Katerfelto: A Story of Exmoor

They were of all ages between twenty and fifty. One of them wore a wig, another powder, a third had brushed his luxuriant hair to the poll of his neck and tied it in a plain black bow. Their long-waisted coats were cut to an ample width at skirt and sleeves; their waistcoats heavily bound with lace. Knots of ribbon adorned the knees of their breeches, their shoes were fastened with buckles, and each man carried sword and snuff-box. To drink, to fence, to "lug out" as it was called, on slight provocation, to sing a good song, tell a broad story, and spill a deal of snuff in its recital, were, at this period, the necessary accomplishments of a gentleman.

The room in which these worthies had assembled seemed more comfortable than luxurious. Its bare floor was sanded, and the chairs, long-legged, high-backed and narrow-seated, were little suggestive of repose, but the mahogany table had been rubbed till it shone like glass, the wood-fire blazed and crackled, lighting up the crimson hangings that festooned the windows, and though the candles were but tallow, there flared enough of them to bring into relief a few pictures with which the unpapered walls were hung. These works of art, being without exception of a sporting tendency, were treated in a realistic style, and seemed indeed to have been painted by the same master:—A fighting-cock, spurred, trimmed, and prepared for battle, standing on the very tip-toe of defiance. A horse with a preternaturally small head, and the shortest possible tail, galloping over Newmarket Heath, to win, as set forth in large print below, "a match or plate of the value of fifty guineas." The portrait of a celebrated prize-fighter, armed with a broadsword, of a noted boxer in position, stripped to the waist. Lastly, an ambitious composition, consisting of scarlet frocks, jack-boots, cocked hats, tired horses and baying hounds, grouped round a central figure brandishing a dead fox, and labelled "The Victory of obtaining the Brush."