The Scouring of the White Horse

“Well, that’s more than I know myself,” said I.

“Then,” said he, taking his pipe out of his pocket and filling it, “I vote we settle for him, eh, Neddy?”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” said Neddy, stretching over for the pottle; “but, I say, Jem, you haven’t finished all those plums?” and he poked about in the leaves with his fingers.

“Every mother’s son of them,” said Jem, lighting a lucifer; “if you come to that, Master Ned, hand me over some of that pine-apple. But now, about the tour; how much money are you going to spend on it, Dick?”

“Well, I haven’t quite settled,” said I; “but I shouldn’t mind, now, going as high as four or five pounds, if I can suit myself.”

“You may go pretty near to Jericho for that now-a-days,” said Neddy. “As I came along Holborn to-night, I saw a great placard outside the George and Blue Boar, with ‘to Llangollen and back 15s.’ on it. What do you think of that? You’ll be turned out at the station there with £4 5s. in your pocket.”

“Where’s Llangollen?” said I.

“Not half-way to Jericho,” shouted Jem, with a laugh. “Where’s Llangollen? Why didn’t you ever hear the song of Kitty Morgan, the maid of Llangollen? You’re a pretty fellow to go touring.”

“Yes, fifty times,” said I; “only the song don’t tell you where the place is – where is it now?”

“In Wales, of course,” said he, thinking he had me.

“Yes, I know that; but whereabouts in Wales,” said I, “for Wales is a biggish place. Is it near any thing one reads about in books, and ought to go and see?”

“Hanged if I know exactly,” said Jem, puffing away; “only of course Wales is worth seeing.”

“So is France,” struck in Neddy; “why, you may go to Paris and stay a fortnight for I don’t know how little.”

“Aye, or to Edinburgh or the Lakes,” said Jem.

“I want to have the particulars though,” said I; “I’m not going to start off to some foreign place, and find myself with no money to spend and enjoy myself with, when I get there.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Neddy, jumping up, “I’ll just run round to the Working Men’s College, and borrow a Bradshaw from the secretary. We shall find all the cheap excursions there;” and away he went before we could say a word.

“I say,” said Jem to me, “how fond he is of bringing up that place; he’s always at me to go and enter there.”

“So he is at me,” said I, “and I think I shall, for he seems to pick up a lot of things there. How sharp he is at figures! and he knows more history and geography ten to one than I do. I’ll bet he knew what county Llangollen is in, and something about it too. Let’s ask him when he comes back.”

“Catch me!” said Jem; “he’ll look it out on the map on his way back, or ask one of the lecturers.”

“Here you are! look here!” said Neddy, tumbling in with two Bradshaws and a great atlas under his arm; “‘unprecedented attraction, pleasure excursions,’ let me see – Return tickets for Ireland, available for a fortnight. Waterford, 1l. 16s.; Cork, 2l.”

“Nonsense!” cried Jem, who had got the other Bradshaw; “listen here: ‘Channel Islands, (remarkable as being the only remaining Norman possessions of the British crown,) second class and fore cabin, 21s.”

“‘London to Dieppe, return tickets available for fourteen days, second class, 21s.,’” sung out Ned, from the other Bradshaw.

And away they went, with Brussels, and Bangor, and the Manchester Exhibition, and Plymouth and Glasgow, and the Isle of Man, and Margate and Ramsgate, and the Isle of Wight; and then to Gibraltar and Malta and New York, and all over the world. I sat and smoked my pipe, for ’twas no use trying to settle any thing; but presently, when they got tired, we set to work and began to put down the figures. However, that wasn’t much better, for there were such a lot of tours to go; and one was a bit too short, and the other too long, and this cost too much, and that too little; so all the beer was gone, and we were no nearer settling any thing when eleven o’clock struck.

“Well,” said Jem, getting up and knocking the ashes out of his third pipe, “I declare it’s almost as good as going a tour one’s self, settling it for Dick here.”

“I just wish you had settled it,” said I; “I’m more puzzled than when we began.”

“Heigh-ho, fellows never know when they’re well off,” said Neddy; “now I never get a chance. In my holiday I just go down to the old folk at Romford, and there I stick.”

“They don’t indeed,” said I; “I wonder to hear you talk like that, Ned. Some folks would give all they’re worth to have old folk to go to.”

“Well, I didn’t mean it,” said he, looking hurt. And I don’t believe he did, for a kinder hearted fellow don’t live; and I was half sorry I had said what I did say.

“Further deliberation will be necessary,” said Jem, lighting his fourth pipe; “we’ll come again to-morrow night; your bacchy’s nearly out, Dick; lay in some bird’s eye for to-morrow; real Bristol, do you hear?”

“Time to go, I suppose,” said Ned, getting up and gathering the Bradshaws and atlas together; “are we to come again to-morrow, Dick?”

“To-morrow, didst thou say? methought I heard Horatio say to-morrow. Go to; it is a thing of naught,” and Jem clapped on his hat and began ranting in his way; so I broke in —

“I wish you’d hold that noise, and talk sense,” said I.

“Shakspeare!” said Jem, stopping short and pulling up his collar.

“Gammon!” said Neddy, bursting out laughing.

“That’s right, Neddy,” said I; “he’s always going off with some of his nonsense, and calling it poetry.”

“I didn’t say it was poetry, did I?” said Jem.

“What is it then?” said I.

“Blank verse,” said he.

“What’s the difference?” said I.

“Go up the mill-dam, fall down slam, dat poetry; go up the mill-dam, fall down whoppo’, dat plank verse,” said he. “Go along nigger – had him dere, nigger,” and he turned in his knees and grinned, like one of those poor beggars who black their faces and go about the streets with red striped trowsers, white ties, and banjos.

“You ought to be a nigger yourself, Jem,” said I, “and I should just like to have the driving of you. There, tumble out with you; it’s time for steady folks to turn in.”

So I turned them out and held the candle, while they floundered down stairs, that wretch, Jem, singing, “There’s some ’un in de house wid Dinah,” loud enough to be heard at the Foundling. I was glad to hear my landlady catch him at the bottom of the stairs, and give it him well about “a respectable house,” and “what she was used to with her gents,” while she opened the door; only I don’t see what right she had to give it me all over again next morning at breakfast, and call Jem Fisher a wild young man, and bad company, because that’s just what he isn’t, only a little noisy sometimes. And as if I’m not to have who I please up to my room without her interfering! I pay my rent regular every month, I know. However, I didn’t mind much what she said at breakfast time, because I had got a letter from the country. I don’t get a letter once a month, and it’s very odd this one should have come on this very morning, when I was puzzling where to go for my holiday; and I dare say you’ll think so too, when I tell you what it was about. Let’s see – here it is in my pocket, so you shall have it whole: —

    “Elm Close Farm, Berks, August 31, 1857.

“Dear Dick, – You know you owe me a visit, for you’ve never been down here, often as I’ve asked you, since we was at school together – and I have been up to you four or five times. Now, why I particularly want you to come this month is, because we’ve got some sport to show you down in these quiet parts, which don’t happen every day. You see there’s an old White Horse cut out in the side of the highest hill hereabouts, (a regular break-neck place it is, and there ain’t three men in the country as’ll ride along the hill-side under the Horse,) and many folks sets a good deal of store by it, and seems to think the world’d come to an end if the horse wasn’t kept all straight. May be I’m a bit of that mind myself – anyhow you’ll see by the paper inside what’s going on; and being a scholar, may be you’ll know about the White Horse, and like to come down to a scouring. And I can tell you it will be good fun; for I remember the last, when I was quite a little chap, before I went to school, and I’ve never seen such games since. You’ve only got to write and say what train you’ll come by, and I’ll meet you at the Farringdon-road station in my trap. So, as I ain’t much of a penman, excuse mistakes, and remember me to Fisher and the others I met at your place; and no more at present from yours truly.

    “Joseph Hurst.

“P. S. – You must stay as long as you can, and I’ll mount you on my young bay colt to see a cub killed.”

I shouldn’t print Joe’s letter whole, (and as it is I’ve put a good deal of the spelling right,) only I’m quite sure he’ll never read this book, and I hope it may serve as a warning to young fellows to keep up their learning when they go and settle down in the country. For when Joe left the Commercial Academy at Brentford, he could write just as good English as I, and if he had put “many folks seems to think,” or “you’ve only got to write,” in a theme, old Hopkins would have given him a good caning. But nothing wears out learning so quick as living in the country and farming, and Joe came into his farm when he was nineteen, and has been at it ever since. And after all, perhaps, it doesn’t much signify, because nobody makes himself better understood than Joe, in one way or another; and if he wasn’t a little behindhand in his grammar, he wouldn’t think much of me perhaps – and one don’t mind being taken for a scholar, even by those who are not the best judges in the world.

Well, thinks I to myself, as I finished my breakfast, this seems like business. If I go down to Joe’s, and stay there all my holiday, the fares will be only seventeen shillings; and, say a pound for expenses down there; one pound seventeen shillings, say two pounds in all. I shall put three pounds into my pocket, and please an old friend, which will be much better than any thing Jem Fisher and little Neddy Baily will hit out for me in a week from the end of Bradshaw. Besides, it will look well to be able to talk of going to a friend in Berkshire. I’ll write to Joe, and say I’ll be with him in good time on the 15th.

So I went down to the office and told Jem Fisher and little Neddy, that I had made up my mind to go and see my old friend Joe, in Berkshire, before they had had time to get their office coats on.

“What? that jolly fellow with the brown face and red whiskers,” said Jem, “who came up and slept in your room last Christmas cattle-show, and wanted to fight the cabman for a gallon of beer, who charged him half-a-crown from Baker Street to Gray’s Inn Lane?”