description of animal peculiar to Oxford livery-stables, which can never
by any possibility be mistaken for any thing but a hired affair, but
will generally go all day, and scramble through almost any thing; with
showily mounted jockey-whips in their hands, bad cigars (at two guineas
a-pound) in their mouths, bright blue scarfs, or something equivalent,
round their necks--their neat white cords and tops (things which they
_do_ turn out well in Oxford) being the only really sportsmanlike
article about them; flattering themselves they looked exceedingly
knowing, and, in nine cases out of ten, being deceived therein most
lamentably; clustered together in groups of four or five, discussing the
merits of the horses, or listening, as to an oracle, to the opinion of
some Oxford horse-dealer, delivered with insolent familiarity--here were
the men who drunk out of a fox's head, and recounted imaginary runs with
the Heythrop. Happy was he amongst them, and a positive hero for the
day, who could boast a speaking acquaintance with any of those anomalous
individuals, at present enshrouded in great-coats, but soon to appear in
all the varieties of jockey costume, known by the style and title of
"gentlemen riders;" who could point out, confidentially, to his admiring
companions, "Jack B----," and "Little M----," and announce, from
authority, how many ounces under weight one was this morning, and how
many blankets were put upon the other the night before, to enable him to
come to the scales at all. Here and there, more plainly dressed, moving
about quickly on their own thorough-breds, or talking to some
neighbouring squire who knew the ground, were the few really
sporting-men belonging to the university; who kept hunters in Oxford,
simply because they were used to keep them at home, and had been brought
up to look upon fox-hunting as their future vocation. Lolling on their
saddles, probably voting it all a bore, were two or three tufts, and
their "tail;" and stuck into all sorts of vehicles, lawful and unlawful,
buggies, drags, and tandems, were that ignoble herd, who, like myself,
had come to the steeple-chase, just because it was the most convenient
idleness at hand, and because other men were going. There were all sorts
of people there besides, of course: carriages of all grades of
pretension, containing pretty bonnets and ugly faces, in the usual
proportion; "all the beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood,"
nevertheless, as the coun