Market Harborough, and Inside the BarWhyte-Melville, G. J. (George John)
General
Market Harborough, and Inside the Bar
Whyte-Melville, G. J. (George John)
Country life -- England -- Fiction; English fiction -- 19th century; Fox hunting -- Fiction
Here, it is needless to observe, he rowed a great deal, smoked a great
deal, drank an enormous quantity of beer, and read not the least in the
world. He acquired, however, considerable proficiency in the difficult
art of driving a tandem, and could conceal boots and breeches under
loose pantaloons, when attending chapel on a hunting morning, more
dexterously than any undergraduate of his year.
He kept the drag, too, for one season, but found his mode of life too
dissipated to admit of the nerve requisite for that amusement. These
dare-devil young gentlemen, you see, go out for the express purpose of
breaking each other’s necks. They ride, of course, directly _at_ the
leading hound; but that quadruped, generally an old stager, and
stimulated by a red-herring steeped in aniseed, gives them plenty to do
before they can catch him. It is a point of honour, I am given to
understand, to turn away from nothing; and the man who can _get through_
his horse quickest, is esteemed to have won the laurels of the day. It
is scarcely possible to imagine an education more calculated to make a
_horseman_, and spoil a _sportsman_, than the Oxford drag.
When Plumtree renounced the mastership of this dashing establishment, he
devoted himself exclusively to driving, and became, if possible, more
_beery_ than before. For lectures he cherished an unaccountable
aversion, nor was it likely that the wit and learning of the schools
would prove very tempting to a man whose heart was habitually in the
cellars.
Well, of course, it came to a finish at last; and Jovial Jem was
rusticated; “Rusticated, by the Hookey!” to use his own remarkable
words, “and recommended not to come up again. Well out of it, too, in my
opinion: and as to another round, why if I do, I _do_; _but_ if I do,
I’m—!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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