestly, no matter whether in praise or blame, I return my thanks. An author must expect no favour, but if there is a hole in his coat it is certain to be laid hold of, and in no way darned, unless " darned to all eternity," as the Yankees have a quaint method of ex- pressing it. I must, however, in passing, notice the Satur- day Review of the 28th of July, 1866, which has never shown any partiality, nor even fairness, for ine; as has been proved by the way my known enemies cling to its columns when they blame me: for among its well- written but bitter stric- tures on every man, woman, child, or thing upon earth, it has intensely amused me by its notice of an " old story," or a work written in 1811 by a lady, and entitled the Mirror of the Graces, The species of that delightful regenerator of virtue is not dead yet. I know to this day some old ladies who have similarly vague ideas of pro- INTRODUCTION. V priety: in one instance, the authoress alluded to says, that girls should not even shake hands with their male acquaintances; and in another instance, this severe remarker on manners absolutely holds it up to be the great desideratum of a modest girl to have "her unsunned bosom clasped to the breast of a man of delicacy and worth;" — the Saturday Review adds, " we presume, in public:" but that, of course, can only be ascertained from the general tenor of the Mirror of Graces^ and from the ideas therein advocated. An "un- sunned bosom!" Ye gods and goddesses! only think of a lovely bosom that never knew the light or air, nor saw that water and the sun were good! It chanced to me some time ago to be writing for a weekly periodical, and among the tales oflFered to its acceptance was one now published in my present volumes, entitled "a tale" of his Grace of Rutland's beautiful old ruin, " Haddon HaU." Now, if there is one thing I pique myself on more than another, it is that I never, by any chance, write anything for publication that any girl might not read. I should dread to see my works lying on very many drawing-room tables — where they assuredly are — if there was a line in VI INTRODUCTION. them that was not comme il faut. Nothing is more obnoxious, vulgar, or indelicate, than false delicacy ; or a feeling, such as is to be found among the middling classes of America — not in the best classes — which prevents a housemaid going into a dining-room because the table is en deshabille and its legs uncovered; or shocks a lady's ear by a man speaking to her of his "naked eye." The tale to which I allude was sent by me, as usual, to the Editor of the periodical ; and, to my astonishment, returned to me refused, as "unfit for publication." Upon this I wrote, in some indignation, for further explanation ; and demanded to know which part of the work had been so libelled. The reply was that a scene, which I hope my readers will now make themselves well acquainted with, in the words in which it was originally written, " was in- decent ;" for it was deemed, I need not say by whom, to be most improper for Sir John Manners to kiss Dorothy Vernon in presence of the old deer-keeper, who was lying hidden in the bushes at their feet. I need not say that it gave me great pleasure to get back the tale of Haddon Hall; and now to make it, as I do, a considerable item in the intel- INTBODUCTION. VU ligence offered to my readers ; and this without fear of condemnation. The text which I have taken for these volumes is a wide one, and perhaps a difficult one to carry out to the full, and yet harmless extent, desired ; but I still hope to offer much that is strange, as well as curiously interesting, to my readers, when as I am about to deal with the " Lives of the Upper Ten Thousand,'' and, therefore, with the ways and customs of others. To set myself right with them I wiU commence with my own method of passing the time ; and show that, if a man chooses it, he need not be dependent on others for the content and happiness which is, or ought to be, unless under peculiar and ex- traordinary circumstances, within the reach of us all. CHAPTER I. LIFE IN THE COUNTRY — EXPERIMENTS IN NATURAL HISTORY "YARREL," HIS BIMACULATED DUCK — THE HYBRID AND THE MULE THE BISON AND COMMON COW THE NEW FOREIGN SNAKE OF BUCKLAND SNAKE ON HER EGGS IN THE REGENT's PARK — THE GORILLA. In the course of my practical and personal studies on Natural History, I have discovered many errors disseminated by the old authorities, such as the "Bimaculated Duck" of "Yarrel," to which I more particularly allude, because I havfi proofs of his error at my immediate command ; and of the blunders so frequently fallen into by men, learned by repute or hearsay, from others, and not through their own personal and prac- tical experience. In the British Museum there is stuffed — and has been for many years — Yarrel's ^^ Bimaculated Duck;" which I at once knew to be nothing more than a male Mule, or barren hybrid between the Drake Widgeon and common Duck. Having declared the fact to be as 10 THE BIMACULATED DUCK. I state it, I bred and then sent to the Museum a Duck Mule to match the male, and leave no sort of doubt about the matter. For the benefit of my readers not up in these matters, perhaps, it is right for me to explain that a Mule and a Hybrid are not the same things. For instance, a Mule is a cross that will not carry on its species ; and a Hybrid is a cross that will breed again to all infi- nity with its own breed, and with other breeds of certain kinds. Though both are, so to speak, Hybrids, both are not "Mules;" the Mule is the one that cannot propagate its species. My study for years has been an attempt to discover where nature draws the line between particular crosses as to barrenness and fecundity, and, though I know some that are barren, and many that will breed, I am just as much at a loss as ever to discover the exact cause tliat induces nature to say, " So far shalt thou go, and no fur- ther," or to induce her unalterable determination. There was at one time an idea very prevalent, that the attachment in the breast of a feathered nestling to its foster-mother was contributed through the warmth given to the egg in its progress to perfection ; but such is not the case. That affection arises from first sight and first thought ; it becomes then confirmed by tender- THE BISON CALF. 11 ness of rearing in the parent bird. I have changed ducks in immediate progress of hatching to a hen or barn-door fowl ; some of the ducks just out of the shell, and others in: all those ducks at once loved the hen, and would, after the first day of sight and knowledge, have shrunk in terror from their natural mother, who had been sitting on them for a month. Again, the same source of affection was visible in the young bisons, brought from America to Taymouth by the late Lord Breadalbane: they loved the cow whom they saw, and of whom they sucked on board the ship; and that did as it always does — it gave them in puberty a desire to mate with the common bull, ins6itod of with a bull of their own kind. To those inclined to pursue these natural in- vestigations, and to amuse themselves with hybrid creation, I would give this caution : When it can be done, let the creatures you design thereafter to cross be reared by the same kind as those with whom you desire that they should breed, for it facilitates in the young a desire to mate with the perceptible progenitor. Even this fact is illustrated in every farm- yard. When the good wife has hatched her ducks under hens, the drake, when grown to 12 HYBRIDS AND MULES. maturity, prefers the society of the hens, and makes a duck, to his heart at least, out of every "chuckie** that he sees. The list of irretrievable mules, or barren crosses, that I have completely ascertained, are as follows: — The pheasant and the barn-door hen; the Muscovy drake and common duck ; the widgeon and common duck ; the American wood- duck and the pintail. The hybrids that are fecundite, and wiU breed on and on, are the pintail and common duck ; the beautiful little Bahama drake and the common duck ; the dusky duck of America and the com- mon duck ; and with these my experience in fowl at present ends. At one time I thought that the voice of the birds was some direction ; but it has nothing to do with the matter. True it is that the call of the male widgeon is perfectly unlike the caU of a drake, though the duck widgeon has the cry of a duck. But then the call of the Bahama drake is as unlike the common drake as that of the male widgeon ; yet the latter will breed with common ducks, and the offspring will breed again. If anything has struck me as indicative of facts in this particular, it is the manner and habits of the birds, more than their cries or plu- THE FECUNDITE HYBRID. 13 mage ; and to arrive at this observation the greatest supervision is necessary. It has frequently happened to me to be shown alleged hybrids, that were not hybrids in any way whatever. Such as pheasant-fowls, crosses also with ducks, and hare-rabbits, as they are called ; but having got myself well up in these particulars, I can at a moment dispel all delusion. In any hybrid cross, and invariably, sire and dam, or cock and hen, share in each limb, in feather and in fiir. There is not a feather in the pheasant and fowl hybrid that is not shared in by the paternal and maternal side ; and, what is still more curious, there being a few days' diflFer- ence in the moult of pheasant and fowl, the mule offspring has two moults immediately succeeding each other. I have thus collected the most spot- less and beautiful feathers shed on the first moult for ladies' hats ; and, strange to say, this double moult does not seem in any way to weaken the doubly-changing-bird. Hybrids that are mules^ in the tribes of which I speak, never lay eggs; but for all that deficiency they will frequently sit; and when eggs are put under them of a fecundite kind, they wiU. hatch and tend them with the greatest possible care — with this curious addition, that they have no 14 FRANK BUCKLAND AND THE SNAKES. desire to drive away their young when reared to maturity. My notice to their desire to sit was first drawn to a hen mule of mine, who was always sitting on one spot on the bare ground. At first I deemed her ill, but on moving her I discovered that the object of her maternal solicitude was an oyster-shell, the white side uppermost. So I made her a nest, put some hens' eggs under her, which she hatched, and then proved herself an excellent foster-mother. I am sorry to say that philosophers, and natu- ralists generally, are very easily deceived, and that they like also to deceive themselves. As witness the new foreign snake of Buckland, which never was anything but the common " brown snake " of this country; and the preposterous idea of the snake in the Regent's Park Gardens sitting to hatch her own eggSj whereas the poor reptile simply coiled herself round them to keep them from man, having no proper place provided for her to bury them. Philosophers and naturalists, too, have been natural enough to believe in the roars of the great monkey gorilla, and in the force of his blows, when, as any man not fond of in- dulging in a mare's-nest must know, that the monkey tribe are governed by the natural laws and instincts of the race, and that monkeys do not LIONS AND GORILLAS. 15 roar or strike. They invariably claw with the open hand, and chatter, or "jabber." It is enough to make a lion roar, could he but hear that he was said to have been out-roared and terrified by a big inactive monkey. I do not mean to tire my readers by alluding to the ridiculous fallacy put forth as to salmon and the salmon ladders. What I have ever said will one day be found to be the truth. No salmon ever went up such ladders so placed as those I have seen in Hampshire and Dorsetshire. Ignorant Commissioners, who have all their lives " sat by the wall instead of by the water,'* cannot have studied the habits of salmon, trout, and fish as I have; if they had, they would have known that the ordinations of creation cannot in some particulars be contravened by those of man, and that as a salmon " shoots a fall '' swift, immediate, and direct as an arrow from a bow, no steps that they can offer, through " a ladder," to his legless body, will make him change his instincts and wind about as an eel through holes by nature unex- pected. It may, perhaps, be in the remembrance of some of my readers, that some time ago I alleged that there were thousands and thousands of acres of land and water in the United Kingdom that, up 16 BARREN LANDS AND WATERS. to the present time, had lain fallow from anything that was either amusing or useful, whereas on sites that could not be made available to remu- nerative agriculture, that hitherto barren acreage of land and water might be made both useful and ornamental, as well as amusing to its possessors. Thus I have seen expansive acres of water with- out a fowl on their surface, or a fish worth catching in their deeps. I have seen miles and miles of moss-covered swampy bogs, without a rill of water being disclosed, and not earth enough shown to hold a worm and attract a snipe ; and I have longed for some such place to be put at my disposal in order to experimentalise, and at least try to prove my assumptions, as to making barren places useful, to be correct. However Paganini might have pleased his audience by playing on a single string, it is not my intention to harp too long on one ; therefore, with my readers* leave, for the present we will postpone the "anecdotes" on this subject of the latter years of " my life " to another chapter, varied by an intervening change. CHAPTER II. HADDON HALL — THE REIGNS OF MARY AND ELIZABETH THE EARL OF RUTLAND — SIR JOHN MANNERS — "THE KING OF THE PEAK" — SIR GEORGE VERNON HIS DAUGHTER, DOROTHY VERNON — THE MASQUED BALL — ELOPEMENT MURDER, AND THE LAST EXECUTION THAT TOOK PLACE WITHOUT TRIAL BY JURY. Part I. Of aU the gifts which a liberal Providence has assigned to man, there is scarce one which makes him at times more ** glorious. O'er all the ills of life victorious,'* than that of " building castles in the air." Stretched on a bed of suffering with a broken bone, there are whiles when, freed from immediate pain, he can lie on the narrow confines of his six- foot mattress, and, as a mental emperor, he can be more of a monarch than a king who fills the throne of realms. That castle-building in the air has been a favourite pursuit of mine ; and many an hour, when I have been compassed by danger VOL. I. c 7 18 CASTLE-BUILDING. and surrounded with enough to have made any man miserable, I have forgotten for the time each sorrow, each deed of ingratitude from those who ought to have had affectionate consideration for me, and risen on the full tide of joyous imagina- tion to halls of bliss, to forests of deer, to stables and kennels of horses and hounds, and to a posi- tion where charity might have been as ample as its virtues, even in poverty, are great, as well as incumbent on every Christian, on every soldier and gentleman. I never visit the ancient and romantic ruin of castle or hall without feeling inclined to seat myself on some time-worn stone or buttress, to commune ivith the spirits of other times. Spirits who had loved there, spirits who had fought there, and who, instead of knocking with impos- sible knuckles against tables, obedient to penny- seeking profligates in scenes termed Sciences, were really hovering round the living soul of one who would have loved and fought as they had done, had but the mysterious essence of being, twined us all together. Among the many graceful and venerable HADDON HALL. 19 heard various accounts; not only of its picturesque beauty, but of the romantic love-affair in which Sir John Manners carried ofl the daughter and sole heiress of Sir George Vernon, in those days better known as "the King of the Peak'' in Derbyshire, whose property and splendid resi- dence Haddon Hall then was. A mysterious longing having seized on me to see this place, and to gather anecdotes of the Upper Ten Thousand, however ancient their dates — having asked his Grace's permission to have the free run of the ruin, and, to while away the time if I wished it, leave to cast my fly in the preserved waters for trout, I set ott from town, and shortly found myself in close approximation — not, I hope, to the " ruin of my studies," so to speak, but to the ruined mansion of Haddon Hall, there to learn, in the midst of time-dilapidated fanes, oriel windows, tapestried chambers, and kerb-stones still bearing the deep impress of the heel of heavily-armed and iron-clad men, how "Dorothy Vernon" was wooed, and how won; by which gateway she eloped with her lover, and on what occasion; and what were the domestic circumstances by which, at the time, they were surrounded. In short, "by what mighty magic" not a handsome knight had won a bride, who 20 THE LIGHT OF OTHER DATS. eventually transferred the splendid domains of lier father to the already far-extending acres of the lords of Belvoir Castle. What castles I built in the air, with what spirits I conferred, or seemed to confer, the reader will learn from the following pages. While ima- gining these things, either stretched on the velvet turf sloping from the Hall to the river at its foot, or sunning myself in that self-same ray of light that, at that same hour, once came through that same casement, as Dorothy sat in her drawing- room and thought on her lover, illuminating her cheek as it did mine, no thought of the world's woes affected me ; no shade of sorrow came across "the light of other days:" I was alone, the monarch of all I saw, or thought that I saw; and, in a beautiful dream assuredly, I "had — my hour." But here — and according to truth I must say, that if "She" had come to stray on those lawns with me, they were open to the public, and for her I need have asked not special permis- sion: perhaps a brighter degree of poetry would have illumined my spirit, and I should have written more eloquently than I have ; or perhaps — Heaven save the mark! — ^^she'^ would have put all Dorothys out of my head ; for she would have AND WHO IS *' SHE ?" 21 been called by another name. And who is *' she?" I think I hear the reader say, as a young lady said to me at Brighton, whom I did not then know, when she asked me for the flower in my coat ; and I replied it was not mine to give, as " she," my love, had given it. My love had not really given it; I had plucked it myself. Who is she? Let Echo answer, " Who?" It is enough for me to know that she exists; and that, whatever be my destiny, wherever I travel, and as long as I breathe, in destiny, travail, and life, she must be loved with all my heart and soul, and with an intensity beyond compare. The only reader that can know who she is, must read with her soft, thoughtful, dove-like eyes ; for none will ever learn the fact from word or sign of mine. Among the institutions of Great Britain of which the country has reason to be proud, is that of the Public Press. Freedom of discussion, free- dom of opinion, and freedom to review the books of others, albeit whether the reviewer is capable or incapable, are the attributes which ought to constitute the valuable utility of the widely-em- bracing pen, but at the same time to restrain it from the vicious propensities and inherent incli- 22 THE PRESS. nations of those who, in many instances, from need, personal lust, or enmity, wield their self- constituted power to minister to their passions, or to work out their private animosity. This I have shown to have been the case with poor "L. E. L. ;" and, were it necessary, many more instances could be adduced in proof of what I say : but my wish is not to work up, or hurt, or invite the angry feelings of anybody, but rather to consider the immense value of the Public Press, while at the same time I do not pass over the faults of which the institution at times is still as the beast of burthen. I have often wondered at the powers of the reporters in the House of Commons, at open- air meetings, or on the hustings of an election; and, indeed, I have known many a speaker, if so his oration would enable me to call him, in the House of Commons and on the hustings, deeply indebted to the fact, that though in his case the "schoolmaster" seemed to have for ever been **at home," nevertheless the reporter had been and was " abroad," and by his better education and his good nature he put the speaker's words into their proper places, made sense of incoherent mal-expressions, stifled tautology, and placed what the speaker ought to have said, but not what JULY 1863. 23 he did say, in decent guise before the eyes of readers. In my own instance I have, in the many works which I have written, been very severely re- viewed, and not always reviewed in the service- able and legitimate way. That is, reviewers have attacked me personally, and applied their argu- ment to the man instead of to the matter; and I must say, and I say it with every certainty of being backed in it by every acquaintance I have, that some of those pretending to review me have utterly perverted my disposition and desires, and depicted me as the reverse of what I am. Except at home, by your own fireside, there is no place where man can be more comfortable than at his inn ; always supposing that that inn is a clean and well-provided one, with wealth of cold water and good wine. In an inn of the best sort, prettily built and beautifully situated, the clear waters of the deeply-bedded Derwent run- ning at the foot of the flower-garden, I found myself in the bright month of July, 1863. Bright, indeed ! too bright for me to make any use of the kind permission of the Duke of Rutland to fish in the preserved waters of the Wye or Derwent ; for in the latter, where there are the most trout, 24 THE '^ PEACOCK ** AT ROWSLEY. there was scarce a foot of water, save in some shallow holes, and the trout were as well aware of the switch of a fly-rod as the columbine of a pantomime is of the wave of a fairy's wand. The chief object that I had in view, when thus finding myself comfortably domiciled in the Peacock at Rowsley, was to inspect, linger around, and admire, that perfect representation of the Hall of the olden time called " Haddon." Having or- dered a slice of salmon, a roast duck and green peas, and a far-famed Bakewell cake, with a pint of sherry and some pale ale for my dinner, a fly was announced, and I proceeded in the first in- stance to the Church at Bakewell, where I found the utmost kind civility from the Incumbent and his family, and all attention at the hands of the clerk. My object there was to see the tombs of the Vernons, and that of Sir John Manners, who married the last-surviving daughter and heiress of Sir George Vernon, through whom the splendid domain came into the possession first of the Earls and then of the Dukes of Eutland. A portion of the church has been enlarged and modernized : but there yet remain a considerable part of the ancient or primeval structure, and many a worn and indented stone that has felt the pressure of the barefooted friar, or rang beneath the THE CHURCH AT BAKE WELL. 25 sonorous chanting of the monks, in the early Norman days and in the reign of King John. In the older part of the church may be seen the very rudest type of Norman Billetmould, with sundry traces in the walls of alteration and im- provement of very ancient date — probably made to suit the increase of the congregation. Within the scope of some modern enlargements — I am loath to say improvements, for 1 do not like an interference with venerable structures — have come the elaborate tombs of Sir George Vernon, better known in his time by the appellation of " King of the Peak," and those of his son-in-law, Sir John Manners, who eloped with his sole re- maining daughter, Dorothy, from her home at Haddon Hall, and thus brought to the ancestors of the present Duke of Eutland the Hall and its wide domains. On gaining their tombs I observed that great care had been bestowed by the sculptor on the form of Sir George Vernon, represented as it is, recumbent between his two wives. The figure and face are not represented as is usually seen — a grim-visaged, stalwart knight, with a beard, and no other expression ; but in- finite pains seem to have evidently been bestowed to give the lineaments of a handsome counte- 26 THE TOMB OF SIR JOHN AND LADY MANNERS. nance and an aquiline nose, while the figure is remarkably neat, and if rather slight, still tall and well-formed. On turning from the tomb of the King of the Peak to that of Sir John and Lady Manners, my eye was at once arrested by the shape of the Knight's head. The figure is kneeling on one side, and his lady at the other. Her features are remarkably small, as if they had been chiselled so for some reason ; but the head of the Knight was so much out of all usual proportion that I was at a loss to account for it, and stood in mute contemplation. The forehead is utterly depressed ; in fact, there can scarce be said to be any ; while the entire skull recedes backward from the brow in the most extraordinary shape I ever saw. My attendant, it would seem, gathered at a glance what it was that riveted my attention, when he said, " No doubt, sir, you are struck with the formation of the head. Many visitors to the church have blamed the sculptor ; but when the alterations caused these tombs to be interfered with a skull was found beneath, bearing in its construction such a close resemblance to that you are looking at, that there is no doubt but that there was an intention in the artist of the time to illustrate the peculiarity. This tomb bears date in the 26th of the reign of Elizabeth, 1584. THE LAST RESIDENT AT H ADDON. 27 Sir George Manners, the last of the Rutland family who resided at the Hall, the son of Sir John and Dorothy, who married the 2nd daughter of Sir H. Pierpoint, and died in 1623, has also a very elaborate tomb. There is a space on the tablet evidently left for the date of the death of his wife, but which has never been filled up. They had nine children, all of whom are represented on the tomb : the youngest died immediately after birth, and was buried in a species of swaddling cloth, as shown on the tomb ; and when the tomb was interfered with, the remains of the child were found without a cofBn. The inspection of an old church, and the tombs of those who from the dark space of the silent vault might murmur up to my ^ar, *' I, too, was a soldier, a knight, and huntsman, and once loved the living sun that now delighteth thee," ever inclines me to rather a saddening theme of thought; and I left the beautiful old church to proceed to mine inn at Rowsley, trying to hum a lively tune and to gladden my eyes with the bright and sunny prospect, in order to rouse myself out of more serious reflection. Succeeding in this, when I entered the comfortable Peacock Inn and asked for my dinner, all gloomy sensations had fled ; so, like a good general, I very soon 28 THE HALL ITSELF. harassed their retreat by an appeal to some very good light sherry and sufficient bitter ale. The next morning saw me in my fly again on my way to the Hall itself, and feeling sure that I should find enough there to make me tarry, mine hostess put me up some sandwiches and a flask of sherry; and so backed I very soon entered the park of Haddon Hall, crossed the pretty rippling river Wye, which murmurs at the foot of the terrace walls, and entered the neatly-kept lodge of the housekeeper, "Mrs. Bath,'* which domicile used to be the stables to the establishment. Having shown my credentials, from her I received every possible attention ; and while making the tour of the building it gave me the greatest pleasure to be able, most justly, to compliment her on the attention she paid to all the interests under her care. There was not a room that was not as well aired and as cleanly swept as any in an inhabited mansion. Ascending the hill from Mrs. Bath's lodge to the low entrance-door to the building, the first thing that struck me over the stone entrance to the outer terrace was the quartering of my own shield with that of the Vernons, the " ten crosses '' very visible ; a fact of which I had not been till that moment aware. Within the ITS HALLS AND OFFICES. 29 court of the Hall there was everything to admire ; for before the eye of modern inspection stood, not in vain, but in massive maintenance of the strength bestowed by the hand of men in dan- gerous times, the walls, the pavements, the wains- cots, the tapestries, and the floors, as they were when Dorothy, in her fantastic disguise at her father's masqued ball, fled to the bosom of a Manners. There was the Chaplain^s room, near the gateway, so that he might be accessible to any of the flock that sought him. On the table of the Chaplain's room lay some of the boots of Cromweirs time and other old things, and two or three rude hunting-horns, such as you see round-cheeked visages blowing as they run after deer on tapestried sylvan revelations. One of these I put to my lips, and blew such a rough, discordant blast, as I have no doubt shook the forms of the old deer-keeper and the old hunts- man, as they are represented in their portraits in the great hall. Leaning against the side of the entrance to the court was Sir George Vernon*s old mash-tub for brewing ; but neither the size of that, nor the size of the cellars and kitchen, came up to my idea of what it really required to furnish forth the feasts I heard of. The cellar was eleven yards each way, and the 30 THE PENAL HANDCUFF. kitchen ten. The dining-hall was ample and curious, and on its walls some of the finest antlers of red and fallow deer I ever saw : proving again, had proof been needed, of how the race of each have deteriorated in modem days — all, all for want of the infusion of fresh blood. On one side of this hall, and at a considerable distance from the dais, nailed to the wall, there was a single handcuff, which, supposing the wrist of a middle-sized man to have been put in it, would have held his arm stretched to the full; but it was not high enough to do so by mine. The history reported to me of this device was, that if any of the guests failed to drink enough, or, when haviug drunk too much, they did not carry their liquor discreetly, they were confined to the wall by this handcuff, and, their arm thus extended, cold water was poured down the limb, in trickling fashion, till they fainted away. This was told me by the housekeeper; but since she imparted the lore I have heard, or I have dreamed, another reason for the use of this instrument of torture, which I will faithfully render to my readers in another place. In the wainscot of the drawing-room, there also I found my shield in quarterings ; while the ceiling, which once had been carefully ornamented, REFORMATION CARRIED TOO FAR. 31 has been defaced with plaster and whitewash — no doubt in the days of the Reformation, though in what way the wise heads of the Reformists connected the devices on the ceiling with religious matters, for the life of me I could not divine. It is needless for me now to give a description of all the rooms I saw, the tale of true love which I contemplate relating; and the deed of outfang- and infang-thef executed by the King of the Peak, will necessitate rather a minute recurrence to many of the rooms within the Hall, as well as to the terraces without : therefore, in the hope that I have sufficiently interested the reader, male or female, to create a desire in them to follow me through a brief narration of some events about the end of Mary's reign, and the beginning of that of Elizabeth, I continue my story. It was, then, a sultry and an airless, though lovely evening, that on which I sat down to dinner in the comfortable little parlour on the ground-floor, looking out upon the garden of the Peacock at Rowsley, and towards the river Der- went. The river, deep and cool under the over- hanging banks where trees grow, rippled up over the shallows at the bridge. There its waters made 32 A DROP OF COMFORT. a soft and murmuring, and even a melancholy music to my ear ; which, after my inspection of tombs, bones, a human skull, antique antlers, horns, fossils, and deserted halls, fell, if freshly still, as though its notes were laden with a tearful weight, and did by the spirit as thunder-drops do when over- weighing summer flowers — it bowed down the lighter asph'ations of my heart, and for a time it made my mind again to mourn. It does not suit " the man " to give way to sad reflections : if the heart grow cold, the spirit's soul should warm it up ; and if a cloud essay to cling around reflection, then should nature's thankfulness to God assume the sunlight of devotion, and drive away despair. In a frame of mind not absolutely sad, yet still sedately reflective, I sat down to my lonely dinner, and feeling that there was a species of comfort in every glass of sherry — alas! that I should be forced to admit that sometimes the sunny side of existence is contained in a glass of brandy and water — I applied rather frequently to my temperate bottle : a mere pint certainly comes within that denomination ; nor did I abstain from a second glass of pale ale. Men, when they are alone, will fall asleep directly after dinner ; perhaps it would be as well for some tetes-d-t^te in the married line if they did not do so. However, as men cannot A STRANGE GUEST. 33 be cross in their sleep, the action of the fact, one way or other, may be left to chance. I do not think that on this occasion I did go off to sleep ; if I did, it was but to a wakeful sort of slumber, and I remember, that in a declension of the head made by me I was somewhat suddenly brought up to the perpendicular by becoming aware of a strange sort of soft oozing sound, as if some kind of heavy, but not hard substance, was pushed against, or butting at, the diamond panes of the little window looking into the garden. It was something like the sound which a damp cloth would make under the hand of a housemaid when cleaning a window ; and yet it came too full and heavily for that : so much so, that on one of its pressures against the panes, the glass on the left- hand side the window as you look into the garden cracked, and I thought I heard a sort of phantom execration. This of course aroused me to clearer perception, when, on looking to the place, I beheld in the light of the summer night a head ; yes, de- cidedly the round, fat outline of a face and head beneath the shadow of what might once havi been a hard, but now a very soft and crumpled hat, and I saw that the head was butting at the window. Mundane and dreamy imagination at once sug- gested a drunken man ; but I apprehended no un- VOL. I. D 34 EXPLANATION. pleasant intrusion to the room on this score, on account of the upright iron bars of the window. It seemed, however, that I must have mistaken their width, for what seemed a very sufficient jolly head when outside the window, at last bobbed against the open casement, and, striking the bars, intruded itself slap into the room ! My first im- pulse was to rise and hit it, but, ere I could take a step to give efiect to my purpose, a rather good- humoured, but still strangely sepulchral tone of voice, exclaimed, " Don't hit me ! No violence, my good master. I only came to do your honour service." As the lips uttered these words, the very thick- set and lusty body, as it appeared outside, to my unspeakable astonishment squeezed itself after the head, through the very narrow bars, inside, and with a flourish of two very stout legs the figure came off" the window-sill, and slipped down bodily on its feet upon the floor. " How very tall you are, good master sir ! " said the uninvited guest, eyeing me from head to foot from beneath the overhanging limp penthouse of his cnjmpled hat. ^^ I heard you in the churchyard to-day, while your honour held some talk with our clerk as now is, about the good Enight, my master as was, and I made up my mind to have a look at you." MIDNIGHT HOSPITALITY. 35 "Well/' I replied, "look then your fill. I never saw so big a terrier as you are get to ground in so small an earth." " Ah, my good master/' rejoined my strange guest, with what seemed to me to be a thrill of de- light ; " how it does rejoice my bones — I had nearly said marrow-bones, but that's not now to the purpose — to hear your honour speak in sporting fashion ! But don't talk about ' an earth/ I knew you loTed the chase, for I have heard you spoken of ; and so I thought that, once in a way, I 'd look into a room again, instead of taking my midnight walks among the woods, and tell your honour what you'd like to know." •' What have you to tell me, then ? " I replied. " If your tale is long, be seated, and help yourself out of the bottle or the jug, which you like best." " The bottle, your honour ! My eyes are dusty, perhaps, but I don't see it." " Not see it ?" I returned. " Why, there it is, the next thing to your hand!" " What, this here ?" cried my visitor, who had now assumed a seat, grasping my pint of wine. " Ha, ha ! this here leetle thing a bottle I ha, ha ! And I suppose," pointing to the ale-jug, "that there t'other spouted thing 's a pitcher ! ha, ha ! I craves your honour's pardon, but if our old hunts- 36 THE DEER AT CHATSWOETH. man was here, how he would open out with me, and we'd have a jolly laugh together! Howsom- ever, he can't come, so there's no two ways about it." My guest, or my supposed guest, having re- freshed himself with wine, then seemed to await my further question ; so I asked him who he was, and, to my utter astonishment, he replied as follows : — " You went, sir, round our Hall to-day — I heard you say when you were in the churchyard that you would do so ; and, no doubt, when in the 4ining-hall at the mansion you saw two pictures : one was of our old huntsman, with couples for hounds in his hand; and the other was your honour's servant, that's me. I was the deer-keeper, in charge of chase and manor, and it would have done your honour's heart good just to have seen the stags and bucks that fed in our glades. Not such stags and bucks as are at Ghatsworth now, for sometimes of a moonlight night I goes to look at them, as, worse luck ! there are none left here. Ours, and theirs too, then were twice as large as they be now. I wish to be fair, your honour, in speaking of a neighbour; but if you goes to Ghatsworth afore you leaves Derby- shire in this the summer of 1563 — I would say, 1863 — you will see the deer worse there than they THE STEWARD AND THE LONDONER. 37 really are ; for it having beea my Lord DevoD- shire's — Duke he is now — resolve (it couldn^t be his pleasure) to reduce his stock of deer, his steward took it in hand — as if a steward could know any- thing outside the buttery — ^and he goes and says to one Herring, a Lunnoner, ' You may take so many deer, all at so much a-head/ ' Yes, sir,* says the crafty Lunnoner; ' and I 'U catch 'em just after the rut.' * So be it,' says the steward, without so much as consulting the deer-keeper. So down comes Master Herring when he knows as all the best bucks is very weak, and much easier caught than the younger ones and does, and he takes up all the valuable deer, and leaves my lord little for the next year's breed, and nothing to speak of for his table. A pretty good bargain for Master Herring, and a deuced bad 'un for my lord ! " At the conclusion of this speech the old deer- keeper, as he announced himself, took another chuckling grasp of my little bottle, smacked his lips, and looked at me again. It now struck me, that some strange chance had put at my disposal the very man I wanted, my purpose being to write a true legend, or anecdote, of old Haddon Hall; so I at once led to the subject by remarking that "he must have seen many a jolly day in his time, and been conversant, too, with that eventful era in re- 38 THE DEER-KEEPER*S TALE. gard to the future destination of the family domains, when Sir John Manners first became enamoured of the only surviving daughter of Sir George Vernon, otherwise called ' the King of the Peak/ " "Jolly days, sir!" remarked what must have been this very old man. "I have seen many on 'em, and to spare, or I should not have been at this here table now. If your honour would like to hear the story, I have yet time to tell it in ; or if I haven't, I can call again to-morrow night." '' Go on then, my good friend," I rejoined ; "take another pull at your glass, and I am all attention." ** ' A ladj looks down from Haddon height, 0*er all men's hearts she 's lordin'; Who harms a hair of her true love's head. Makes a foe of Geordie Gordon.' So sings, or leastways did sing, our ^ Old Ballad,' '' continued the deer-keeper: — " It was during the latter years of the reign of Queen Mary that the eldest daughter of Sir George Vernon, whom men called ' King of the Peak' in Derbyshire, died, and thus placed Dorothy, his surviving child, as sole apparent heiress of his wealth and wide domains, and mistress of his ancient Hall. Lord love you, sir! it would have done you good to have seen the feasting and drinking that there was in those H ADDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 39 days ; it .was, indeed, ' merry in hall when beards wagged all ;' and when Sir George and our young lady, Dorothy, sat on the dais, there was such a kindliness in their glances down the tables, for the feasting-boards often stood as thick as they could be placed, that though good order was ever kept in their presence, every soul, from the guests to the steward and retainers, even to the lowest jack-scullion, felt as if they were at home in their own houses. From what I have heard people a-talking of in later days over my head, the feasting in Sir George's time was not like what it is now, any more than this here thimble (pointing to my pint bottle), and that there mug (pointing to the jug that held my pale ale), was like to our flagons, or black-jacks. Bless you, sir ! the jacks that our two butlers used to carry — we had two : one for the strong-beer cellar and one for the small — to replenish the tables with, was, when full, as much as a man could lift; and even then right oft;en were they fetched and car- ried to and fro ! Mind you, I speak of days when there were guests; at other times, when none but the household were at dinner, there then was plenty, but no waste ; and our young lady, taking a leaf out of her poor mother's book, who had been dead some years, used to look us all up, and 40 THE VERNONS IN DEBBTSHIRE. keep a good eye even to the kitchen. 'Tis like your honour may have heard that Sir Ralph de Vernon, one of the ancestors of this here family, lived to the age of 145 years ; it 's so set down upon the ' Book of Huvey/ folio 3, date 1306 : but it 's a fetch about that knight's age, and I know it, because in my time such things were nearer than they are now. True, he lived to a great age, and married a daughter of my Lord Dacres, and after that the widow of Master ' Jack Hatton ;' but he didn't require all that time to do it in. Belike you know that ' Peyvere and PevereU, and Vere and Vernon,' came over when your honour's ancestor did, at the time of the Conquest, and that, like Harding did with the Saxon Berkeley, they married the native nobility, and got royal and territorial grants ; and it was that that settled our family, the Vemons, in Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Your honour knows some of the Vernon lines of later date: — ' A grislj boar, as raven*8 feather black, Bred in that land Bollo had hj his wife, Past th' ocean, the Bastard's part to take, Who Harold reft of kingdom and of life/ You sees the boar on our arms, no doubt, with the quarterings and the crosses of your honour's shield ; but as I have told you things beside the LOVE AND MUBDER. 41 mark of the tale you want, I 41 just wet my lips again, and then to love and murder, for there ^s both in what I have to tell." By this time my anxiety for the power of speech in my guest was excessive, for not only had he made frequent applications to the wine, but of late he had gone deep into the bosom of the jug of sufficient ale, and the tones of his voice, which were always hollow, or like those of a man with his lips to the larger end of a hunting- horn, and speaking through it, had become more indistinct, each word running into the next in a way that was doubly mysterious: so when in describing the fact that the hero and heroine of his discourse were, as he pronounced it, " sh-was- fond-of-seach-other," I suddenly resolved simply to listen to and catch any coherent sentence, but to write the continuous tale myself, which we must now defer to another chapter. CHAPTER m. A LEOENB OF OUR LIFE — THE POWEE TO TAME TIMID CREA- TURES — NATURALISTS, NATURALS, AND FLATS. As no opportunity has been afforded me to tame lions and tigers, as it is the fashion to call the redaction of those beasts into non-rending or de- vouring behaviour, and as it likes me better to induce a little thing to love me than a gigantic brute to be afraid of me, my experience has been gathered among birds. I do not say dogs, because a dog is an already tamed and domestic animal, capable of some of the finest feelings in human nature, and able and ever wiUing to give man a lesson in many of the virtues, drawn even from the highest texts of Scripture. When I see not only the writings of accepted naturalists ^f the bygone day, but books in the present day pretending to treat, of the mysteries of creation, and of the instincts of beasts, birds, and fishes, and their habits, and the egregious blunders into which their writers, past and pre- " TOM BEOWN " AND DE. BURNET. 43 sent, more or less have fallen, I am inclined to review them all, and show some of the fallacies that now cumher the shelves of the British Museum, — records curious enough from their dates and errors, and usefully kept, perhaps chiefly to show the progress of science and literature. We all know that when an author writes on any subject with opinions of his own, and facts to . which he can attest, in direct opposition to long- accepted notions, that there arise at once hosts of people ready to revile, and, if they could, to ridicule all he says. The lines by " Tom Brown " on " Dr. Burnet, bishop of Salisbury," with a very little alteration, would suit some of the professors of the year of our Lord 1866-7, slightly altering the words of the last two lines : — '* Here old Sarum lies, As great as wise, And leam'd as Tom Aquinas ; Lawn sleeves he wore, Yet knew no more Of nature than Socinus" It is however idle to expose the faults of others, if th^y are dead, and as idle to attempt to contravene the opinions of the living, while with 44 VARIOUS KINDS OF FOWL. the tenacity of life they cling to their own doctrines. I select, therefore, simply to show what it has been in my power to do ; and if any other natu- ralist of my day has done, or can yet do, the same, why I will drink his health and hail him a joUy fellow ! In this our winter of 1866-7 many of my various kinds of wild-fowl have their wings at their command, and at that beautifully mysterious hour, known to all true sportsmen as " cockshut," and by cockneys and townsmen as twilight, they seek their far-off feeding-places to welcome there, in the " foreign rides of fowl " — a term well known among decoy-men — and to locate their guests in the English waters, and thus bring them back, if they will come, to the fostering preserva- tion of their own peculiar preserve. My flight of fowl is of the most varied kind, and each bird of which it consists is personally attached to me: they will follow me about at the specified times of feeding, morning and evening, so close and so 'devoid of all fear, that many of them will feed out of my hand, and even prevent my walking without great caution, from their assembling on and around my feet, and absolutely covering the ground around me. HOW TO TAME THEM. 45 Some of these fowl are hand-reared, some have been taken wild in various decoys, but all are tame, and more or less attached to me and to my keeper, and my servants and myself are the only people who ever feed them. All creatures under the sun form their cha- racters or their conduct through the force of example. Thus, the hound takes his bearing from his huntsman. If the huntsman is wild and noisy, so will the hound be ; if he is cool, sensible, persevering, and resolute to work all day, rather than lose his fox, so will the hound fashion his nature accordingly, and "put his nose down" to the last. And now as to bringing wild-fowl to live in this, what may be called, semi-domesticated state. Having been asked to describe the methods I adopt, they are very simple, and I proceed to lay them before my readers. When ducks' eggs of any kind are put under a barn-door hen, great care must be taken each day that the hen is off for food to sprinkle the eggs slightly with tepid water. The reason for this is, that the eggs under their natural parent would re- ceive this kind of moisture whenever she returned from her aquatic feeding-places to her nest ; and, therefore, if this plan is not pursued, they become 46 HOW TO R£AB THEM. too dry. Always, if possible, have all eggs, whe- ther of water-fowl, pheasants, partridges, black- game, or grouse, nested on the ground. Birds of all kinds hatch better so ; and not only that, suppose twelve young ones were hatched, twelve to each nest, one having been on the ground and the other in a fowl-house or on boards, the young that were hatched on the bosom of Mother Earth would be much stronger and better to do than those in the more artificial situation. When any of these fowl or game-birds are hatched, and put out with their foster-parent the hen, a crate should be put to the front of the coop, fitting close to the sides of the latter, whatever breadth it might be, and extend at least six or seven feet in length. The crate should be about a foot high, and the top of it be fitted either with a close- meshed net or a wire net, to prevent the young birds getting out, or other birds getting into them. The walls of the crate should not be higher than a foot, in order to let as much sun come to the brood as possible. If the brood should be of water-fowl, then, for the first ten days or fortnight, they should simply have an earthenware-dish, such as a good-sized flower- pot would stand in, filled from some pond, not pump water, and some short sweet grass thrown HOW TO FEED THEM. 47 into it for the little birds to wade among, and, if they liked, to eat it. A little fresh mould, or fine grayel or sand, should also be put into this dish; and the food of the birds should be at first "wild willow-weed seed," strewn on the water, grits and little red worms cut small, and raw bullock's or sheep's liver finely minced; and to this, as they get stronger, well-kept and well-scoured maggots, hempseed, and very thickly-mixed oat or barley-meal (I prefer the former), may be added. When the young fowl begin to know their foster-mother, and to have overcome their terror at the hand that feeds them, then the crate may be drawn sufficiently away from the sides of the coop to let the young come forth on the grass to catch insects ; and when they have become strong and less timid, then their coop, with the hen in it, may be moved to the water's side, and the young birds permitted to disport themselves in their natural element. When they retire for the night under the hen, a board should be fitted well to the front of the coop, and slates put beneath the coop all round, projecting a few inches within and without the coop, to prevent die entrance of vermin* The most common as weU as the worst of 48 HOW TO PROTECT THEM. vermin is the house-rat. I will be bound that the coop has not been put out by the waterside two days, ere some rat out for the summer, by what he regards as his seaside, has found it out. If, when the rat thus finds it, after the front of the coop is boarded up for the night a small light-going steel trap is set, so that the water lightly but completely covers ity just at the front of the coop, where the little ducks feed or go in and out, the vermin is sure to be taken. If it is intended to pinion the wild-fowl, to do it effectually the wing must be taken off at the second joint from the body. It is useless to take off the extreme joint only at the end of the wing ; for when the habit of body is in the humour to throw out the blood-feathers in the moult, the end of the wing, being not much more than gristle, will grow again, and a second ope- ration, if you can then catch the bird, becomes necessary. The safest time to pinion birds is at the moment all their feathers have completed the first moult, and become thoroughly dry at their base. If not pinioned then, the termination of the second moult must be waited for, when the bird has assumed the adult plumage. If on finding, in the first instance, that you have not HOW TO PINION THEM. 49 caught the bird just at the right time, then, to prevent his flying away (oflfended, perhaps, at being caught), clip with a scissors that portion of the feathers in the wing that have become hard, and wait till all are hardened to completely pinion him. Use a sharp penknife, not scissors, and sever the joint in the midst, taking out a portion of the joint, and restore the bird at once to the water ; and these things attended to, there is no danger to be apprehended from the ope- ration. If a bird is in moult at the time of pinioning, so great is the determination of blood to the skin and to the extremities, that, on the joint of the wing being severed, he is certain to bleed to death. Frost also should be avoided for this operation, as the wound is sure to be affected by it, and perhaps to mortify. In approaching wild- fowl while in this same tame state, all haste or sudden appearances should be avoided ; and the person who feeds them should always try to be in the same, or a dress similar to the one he at first wore, when they began to notice him. If you want to increase your power over the birds you should, in the first instance, let them see you in a gaudy-coloured coat, as much unlike the common patterns as possible, and always wear VOL. I. E 50 HOW TO INDUCE THEIR ATTENTION. it when you go to feed them, I discovered this while keeping my stag-hounds at Cranford. One morning the pheasants in what was called the " Churchyard Cover " not having been fed, 1 went in my orange plush frock, or " tawny coat," as the ancients defined it when the hounds of my family were kept at " Charing Cross," or at the then " village of Charing," and attended by "thirty huntsmen in tawny coats,'' and fed as I was wont to do when in my shooting-jacket. This bright appearance was never forgotten by the pheasants, and, whether they had been fed or not, they always recollected the colour and connected it with food, and as I walked from the mansion down to the kennel on the mornings of hunting every pheasant in the cover followed me, and stood in the bushes near to or round the kennel-door. I remember when the Field newspaper was at its best, a correspondent addressing the then Editor, and asking him if he could account for the state of some hawks he had in training. He left them quite good to his "fist,'' and tame, and, leaving them so, went out for a few days' pleasure. On returning home the first thing he did was to ricsh to his hawks, to see how they had been cared * for, when, to his astonishment and dismay, to him they evinced the utmost wildness, were scared at CAKE OF THEIR EGGS. 51 his approach, and were then and there quite in- tractable. Had I thought it worth my while to answer his query, I should have suggested less haste in his approach after an absence, and a change in his irresistible or pleasure-seeking gar- ments to the attire of the old shooting-jacket and that in which it had been his custom to attend his birds. The hawks would then have recognised their friend, and, if they had been fond of him in that attire, evinced much pleasure at his return. It is often astonishing to me how men pass over apparently little things, which little cheap things are really the keystone to success, and only grasp at costly ones, because they impress their minds from the trouble they occasion. Thus I have had fowl from foreign countries sent to me, every care being taken of them as to corn, but a little fine sand or gravel utterly unthought of; in which cheap thing was centred all the chances of a healthftil existence, and the delivery to me of them alive. In the same way men let the eggs of fowl remain on their table till they have enough for a sitting, kept perhaps in cotton, or some dry material, and never sprinkled with a little water, and never turned. Instead of this, there should be a little water applied to the eggs every day, and each egg should be completely and carefully turned 52 THE BLACKCOCK. by the hand, so that it should never lie for twenty-four hours on the same side. If left in one position, the bird in hatching will be found stuck to the shell, and unable to get rid of the incum- brance. To plunge the egg then in warm — very warm, but not too hot — water, will sometimes effectually lucubrate the error, but in nine cases out of ten the callow bird so adhered to the shell will die. The bird that I have taken immense pains with, in an attempt to tame him, or, by hand-rearing, to give him a local attachment to the spot, is the blackcock. If pinioned and at large in a walled garden he will become very tame, but then in that situation there is one thing absolutely fatal to his continued existence, and that is the growth of fruit in the garden, whether it be of standard plums or apples, or of waU-fruit. However amply the blackcock may be fed with oats and Indian corn, boiled rice and thickly- kneaded meal, still there is something in the way of food that he wants and you cannot give him ; for, do what you will, he will swallow all the small, blighted, bullet-like little apples that fall in his way, and the same by the little blighted peaches, nec- tarines, and apricots, and thus what we call indi- gestibly " crop-set " himself, and consequently die. THE PRAIRIE GROUSE. 53 I cannot say that I have entirely failed to induce greater trust in man in this beautiful game-bird, for there is an old wild native of my heaths that comes on my little lawn, sits on the garden wall, and in spring " curls " with some of his fellows near my house, and does his best to drive all the cock pheasants away. Not one pheasant can withstand his assault, or the fury of his appearance when his tail is up, fan-like, completely over his back, and the long curled black feathers on either side of it exalted on either side his face, ornamented by the bright red upstanding fringe above his eyelids. While he does this he stamps like the male prairie- grouse, or as the turkey does when he is making a fool of himself in the farmyard ; and, as far as I can learn, like a Chinese soldier he relies more on his noise and looks as against an enemy than in the danger arising from his blows. The male prairie-grouse — these birds have bred with me — follow his fashion in war, and the noise, or howling, they make resembles the same in a bloodhound, and quite as loud. On either side their neck they inflate, when the skin is bare, two brilliantly-hued vermilion and orange globes, the size of an orange : these globes push up or excite the long " pennated " plume that is on either side, descending from beneath the cheeks; and 54 THE AMERICAN WOOD-DUCK. these feathers, so supported, stand up perfectly erect like horns. When the male bird howls he stops and stoops his head, with bill close to the ground, and by a great eflFort he produces this kind of hollow howl by forcing his breath through these large globes, but unless the globes are full to their utmost extent he does not indulge in any sound at all. There is nothing more curious than to see that most lovely plumaged bird, the American wood- drake, who is susceptible of being made very tame, endeavour to induce the common duck to pair with him. He is the gentlest and most graceful of all the duck-lovers I ever saw, and by continuous and the most worshipping assiduity he makes an impres- sion on his mistress, totally at variance with her common nature. Unlike the common drake, he enters into no unseemly scramble with her for the bit of bread or kneaded meal, but he invites her to partake of it as the barn-door cock does the hen ; and if he be pestered by the presence of the more vulgarly intrusive ducks and drakes, he will seize the morsel out of their way, and, carrying safe off in his bill, call to his duck to come and take it. His efforts to keep her from the flock and to get her to himself are beautiful. If she swims towards any other bird he glides before her, making a whis- ITS PECULIARITIES. 55 pering sort of whistle, gets in her way, and with his beautiful breast steers her through the water, as far as he can from surrounding contamination. He heads her at every turn, and at last teaches his duck to understand and love him. You will not succeed though in effecting this cross, unless you can confine the wood-drake with the common duck in an aviary, because the more violent drakes of the duck's own kind will at last enforce a separation, and Uke the gipsy girl, if de- coyed away from her camp by a well-dressed suitor, there is always a latent hankering to go back to the more squalid alliance. There is another difficulty with these birds, too : the wood-drake will only love where his mind directs; it is not in human power to pair him against his will, and he will only love at his own free choice from a flock where the fowls are all at large together, and he is free to choose. It is not always possible at the right moment to catch the pair thus associated, and if you catch him and then put him in an aviary with a duck as much resembling his love as it is for one bird to resemble another, he will have nothing to say to her ; but sit on the bank melancholy and brooding over the loss his bosom has sustained. If, on the other hand, he is left at large, then 56 LIFE IN THE COUKTRY-HOUSE. the common drakes will beat him and drive him off; and his fickle fair one, approving of the best warrior, sails away and leaves the graceful suitor in the lurch — a fact I have seen happen in regard to men and women. Our " lives '* in our country-houses are often- times more curious and illustrative than the vulgar world is apt to believe. The old vulgar saying, " Oh, he is a man who can think of nothing but horses and dogs !" is really but seldom applicable to the country gentleman, or noble lord at his castle, mansion, or hall. We hunt, we shoot, we love our horses, hounds, and dogs, our woods and waters, and our fields ; they are the agreeable adjuncts and recreations of our lives: but this attachment to field sports does not unfit us for the graver and wider pursuits and duties of life, nor do they in any way brutalize our nature, or unfit us to admire and cultivate every more gentle accom- plishment under the sun. Our tenantry and the labouring poor, by our residence among them, obtain our friendship and our care ; and every edu- cated and thinking mind must derive a greater benefit from constant commimion with the book of nature, and the works — the wide, the wild, the beautiful, and unfettered and inscrutable works — of God. THE BARON AND THE RUSTIC POOR. 57 "Our legends and our lives" will bear re- search, and have stood, and will stand the test of ages, in spite of all the noisy, selfish, hollow dema- gogues, who from time to time "spawn" their speeches, " And demand a praise." In times of injustice, tyranny and distress, the baron's sword has leaped from its scabbard in the people's cause — Runnymede still tells the tale; and when famine assails the labouring poor, what hands go more lavishly deep into their pockets than those of the undoubted nobility and gentry of the United Kingdom ? CHAPTER TV. GHOST STORIES — THE LIVING AND THE DEAD — THE BLUE DRESSING-ROOM — A GHOST IN WALES A MURDER IN SCOTLAND MR. STRACHAN HELEN BELL AND STRANGE DEEDS, In referring to Ghost Stories, and telling " anec- dotes'' of the ancestral predecessors of" the Upper Ten Thousand," I know that I have a very delicate task to perform, governed as I am by the sincere desire to hurt no one's feelings. In writing anecdotes of the living or the dead the same delicacy ought to rule the writer's pen, for the dead cannot contradict ; their memory, too, ought to be revered ; and in addition to this, there may be those yet in existence who might be compromised or annoyed if the tale were bad or sad. It is strange, but " up" in ghost stories as I am, take all those I know, and the majority of re- visitations by souls to this world — for of course they must be souls, having left the earth and their bodies at the same time — are connected in some THE BLUE PRESSING-ROOM. 69 degree or other with avarice, or at least with the love of money, and very often with a desire to arrange their hair. There is a house, I will not say in what county, though its mistress is very beautiful, and there is in that house a room called " the Blue Dressing-room," (there are blue rooms, and yellow rooms, and red rooms, in nearly all old mansions, so the colour mentioned leads to nothing,) that is haunted by a ghost — by a soul about whose parting from this world, as well as with his estate, there are told wild stories. . No servant will sleep in this room, and when I ask what appearance has ever been seen in the room by a credible witness, I am told that '' the old gentleman" (the monosyllable "the" does not mean the devil, but a former possessor of the estate) comes to this room as soon as it is dark, and, in commemoration of the supposed violence done to him, or to his wishes, " stands before the looking-glass and brushes his hair!^^ Well, this is an odd idea, this double reason for the return to this life of an unhappy soul, being gold, and vanity as to looks, illustrated by the assertion that he was coerced in leaving the former ; and at the age at which he died, he must be deemed to have been not over-sedulous as to the latter, viz. his personal appearance. 60 DISAPPOINTED HEIRS. In another instance a lady of large property married when she was old. I take it her riches came not to her at an early period of life — a sup- position sufficiently accounting for prolonged celi- bacy ; and having expectant heirs, when she died a will was found leaving every sixpence and fraction of money and estate to her lawyer and his son. The mansion where this happened was an old, rambling, ill-built house, situated in a hollow at the foot of a high hill densely wooded, and was close to the sea-shore. Soon after the old lady's death and the de- claration of the most unlooked-for will, a rumour got abroad that her soul haunted both the house and grounds; and for a soul who had come to years of discretion I must say the farmers, do- mestics, and labouring people, gave unto her the most strange cantrips. Even strangers passing the lodge gates swore that they saw a little old lady in evening dress, who bolted out suddenly on purpose to scare their horses ; and all farmers who arrived late from the market-town excused themselves by assuring their dames that they had " not stayed out drinking," and that whatever change in their method of speech the dame observed was not the gin-and- water, but "sh- fright, for shey'd been carried over hedges-sh-fields BEWARE OF LAWYERS. 61 by sh'old ooman, and left in sh' brook or sh* ditch;' Now if this ghost had confined herself to carrying off farmers, frightening strangers, and even ducking the lawyer who was the supposed cause of her restlessness, no one would have cared: but connected with her presence there seemed a curse upon the son and daughters who benefited by the will; and the sins of the father, if any, were in this case assuredly visited on the chndren. The two daughters had been nice, pretty girls : one had an accident and injured her figure, the other became insane; while the old ghost, not content with these misfortunes, haunted the house and grounds as briskly and continuously as ever, visiting the bed-rooms of all guests, and fright- ening everybody out of their senses. The father and mother — that is, the lawyer and his wife — died; the estate came to the son, who married excellently well; but as he could not exorcise the ghost, it was resolved to pull down the old house and build a new one in its stead. And now comes the strangest part of the tale, backed as it is by the architect who built the new house, and who came to sleep in it to await the arrival of, and to receive his employers when they 62 THE AECHITECT AND THE GHOST. came home from abroad. The tale he told was this. Having retired to bed early, and stirred the fire before he sought his pillow, the fire continued for some time to throw a distinct light over the apartment, when suddenly he saw plainly con- fessed before him, and standing on the hearth- rug, the figure of a little old lady. At first he thought it might be the new housekeeper, for all the servants had been newly hired, and that she was ignorant of which room he slept in ; so, by way of a modest signal, he coughed loud enough to have made any housekeeper aware of the male presence. It had no effect; the intruder did not even turn her head ; and by this time he had had leisure to observe that the dress of the figure before him was immensely antiquated; and for a man in a terrible fright I must say he was a close observer, for he thus depicted her attire. She wore a short flowered kind of tunic over a white petticoat, the sleeves fitting close to the arm as far as the elbow, and terminated by deep lace ruflBies: the arm, therefore, from elbow to hand, bare, and disclosing to his horrified view the most brown, shrivelled, weird, and wizened limb imaginable. The narrator of this declared, that while he looked on this apparition there was an in- THE NEW HOUSE ALL IN VAIN. 63 describable dread upon him, and a cold shudder up his back, which he had never known before or since. So terrified was he, though he declared that he was in no way nervous, that instead of accosting the old lady he seized the bell at the bed's head, and rang such a continuous peal that every servant in the house came tumbling into his room together ; and when he looked for the old lady she had disappeared, not by the door, because to get to it she must have passed him, but by some means only dispensed to wandering spirits. On telling the servants why he rang the bell, each and every one exclaimed, " The ghost ! the ghost ! " In this instance, then, pulling down the old house and building a new one did not lay the ghost, though it caused the outlay of a considerable sum of money; and, as far as I know, the old lady has it all her own way to this hour. Ceaigerook Castle, N. B. It is strange, when we look through the legends of former years, to find that not only is the gloomy month of November famed for its murky atmosphere and the lugubrious shadow of its dark and gloomy days, but as if to add to its horrors, or perhaps induced by weather so 64 EDINBURGH IN 1707. much in accordance with the commission of crime, men's hearts seem to fraternise with the forms on the shrouded face of the world, and to seek, even in the daily darkness, an opportunity for the commission of deeds they would shrink from before the rays of an unclouded sun. It was on a dark day, a week previous to the 3rd of November, 1707, that Helen Bell, the house- keeper of Mr. Strachan, in the house of that gentleman in Edinburgh hospitably entertained as her friends two men, " William Thomson, wright," and "John Robertson, smith," with all the comforts that her position enabled her to set before them. Little did she think, that all the time they were professing their admiration for such personal charms as she possessed, and par- taking of her hospitable cheer, that in truth they were but humouring her vanity, so that they might gain time in which to compass, and a scene wherein to enact, her untimely death. Yet so it was ; so such deception has ever been, and so it will be again. The villains traded in woman's vanity, in order to fulfil the impious and horrible designs of their own depraved and hellish dispositions. In the company of their intended victim, in Mr. Strachan's house in Edinburgh, these monsters in crime revelled ; the idea of rendering that hand life- MURDER. 65 less and cold, which then warm and kindly poured out for them the foaming tankard or the inspiriting spirit, now entered their desperate thoughts : bent on getting money, and capable of any deed, these men flattered and cajoled their victim till, in the openness of her unsuspecting discourse, she had told them on the Saturday that on the followiag Monday, the 3rd of November, 1707, she should proceed to Craigerook Castle in possession, among other things, of a sum of money. As if by accident, at five on that Monday morning, these men fell in with her near the Well Bow, and announced that they were going a part of the way in the same direction as herself. Pleased with their company, and unsuspecting, unappre- hensive of any mischief, at their solicitations of being of service to her she gave to Thomson two bottles and the key of her master's castle to carry, and to Robertson she assigned something else. Thus they proceeded in approved good fellowship till they came below the Castle, when one of them threw her down on the steps, the other at the same time striking her with a hammer; when, having murdered and robbed their victim, the keys of the entrancie-door in their possession, they hastened on to plunder the premises thus rendered up to pillage. VOL. 1. F 66 ROBBERY. On reaching the Castle they opened the outer door with the key already in their possession, lit a candle at the kitchen-fire, which yet held a few embers, and then, either with a crowbar or the poker, "prized" the study door, broke open a chest and possessed themselves of eight bags con- taining money, besides a purse of gold, leaving, through accident or oversight, two other bags in the chest, also containing cash. Of the eight bags thus stolen Thomson carried six, as well as the purse of gold, and Robertson the other two bags, one of which contained a hundred pounds. As soon as the robbery was completed, Robertson suggested that they should gather together all the tow they could find, as well as the linen and bed- clothes, and carrying them into a back room set the house on fire, as a means of concealing their crime ; but, strange to say, though at that moment red-handed in the terrible fact of murder, and stained with the blood of woman, Thomson refused to comply with the suggested incendiarism, saying that "he had done wickedness enough already, and was resolved not to burden his soul with any more.'* In this resolve he persisted, though Robertson threatened to murder him for his faint- heartedness. Now it is almost impossible to conceive that a villain so steeped in the most A STKANGE INTERPOSITION. 67 hideous crime as Thomson was, could have had any qualms of conscience and scruples unless through some heavenly interposition, or reservation of circumstances that might lead to future de- tection : but so it was ; Thomson persisted in his refusal, and Robertson did not put his threat of a second murder into execution. Leaving the house in company, as they returned together through the Grass Market they mutually swore to each other to assign their bodies as well as their souls to the devil, if ever they should impeach or tell upon each other in the event of being apprehended. Robertson, the most daring of the two, then and there at once proposed that this impious engage- ment of theirs should be engrossed in a solemn bond signed in blood, and made, as far as men could make it, indissoluble in its terrible provisions. There seemed however, according to tradition, to be other ears than theirs listening to the proposal, for no sooner was the suggestion uttered by Ro- bertson than the villains were alike startled, Thomson terrified and Robertson nearly shaken from his hardihood, by the sudden appearance of a strange man right betwixt them ; and thus, in the middle of the Bow, that stranger spoke: — "I'll witness the compact, and write out the bond here at once, if you will sign it with a pen dipped in the 68 A SIGNATURE IN BLOOD. blood of bothy In a moment Robertson, cloaking his fears perhaps with an amount of bravado, ex- claimed, " Done with you, my hearty ! Where *s your pen? the ink you want is here !'' his fist doubled, and the finger of the other hand pointing to his nose. But Thomson was overwhelmed in terror ; he could not go any further step by step in miserable crime. Already he was confounded by the guilt he had helped to do, and cowed by a murderer's fears. "No," he cried, "I cannot, will not do it! But who are you that have thus become a witness against us ? Your name ! your name ! " "I am no witness against you," replied the stranger^ whom neither of the murderers had ever seen before ; " at leasts not now : my name you will one day learn. What I know I shall perhaps make use of in another place : till then, farewell, farewell, and keep your blood till wanted,^* The murderers stared on the spot between them, where but now loomed the dark form of the stranger : but they stood alone, the form had disappeared. For weeks the perpetrators of this atrocious deed remained undiscovered ; but, strange to say, a scrap of dirty paper, bearing the name of " Thom- son," was found on the premises that had been robbed, and that slight vestige of evidence — for there were thousands of the name of Thomson — king's EVroENCE. 69 which fire would have consumed had Robertson's desire to burn the house been complied with, led to Thomsons apprehension. Still nervous, still shaken to the very centre of his existence, in the vain hope of saving his wretched life, Thomson made a voluntary confession, turned evidence, and impeached his companion; and thus they were both apprehended and eventually brought to exe- cution. In all the ghostly legends that I have ga- thered, it seems that the most restless of all spirits is the spirit of a defunct housekeeper. Whether murdered or not, in life happy or unhappy, the ghost that renders night hideous, and tapestried rooms and staircases horrible, is sure to be an old housekeeper : it is never a young and pretty one, nor one in a modem dress; very seldom a butler; and never, that I can discover, the spirit of a liveried flunkey or footman. It is strange all this, and impossible to be accounted for; but as a faithful historian I feel myself constrained to be as near the truth as possible. The form of poor Helen Bell is still said to haunt the Castle of Craigerook, but why or wherefore it should be permitted to do so I am not ghost-seer enough to determine. CHAPTER V. PRESENCE OF MIND, IN LOVE AND MONEY. During my life I have ofiben had to admire pre- sence of mind in women, and sometimes in men ; but on the occasion to which I am now about to allude, man alone showed presence of mind, in both love and money. Let the reader, or let that infinitely more charming creature the readeress, imagine a girl of enchanting appearance, — not a lady of *' dash- ing exterior, dressed in the height of fashion," as we sometimes see a female described in the daily prints, whose hand, in an omnibus, has been caught in some sister-traveller's pocket, hold of her purse ; or who, in spite of the caution passed among the counter-skippers in a haber- dasher's shop of " tw0yj;end," has put into her muff, " quite promiscuously," a piece of silk, for which she forgot to pay. No, gentle reader ; not A LXJXUKIANT HEAD OF HAIR. 71 a flaunting female of " imposing appearance/* but a handsome, niee, quiet girl, of rather retiring demeanour, who, in addition to her graceful looks and gentle mind, was possessed in her own right of a considerable fortune. Of course, for hap- piness so nice and comfortable, many suitors were on the qui vive, and many were refused : one only seemed to have made any impression and to have cut out the rest, and he was a man con- siderably her senior, with what was deemed to be a beautiful and luxuriant head of black hair. This fortunate suitor was very careful of his appearance, and was reputed to have had con- siderable success among the fair sex. A sensible girl, the thought had struck her that in this lover she had found a steady, as well as a well-dressed and good-looking man; no butterfly folly about him, no wandering wish to rove from flower to flower, no valentine desire for a pair in Feb- ruary and a separation in August : but here she thought she saw a man with whom in every way she could be happy, so she accepted his offer, and they were married, her trustees only showing a piece of low vulgarity by covenanting that her fortune was to remain in her possession, her husband having nothing more than a life-interest in the annual income. Of course her lover cared not for money : 72 NO ONE CARES FOR MONEY. oh, no ! not a bit ! lovers always swear they never do ; and I knew one who wooed a lady who, he felt convinced, was very rich, because all the world said so, who, in order to be sure of getting her, and to show his disinterestedness, when it was suggested to him by her parents that before the affair came off he should see what they would have to live on, replied, " Oh, no ! money is of no moment to me ; let her keep it all : my only object is her hand/' They were married, and then the generous suitor found she scarce brought him a hundred pounds a-year; on which he went and upbraided her belongings, who coolly replied, ^^We asked you to see her fortune ; but you said you did not wish to do so, for money was not your object.** I also know a pretty little woman — at least, she was then very pretty — who mamed a snob, whose father had made, or was supposed to have made, a good deal of money by trade. The snob married her, because he also supposed her to be rich. Both were deceived, for neither had any- thing; and hating each other they never, what is called, " hit it off." But to return to the heroine of my tale ; though her hero would have liked to have been able to touch both principal and interest, as he could not *' MY LOVE ! A DEBT OP HONOUR." 73 do SO he just took all he could get, and I must say they lived very happily together. In short, they might have been claimants for the " flitch of bacon," but for one little stumbling-block to per- petual and unbroken happiness and good humour. He was attached to the turf; he would wager on the great events, as many fools do who know no- thing about them ; and he was very often coming to his wife to " just advance him a trifle more to pay a debt of honour : a debt of honour, you know^ my dear — a debt of honour V^ These debts of honour she very soon dis- honoured, for, like a sensible girl, she quickly saw that the more she gave the more he wanted; and, strange to say, if he won he never gave her back anything : so the long and the short of it was, she kindly but peremptorily refused his last request for the heaviest sum he had ever previously applied for, and no wheedling on his part could decoy her from her just resolution. The honeymoon had been long over, and the pair had settled down to their quiet home and sane behaviour. A Derby-day had then just concluded; the husband looked a little careworn and anxious, but as she knew that Epsom, in all probability, was the cause of the cloud, she cared not to ask him the reason why. He had been obliged, therefore, to promote the 74 A SENSIBLE WOMAN. usual request, but all in vain; namely, the means to discharge a debt of honour — "But, my love, a debt of honour ! " for there was no other proceeding left to him, as she would in no way lead up to the matter that weighed so heavily on his mind. Now this was not only a very pretty, but a very sensible young lady ; for though she found it to be for her good, as well as his, to stop the su^ plies on the gambling account, in all other things she was as kind to him and as liberal as ever ; and the harmony of their wedded life was in no way seriously interrupted. There was just as much romping, tickling, and kissing as ever — when they were alone, of course; and perhaps rather more : for in all probability he still had in view a chance to overcome her reluctance — " this last time, of course!" — to advance him a considerable sum. My readers will do me the kindness to re- member that an author has, to some extent, an Asmodean power to unroof houses, open bosoms, and uplift skulls, to see what house, heart, and brain contain : and all this for the benefit of the community and his publisher: so if with confi- dence I narrate this tale, it is because an occult power aids me to the truth. Well, on the memorable evening that preceded TICKLING IN VAIN. 75 the night to which I am about to allude, the lovers — for though some married men may cry out the well-known and inestimable name of " Walker I " they were still lovers, though they had been married nearly two years — had dined tSie-a-tete, and were whiling away the hours before bedtime with a little innocent romping. She as often sat dh her lord's knee as on a chair ; visited his most assailable places to tickling, touched him under the arms, on the ribs, and just above the hip ; but though digitary applications to these spots used to make him succumb, in tender fits of mirth, to her power, on this occasion he was passive cer- tainly, but moodily flinching, instead of merrily laughing, and at times with a solemn sigh he uttered, " Don't, my dear; I cannot bear it; I am out of spirits, or unwell.*' Perhaps it would be right again to repeat, that before marriage he had been what people term rather a fast man in dress, in love, in perfumery, and greatly in that exceedingly nourishing condi- ment for the hair, Douglas's Promethean Balm. It was to this latter fact that his splendid head of black hair was assigned. He always betted a good deal more than he had in his pocket, which a wise man never does; the Derby, the Oaks, the "Two Thou.," as it is called in racing vulgarity, always 76 A MUFF*S BOOK. hit him ; for, somehow or other, he could never get upon the right horse, and often made a book which, when analysed, made him stand to lose on every- thing. No wonder then that at first he applied to the wife of his bosom for the means to pay, — '^A debt of honour, my dear; a debt of honour, you know!" and that at first she complied, but in this last instance, and for a heavier sum than ever, she mildly but firmly had refused. It was^ then, subsequently to this last refusal, after a romping evening, in which he saw no chance of altering her steadfast resolve, and during which he had come off the worst in the tickling match, that they retired to their bed, and therein he soon fell into a sleep even more sound than usual, for his mind had been dwelling on his im- possibility to pay, and had wearied him to a most unusual extent. Of course he couldn't go to bed without his head ; so deep in the snowy pillow lay that splendid lot of black hair, curled and curling around his temples as thick as ever, and ready at any moment for his wife's admiration ; and, to tell the truth, she was fond of looking at it, though, on the score of not being able to bear tickling about the head, he contrived always to divert her playful hands from the seat of reason. Fast asleep they bad both gone, her cheek close to his, a locket of VARIED DREAMS. 77 that black hair still resting on her bosom, her last thought the triumphs of Douglas's Promethean Balm. Sound asleep as he had fallen, no doubt his dreams had disturbed him, as the sequel will show; but her dreams were all of joy. Sweet, little, round- headed babies, with dots of the letter i for eyes in their cherub cheeks, but without wings, all dressed in long, shapeless, sack-like, snowy garments, stretched out their little fat hands and bleated a kind of noise, which the nurses swore meant mamma ; but suddenly one of their heads dropped off — the head that had the darkest hair of all, and its fall, or imagined fall, scared her from sleep, and set her bolt upright in bed. And, gracious powers ! what did she see on the pillow at her side, where she expected to find the flowing, glossy locks, whose likeness was to be handed down in " little ones," and perpetuated for ever ? She saw a bald, polished skull, without the vestige of a hair on it — a ghastly spectacle of a turnip, still pos- sessed of eyes and nose she thought she knew. Or might it not be the head of a designing villain ? It was too much for her ; so, sitting up transfixed by the sight, she uttered a frantic shriek. Horses, jockeys, judges, whips, winning-post and distance, legs and books, took to flight from the vexed mind of the dreamer, now suddenly 78 PRESENCE OF MIND, INDEED ! awakened; and our betting firiend, turning his head, felt a cold sensation about his brows, and beheld his better half bolt upright by his side, and gazing down on him with horror. Presence of mind, in love and money: here, then, was an example of it. Quick as thought he felt his loss, and knew what scared his wife. His hand, with the speed of lightning, grasped a some- thing that was close to his head, but just beneath the bed-clothes, and with a convulsive motion of his arm he dropped it, sprang like a lunatic to the floor, and kicked it under the bed ; and then, with a hand on his bare skull, and a piteously- resigned but forgiving look at his wife, he moaned, — " And is it come to this ? My power to bear my misery unscathed has failed, and I am made a miserable object for the rest of my weary life! Inability to pay my debt of honour has settled on my brain, and every hair I had has suddenly fallen off!" Then, sinking on his knees, he hid his face on the coverlet of the bed, and seemed to weep in anguish. In an instant the believing, the affectionate girl, had clasped him in her arms. Wracked with remorse for the injury she had done him she prayed his forgiveness, and bade him take enough for the debt, and fifty times more, by way of REMORSE AND REPARATION. 79 an atonement for her cruel sin. For some time nothing seemed to pacify him, but at last he yielded to her entreaties^ and had the money he desired — and a little more. By one excuse or other, and by saying he had dropped his purse or lost his handkerchief, while she resumed her couch, he contrived to get the first look under the bed, and got unseen possession of his wig; and then came a playful contest as to whether he should have a wig made or not. She insisted on it; while he, remembering that " The beggar who is bald, you know, Doth challeDge double pity," or a couplet something like it, was desirous of going bare. At last he yielded, and after pretend- ing to go to a hairdresser, one day he returned with a wig so like "his hair" — not the least doubt of the exact likeness, because it was that which had fallen from his head — that his dear, little, lovely, sensible wife, screamed with pleasure when she saw him look as he looked when first he asked her hand* CHAPTER VI. RETRIEVERS, SETTERS, AND POINTERS, AND DOG-BREAKING. Since the loss of my long-tried friend, and old favourite retriever, " Brutus," I have been looking everywhere to find some intelligent active young dog to take his place. So far as the duties attached to it go, his place in my affectionate re- membrance cannot so readily be filled up. An old, or what is called a thoroughly -broken retriever, I did not desire ; because, ten to one but I should have had as much to unlearn him from as to learn him : for men, masters and keepers, have some very odd ideas about what a retriever should do, from many of which I dissent in toto. There are what I call automaton retrievers,^ and there are real retrievers, who only work when they think that something is really lost, and on purpose to recover whatever is lost, and to bring it to their masters. TWO SORTS OF RETRIEVERS. 8l The automaton dog is one who picks up by eye, or who hunts for anything by his master's voice or hand alone, and not of his own knowledge or by his nose. The automaton dog has been used to bring gloves, sticks, hats, or handkerchiefs, or to swim into the water after impossible-to>be- retrieved stones. The real retriever ought never to have been sent to fetch any imperishable thing ; he ought only to have had fur and feathered things in his mouth, alive or dead, which he had learned to know would be spoiled if he bit them too hard. I have had retrievers who would not bring game, if there was no obstacle between me and the thing that was killed ; who would look at the fallen bird, hare, or rabbit, and say, as plain as a dog could say, " There's your game — no difficulty about it ; pick it up yourself." On the contrary, if whatever was killed fell into water, or the other side of water, or into a wood, or the other side of a wall or hedge, then the sensible dog, thinking that his master could not get it without his aid, would hasten at once to recover it, and bring it to the bag. I have known a dog mark a wounded pheasant, that flew a considerable distance, when, as other pheasants were falling, he remained at my heels, ready to work through all the immediate fun, VOL. I. G 82 AN ANECDOTE OF "WOLF." but in perfect remembrance of the distant and probably dead bird. When we beat the cover out, and the word "All out !" was given, then, without being told to do so, he absented himself, went to the spot he had marked half an hour before, and returned with the dead bird. Now that is thought ^ and industry of the brain as well as nose ; and it is to these reasoning qua- lities that we should address ourselves when edu- cating a retriever. I have known my dogs, who have been used to be at my heels summer and winter among the game, absolutely rebuke me by their looks when I shot a white rabbit ; and though "Wolf" went over the fence in expectation of a rabbit, on coming to the colour which he had seen was never shot at, and as to which he had received a caution not to hunt, he regarded me with a look of sor- rowful surprise, and refused to touch the thing that I had sent him for. The same dog, on my lawn at Teffont, in Wiltshire, was sent by me to hunt a rabbit out of a circular flower-bed, a long way from any of the coops where pheasants were being reared by hand. He went a little way in, but returned at once to my heels, looking very sheepish, and refused to hunt it out. I saw at once that there was some reason for this refusal : ANECDOTE OF " BRUTUS. 83 I knew it by his look and manner, so went to see what it was. There was a lot of the earliest young pheasants there ; he had often lain by my gun among them, and seen them fed, and knew that they were never to be disturbed ; and hence his refusal to go near them after the rabbit. The same, only a year ago (1865), with poor old " Brutus." A young cock pheasant had been caught in a vermin-trap, and had left a leg behind him. I happened to see this fine young cock bird in full plumage the next day, away from all other game, and shot him. At a sign " Brutus" jumped the fence, and ran up to the bird, not dead, but hit in the head and fluttering strongly about the ground. The instant he saw that it was a phea- sant, on land where he had seen them reared and taken care of, he let fall his stem, and stood and gazed at me with a mournful expression in his eyes, not attempting to touch the bird, but evi- dently hurt at what he thought an accident. On being assured by me that I wished for the bird, he brought it ; but in so tender and remarkable a manner, so unlike the proud way he used to bring things that had fallen to the gun, that it was perfectly evident that he thought the bird was wanted in an endeavour to save its life. My famous " Smoker" would not follow a winged 84 AN ANECDOTE OF '* SMOKER." and runniag pheasant into the corner of a wood at Cranford, where there was a great deal of game that had not yet risen. So that my brother- sportsmen by these instances will see, that dogs have only to be sensibly treated to become as sensible, or more so, than some of their masters ; and there is just as much difference in the really good retriever and the automaton fetch-and-carry dog, as there is between a fool and a sensible man. Perhaps among the most ignorant things done, and that, too, by men whose lives have been passed among game and dogs, is the one of taking a retriever up to the spot on which a bird had fallen, and then the man not being able to pick up the bird himself, will call the dog back fifty times if he goes on elsewhere to look for it. And that, too, on ground on which, if the dead bird had been there, there was no reason why the man should not see it and pick it up. Often have I been so enraged at this ignorance, that, whether they have been my servants or those of other people, I have exclaimed on seeing them call the dog back, ^^ Let him alone, you fool ! If the bird was there, you 'd see it ; if the bird is not there, he must have run on ; and how the devil can the dog retrieve it, unless you DOWN AND UP WIND. 85 let him alone? He must know better than you do what he is about, because on such an occasion his nose is better than your eyes or head/* There is another point that few keepers ever think suflSciently of, and that is, which way the wind blows. Unless your setters and pointers are beautifully broken, and have been most saga- ciously used, you must beat up wind, or a mo- derate dog, whose knowledge is not extreme, will run up his game. A first-rate dog, such as has several times been in my possession, the instant he touches the usings or foot of game which he knows to be down wind of him, will at once stop, and of his own accord change the circuit of his line, and put himself down wind instead of up wind of the covey of partridges or pack of grouse, and if he finds that they are running from the gun he will get a-head of them, and pin them between him and his master. This is a most beautiful thing to see, and to my mind is the perfection of that sort of sport. A well- broken, sensible dog, should range wide and right in front of the gun, crossing the line of the gun backwards and forwards, and leaving no part of the lands untried. Each dog, when a brace is on range, should, of their own per- ception, avoid each other's line, and each be 86 ILL-BROKEN DOGS. bent on beating the ground unoccupied by the other. It has often amused me to see men in the New Forest, and in other places, with what they deemed a good dog. Their dogs ran straight out from them, and then, retracing their footsteps, back again to them; no doubt they would point if they came on game, but they beat no ground, and their owners would have trod up or found as much game if the dogs had not been there. It is very easy to have dogs too artificially broken : by that I mean, too much broken to hand^ and possessed with the erroneous idea that their eye was always to be on their keeper or master, to look for the uplifting of his hand, and their ear for the report of the gun, to which they were also instantly to drop. This over-education is a great mistake, and I think it arises to some extent from dogs being taken on some outside beat where there is very little game, and on which ground they soon learn that they have little else to look to than a signal from their masters. I have had dogs, both pointers and setters, who were sure to go direct to the very spot, on field or moor, where the game was, as if they were aware of the likeliest locality ; and so I believe some dogs are, and that not from a know- ledge or long use of the ground, but from some THE " GUN shy" DOG. 87 occult power which man knows nothing of. In my opinion, no dog is fit to shoot to that requires whistling to, speaking to, or rating: and not one man in a million is fit to shoot to a perfect dog, or to he that dog's master. You seldom see a keeper encourage or caress a dog for doing well; the keeper looks on him as if he were a machine made to scent birds, and incapable of thoroughly appre- ciating praise, whereas the dog is as sensitive and sensible as man, or more so, and keenly alike to rebuke or neglect. The most difficult fault to deal with in some setters and pointers is, that lamentable nervousness which is denominated being " gun shy," or terrified at the report of fire-arms. The females of my old and favourite breed of setters were always inclined to this fault, and the same occasionally as to the dogs. It is an ill wind, though, that blows no good ; and in all cases where this nervousness has existed the setter has always proved to be a most valuable dog, and very easily taught his duty when " gun shyness " was got over. When this species of timidity is rife in the blood, the greatest pains should be used to find out which individuals had it, so as never to have them out of couples when they heard the first gun. In short, never to permit them in the first instance to run home, 88 NERVOUS DOGS. or to find an imaginary safety in flight. In breaking these confessedly timid dogs, a pistol or a gun, at first with a very small charge of powder — the charge of powder to be increased as the dog became bolder — should be used, and then the young dog, on the occasion of a winged or crippled bird, or a crippled hare or rabbit, should be allowed to run in and catch it : thus to connect the report of the gun with his own individual recreation. I have, though, known this nervous timidity to exist to such an extent, that, on the discharge of the gun, the young dog would fall to the ground ; and then, on the report of the second barrel, absolutely go off into a fit. But in this case she had not been gra- dually brought to endure the squibbing and then the noise of the explosion, and therefore her terrors were the more confirmed when the loud report so suddenly rang in the air over her head. The greatest care and gentleness, good temper and kindness, are requisite in the breaking of dogs, and it should ever be painted up in the largest characters over the door of all dog-breakers, that where the whip and brutality frustrates one fault it flogs in and inculcates twenty. It is well to have a light whip concealed in the pocket in case of absolute necessity, but on no account whatever let a dog-breaker or keeper carry with him those TOO MUCH PUNISHMENT. 89 horribly knotted flails which saddlers call and sell as dog whips ; for they are instruments of torture that may break a rib, or by too much pain put out of the dog's head the reason of the punishment and the recollection of his fault, while they can eflFect no service whatever. CHAPTER VII. THE PACKET BETWEEN DUBLIN AND BRISTOL — THE IRISH- MAN, THE HEIR, THE BERTH, AND THE DEAD ALIVE. Part I. The researches which I have amused myself with making among old books and records of the by- gone time, have put into my possession many anecdotes and things pertaining to places, and also to family histories, which I cannot quite bring myself to publish; simply and solely be- cause I would not willingly give pain to any one. And there might be a descendant of the old stock yet left, near enough to the time with which I deal, to feel aggrieved at long-forgotten things being brought to light. Under these circumstances, in the tale I am now about to recount I shall use fictitious names ; and yet perhaps tell sufficient truth to amuse and interest the reader. My story starts from the Emerald Isle, and at a time when Erin was pretty THE FOOL AND THE FENIAN. 91 quiet, and no mischievous fools like the Fenians (I really think that the epithet " Fool" is the hest definition of the term " Fenian'*) to interrupt her trade, or scare the outlay of English money from her shores. In those days, as in the present time, there were men who outran the constable. Men who lost all they had to lose — which, very likely, was really very little — on the turf, at the Curragh, and other places ; men who lost all they had at whist or games of cards, mains of cocks, or mains of seven : in short, there were tall, smart, handsome young men then, as there are now, very good- looking, very accomplished, very popular with both sexes, who, having very little at starting in life, betted or wagered much more than they had in their pockets — which, indeed, was nil — in the hope of getting something there to keep the devil from a fiendish dance ; and I regret to say, that when they did this they perfectly well knew that if they lost they could not pay; but if they won they would pocket their winnings. A fact not in any way fair to those with whom they made their wagers ; and, in my opinion, utterly dishonest. " Debts of honour ^^^ however, in those days, it they were not paid, generally included the chance 92 THE DEBT OF HONOUR. of the great debt of life being paid^ as the pistol was constantly appealed to; and a man would rather fight a thousand battles, and risk his exist- ence, than take a coat-flap under either arm and tell his creditor to kick him, to the contentment of his (the creditor's) heart, if not to the satisfac- tion of his pocket. George St. Mellor — for my hero must appear under that name — (not any sort of relation to the St. Mellors of the present day, if there are any), had many wild, raking young friends in Ire- land, and in the City of Dublin, who liked him for his high spirit, fun, and frolic, and because there was no doubt that if a crochety, old, humdrum codger of an uncle of his would be kind enough to vacate the hooks, and slip out of a very large estate, George St. Mellor must come into it, being the next heir in entail. Now, though George was wild enough and unscrupulous enough in some things, he was not egregious fool enough to give post-obits, nor to back other people's bills, giving seventy-six per cent for his money: so, poor as he was, he held on; lived on his friends a good deal, who were always happy to see him, though for the present they declined his bets, and dodged his English creditors by putting the sea between him and GOOD NEWS. 93 them; and being ready, at a moment's notice, to fly into the mountains. One fine morning — at least it seemed a very fine one to poor George — a letter came to him from England, marked on the outside, " Immediate and private." On opening it, it contained these few words, hastily written to save post and packet : — " Come to England; old Hunks is missing — supposed to be dead. Lose not an instant, for I believe he is no more." " ' Come to England ! * How am I to get there," exclaimed George, still staring at the open letter, " without a penny to pay my passage to Bristol?*' Then, after a few moments of irreso- lution, he sprang from his chair and exclaimed, " I must borrow the money ! Surely Tim O'Brien will lend it me, on the chance of my becoming a rich man!" In one of poor George*s impulsive moments, the thought had no sooner entered his head than he set about to ^ put it in practice: so, clutching his hat, which he drove furiously on his nose, and rushing out of his little lodging, he repaired direct to Misthur Tim O'Briens door; and nearly knocked it in before him. The summons was so loud, that it not only brought a servant to the 94 AFTER A WET NIGHT. portal, but it reached the master upstairs; who, from having had a wet night of mingled liquors, beginning with champagne, sherry and stout, and ending with port, claret, and no end of whisky, had a considerable headache, and not the least in- clination to rise before noon. No* sooner had the door been opened than George bolted upstairs, on hearing that the master was not yet come down; when, on entering his room, he found him bolt upright in bed, and caught the last murmured words of some sentence he had been muttering, somewhat to the following effect, — "Faith, then, it*s the duel ; and, bedad, a pretty one, too!" The instant George entered, he cast the letter just received on the bed before his friend, and said : " Now then, my boy, lend me the money to get across to Bristol." " Oh, be the Lord!" roared his friend, taking a dive under the bedclothes the instant he heard the word money; " Oh! it's ill I am, and gone to sleep : fast as a church I am. Good night. Come and see me to-morrow/' " No, no," exclaimed George ; " none of your sleepy gammon. I am in a fix ; read that letter. Or m read it to you here." And he read the few words it contained. " There," he resumed, " you A RESTIVE FRIEND. 95 see they say the old cock is off his perch at last ; and if it is the case, why then, my dear Tim, I'll book up to you and every broth of a boy among us; and no mistake on that head/' " Heads or tails, I tell ye," growled Tim from beneath the bedclothes ; " it t^ head or tail, an open toss-up whether he is dead or not : these ould chaps niver die. I can't afford to shell out any more dirty money. And besides, ye can't sail till to-morrow night. There 's no divil of a boat a-going to-night ; so, don't bauther me ! " " Well, but will you lend it me or not ? 1 11 sail whenever I can," demanded George. " I don't know — no : there 's time enough be- tween this and to-morrow night; so I'm going to sleep, and be kind enough to do me the favour to leave my room." " Well, well," replied poor George, " I '11 come and see you to-morrow; but I say, don't be out ! " " Out, sir ! by Jasus and the holy powers, whoever said I was out when I was in?" when, seizing a chair which stood by his bedside, he hurled it at George's legs ; but who avoided it, by putting the door between himself and the missile. The morrow came, and with it the post from 96 BETTER NEWS. England; and another letter greeted George's eyes, marked externally, " Most immediate." It contained the words, " Your uncle is dead : his body was found to-day in the river, in my pre- sence : there 's no time to forward remittances. Come, and lose no time." With this joyful annunciation to George, George instantly set oflF to his friend Tim O'Brien, whom he found at breakfast. " Here,** he cried, " you misbelieving son of the soil, will you believe it now ? will you believe that yesterday and to-day I was and am the harbinger of good news to you? I am a rich man ; at least I shall be so when I cross the herring-pond to take possession : so lend me my passage-money, and I am oflF to-night." " Lend you the money it is yer after ! And where the divil d ye think the money 's to come from ? They say the ould boy 's dead, but ye see" (looking at the letter) " his body was but that moment found, and no time for particulars. Be my soul, they *11 be at him with the bellows and brandy ; and there 's no saying but they 've got the breath into his body again afore this, an' he 11 be the better for it all, and split his sides when he sees you a-coming, as you think, to take possession ! " AN AGREEABLE FRIEND. 97 " Well, but I didn't ask you for much," re- plied George, almost in despair ; " only just enough to carry me over : when in England, no doubt I shall be able to command almost any sum I please." "Well, then, let's see," returned O'Brien, looking to a paper on his table which gave the fares of passengers by the sailing-packet — steamers did not exist then. " Oh, by the life of me, it 's a good deal ! But there, there, my boy, take it" (smiling good-humouredly) ; "you'll give it me back some day ; and mind, all the interest too. There 's your passage-ticket, and I wish you all the success in life." With many thanks our impulsive hero, George, then left his friend, to go to the oflBce and secure himself a berth, with a promise to return to his friend and have a glass of hot whisky-toddy before he sailed. The berth having been secured, immediately beneath one which had already been taken, George then busied himself with packing up his things, and calling on several tradesmen to tell them that good tidings had reached him, which would very shortly enable him to pay off all his liabilities. The day thus speedily got through, George having sent his things aboard, about dinner-time VOL. I. H 98 A JOLLY DINNER, repaired to his friend, Tim O'Brien, and they sat down to a quiet Mte-d-Mte dinner, topped up by hot whisky and water, and a merry conversation, the tide not serving till rather a late hour, " Well, now, about this divil of an ould boy," said Tim, when whisky in quantities^ as it does with some people, inclined him to melancholy fore- boT.TTr^TT0" BRUTUS AND THE DONKEY. 213 amusing donkey, who, followed by three horses, had opened the gate and got into the garden, teasing " Brutus" in his house, by shaking his long ears at him, and capering quite within the length of the dog's chain. Hastening down to drive the intruders out of the garden, the donkey was by that time amusing himself; having it all his own way, " like the- bull in the china shop;" and rolling luxuriously in a soft bed of young onions. " Brutus'' understood everything, even some of the best usages in society — dear old dog! In the faithful simplicity of his mind he distrusted the bare idea of any man approaching his master. If seated in the woods with a lady, or on or in the grounds or the steamer-lodge of the late Lord Stuart De Eothesay, at HighcliflF, however much we might be deep in conversation, " Brutus " watched to give notice of an intruding footstep. Often have I wished that men, and women too, had learnt the same discretion ; for very often and innocently, according to the old adage, " two is company while three is none:" yet muffs of both sexes cannot remember this, and often show themselves when least desired. It was this vigilance on the part of " Brutus*' that led to the following catastrophe. There had been a party of ladies at my house to fish in the 214 A SCEKE AT WINKTON. river; they invited a neighbouring clergyman to come with them, who I was most happy to see; and when they arrived, there being five or six ladies to receive, it was some minutes before the clergyman was introduced to me. While speaking to the ladies, a low growl from " Brutus *' reached my ear, and I beheld my reverend guest patting his head. On this the guest received at once a caution from me that " Brutus," though civil to ladies, did not like men to touch him. This little episode in the day's diversion over, we went to the boat, " Brutus" in company, and after rowing and fishing returned home, all very good friends. When we reached the house, all the ladies but one, without my observing it, feel- ing, as they said, tired, turned into the drawing- room, while the other accompanied me to the ex- treme end of the garden, at the foot of which the river runs, and from which garden there is no exit that way ; and we continued to angle for perch. " Brutus" immediately put himself to watch, when, knowing that we could go no further than the boundary of the garden, and that we must re- turn the way we went, he laid himself down as usual to intercept all approachers, and to await my return. It so chanced that the clergyman AN INCAUTIOUS CLERGYMAN. 215 was not tired ; so, when be had seen the ladies to the drawing-room, he came out again, and pro- ceeded to follow me in the direction I had stated that we should go ; and on his road he saw "Brutus" lying down; and, what ought to have been a further caution to him, near "Brutus" was a newspaper which I had been reading. Forgetful of the caution I had previously given, and perhaps misled by the apparent affabi- lity of " Brutus" when in the boat, and not having the thought of enacting a Monsieur de Trop before his eyes, he stopped when he came to " Brutus," and attempted to pat his head. This added insult to injury, so "Brutus'* immediately flew at him; but not being certain as to whether he ought to use his teeth or not, he only boxed the deemed in- truder's ears with his four paws; when, having his dew-claws on, he cut or scratched each side of the clergyman's face. For some little time I knew no more of this than that " Brutus" had been made angry, and had joined me to make me aware of it. He was soon followed by my housekeeper, who told me " that the ladies in the house desired my presence, for ' Brutus ' had torn my male guest to pieces." Making much allowance for ex- cited expression, of course our fishing-rods were thrown down, and I sped over the lawn home; 216 ANGRY LADIES. and, in passing '' Brutus's *' house, I chained him up, and kissed his forehead in a parting adieu. When I entered the room, to use a vulgar phrase, the ladies of the party — two of them — "just about pitched into me;" and, with violent emotions of horror, asked me why I did not instantly destroy my dear old dog, instead of giving him a kiss, and encouraging him for what he had done? " Look!" they cried, pointing to my clerical friend, "'Brutus' has torn his cheeks to pieces, and Mr. will probably go mad ! " I really believe, that in that short time the ladies had induced Mr. to think that he already felt inclined to bark and bite too, and that hydrophobia had incipiently commenced. On examining the wounds I then explained, that the dog had not bitten anybody^ for no dog could have taken any man's head in his mouth at one spring and bite, to the extent described. The marks or scratches were not deep, and were simply inflicted by the paws of " Brutus :" so far then as such bad effects were concerned, none could possibly arise. Having expressed my deep regret that anything of the sort should have occurred, everybody became pacified, and when I called on the clergyman some few days after, he was as well and as easy in his mind (( T>mrmTTC.'