Hurst and Blackett first edition - 1897
'Don't judge a book by its cover' is a well known aphorism; but in this instance I should not have succumbed to the title. The Tame Fox turned out to be but the first chapter of nineteen and a mere dozen pages at that. In fact, if there was a common theme it was that of fox-hunting and a variety of personages involved in that 'sport'. Some of the stories had already appeared in the pages of several magazines and journals - to whit, Baily's Magazine, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, County Gentleman and Finch Mason's Annual - between 1895 and 1896. George Finch Mason (1850-1915), the son of an Eton schoolmaster, was a sporting artist, author and illustrator, specialising in humorous studies and caricatures. In fact, these days he is better known for his prints of fox hunts and race meetings than for his fiction. Prints of his sell for a considerable amount of money. He also worked for Punch magazine. His books included Humours of the Hunting Field (1886), Tit Bits of the Turf (1887), The Flowers of the Hunt (1889), My Day with the Hounds (1890), The Run of the Season (1902) and Gentlemen Riders Past and Present (1909). He also edited Fores's Sporting Notes and Sketches, a quarterly magazine which ran from Volume I in 1884-5 until just before the Great War.
So, rather to my dismay, the fox merely figured as the prey of the Hunt and, only in that very first chapter, was it accorded the sympathy I was looking for. It was an unoriginal story of a tame fox, Slyboots, escaping from his mistress for the wild. It is told in the first person by her prospective partner, who has been getting increasingly downhearted as Skyboots appears higher in the pecking order than himself. Did I feel like having Foxyphobia?, he posits. Certainly, he is hard at it five and six days a week with the local Hunt when the pet vanishes. Miss Violet Goldthread's reaction? Fainting-fit on the spot, with hysteria to follow at intervals throughout the day, her butler informs the eventual hero. He manages to forestall a digging operation by the Hunt whippers to extract the cub from a drain. As a result, the loveliest of her sex has consented to be mine (a gold-mine, ha, ha!)
As for the other eleven 'sketches', I can see why they would appeal to the horse racing fraternity - of both sexes. Perhaps not so much to a vulpine audience (Fox News?). They are very much of the period, the 1890s (and why shouldn't they be) and are 'dated' in several ways. That, however, adds to their charm. Chapters include the wheeze of exchanging a squire's thoroughbred horses for local nags, lent by supportive tenantry, to fool sheriffs who were coming to seize his entire stable. The bailiffs went away empty-handed but probably the wiser. Mr. Burlington Bellamy, the millionaire from Manchester, may have fallen head over heels with pretty Laura Lightfoot, but got nothing but chaff, and plenty of it, in return for his devotion. Instead Mrs. Kitto, (Kittums) the lively but impecunious widow, takes advantage of Burlington getting lost with her during a Hunt in Skelperdale Forest and convinces him, with artful strategies, that she is the right one. In Angels on Horseback, the Master of the Foxhounds, Mark Bramble, the popular young Master but confirmed bachelor, meets his match in the pick of the bevy of ladies on the Hunt, Queen Mab, who has been waiting long for 'Mr. Right'. He comes to her aid when she faints after her horse just manages to clear a ragged fence to land in a gravel pit. I do not know how many kisses had been impressed upon her lips by that confirmed bachelor Mark Bramble, Esq., M.F.H., to the great edification of the field. On coming round and hearing loud cheering, Queen Mab asks what is the matter, and he told her, and she did not mind a bit. "They know who I'm going to marry now, don't they, dear Mark?"
Tubby, or not Tubby (how very Shakespearian), concerns one John Daventry, nicknamed on account of his rotundity, for all the world like a beer-barrel... his round-turned legs were the shortest of the short, and he could not stick on [a horse] at any price. Hearing that he had entered the Tallyho Steeplechase on his brown gelding Saucy Boy, he is mercilessly chaffed by the locals; in particular, by a hated rival Captain Bustard, late of the Queen's Roans, an undeniably fine horseman. A large wager is placed between them. On the day of the race, poor Tubby and his nag look also-rans up against the Captain and his chestnut mare, Lady of the Lake. However, Bustard is beaten by Tubby, who has hung on throughout. How? He had been strapped on!
I quite enjoyed the sketch The Lady at the Dragon. Young Lord Blythebury, just come of age, marries out of the county one Miss Violet Vollaire, the lovely and dashing equestrienne at Jingler's well-known circus, thereby nearly breaking his noble and venerable father's heart. Nothing more is known of their whereabouts, but considerable excitement was caused when a young, vivacious lady puts up at the Red Lion, with six horses and a pony, for the avowed purpose of hunting with Lord Harefield's hounds. This Miss Wilton - "one of the most charming and well-bred girls it has ever been my lot to meet", declared the Rev Frank Simpson - turns up for the opening day of the season at Harefield Place. She ends up riding with the Earl and a couple of others and is there to take charge when the noble lord falls off his horse when it failed to clear a brook. The earl comes round and in a faint voice, says he is dying and that his son must be sent for. Miss Wilton not only promises, but adds, "I will send for him myself. I am his wife".
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