Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour Read online

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  Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour.

  R.S. Surtees

  _Mr. Sponge completely scatters his Lordship_]

  Transcriber's Note: Minor typos corrected and footnotes movedto end of text.

  TO

  THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ELCHO,

  IN GRATITUDE

  FOR MANY SEASONS OF EXCELLENT SPORT WITH HIS HOUNDS,

  ON THE BORDER.

  THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED,

  BY HIS

  OBLIGED AND FAITHFUL SERVANT,

  THE AUTHOR.

  PREFACE

  The author gladly avails himself of the convenience of a Preface forstating, that it will be seen at the close of the work why he makes such acharacterless character as Mr. Sponge the hero of his tale.

  He will be glad if it serves to put the rising generation on their guardagainst specious, promiscuous acquaintance, and trains them on to the noblesport of hunting, to the exclusion of its mercenary, illegitimateoff-shoots.

  _November 1852_

  CHAPTER I

  OUR HERO

  It was a murky October day that the hero of our tale, Mr. Sponge, or SoapeySponge, as his good-natured friends call him, was seen mizzling alongOxford Street, wending his way to the West. Not that there was anythingunusual in Sponge being seen in Oxford Street, for when in town his dailyperambulations consist of a circuit, commencing from the Bantam Hotel inBond Street into Piccadilly, through Leicester Square, and so on toAldridge's, in St. Martin's Lane, thence by Moore's sporting-print shop,and on through some of those ambiguous and tortuous streets that, appearingto lead all ways at once and none in particular, land the explorer, sooneror later, on the south side of Oxford Street.

  Oxford Street acts to the north part of London what the Strand does to thesouth: it is sure to bring one up, sooner or later. A man can hardly getover either of them without knowing it. Well, Soapey having got into OxfordStreet, would make his way at a squarey, in-kneed, duck-toed, sort of pace,regulated by the bonnets, the vehicles, and the equestrians he met tocriticize; for of women, vehicles, and horses, he had voted himself aconsummate judge. Indeed, he had fully established in his own mind thatKiddey Downey and he were the only men in London who _really_ knew anythingabout, horses, and fully impressed with that conviction, he would halt, andstand, and stare, in a way that with any other man would have beenconsidered impertinent. Perhaps it was impertinent in Soapey--we don't meanto say it wasn't--but he had done it so long, and was of so sporting a gaitand cut, that he felt himself somewhat privileged. Moreover, the majorityof horsemen are so satisfied with the animals they bestride, that they cockup their jibs and ride along with a 'find any fault with either me or myhorse, if you can' sort of air.

  Thus Mr. Sponge proceeded leisurely along, now nodding to this man, nowjerking his elbow to that, now smiling on a phaeton, now sneering at a'bus. If he did not look in at Shackell's or Bartley's, or any of thedealers on the line, he was always to be found about half-past five atCumberland Gate, from whence he would strike leisurely down the Park, andafter coming to a long check at Rotten Row rails, from whence he would passall the cavalry in the Park in review, he would wend his way back to theBantam, much in the style he had come. This was his summer proceeding.

  Mr. Sponge had pursued this enterprising life for some 'seasons'--ten atleast--and supposing him to have begun at twenty or one-and-twenty, hewould be about thirty at the time we have the pleasure of introducing himto our readers--a period of life at which men begin to suspect they werenot quite so wise at twenty as they thought. Not that Mr. Sponge had anyparticular indiscretions to reflect upon, for he was tolerably sharp, buthe felt that he might have made better use of his time, which may beshortly described as having been spent in hunting all the winter, and intalking about it all the summer. With this popular sport he combined thediversion of fortune-hunting, though we are concerned to say that hissuccess, up to the period of our introduction, had not been commensuratewith his deserts. Let us, however, hope that brighter days are about todawn upon him.

  Having now introduced our hero to our male and female friends, under hisinteresting pursuits of fox and fortune-hunter, it becomes us to say a fewwords as to his qualifications for carrying them on.

  Mr. Sponge was a good-looking, rather vulgar-looking man. At adistance--say ten yards--his height, figure, and carriage gave him somewhatof a commanding appearance, but this was rather marred by a jerky, twitchy,uneasy sort of air, that too plainly showed he was not the natural, or whatthe lower orders call the _real_ gentleman. Not that Sponge was shy. Farfrom it. He never hesitated about offering to a lady after a three days'acquaintance, or in asking a gentleman to take him a horse in over-night,with whom he might chance to come in contact in the hunting-field. And hedid it all in such a cool, off-hand, matter-of-course sort of way, thatpeople who would have stared with astonishment if anybody else had hintedat such a proposal, really seemed to come into the humour and spirit of thething, and to look upon it rather as a matter of course than otherwise.Then his dexterity in getting into people's houses was only equalled by thedifficulty of getting him out again, but this we must waive for the presentin favour of his portraiture.

  In height, Mr. Sponge was above the middle size--five feet eleven orso--with a well borne up, not badly shaped, closely cropped oval head, atolerably good, but somewhat receding forehead, bright hazel eyes, Romannose, with carefully tended whiskers, reaching the corners of a well-formedmouth, and thence descending in semicircles into a vast expanse of hairbeneath the chin.

  Having mentioned Mr. Sponge's groomy gait and horsey propensities, it werealmost needless to say that his dress was in the sporting style--you sawwhat he was by his clothes. Every article seemed to be made to defy theutmost rigour of the elements. His hat (Lincoln and Bennett) was hard andheavy. It sounded upon an entrance-hall table like a drum. A little magicalloop in the lining explained the cause of its weight. Somehow, his hatswere never either old or new--not that he bought them second-hand, butwhen he got a new one he took its 'long-coat' off, as he called it, with asingeing lamp, and made it look as if it had undergone a few probationaryshowers.

  When a good London hat recedes to a certain point, it gets no worse; it isnot like a country-made thing that keeps going and going until it declinesinto a thing with no sort of resemblance to its original self. Barring itsweight and hardness, the Sponge hat had no particular character apart fromthe Sponge head. It was not one of those punty ovals or Cheshire-cheeseflats, or curly-sided things that enables one to say who is in a house andwho is not, by a glance at the hats in the entrance, but it was just aquiet, round hat, without anything remarkable, either in the binding, thelining, or the band, but still it was a very becoming hat when Sponge hadit on. There is a great deal of character in hats. We have seen hats thatbring the owners to the recollection far more forcibly than the generalityof portraits. But to our hero.

  That there may be a dandified simplicity in dress, is exemplified every dayby our friends the Quakers, who adorn their beautiful brown Saxony coatswith little inside velvet collars and fancy silk buttons, and even thesevere order of sporting costume adopted by our friend Mr. Sponge is notdevoid of capability in the way of tasteful adaptation. This Mr. Spongechiefly showed in promoting a resemblance between his neck-cloths andwaistcoats. Thus, if he wore a cream-coloured cravat, he would have abuff-coloured waistcoat, if a striped waistcoat, then the starcher would beimbued with somewhat of the same colour and pattern. The ties of thesevaried with their texture. The silk ones terminated in a sort of coachingfold, and were secured by a golden fox-head pin, while the stripedstarchers, with the aid
of a pin on each side, just made a neat,unpretending tie in the middle, a sort of miniature of the flagrant,flyaway, Mile-End ones of aspiring youth of the present day. His coats wereof the single-breasted cut-away order, with pockets outside, and generallyeither Oxford mixture or some dark colour, that required you to place himin a favourable light to say what it was.

  His waistcoats, of course, were of the most correct form and material,generally either pale buff, or buff with a narrow stripe, similar to theundress vests of the servants of the Royal Family, only with the patternrun across instead of lengthways, as those worthies mostly have theirs, andmade with good honest step collars, instead of the make-believe rollcollars they sometimes convert their upright ones into. When in deepthought, calculating, perhaps, the value of a passing horse, or consideringwhether he should have beefsteaks or lamb chops for dinner, Sponge's thumbswould rest in the arm-holes of his waistcoat; in which easy, but not veryelegant, attitude he would sometimes stand until all trace of the idea thatelevated them had passed away from his mind.

  In the trouser line he adhered to the close-fitting costume of former days;and many were the trials, the easings, and the alterings, ere he got a pairexactly to his mind. Many were the customers who turned away on seeing hismanly figure filling the swing mirror in 'Snip and Sneiders',' a monopolythat some tradesmen might object to, only Mr. Sponge's trousers beingadmitted to be perfect 'triumphs of the art,' the more such a walkingadvertisement was seen in the shop the better. Indeed, we believe it wouldhave been worth Snip and Co.'s while to have let him have them for nothing.They were easy without being tight, or rather they looked tight withoutbeing so; there wasn't a bag, a wrinkle, or a crease that there shouldn'tbe, and strong and storm-defying as they seemed, they were yet as soft andas supple as a lady's glove. They looked more as if his legs had been blownin them than as if such irreproachable garments were the work of man'shands. Many were the nudges, and many the 'look at this chap's trousers,'that were given by ambitious men emulous of his appearance as he passedalong, and many were the turnings round to examine their faultless fallupon his radiant boot. The boots, perhaps, might come in for a little ofthe glory, for they were beautifully soft and cool-looking to the foot,easy without being loose, and he preserved the lustre of their polish, evenup to the last moment of his walk. There never was a better man for gettingthrough dirt, either on foot or horseback, than our friend.

  To the frequenters of the 'corner,' it were almost superfluous to mentionthat he is a constant attendant. He has several volumes of 'catalogues,'with the prices the horses have brought set down in the margins, and has arare knack at recognizing old friends, altered, disguised, or disfigured asthey may be--'I've seen that rip before,' he will say, with a knowing shakeof the head, as some woe-begone devil goes, best leg foremost, up to thehammer, or, 'What! is that old beast back? why he's here every day.' No mancan impose upon Soapy with a horse. He can detect the rough-coatedplausibilities of the straw-yard, equally with the metamorphosis of theclipper or singer. His practised eye is not to be imposed upon either bythe blandishments of the bang-tail, or the bereavements of the dock.Tattersall will hail him from his rostrum with--'Here's a horse will suityou, Mr. Sponge! cheap, good, and handsome! come and buy him.' But it isneedless describing him here, for every out-of-place groom anddog-stealer's man knows him by sight.