.^-U 1. GoiiJ^ aloji^ a slapping pace. JOHNA.SEAVERNS o umivcnoiiT LIBMAMItb 3 9090 014 537 043 Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University 200 Westboro Road North Grafton, MA 01536 THE BEECHWOOD BOOKS Edited by SAMUEL J. LOOKER THE CHASE BY THE SAME AUTHOR TRAVEL OLD AND NEW A Selection from the Literature of Travel. Demy 8vo. 21/- net. THE BEECHWOOD BOOKS F'cap. 8vo. 6/- net each. FLOAT AND FLY A Little Book for Anglers. With coloured Frontispiece by Claud Lovat Eraser. ON THE GREEN An Anthology for Golfers. With coloured Frontispiece by Claud Lovat Eraser. From a did icing by Claud Lorat Frase/: THE CHASE AN ANTHOLOGY OF HUNTING EDITED WITH A FOREWORD BY SAMUEL J. LOOKER, AND A FRONTISPIECE BY CLAUD LOVAT ERASER * =r * * PUBLISHED IN LONDON BY DANIEL O'CONNOR, AT 90 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C. i, 1922 WW Foreword ,^> ^^ *£> THE Literature of Sport is a vast and ever- increasing one. Unfortunately its quantity is more apparent than its quality. Only here and there does it happen that a trained writer with a gift of literary expression turns his attention to sporting literature. Especially is this true of books on Hunting. If enthusiasm counted for perfection, fine indeed would be the quality of its literature. Alas ! enthusiasm for the hunting-field is too often the only quality possessed by writers on the subject. The unfortunate compiler is perforce reduced to the task of wading through a mass of stodgy and ephemeral writing, emulating the labours of Hercules in order to search out the jewels of thought and hidden beauties buried under much rubbish. Nevertheless this book has been a labour of love, and many have been the discoveries made in some quiet backwater of literature, many the friends gained in the course of its compilation. For, in spite of its frequent weakness and absence of charm, the Literature of Hunting is full of quaint surprises. Here a hunting squire is moved to unwonted eloquence in praise of his favourite pastime ; there a lady novelist, fresh from the conquest of the great army of sentimental folk, depicts in glowing colours the delights of the hunting-field. There is another and more powerful reason why vi Foreword an anthology on hunting makes a wide appeal to all lovers of sport. From the earliest days in England hunting, in one form or another, has been pursued with zest by all classes and conditions of men. In spite of what its enemies may suggest it has never been a rich man's preserve, the common people of the country-side have always enjoyed the sport. There is no more characteristic English scene than the sight of the red coats of the Hunt and the glory of the gallant pack on some wonderful scenting day when Reynard is afoot. It is interesting to notice that one of the most vigorous and successful long narrative poems of recent years is concerned with the Chase, Mr. John Masefield's Reynard the Fox^ possibly the most authentic utterance on the subject since Thomas Smith's Life of a Fox, and remarkable for its vivid colouring and zest of narrative. The purpose of this anthology is to present in readable form a selection from Hunting Literature past and present. Without sacrificing fidelity to the essentials of the sport, it has been sought to maintain a certain standard of literary excellence in the prose passages and poems chosen. Buried among the works of long-forgotten authors are to be found many pen-pictures of great charm and beauty of expression ; it has been part of the editor's task to discover such passages. In this connection he would call attention to the writings of Thomas Miller, a busy author of the early and middle nineteenth century, whose many novels, poems, and nature studies are now almost entirely forgotten. Several passages from his writings are to be found here. It is to be noticed that in charm and power they compare favourably with work by writers of greater fame. No apology is needed for Foreword vii the inclusion of two extracts on whale-hunting from Herman Melville's masterpiece Moby Dick, One of the chief pleasures found in the compilation of an anthology is to discover in the unexpected, obscure author part of the charm of the master, and it is not the least of the pleasures felt by its readers to rediscover old favourites, old, yet ever new in their appeal. Samuel J. Looker. Contents ^:> THE HUNT IN LITERATURE Hark ! the Hollow Woods Resounding . . Anon. The Boar ...... Homer The Lament for Adonis .... Bion The Blazon Pronounced by the Huntsman The Noble A7-le George Gascoigne Hunting- in Arcadia Arcadia^ 1590 At Bay The Faerie Queene Shakespeare on Hunting A Defence of Hunting . D0}i Quixote A Fox-hunt in the Middle Ages Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight To Sir Robert Wroth . Hunting a Boar .... The Delights of Hunting The Cofupleat Angler Sir Roger in the Hunting Field 7 lie Spectator Rural Sports .... Rural Sports [17 13] The Soul of a Country's Life . Thoughts upon Huntitig Squire Western .... Tom Jones From White's Selborne . My Heart's in the Highlands . Sir Philip Sidney Spenser Cervantes . Benjonson Thomas Otway Izaak Walton Joseph Addison John Gay Peter Beckford Henry Fielding Rev. Gilbert White Robert Burns Kenneth Hare 10 PAGR William Hazlitt 22 X Contents Merry England Companionship Endymion The Plunderer Guy Mannering A Delightful Day . Rural Rides The Childless Father The Brave Cob Lavengro A Recollection Hunting Songs Selling a Horse Silas Marner Through Thick Arcadian Woods The Earthly Paradise A Good Horse Doctor Thome The Hillsides of the West . Rt. Hon. D. H. Madden 33 The Diary of Master iVilliam Silence Reynard the Fox .... Samuel J , Looker 34 Mr. Masefield on Hunting The Sportsman .... Robert Browning 39 John Keats . Sir Walter Scott William Cobbett William Wordsworth George Borrow R. E. Egerton- Warburton . George Eliot William Morris Anthony TroUope 24 24 25 26 27 28 28 NOTABLE RUNS IN FACT AND FICTION Ethel M. Dell 40 Henry Fielding 45 Peter Beckford 48 The Fall .... The Knave of Diamonds The Squire Diverted Tom Jones A Fox Chase Thoughts upon Hunting Hunting Song . . R. E. Egerton- Warburton 53 Hunting Songs " A Merry Go-Rounder " . G. J . Why te- Melville 54 Market Harborough Tarwood . . . R. E. Egerton- Warburton 61 Hunting Songs Contents XI A Day with the Surrey Hounds . IV. M. Thackeray 64 Cox's Diary Forty Minutes with Lord Hardman's Hounds Killed in the Open Mrs. Edward Kennard 69 HUNTING-LORE . Anthony Trollope Along-side Hounds Hunting Sketches Viewing the Fox . Hjcnting the Fox Riding in the Hill Country Nimrod^s Hunting Tours A Tired Fox . Heniy, Lord Willoughby de Broke Advice on Fox-Huniing 'Ware Babble .... Peter Beck ford Thozights upon Hunting Lord Willoughby de Broke C. J. Apperley 77 77 78 80 80 Cub Hunting Hunting the Fox Lord Willoughby de Broke 81 Leicestershire for Hunting Nivirod^s Hunting lours • C. J. Apperley 82 THE FOX Trimbush the Hound on the Fox . The Life of a Foxhound . John Mills 85 Aha ! the Fox Chaucer 86 Shakespeare on Reynard . . 86 Troublesome Neighbours The Life of a Fox Tho7/ias Smith 87 A GHmpse The Life of a Fox • Thomas Smith 88 THE HARE The Haunt of the Hare The Open Air Richard Jefferies 90 The Hunting of the Hare Venus and Adonis . Shakespeare 91 Breaking the Ranks From Cadet to Colonel Sir Thomas Seaton 92 Harmony The Hunting of the Hare • . Anon. 93 xii Contents PAGE Hunting- the Hare . John Gay 93 Rural Sports Tame Hares . H. D. Thoreau 94 Walden Epitaph on a Hare • . W. Cowper 95 THE HORSE The Glory of the Horse . . 97 The Book of Job Pure Air and Fire . . Shakespeare 97 Henry V The Best Companion George Borrow 98 The Romany Rye Horses and Men . . Anon. lOI The Daily News The Horse . . Shakespeare lOI Venus and Adonis A Splendid Animal , George Borrow 103 The Romany Rye The Hunter of the Past. . C. J. Apperley 105 The Chace Mainstay's Summering . . . John Mills 106 The Flyers of the Hunt THE HOUNDS The Modern Foxhound . Hunting the Fox The Perfect Hound The Chace The Hounds . Venus and Adonis First Pack of Foxhounds Hone's Tad le- Book Shakespeare on Hounds The Grafton Hounds The Tost and the Paddock Admiration ! A Squire' s Essay on Hunting The Sportsman's Distress Lord Willoughby de Broke 108 Sotnerville 109 . Shakespeare 109 William Hone iii . 112 H.H.Dixon 113 . Anon. 114 . Anon. 115 Contents xiii HUNTING THE STAG page Hunting the Deer in Olden Times . Thomas Miller 1 16 Sports and Pastimes of Merry England The Haunt of the Deer . . . Samuel ] . Looker 117 Daw7t and Sunset Gold Old Towler ....... Anon. 117 Anonymous \%th-century Hunting Song The Run .... Charles Folk Collyns n8 Notes on the Chase of the Wild Red Deer Sweet Echo Wakes her Mimic Song . . Anon. 120 The Wolmer Forest . . Rev. Gilbert White 121 The Natural History of Selborne The Wildgrave . . . .Sir Walter Scott 123 The Wild Huntsman Mr. Jorrocks and the Surrey Staghounds R. S. Surtees 123 Jorrock's Jaunts From Hart-Leap Well . . William Wordsworth 127 The Chase Begins . . . Thomas Miller 129 Sports and Pastimes of Merry England The Chase Ends .... Thomas Miller 1^9 Sports and Pastimes of Merry England The Chase is O'er . ..... Anon. 131 WRITERS ON HUNTING Nimrod (C. J. Apperley) . . G. F. Underhill 132 A Century of English Fox-Hunting The Druid (Henry Hall Dixon) Hon, Francis Laivley 133 The Life and Times of the Druid R. S. Surtees . .... Samuel J . Looker 136 Whyte-Melville . . . . G. F. Underhill 136 A Century of English Fox-Hunting Egerton-Warburton Me^noir Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell^ Bart. 138 THE POETRY OF HUNTING The Hunting of the Stag . . Michael Drayton 140 A-Hunting We will Go . . . Henry Fielding 142 XIV Contents The Devoted Three The Death of Keeldar Simon Lee Simon Lee Hunting- Song- Hark ! Hark ! Maid Alarian A Stag Hunt The Proud King 7 he Earthly Paradise The Wind's in the South Hunting Songs The Three Jovial Huntsmen . The Little Red Rover . R Hunting Songs The Huntsman's Dirge . PAGE . Sir Walter Scott 143 IVilliam Wordsworth 144 . Sir Walter Scott 145 Thomas Love Peacock 146 . Sir Walter Scott 147 William Morris 148 R. E. Egerton- Warburton 149 . Anon 151 E. Egerton- Warburton 153 . Anon. 154 WISE SAWS AND MODERN INSTANCES The Wholesome Smell of the Stable George Borrow 155 Lavengro Fox-Hunting in the Old Days . Hubert Garle 155 Hunting in the Golden Days Who would Change with a King? Mrs. Edward Kennard 157 Too Gentle ! . . Major W. Fraser-Tytler 158 Hunting- Talk Ignorance ..... Thomas S?nith 159 The Diary of a Huntsman A Joomp ! . . . A Derbyshire Hunting Song Lost ! . . . . Thoughts Upon Hunting A Hunt Breakfast Tallyho Beating Cover The Chace The Peerless Sport Hunting-Talk F. Cottott 160 Peter Beckford 160 F. F. White htcrst 160 C. J. A p per ley 161 Major IV. Fraser-Tytler 163 Contents XV The Huntsman The Diary of a Huntstnan In Brief PAGE Thomas Smith 164 166 GIANTS OF THE PAST The Antiquity of the Chase . The Sportsman^ s Library A Master of Hounds of 1726 . 7 he Hunting Directory Fox-Huntingf Scott and Sebright Lord Sefton . , , . Nimrod's Hunting Tom s The Redoubtable Jack Musters The Post and the Paddock John Mills 169 H. H. Dixon C. J. Apperley H. H. Dixon 170 172 73 174 Edward Goulbiirn 175 Mr. Stubbs of Beckbury The Epwell Kwi A Notorious Hunting Squire . A Century of English Fox-Hunting A Quorn Story . . . G. J. Whyte-Melville Tom Moody ....... Anon. Sir Thomas Mostyn . . . H. H. Dixon The Post and the Paddock Thomas Assheton-Smith Sir John Eardley Wilviot A Famous Fox-Hunter G. F. Under hill 175 178 179 180 ** Good Sport" Rural Rides . William Cobbett 185 Wells and Maiden . R. E. Egerton- Warburton 185 Tom Sebrig-ht in Old Age Scott and Sebright H. H. Dixon 187 Anthony TroUope as Fox-Hunter A utobiography . A. Trollope 187 Some Past Dianas Fox-Hunting in the Shires . T. F. Dale 188 Old Martin Round . John Mills 190 XVI Contents PERSONALITIES Charles Kings ley Chaucer Hunting from London . My Winter Garden The Clerical Hunter Canterbury Tales King Edward VH Fifty Years' Fox-Hiinting The ex-Queen of Naples Fijty Years' Fox-Hunting The *' Iron Duke" as Fox-Hunter A Famous Fox-Hunter Sir J. E. Eardley-Wihnot The Brocklesby .... G. E, Collins History of the Brocklesby Hounds Song to the New Year ..... Anon. Sporting Magazine .f 1835 [92 193 /. M. K. Elliott 193 /. M. K. Elliott 195 196 196 [97 HUMOUR IN THE CHASE " Foxing" ..... Hunting /. Otho Paget 198 When Bucks a-Hunting Go . Old Ballad . Anon. 199 Tit for Tat Fifty Years Fox-Hunting /. . M. K. Elliott 200 The Cleveland's Foundation . . Anon. 200 Lord Lonsdale's Harriers . Anon. 201 The Bedale " Rules of Advice " . . IV. Datibuz 203 TALLY-HO The First Day of the Season New Sporting Magazine, 1 83 1 . Anon. 206 The Find Charles Kingsley 207 The Longest Run .... H. A. Br y den 208 The Hunting Song Sweet Polly's Garland . Anon. 209 The British Horse of 1616 . Ge? vase Markham 210 The Coal-black Steed . . G. /• ^ Whyte-MelviUe 2U Contents xvii Hare v. Fox . J.s. Gardiner PAGE 214 A Frequent Cause Hunting . J. Otho Paget 214 The Good Grey Mare . . G. J. Baily's Magazine, 1871 Whytt -Melville 215 A French Boar-hunt Qiientin Dnrwa7-d Pig-sticking in India From Cadet to Colonel HERE AND THERE . Sir Walter Scott A Kangaroo Hunt The Antipodes and Round the World The Wild Boar The Earthly Paradise Hunting the Antelope in Persia Sketches in Persia Hunting the Fox in Persia Sketches in Persia The Mountain Bull Cadyow Castle At Walden .... Walden The Hunt is up Sir Thomas Seaton Alice M. Frere Williajn Morris Sir John Malcolm Sir John Malcolm Sir Walter Scott H. B. Thoreaii Lord Sands and Thomas Oliphant 218 220 222 223 224 226 227 228 231 Hunting the Whale Moby Dick Killing the Whale . Moby Dick WHALE HUNTLNG . Herman Melville Her?na7i Melville 232 235 THE CHASE THE HUNT IN LITERATURE Listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, From the side of some hoar hill Through the high wood echoing shrill. Milton. Hark ! the Hollow Woods Resounding -£Z> A Glee HARK ! the hollow woods resounding, Echo to the hunter's cry, Hark ! how all the vales resounding. To his cheering voice reply ; Now so swift o*er hills aspiring. He pursues the gay delight, Distant woods and plains retiring. Seem to vanish from his sight. Flying still, and still pursuing. See the fox, the hounds, the men, Cunning cannot save from ruin. Free from refuge, wood, or den ; Now they kill him, homeward hie them, To a jovial night's repast, Thus no sorrow e'er comes nigh them, Health continues to the last. 4 The Chase The Boar o ^o -^o o THEREBY in a thick lair was a great boar lying, and through the coppice the force of the wet winds blew never, neither did the bright sun light on it with his rays, nor could the rain pierce through, so thick it was, and of fallen leaves there was great plenty therein. Then the noise of the men's feet and the dogs came upon the boar as they pressed on in the chase, and forth from his lair he sprang towards them with his back bristled-up and fire shining in his eyes, and stood at bay before them all. Homer. The Lament for Adonis ^^ ^£> I WEEP for Adonis, beautiful, dead Adonis, and the Loves weep with me : " Adonis, the beautiful, is dead." Lovely Adonis lies on the hill, his thigh rent with ivory ; white flesh with white tusk. Under the brows the eyes fail of sight, the rose is fugitive on his lip where the kiss dies, that ever to Kypris shall be unrestored. . . . The hounds he loved wail about the youth. . . . . . . Who would not weep, hearing the tale of Aphrodite's love ? — " Thou diest, thrice-desired, and my love is gone as a dream. Kytherea is bereft and the Loves are idle in her halls. My girdle is lost together with thy love. Why wast thou bold in hunting, and why, with all thy beauty, must thou be ever-daring in the chase . . . r" "I weep for Adonis, Adonis, the beautiful, is dead." Mourn Adonis no longer in the oak-woods, Kypris ; a solitude of leaves is no fit resting for thy The Hunt in Literature 5 lover. Restore Adonis, dead, to thine own couch. He is beautiful in death, lovely as though he slept. . . . End weeping now, Kytherea, and beat thy breast no more. Thou wilt lament thy love and mourn with each returning year. Bion. The Blazon pronounced by the Huntsman I AM the hunte, which rathe and earely ryse, My bottell filde with wine in any wise ; Twoo draughts I drinke, to stay my steppes with all, For eche foote one, bicause I would not fall. Then take my Hounde in liam me behinde. The stately Harte in fryth or felle to finde. And whiles I seeke his slotte where he hath fedde The sweete byrdes sing, to cheare my drowsie hedde. And when my Hounde doth streyne upon good vent I must confesse the same dothe me content. George Gascoigne (1525— 1577). Hunting in Arcadia ^o ^^> <:> THEN went they together abroad, the good Kalander entertaining them with pleasant dis- coursing— how well he loved the sport of hunting when he was a young man, how much in the comparison thereof he disdained all chamber-delights, that the sun (how great a journey soever he had to make) could never prevent him with earliness, nor the moon, with her sober countenance, dissuade him from watching till midnight for the deers feeding. O, said he, you will never live to my age, without you keep yourself in breath with exercise, and in heart with joyfulness ; too much thinking doth consume the spirits j and oft it falls out, that, 6 The Chase while one thinks too much of his doing, he leaves to do the effect of his thinking. Then spared he not to remember, how much Arcadia was changed since his youth j activity and good-fellowship being nothing in the price it was then held in ; but, according to the nature of the old-growing world, still worse and worse. Then would he tell them stories of such gallants as he had known ; and so, with pleasant company, beguiled the time's haste, and shortened the way's length, till they came to the side of the wood, where the hounds were in couples, staying their coming, but with a whining accent craving liberty ; many of them in colour and marks so resembling, that it showed they were of one kind. The huntsmen handsomely attired in their green liveries, as though they were children of summer, with staves in their hands to beat the guiltless earth, when the hounds were at a fault ; and with horns about their necks, to sound an alarm upon a silly fugitive : the hounds were straight uncoupled, and ere long the stag thought it better to trust to the nimbleness of his feet than to the slender fortification of his lodging ; but even his feet betrayed him ; for, howsoever they went, they themselves uttered themselves to the scent of their enemies, who, one taking it of another, and some- times believing the wind's advertisements, sometimes the view of — their faithful counsellors — the hunts- men, with open mouths, then denounced war, when the war was already begun. Their cry being composed of so well-sorted mouths, that any man would perceive therein some kind of proportion, but the skilful woodmen did find a music. Then delight and variety of opinion drew the horsemen sundry ways, yet cheering their hounds with voice and horn, kept still as it were together. The wood The Hunt in Literature 7 seemed to conspire with them against its own citizens, dispersing their noise through all its quarters ; and even the nymph Echo left to bewail the loss of Narcissus, and became a hunter. But the stag was in the end so hotly pursued, that, leaving his flight, he was driven to make courage of despair ; and so turning his head, made the hounds, with change of speech, to testify that he was at a bay : as if from hot pursuit of their enemy, they were suddenly come to a parley. Sir Phi lip Sidney. At Bay <^ si:> <:> s^> LIKE a wylde bull, that, being at a bay, Is bayted of a mastifFe and a hound And a curre-dog, that doe him sharp assay On every side, and beat about him round ; But most that curre, barking with bitter sownd. And creeping still behinde, doth him incomber. That in his chaufFe he digs the trampled ground. And threats his horns, and bellowes like the thonder. Spenser. Shakespeare on Hunting <:> ^o THE hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey. The fields are fragrant and the woods are green. Tit. Andr., II. 2, I. Curio. Will you go hunt, my lord ? Duke. What, Curio ? Curio. The hart. Duke. Why so I do, the noblest that I have : O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence ! That instant was I turnM into a hart ; 8 The Chase And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me. Twelfth Night, I. I, 1 6. Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart ; Here did'st thou fall ; and here thy hunters stand Sign'd in thy spoil and crimson'd in thy lethe. yulius C^sar. ... to sigh, as 'twere The mort o' the deer. The Winters Tale, I. 2, 117. Go, one of you, find out the forester ; For now our observation is perform'd ; And since we have the vaward of the day, My love shall hear the music of my hounds. Uncouple in the western valley : let them go ; Despatch, I say, and find the forester. Midsummer Nighfs Dream. Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt With modest warrant. Coriolanus, III. I, 274. . . . the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze. Wildly determining which way to fly. Lucrece, 1 149. . . . but match'd in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn. Midsummer Night's Dream. . . . we may outrun. By violent swiftness, that which we run at, And lose by over-running. Henry Fill, I. I, 139. The Hunt in Literature g Uncouple at the timorous flying hare, Or at the fox which lives by subtlety, Or at the roe which no encounter dare : Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs. And on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds. renus and Adonis^ 673. He is no woodman that doth bend his bow To strike a poor unseasonable doe. Lucrece^ 580. Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood ; To the which place a poor sequester'd stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord. The wretched animal heaved forth such groans That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting, and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase ; and thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook. Augmenting it with tears. As Tou Like It^ II. i, 31. A Defence of Hunting e> ^o " A yTERCY on me, what pleasure can you find, J^VX^^y of ye all, in killing a poor beast that never meant any harm ! " The Duke. " You are mistaken, Sancho ; hunting wild beasts is the most proper exercise for knights and princes ; for in the chase of a stout noble beast may be represented the whole art of war, stratagems, policy, and ambuscades, with all other devices usually lo The Chase practised to overcome an enemy with safety. Here we are exposed to the extremities of heat and cold : ease and laziness can have no room in this diversion. By this we are inured to toil and hardship ; our limbs are strengthened, our joints made supple, and our whole body hale and active ; in short, it is an exercise that may be beneficial to many, and can be prejudicial to none." Cervantes (i 547-1616). Part of the Story of a Fox-Hunt in The Middle Ages ^i:^ ^^y- ^c^ (From Sir Gawayne mid the Green Knight) THE Mass is sung to end, the pages wait The guests' arrival and upon them pressed The sops in goblets, while to the main gate The serving men bring coursers of the best, For all that troop is to the hunting dressed ; Brisk is the earth with frost on stock and stone. And the great steeds impatient of arrest, And as with joy departed is each one. Out of his cloud-rack ruddy rose the mighty sun. When they had ridden to the greenwood side The hounds of their long leashes free they cast ; A traverse way athwart the wood they ride, And through the horns they blow a rousing blast. A little hound that by a thorn-bush passed Shrilly gives tongue, his fellows answer back, The huntsmen cheer, the rabble fall in fast. Hounds swift and lithe follow the fox's track As forth by many a difficult grove he leads the pack. He swerves, he backs, he doubles, oft he crept Beneath some sharp hedge, marking far away How fast drew on the hunt, then quick he leapt The Hunt in Literature 1 1 Over a spinney, leading them astray, And scaped the forest, and had won the day But that a beater's hut was stationed there, Wherefrom three fierce ones ran at him all grey. So, to the woods again, poor wretch, in care. With all the woe in life and courage of despair. Then was it very bliss to hear the hounds When all the pack had view of him together — Such outcry for his head, as from their bounds The clambering cliffs had clattered altogether. No gambler on his life would stake a feather — Full loud they holloaed when they came at him And "thief! thief! " cried, and in the greenwood tether. Those tattlers at his tail with eyen grim Hem him lest out again he dart from forest dim. Kenneth Hare. To Sir Robert Wroth o o {The Delights of a Country Life) OW blest art thou, canst love the country. H Wroth, Whether by choice, or fate, or both. And though so near the city, and the Court, Art ta'en with neither's vice nor sport ; Nor throng'st, when masquing is, to have a sight Of the short bravery of the night ; But canst at home, in thy securer rest. Live, with unbought provision blest ; Free from proud porches, or the gilded roofs, 'Mongst lowing herds, and solid hoofs. . . . Or if thou list the night in watch to break, A-bed canst hear the loud stag speak. In Spring, oft roused for thy Master's sport. Who for it makes thy house his Court ; 12 The Chase Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year Divid*st, upon the lesser deer : And in the Winter, hunt'st the flying hare, More for thy exercise, than fare ; While all that follow, their glad ears apply To the full greatness of the cry : Thou dost with some delight the day outwear. Although the coldest of the year. The whilst the several seasons thou has seen Of flowery fields, of copses green. The mowed meadows, with the fleeced sheep, And feasts, that either shearers keep ; The ripen'd ears, yet humble in their height, And furrows laden with their weight ; The apple-harvest, that doth longer last ; The hogs return'd home fat from mast ; The trees cut out in log, and those boughs made A fire now, that lent a shade. Ben Jonson. Hunting a Boar ^o^ ^z^ ^o FORTH from the thicket rushed another boar. So large he seemed the tyrant of the woods, With all his dreadful bristles raised on high ; They seemed a grove of spears upon his back : Foaming, he came at me, where I was posted. Whetting his huge long tusks, and gaping wide, As he already had me for his prey ; Till, brandishing my well-poised javelin high, With this bold executing arm I struck The ugly brindled monster to the heart. Thomas Otway (1651-1685). The Hunt in Literature 13 The Delights of Hunting o o WHAT pleasure doth man take in hunting the stately Stag, the generous Buck, the Wild-Boar, the cunning Otter, the crafty Fox, and the fearful Hare ! . . . Hunting is a game for Princes and noble persons ; it hath been highly prized in all ages ; it was one of the qualifications that Xenophon bestowed on his Cyrus, that he was a hunter of wild beasts. Hunting trains up the younger nobility to the use of manly exercises in their riper age. What more manly exercise than hunting the Wild-Boar, the Stag, the Buck, the Fox, or the Hare ! How doth it preserve health, and increase strength and activity ! And for the dogs that we use, who can commend their excellency to that height which they deserve ? How perfect is the hound at smelling, who never leaves or forsakes his first scent, but follows it through so many changes and varieties of other scents, even over and in the water, and into the earth ! What music doth a pack of dogs then make to any man, whose heart and ears are so happy as to be set to the tune of such instruments ! For my Hounds, I know the language of them, and they know the language and meaning of one another, as perfectly as we know the voices of those with whom we discourse daily. Izaak Walton. Sir Roger in the Hunting Field «£> (From Addison's Spectator) AD not Exercise been absolutely necessary H for our Well-being, Nature would not have made the Body so proper for it, by giving such an 14 The Chase Activity to the Limbs, and such a Ph'ancy to every Part as necessarily produce those Compressions, Extensions, Contortions, Dilatations, and all other kinds of Motions that are necessary for the Preserva- tion of such a System of Tubes and Glands as has been before mentioned. And that we might not want Inducements to engage us in such an Exercise of the Body as is proper for its Welfare, it is so ordered that nothing valuable can be procured without it. Not to mention Riches and Honour, even Food and Raiment are not to be come at with- out the Toil of the Hands and Sweat of the Brows. Providence furnishes Materials, but expects that we should work them up our selves. The Earth must be laboured before it gives its Encrease, and when it is forced into its several Products, how many Hands must they pass through before they are fit for Use ? Manufactures, Trade, and Agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen Parts of the Species in twenty ; and as for those who are not obliged to labour, by the Condition in which they are born, they are more miserable than the rest of Mankind, unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary Labour which goes by the Name of Exercise. My Friend Sir Roger has been an indefatigable Man in Business of this kind, and has hung several Parts of his House with the Trophies of his former Labours. The Walls of his great Hall are covered with the Horns of several kinds of Deer that he has killed in the Chace, which he thinks the most valuable Furniture of his House, as they afford him frequent Topicks of Discourse, and shew that he has not been Idle. At the lower end of the Hall, is a large Otter's Skin stuffed with Hay, which his Mother ordered to be hung up in that manner, and The Hunt in Literature 15 the Knight looks upon with great Satisfaction, be- cause it seems he was but nine Years old when his Dog killed him. A little Room adjoining to the Hall is a kind of Arsenal filled with Guns of several Sizes and Inventions, with which the Knight has made great Havock in the Woods, and destroyed many thousands of Pheasants, Partridges and Wood- Cocks. His Stable Doors are patched with Noses that belonged to Foxes of the Knight's own hunting down. Sir Roger showed me one of them that for Distinction sake has a Brass Nail stuck through it, which cost him about fifteen Hours riding, carried him through half a dozen Counties, killed him a brace of Geldings, and lost above half his Dogs. This the Knight looks upon as one of the greatest Exploits of his Life. The perverse Widow, whom I have given some account of, was the Death of several Foxes ; For Sir Roger has told me that in the Course of his Amours he patched the Western Door of his Stable. Whenever the Widow was cruel, the Foxes were sure to pay for it. In propor- tion as his Passion for the Widow abated, and Old Age came on, he left off Fox-hunting; but a Hare is not yet safe that sits within ten Miles of his House. There is no kind of Exercise which I would so recommend to my Readers of both Sexes as this of Riding, as there is none which so much conduces to Health, and is every way accommodated to the body, according to the Idea which I have given of it. Doctor Sydenham is very lavish in its Praises ; and if the English Reader would seethe Mechanical Effects of it described at length, he may find them in a Book published not many Years since, under the Title of Medicina Gymnastica, For my own part, when I am in Town, for want of these oppor- tunities, I exercise my self an Hour every morning 1 6 The Chase upon a dumb Bell that is placed in a corner of my Room, and pleases me the more because it does everything I require of it in the most profound Silence. My Landlady and her Daughters are so well acquainted with my hours of exercise, that they never come into my Room to disturb me whilst I am ringing. When I was some Years younger than I am at present, I used to employ myself in a more laborious Diversion, which I learned from a Latin Treatise of Exercises that is written with great Erudition ; it is there called the Fighting with a Man's own Shadow ; and consists in the brandishing of two short Sticks grasped in each hand, and Loaden with Plugs of Lead at either end. This opens the chest, exercises the Limbs, and gives a Man all the Pleasures of Boxing, without the blows. I could wish that several Learned Men would lay out that time which they employ in Controversies and Dis- putes about nothing, in this method of fighting with their own Shadows. It might conduce very much to evaporate the Spleen, which makes them uneasy to the Publick as well as to themselves. To conclude. As I am a Compound of Soul and Body, I consider my self as obliged to a double scheme of Duties ; and think I have not fulfilled the Business of the Day, when I do not thus employ the one in Labour and Exercise, as well as the other in Study and Contemplation. Addison ( 1 6 7 2- 1 7 1 9) . Rural Sports ^^^ o* >£> SOON as Aurora drives away the night, And edges eastern clouds with rosy light, The healthy huntsman, with the cheerful horn. Summons the dogs, and greets the dappled morn ; The Hunt in Literature 17 The tuneful noise the sprightly courser hears, Paws the green turf, and pricks his trembling ears ; The slacken'd rein now gives him all his speed. Back flies the rapid ground beneath the steed ; Hills, dales, and forests, far behind remain. While the warm scent draws on the deep-mouth'd train. Where shall the trembling hare a shelter find ? Hark ! death advances in each gust of wind ! New stratagems and doubling wiles she tries ; Till, spent at last, she pants and heaves for breath. Then lays her down, and waits devouring death. John Gay, The Soul of a Country's Life -.^^^ ■«r> IT would be needless to enumerate the heroes of antiquity who were taught the art of hunting, or the many great men [among whom was the famous Galen] who have united in recommending it. I shall, however, remind you, that your beloved hero, Henry the Fourth of France, made it his chief amusement [his very loveletters, strange as it may appear, being filled with little else] ; and that one of the greatest ministers which our own country ever produced, was so fond of this diversion, that the first letter he opened, as I have been told, was generally that of his huntsman. In most countries, from the earliest times, hunting has been a principal occupation of the people,either for use or amusement ; and many princes have made it their chief delight ; . . . Hunting is the soul of a country life : it gives health to the body, and contentment to the mind ; and is one of the few pleasures that we can enjoy in society, without prejudice either to ourselves or our friends. Peter Beckford. 1 8 The Chase Squire Western ^:> <::> <:> THE good squire was a little too apt to indulge in that kind of pleasantry which is generally called rhodomontade, but which may, with as much propriety, be expressed by a much shorter word, and, perhaps, we too often supply the use of this little monosyllable by others ; since very much of what frequently passes in the world for wit and humour should, in the strictest purity of language, receive that short appellation, which, in conformity to the well-bred laws of custom, I here suppress. . . . Jones was lately grown very intimate with Mr. Western. He had so greatly recommended himself to that gentleman, by leaping over five-barred gates, and by other acts of sportsmanship, that the squire had declared Tom would certainly make a great man, if he had but sufficient encouragement. He had often wished he had himself a son with such parts ; and one day very solemnly asserted at a drinking-bout, that Tom should hunt a pack of hounds, for a thousand pounds of his money, with any huntsman in the whole country. By such kind of talents he had so ingratiated himself with the squire, that he was a most wel- come guest at his table, and a favourite in his sport ; everything which the squire held most dear, to wit, his guns, dogs, and horses, were now as much at the command of Jones as if they had been his own. . . . Mr. Western grew every day fonder and fonder of Sophia (his daughter) insomuch that his beloved dogs themselves almost gave place to her in his affections ; but as he could not prevail upon himself to abandon these, he contrived very cunningly to The Hunt in Literature 19 enjoy their company, together with that of his daughter, by insisting on her riding a-hunting with him. Sophia, to whom her father's word was a law, readily complied with his desires, though she had not the least delight in a sport, which was of too rough and masculine a nature to suit with her dis- position. She had however another motive, besides her obedience, to accompany the old gentleman in the chase ; for, by her presence, she hoped in some measure to restrain his impetuosity, and to prevent him from so frequently exposing his neck to the utmost hazard. The strongest objection was that which would have formerly been an inducement to her, namely, the frequent meeting with young Jones, whom she had determined to avoid ; but, as the end of the hunting-season now approached, she hoped by a short absence with her aunt to reason herself entirely out of her unfortunate passion ; and had not any doubt of being able to meet him in the field the subsequent season without the least danger. On the second day of her hunting, as she was returning from the chase, and was arrived within a little distance from Mr. Western's house, her horse, whose mettlesome spirit required a better rider, fell suddenly to prancing and capering in such a manner, that she was in the most imminent danger of falling. Tom Jones, who was at a little distance behind, saw this, and immediately galloped up to her assist- ance. As soon as he came up, he leaped from his own horse, and caught hold of hers by the bridle. The unruly beast presently reared himself on end on his hind legs, and threw his lovely burden from his back, and Jones caught her in his arms. She was so affected with the fright, that she was 20 The Chase not immediately able to satisfy Jones, who was very solicitous to know whether she had received any hurt. She soon after, however, recovered her spirits, assured him she was safe, and thanked him for the care he had taken of her. Jones answered, " If I have preserved you, madam, I am sufficiently repaid ; for, I promise you, I would have secured you from the least harm at the expense of a much greater misfortune to myself than I have suffered on this occasion." "What misfortune?" replied Sophia eagerly: "I hope you have come to no mishief?" " Be not concerned, madam," answered Jones. " Heaven be praised you have escaped so well, con- sidering the danger you were in. If I have broke my arm, I consider it as a trifle, in comparison of what I feared on your account. . . ." Mr. Western, who was advanced at some distance when this accident happened, was now returned, as were the rest of the horsemen. Sophia immediately acquainted them with what had befallen Jones, and begged them to take care of him. Upon which Western, who had been much alarmed by meeting his daughter's horse without its rider, and was now overjoyed to find her unhurt, cried out, " I am glad it is no worse. If Tom hath broken his arm, we will get a joiner to mend un again. . . ." As to Squire Western, he was seldom out of the sick-room, unless when he was engaged either in the field or over his bottle. Nay, he would some- times retire hither to take his beer, and it was not without much difficulty that he was prevented from forcing Jones to take his beer too : for no quack ever held his nostrum to be a more general panacea than he did this; *' which," he said, "had more virtue in it than was all the physic in an apothecary's The Hunt in Literature 21 shop." He was, however, by much entreaty, pre- vailed on to forbear the application of this medicine ; but from his serenading his patient every hunting morning with the horn under his window, it was impossible to withhold him ; nor did he ever lay aside that halloo, with which he entered into all companies, when he visited Jones, without any re- gard to the sick person's being at that time either awake or asleep. This boisterous behaviour, as it meant no harm, so happily it effected none, and was abundantly compensated to Jones, as soon as he was able to sit up, by the company of Sophia, whom the squire then brought to see him ; nor was it, indeed, long before Jones was able to attend her to the harpsi- chord, where she would kindly condescend, for hours together, to charm him with the most delicious music, unless when the squire thought proper to interrupt her, 'by insisting on "Old Sir Simon," or some other of his favourite pieces. Henry Fielding. From White's Selborne <:> y^p^ ^> THE king's stag-hounds came down to Alton, attended by a huntsman and six yeoman prickers, with horns, to try for the stag that has haunted Hartley Wood for so long a time. Many hundreds of people, horse and foot, attended the dogs to see the deer unharboured ; but though the huntsmen drew Hartley Wood, and Long Coppice, and Shrubwood, and Temple Hangers, and in their way back Hartley and Wardle-Ham Hangers, yet no stag could be found. The royal pack, accustomed to have the deer turned out before them, never drew the coverts 22 The Chase with any address and spirit, as many people that were present observed ; and this remark the event has proved to be a true one. For as a person was lately pursuing a pheasant that was wing-broken in Hartley Wood, he stumbled upon the stag by accident, and ran in upon him as he lay concealed amidst a thick brake of brambles and bushes. The Rev. Gilbert IVhite (1720-1793). My Heart's in the Highlands <^> <:> MY heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here ; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer ; A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of Valour, the country of Worth, Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands for ever I love. Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow ; Farewell to the straths and green valleys below : Farewell to the forests and wild hanging woods ; Farewell to the torrents and loud pouring floods. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here. My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer : Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe ; My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. Robert Burns, Merry England *^> "O ^c?^ THE beams of the morning sun shining on the glades, or through the idle branches of the tangled forest, the leisure, the freedom, " the pleasure of going and coming without knowing where," the troops of wild deer, the sports of the chase, and The Hunt in Literature 23 other rustic gambols, were sufficient to justify the well-known appellation of " Merry Sherwood," and in like manner, we may apply the phrase to Merry England. . . . The English also excel, or are not excelled in wiring a hare, in stalking a deer, in shooting, fishing, and hunting. England to this day boasts her Robin Hood and his merry men, that stout archer and outlaw and patron-saint of the sporting-calendar. What a cheerful sound is that of the hunters issuing from the autumnal wood and sweeping over hill and dale ! — a cry more tuneable Was never halloo'd to by hound or horn.* What sparkling richness in the scarlet coats of the riders, what a glittering confusion in the pack, what spirit in the horses, what eagerness in the followers on foot, as they disperse over the plain, or force their way over hedge and ditch ! Surely, the coloured prints and pictures of these, hung up in gentlemen's halls and village alehouses, however humble, as works of art, have more life and health and spirit in them, and mark the pith and nerve of the national character more creditably than the mawkish, sentimental, affected designs of Theseus and Pirithous and ^neas and Dido, pasted on foreign salons a manger, and the interior of country houses. If our tastes are not epic, nor our pretensions lofty, they are simple and our own ; and we may possibly enjoy our native rural sports and the rude remem- brances of them, with the truer relish on this account, that they are suited to us and we to them. IVilliam Hazlitt. ^ From Midsummer Night's Dreamy an instance of Hazlitt's frequent inexactitude in quotation. It should read — "Was never hoUa'd to, nor cheer'd with horn." 24 The Chase Companionship ^^ ^> .^> SOME were athirst in soul to see again Their fellow-huntsmen o'er the wide champaign, In times long past : to sit with them and talk Of all the chances in their earthly walk ; Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores Of happiness, to when upon the moors. Benighted, close they huddled from the cold. And shared their famish'd scrips. John Keats. The Plunderer .^:> <:?* »^> THE scene, though uncouth to the eye of a professed sportsman, had something in it wildly captivating. The shifting figures on the mountain ridge having the sky for their background appeared to move in the air. The dogs, impatient of their restraint, and maddened with the baying beneath, sprung here and there and strained at the slips which prevented them from joining their com- panions. Looking down, the view was equally striking. The thin mists were not totally dis- persed in the glen, so that it was often through their gauzy medium that the eye strove to discover the motions of the hunters below. Sometimes a breath of wind made the scene visible, the blue rill glittering as it twined itself through its rude and solitary dell. They then could see the shepherds springing with fearless activity from one dangerous point to another, and cheering the dogs on the scent — the whole so diminished by depth and distance, that they looked like pigmies. Again the mists close over them, and the only signs of their con- tinued exertions are the halloos of the men, ascending The Hunt in Literature 25 as it were out of the bowels of the earth. When the fox, thus persecuted from one stronghold to another, was at length obliged to abandon his valley, and to break away for a more distant retreat, those who watched his motions from the top slipped their grey-hounds, which, excelling the fox in swiftness and equalling him in ferocity and spirit, soon brought the plunderer to his life's end. Sir IValter Scott, A Delightful Day -i> ><:> o Friday, November i6th, 1821. A WHOLE day most delightfully passed a hare- hunting, with a pretty pack of hounds kept here by Messrs. Palmer. They put me upon a horse that seemed to have been made on purpose for me, strong, tall, gentle, and bold, and that carried me either over or through everything. I, who am just the weight of a four-bushel sack of good wheat, actually sat on his back from daylight in the morning to dusk [about nine hours] without once setting my foot on the ground. Our ground was at Orcop, a place about four miles distance from this place. We found a hare in a few minutes after throwing oflF; and, in the course of the day, we had to find four, and were never more than ten minutes in finding. A steep and naked ridge, lying between two flat valleys, having a mixture of pretty large fields and small woods, formed our ground. The hares crossed the ridge forward and backward, and gave us numerous views and very fine sport. I never rode on such steep ground before ,• and, really, in going up and down some of the craggy places, where the rains had washed the earth from 26 The Chase the rocks, I did think once or twice of my neck. As to the cruelty, as some pretend, of this sport, that point I have, I think, settled in one of the chapters of my Tear^s Residence in America. As to the expense, a pack, even a full pack of harriers like this, cost less than two bottles of wine a day with their inseparable concomitants. And, as to the time thus spent, hunting is inseparable from early rising ; and, with habits of early rising, who ever wanted time for any business ? William Cobbett. The Childless Father "C^ '>0 ^c^ " T TP, Timothy, up with your staff and away ! X^ Not a soul in the village this morning will stay ; The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds, And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds." Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet, and green, On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen ; With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow. The girls on the hills made a holiday show. Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before. Filled the funeral basin at Timothy's door ; A coffin through Timothy's threshold had past ; One child did it bear, and that child was his last. Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray. The horse and the horn, and the hark ! hark away Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut With a leisurely motion the door of his hut. The Hunt in Literature 27 Perhaps to himself at that moment he said : " The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead." But of this in my ears not a word did he speak ; And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek. William Wordsworth. The Brave Cob o o o I CANNOT help thinking that it was fortunate for myself, who am, to a certain extent, a phi- lologist, that with me the pursuit of languages has been always modified by the love of horses ; for scarcely had I turned my mind to the former, when I also mounted the wild cob, and hurried forth in the direction of the Devil's Hill, scattering dust and flint-stones on every side ; that ride, amongst other things, taught me that a lad with thews and sinews was intended by nature for some- thing better than mere word-culling : and if I have accomplished anything in after life worthy of mentioning, I believe it may partly be attributed to the ideas which that ride, by setting my blood in a glow, infused into my brain. I might, other- wise, have become a mere philologist, a harmless drudge, one of those beings who toil night and day in culling useless words for some opus magnum which Murray will never publish, and nobody ever read — beings without enthusiasm, who, having never mounted a generous steed, cannot detect a good point in Pegasus himself; like a certain philologist, who, though acquainted with the exact value of every word in the Greek and Latin languages, could observe no particular beauty in one of the most glorious of Homer's rhapsodies. What knew he of Pegasus ? he had never mounted a generous steed ; the merest jockey, had the strain 2 8 The Chase been interpreted to him, would have called it a brave song ! — I return to the brave cob. George Borrow. A Recollection ^:y- ^o^ ^,0 I WELL remember in my youthful day, When first of love I felt the inw^ard smart, How one fair morning, eager all to start. My fellow-hunters chided my delay. I follow'd listless, for with tyrant sway That secret grief oppress'd my aching heart, Till fond Hope whisper'd, ere this day depart Thy lov'd one thou shalt see — Away ! away ! The chase began, I shar'd its maddening glee. And rode amid the foremost in that run, Whose end, far distant. Love had well foretold. Her dwelling lay betwixt my home and me ; We met, still lingering ere it sunk, the sun Overspread her blushes with a veil of gold. R. E. Egerton-Warhurton, Selling a Horse ^^i^ ^o^ ^o- DUNSTAN CASS, setting off in the raw morning, at the judiciously quiet pace of a man who is obliged to ride to cover on his hunter, had to take his way along the lane, which at its farther extremity passed by the piece of unenclosed ground called the Stone-pit, where stood the cottage, once a stone-cutter's shed, now for fifteen years inhabited by Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary at this season, with the moist trodden clay about it, and the red, muddy water high up in the deserted quarry. . . . He rode on to cover. The Hunt in Literature 29 Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure they would be — he was such a lucky fellow. " Heyday," said Bryce, who had long had his eye on Wildfire, "you're on your brother's horse to-day : how's that ? " " Oh, I've swopped with him," said Dunstan, whose delight in lying, grandly independent of utility, was not to be diminished by the likelihood that his hearer would not believe him ; " Wildfire's mine now." " What ! has he swopped with you for that big- boned hack of yours ? " said Bryce, quite aware he would get another lie in answer. " Oh, there was a little account between us," said Dunsey carelessly, " and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated him by taking the horse, though it was against my will, for I'd got an itch for a mare of Jortin's — as rare a bit of blood as ever you threw your leg across. But I shall keep Wildfire, now I've got him, though I'd a bid of a hundred and fifty for him the other day, from a man over at Flitton — he's buying for Lord Cromleck — a fellow with a cast in his eye, and a green waistcoat. But I mean to stick to Wildfire ; I shan't get a better at a fence in a hurry. The mare's got more blood, but she's a bit too weak in the hind-quarters." Bryce, of course, divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the horse, and Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing is only one of many human transactions carried on in this ingenious manner) ; and they both considered that the bar- gain was in its first stage, when Bryce replied ironically — " I wonder at that now ; I wonder you mean to keep him ; for I never heard of a man who 30 The Chase didn't want to sell his horse getting a bid of half as much again as the horse was worth. You'll be lucky if you get a hundred." Keating rode up now, and the transaction be- came more complicated. It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at the Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley, and having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him home with the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run, encouraged by con- fidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy from his pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped without injury ; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his flank, and painfully panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and under this ex- asperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident happened ; and hence he was between eager riders in advance, not troubling themselves about what happened behind them, and far-of} stragglers, who were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wildfire The Hunt in Literature 31 had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature It was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of witnesses to a position which no swaggering could make enviable. George Eliot. Through thick Arcadian Woods ^> >^> THROUGH thick Arcadian woods a hunter went, Following the beasts up, on a fresh spring day j But since his horn-tipped bow but seldom bent. Now at the noontide nought had happed to slay. Within a vale he called his hounds away, Harkening the echoes of his lone voice cling About the clifFs and through the beech-trees ring. But when they ended, still awhile he stood. And but the sweet familiar thrush could hear, And all the day-long noises of the wood, And o'er the dry leaves of the vanished year His hounds* feet pattering as they drew anear. And heavy breathing from their heads low hung, To see the mighty cornel bow unstrung. Then smiling did he turn to leave the place. But with his first step some new fleeting thought A shadow cast across his sunburnt face ; I think the golden net that April brought From some warm world his wavering soul had caught ; For, sunk in vague sweet longings, did he go Betwixt the trees with doubtful steps and slow. William Morris. 32 The Chase A Good Horse I >^> ^ " ^ I ^HAT'S a niceish nag you gave Frank this J_ morning," said he to his uncle. " I was looking at him before dinner. He is a Monsoon, isn't he ? " " Well, I can't say I know how he was bred," said the squire. " He shows a good deal of breeding." " He's a Monsoon, I'm sure," said the Honour- able John. " They all have those ears, and that peculiar dip in the back. I suppose you gave a goodish figure for him ? " " Not so very much," said the squire. " He's a trained hunter, I suppose ? " "If not, he soon will be," said the squire. " Let Frank alone for that," said Harry Baker. " He jumps beautifully, sir," said Frank. " I haven't tried him myself, but Peter made him go over the bar several times this morning." The Honourable John was determined to give his cousin a helping hand, as he considered it. He thought that Frank was very ill-used in being put off with so incomplete a stud, and thinking also that the son had not spirit enough to attack his father himself on the subject, the Honourable John determined to do it for him. "He's the making of a very nice horse, I don't doubt. I wish you had a string like him, Frank." Frank felt the blood rush to his face. He would not for worlds have his father think that he was discontented, or otherwise than pleased with the present he had received that morning. He was heartily ashamed of himself in that he had listened with a certain degree of complacency to his cousin's tempting ; but he had no idea that the subject The Hunt in Literature 33 would be repeated — and then repeated, too, before his father, in a manner to vex him on such a day as this, before such people as were assembled there. He was very angry with his cousin, and for a moment forgot all his hereditary respect for a De Courcy. "I tell you what, John," said he, "do you choose your day, some day early in the season, and come out on the best thing you have, and Til bring, not the black horse, but my old mare ; and then do you try and keep near me. If I don't leave you at the back of God-speed before long, I'll give you the mare and the horse too." Anthony Trollope. The Hillsides of the West o o IF we would realise in some degree the England of three centuries ago, we must seek it in the moorland districts of the west, where the general elevation of the surface has restricted the area of cultivation to the bottoms, and the lower slopes of the hills. Vast tracts of upland remain unen- closed, the haunt of red deer and moorland ponies. There also primitive manners linger, and ancient sport survives. The hart is hunted as he was hunted throughout England when Elizabeth was Queen. The Noble Art of Venerie is still cited as an authority. The village fair ; the wrestling green ; the songs and catches of villagers in the inn kitchen ; parson and yeoman discoursing by the covert side on the mysteries of woodcraft ; the hare hunt on the unenclosed hillside; "the assembly " on the opening day of the hunting season, the " mort o' the deer " in the moorland stream ; the frank recognition of differences of 34 The Chase rank ; the old world games ; the harvest-home dinner ; are all stray watts of the Elizabethan age. No more than distant mutterings of the storms which have since then broken over England have reached the lonely moors of Exe and Barle, and merry England, like the setting sun, lovingly lingers on the hillsides of the west. The Rt. Hon. D. H. Madden. Reynard the Fox ^:^ ^:^ ^c^ (Mr. Masefield on Hunting) REYNARD the Fox, or the Ghost Heath Run," is Mr. Masefield's finest narrative poem. Here he rises in great measure above the faults which so often disfigure his poetry. Subject and form become perfectly fused, and the zest of the narrative is extraordinary. The poem has been read to one of the leading Huntsmen in the Mid- lands, not a lover of literature by any means, who expressed himself concerning it in terms of un- measured praise. The poem is divided into two parts. In the first part the meet is described, the hounds and the huntsmen, and in the second part we are shown the hunt from the fox's point of view. The poem shows throughout evidence of the most careful and accurate observation. The description and incidents are rendered with a pictorial quality which is as rare as it is welcome in modern poetry. In Reynard the Fox we are reminded of the manner of Chaucer. Here in abundance are many of the loving, lingering descriptive touches, which build up such a convincing picture in the work of the father of English poetry. The fidelity of Mr. Masefield's work may be The Hunt in Literature 35 tested by a simple but nevertheless searching test. I turn to one of the best prose books ever written on the life of the Fox, The Life of a FoXy as TVritten by Himself by Thomas Smith, Master of the Craven Hounds, and afterwards of the Pytchley Hounds, Northamptonshire. There I find in prose what Mr. Masefield has given us in his poetry. The work of Thomas Smith is deservedly famous. After reading it we can understand as never before some- thing of the life of that strange, fascinating animal, the Fox. Describing the chase of a young fox-cub Smith writes: "One of these (the hounds) at last got fast on my track, and away I went straight to the earth where we were born ; but to my surprise and disappointment, I found it stopped up with a bundle of sticks covered over with earth." Com- pare this with the following passage from Mr. Masefield's poem : — He passed the spring where the rushes spread, And there in the stones was his earth ahead. One last short burst upon faih'ng feet — There life lay waiting, so sweet, so sweet, Rest in a darkness, balm for aches. The earth was stopped. It was barred with stakes. One more example may be given : " Soon after I had moved from my kennel, a single hound threw his tongue, Mr. Smith gave a very loud cheer, and every hound appeared at once to be running on the scent. This so frightened me that I lost no time in leaving the covert and taking my way straight to the forest." This from Smith. While Mr. Masefield writes : — Then the horn blew nearer, a hound's voice quivered, Then another, then more, till his body shivered, He left his kennel and trotted thence With his ears flexed back and his nerves all tense. 36 The Chase Many other illustrations could be given to prove the wonderful way in which Mr. Maselield succeeds in getting into his poem the essential features. Every phrase tells, every line helps to build up in the reader's mind a vivid picture of the hunts- men and the hunted. The poem opens with a description of the hunting stables, which conjures up a busy, bustling scene of action : — The stables were alive with din From dawn until the time of meeting, A pad groom gave a cloth a beating, Knocking the dust out with a stake. Two men cleansed stalls with fork and rake. And one went whistling to the pump. The handle whined, ker-lump, ker-lump, The water splashed into the pail, And as he went, it left a trail. Lipped over on the yard's bricked paving. Then the followers of the hounds begin to arrive. The parson's son a famous runner, ready to follow the hounds on foot. The parson himself, vividly sketched : — Well-knit, well-made, well-coloured, eager. The various characters of the countryside, who arrive to take part in the hunt, are described with much skill. The pert young women, the hard- bitten, sturdy yeomen, and the old squire with his three daughters, Carrie, Jane, and Lou : — Carrie, youngest of the three. And lovely to the blood was she ; Blonde, with a face of blush and cream. And eyes deep violet in their gleam. Bright blue when quiet in repose. She was a very golden rose. Then Charles Cothill of the Sleins, the lover of the open air, the free comrade of the downs. The Hunt in Literature 37 When the meet has assembled, the Hunt arrives. After describing the hounds Mr. Masefield goes on to describe the two Whips and the Huntsman Robin Dawe, which might stand in its beauty and truth for the character of the best type of Engh'sh yeoman. These sons of the soil and children of the open air who for generations have lived lives of quiet devotion to duty, and when danger or diffi- culties have come to their country, have shouldered the burden, and have lived nobly or died courageously for the great cause. It is hard to decide which to admire the most in this portrait of Robin Dawe, the beauty of the verse or the fidelity of its content. Here realism and felicity of diction have made a perfect marriage. Part II. of the poem opens with a description of the copse where a fox is taking his rest after the adventures of the night. He is sleeping with one eve open and ears alert. The fox hears the sounds of the approaching hunt and makes tracks for his native earths. He approaches the earth only to find it barred with stakes, so there is nothing for it but to make tracks for another earth farther on. His scent is killed for a moment by a terrier who chases him fruitlessly, but it is only a brief respite, as the hounds soon pick up the scent again. The fox by now is in parlous case, for his next earth is at Mourne End Wood, four miles ahead. At length, weary and spent he nears his goal : — A dry, deep burrow with rocky roof, Proof against crowbars, terrier proof, Life to the dying, rest for bones ; The earth was stopped ; it was filled with stones. Then everything seems hopeless, and for a moment his courage fails. Utterly spent he lies 38 The Chase in the gorse, waiting with bared teeth for the hounds and the last fight. But the hounds rush by, their cry now is not for him, for the wood is rank with the scent of fox, and the hounds have got on the track of another cub which they eventually kill. The day draws to its close, the fox lies still and takes his rest after the heat and burden of the chase. A robin sang from a pufTt ted breast, The fox lay quiet and took his rest. . . . Reynard the Fox is a poem which is alert, vivid, full of apt phrasing and descriptions of natural beauty. A poem to make the blood course faster in the veins of every true sportsman. The love of the Chase, this zest of Hunting is in our blood, it is part of the English tradition and heritage. Wc find also in the poetry of John Clare and in one or two of Wordsworth's finest poems, the same quality of exact and loving depiction of English Landscape which Mr. Masefield has given us in Reynard the Fox. The charm of the English countryside, the vision of the land we love, with its aroma that haunts the mind ; its life of trees and flowers ; its glad cries of birds, and its intimate life of animals and insects, was rendered with passionate devotion by the peasant poet, John Clare. In prose Richard JefFeries and George Borrow, in verse Clare and Wordsworth are our greatest interpreters of English Landscape. Samuel y . Looker. The Hunt in Literature 39 The Sportsman ,^> .^> .<^ HUNT, fish, shoot, Would a man fulfil life's duty ! Not to the bodily frame alone Does Sport give strength and beauty. But character gains in — courage ? Ay, Sir, and much beside it ! You don't sport, more's the pity : You soon would find, if you tried it, Good sportsman means good fellow, Sound-hearted he, to the centre ; Your mealy-mouthed mild milksops — There's where the rot can enter ! . . . Still, tastes are tastes, allow me ! Allow, too, where there's keenness For Sport, there's little likelihood Of a man's displaying meanness ' Robert Browning. NOTABLE RUNS IN FACT AND FICTION The Fall • ^c?^ ^^> THEY found a fox after some delay in a copse on the side of a hill, and the run that followed scattered even Anne's sedateness to the winds. Something of youth, something of girlish- ness, yet dwelt within her and bounded to the surface in response to the wild excitement of the chase. The grey went like the wind. He and the black mare that Nap Errol rode led the field, a distinction that Anne had never sought before, and which she did not greatly appreciate on this occasion. For when they killed in a chalky hollow, after half-an-hour's furious galloping across country with scarcely a check, she dragged her animal round with a white, set face and forced him from the scene. Nap followed her after a little and found her fumbling at a gate into a wood. " I've secured the brush for you," he began. Then, seeing her face, " What is it ? You look sick." " I feel sick," Anne said shakily. He opened the gate for her, and followed her through. They found themselves alone, separated from the rest of the hunt by a thick belt of trees. 40 Notable Runs 41 " Do you mean to say you have never seen a kill before ? " he said. " Never at close quarters," murmured Anne, w^ith a shudder. He rode for a little in silence. At length, "I'm sorry you didn't like being in at the death," he said. " I thought you would be pleased." "Pleased ! " she said, and shuddered again. "Personally," said Nap, " I enjoy a kill." Anne's face expressed horror. "Yes," he said recklessly, "I am like that. I hunt to kill. It is my nature." A red gleam shone suddenly in his fiery eyes. He looked at her aggressively. "What do you hunt for anyway?" he demanded. "I don't think I shall hunt any more," she said. " Oh, nonsense, Lady Carfax ! That's being ultra-squeamish," he protested. "You mustn't, you know. It's bad for you." "I can't help it," she said. "I never realised before how cruel it is." " Of course it's cruel," said Nap. " But then so is everything, so is life. Yet you've got to live. We were created to prey on each other." " No, no ! " she said quickly, for his words hurt her inexplicably. "I take a higher view." "I beg your pardon," said Nap, in the tone of one refusing a discussion. She turned to him impulsively. "Surely you do too ! " she said, and there was even a note of pleading in her voice. Nap's brows met suddenly. He turned his eyes away. " I am nothing but an animal," he told her rather brutally. "There is nothing spiritual about 42 The Chase me. I live for what I can get. When I get a chance I gorge. If I have a soul at all, it is so rudimentary as to be unworthy of mention." In the silence that followed he looked at her again with grim comprehension. " P'raps you don't care for animals," he suggested cynically. " To change the subject, do you know we are leaving the hunt behind ? " She reined in somewhat reluctantly. " I suppose we had better go back." " If your majesty decrees," said Nap. He pulled the mare round and stood motionless, waiting for her to pass. He sat arrogantly at his ease. She could not fail to note that his horse- manship was magnificent. The mare stood royally as if she bore a king. The man's very insignificance of bulk seemed to make him the more superb. " Will you deign to lead the way ? " he said. And Anne passed him with a vague sense of uneasiness that almost amounted to foreboding. For it seemed to her as if for those few moments he had imposed his will upon hers, had without effort overthrown all barriers of conventional reserve, and had made her acknowledge in him the mastery of man. Rejoining the hunt, she made her first deliberate attempt to avoid him, an attempt that was so far successful that for the next hour she saw nothing of him beyond casual glimpses. She did not join her husband, for he resented her proximity in the hunting-field. They drew blank in a wood above the first kill, but finally found after considerable delay along a stubbly stretch of ground bordering Baronmead, a large estate that the eldest Errol had just bought. The fox headed straight for the Baronmead Notable Runs 43 woods, and after him streamed the hunt pell-mell along a stony valley. It was not Anne's intention to be in at a second death that day, and she deliberately checked the grey's enthusiasm when he would have borne her headlong through the scampering crowd. To his indignation, instead of pursuing the chase in the valley, she headed him up a hill. He protested with vehemence, threatening to rebel outright, but Anne was determined, and eventually she had her way. Up the hill they went. It was a scramble to reach the top, for the ground was steep and sloppy, but on the summit of the ridge progress was easier. She gave the grey the rein, and he carried her forward at a canter. From here she saw the last of the horsemen below her sweep round the curve towards Baronmead, and the hubbub growing fainter in the distance told her that the hounds were already plunging through the woods. Ahead of her the ridge culminated in a bare knoll whence it was evident that she could overlook a considerable stretch of country. She urged her animal towards it. The mist was thickening in the valley, and it had begun to drizzle. The watch on her wrist said two o'clock, and she determined to turn her face homewards as soon as she had taken this final glimpse. The grey, snorting and sweating, stumbled up the slippery ascent. He was plainly disgusted with his rider's tactics. They arrived upon the summit, and Anne brought him to a standstill. But though she still heard vague shoutings below her, the mist had increased so much in the few minutes they had taken over the ascent that she could discern nothing. Her horse was winded after the climb, however, 44 The Chase and she remained motionless to give him time to recover. The hubbub vi^as dying away, and she surmised that the fox had led his pursuers out on the further side of the w^oods. She shivered as the chill damp crept about her. A feeling of loneli- ness that was almost physical possessed her. She half wished that she had not forsaken the hunt after all. Stay ! was she quite alone ? Out of the clinging, ever-thickening curtain there came sounds — the sounds of hoofs that struggled upwards, of an animal's laboured breathing, of a man's voice that encouraged and swore alternately. Her heart gave a sudden sharp throb. She knew that voice. Though she had only met the owner thereof three times she had come to know it rather well. Why had he elected to come that way, she asked herself? He almost seemed to be dogging her steps that day. Impulse urged her to strike in another direction before he reached her. She did not feel inclined for another tete-a-tete with Nap Errol just then. She tapped the grey smartly with her switch, more smartly than she intended, for he started and plunged. At the same instant there broke out immediately below them a hubbub of yelling and baying that was like the shrieking of a hundred demons. It rose up through the fog as from the mouth of an invisible pit, and drove the grey horse clean out of his senses. He reared bolt upright in furious resistance to his rider's will, pawed the air wildly, and being brought down again by a sharp cut over the ears, flung out his heels in sheer malice and bolted down the hill, straight for that pande- monium of men and hounds. If the pleasures of the hunt failed to attract his mistress, it was other- Notable Runs 45 wise with him, and he meant to have his fling in spite of her. For the first few seconds of that mad flight Anne scarcely attempted to check his progress. She was taken by surprise and was forced to give all her attention to keeping in the saddle. The pace was terrific. The scampering hoofs scarcely seemed to touch the ground at all. Like shadows they fled through the rising mist. It struck chill upon her face as they swooped downwards. She seemed to be plunging into an icy, bottomless abyss. And then like a dagger, stabbing through every nerve, came fear, a horror unspeakable of the depth she could not see, into which she was being so furiously hurled. She was clinging to the saddle, but she made a desperate efi:ort to drag the animal round. It was quite fruitless. No woman's strength could have availed to check that headlong gallop. He swerved a little, a very little, in answer, that was all, and galloped madly on. And then — all in a moment it came, a moment of culminating horror, more awful than anything she had ever before experienced — the ground fell suddenly away from the racing feet. A confusion of many lights danced before her eyes — a buzzing uproar filled her brain — she shot forward into space. . . . Ethel M. Deliy The Squire Diverted ^i^ o ^o THE reader may be pleased to remember that the squire departed from the inn in great fury, and in that fury he pursued his daughter, he rode ^ From The Knave of Diamonds. By permission of the author. 46 The Chase full speed, vowing the utmost vengeance against poor Sophia, if he should but overtake her. He had not gone far before he arrived at a cross- way. Here he called a short council of war, in which, after hearing different opinions, he at last gave the direction of his pursuit to Fortune, and struck directly into the Worcester road. In this road he proceeded about two miles, when he began to bemoan himself most bitterly, frequently crying out, " What — pity is it ! Sure never was so unlucky a dog as myself! " And then burst forth into a volley of oaths and execrations. The parson attempted to adminster comfort to him on this occasion. "Sorrow not, sir," says he, "like those without hope. Howbeit we have not yet been able to over- take young madam, we may account it some good fortune that we have hitherto traced her course aright. Peradventure she will soon be fatigated with her journey, and will tarry in some inn, in order to renovate her corporeal functions ; and in that case, in all moral certainty, you will very briefly be compos votiy " Pogh ! d — n the slut ! " answered the squire, " I am lamenting the loss of so fine a morning for hunting. It is confounded hard to lose one of the best scenting days, in all appearance, which hath been this season, and especially after so long a frost." Whether Fortune, who now and then shows some compassion in her wantonest tricks, might not take pity of the squire ; and, as she had determined not to let him overtake his daughter, might not resolve to make him amends some other way, I will not assert ; but he hardly uttered the words just before commemorated, and two or three oaths Notable Runs 47 at their heels, when a pack of hounds began to open their melodious throats at a small distance from them, which the squire's horse and his rider both perceiving, both immediately pricked up their ears, and the squire, crying, " She's gone, she's gone ! Damn me if she is not gone ! " instantly clapped spurs to the beast, who little needed it, having indeed the same inclination with his master ; and now the whole company, crossed into a cornfield, rode directly towards the hounds, with much hallowing and whooping, while the poor parson, blessing himself, brought up the rear. . . . The hounds ran very hard, as it is called, and the squire pursued over hedge and ditch, with all his usual vociferation and alacrity, and with all his usual pleasure ; nor did the thoughts of Sophia ever once intrude themselves to allay the satisfaction he enjoyed in the chace, which, he said, was one of the finest he 'ever saw, and which he swore was very well worth going fifty miles for. As the squire his daughter, the servants, we may easily believe, forgot their mistress ; and the parson, after having expressed much astonishment, in Latin, to himself, at length likewise abandoned all farther thoughts of the young lady, and, jogging on at a distance behind, began to meditate a portion of doctrine for the ensuing Sunday. The squire who owned the hounds was highly pleased with the arrival of his brother squire and sportsman : for all men approve merit in their own way, and no man was more expert in the field than Mr. Western, nor did any other better know how to encourage the dogs with his voice, and to animate the hunt with his holla. Sportsmen, in the warmth of a chace, are too much engaged to attend to any manner of ceremony, nay, even to the offices of 48 The Chase humanity ; for, if any of them meet with an accident by tumbling into a ditch, or into a river, the rest pass on regardless, and generally leave him to his fate : during this time, therefore, the two squires, though often close to each other, interchanged not a single word. The master of the hunt, however, often saw and approved the great judgement of the stranger in drawing the dogs when they were at a fault, and hence conceived a very high opinion of his understanding, as the number of his attendants inspired no small reverence to his quality. As soon, therefore, as the sport was ended by the death of the little animal which had occasioned it, the two squires met, and in all squire-like greeting saluted each other. The conversation was entertaining enough, and what we may perhaps relate in an appendix, or on some other occasion ; but as it nowise concerns this history, we cannot prevail on ourselves to give it a place here. It concluded with a second chace, and that with an invitation to dinner. This being accepted, was followed by a hearty bout of drinking, which ended in as hearty a nap on the part of Squire Western. Henry Fielding. A Fox Chase ^^^ <^ xi:> HOW well the hounds spread the cover ! — the huntsman, you see, is quite deserted, and his horse, who so lately had a crowd at his heels, has not now one attendant left. How steadily they draw ! — you hear not a single hound ; yet none are idle. Is not this better than to be subject to continual disappointment, from the eternal babbling of unsteady hounds ? Notable Runs 49 How musical their tongues ! — and as they get nearer to him, how the chorus fills ! — Hark, he is found ! — Now, where are all your sorrows, and your cares, ye gloomy souls — or where your pains and aches, ye complaining ones ! — one halloo has dispelled them all. What a crash they make ! — and echo seemingly takes pleasure to repeat the sound. The astonished traveller forsakes his road, lured by its melody : the listening ploughman now stops his plough ; and every distant shepherd neglects his flock, and runs to see him break — what joy, what eagerness, in every face ! Mark how he runs the cover's utmost limit, yet dares not venture forth ; the hounds are still too near ! — That check is lucky. Now, if our friends head him or not, he will soon be off. Hark, they halloo ! — by G — d he's gone ! ! Hark ! what loud shouts Re-echo through the groves ! he breaks away. Shrill horns proclaim his flight. Each straggling hound Strains o'er the lawn to reach the distant pack. 'Tis triumph all, and joy. — Now, huntsman, get on with the head hounds ; the whipper-in will bring on the others after you ; keep an attentive eye on the leading hounds, that, should the scent fail them, you may know at least how far they brought it. Mind Galloper^ how he leads them ! — It is difficult to distinguish which is first, they run in such a style ; yet he is the foremost hound : the goodness of his nose is not less excellent than his speed. How he carries the scent ! and, when he loses it, see how eagerly he flings to recover it again ! — There, now he's at head again ! See, how they top the hedge ! — Now, how they mount the E 50 The Chase hill ! — Observe what a head they carry ; and show me, if thou canst, one shuffler or skirter amongst them all. Are they not like a parcel of brave fellows, who, when they engage in an undertaking, determine to share its fatigue and its dangers equally among them . . . ? It was then the fox I saw, as we came down the hill ; those crows directed me which way to look, and the sheep ran from him as he passed along. The hounds are now on the very spot ; yet the sheep stop them not, for they dash beyond them. Now see with what eagerness they cross the plain ! — Galloper no longer keeps his place. Brusher takes it : see how he flings for the scent, and how im- petuously he runs ; how eagerly he took the lead, and how he strives to keep it ! yet Victor comes up apace : he reaches him ! — Observe what an excellent race it is between them ! — it is doubtful which will reach the cover first. How equally they run ! — how eagerly they strain ! — Now Victor^ Victor I — ah, Brusher^ thou art beaten, Victor first tops the hedge ! — See there ; see how they all take it in their strokes ! The hedge cracks with their weight, so many jump at once ! Now hastes the whipper-in to the other side of the cover : he is right, unless he head the fox. Listen ! the hounds have turned : they are now in two parts. The fox has been headed back, and we have changed at last. Now, my lad, mind the huntsman's halloo, and stop to those hounds which he encourages. He is right ! — that, doubtless, is the hunted fox. Now they are oflp again. Ha ! a check. Now for a moment's patience ! — We press too close upon the hounds ! — Huntsman, stand still ! — as yet they want you not. How Notable Runs 51 admirably they spread ! — how wide they cast ! — Is there a single hound that does not try ? — If there be, ne'er shall he hunt again. There, Trueman is on the scent : he feathers, yet still is doubtful. 'Tis right ! — how readily they join him ! — See those wide-casting hounds, how they fly forward to recover the ground they have lost ! — Mind Lightning^ how she dashes ; and Mungo^ how he works ! — Old Frantic^ too, now pushes forward : she knows as well as we the fox is sinking. Huntsman ! at fault at last ? — How far did you bring the scent ? — Have the hounds made their own cast ? — Now make yours. You see that sheep-dog has coursed the fox : get forward with your hounds, and make a wide cast. Hark ! that halloo is indeed a lucky one. If we can hold him on, we may yet recover him ; for a fox so much distressed must stop at last. We shall now see if they will hunt as well as run ; for there is but litttle scent, and the impending cloud still makes that little less. How they enjoy the scent ! — See how busy they all are, and how each in his turn prevails ! Huntsman, be quiet ! Whilst the scent was good, you pressM on your hounds : it was well done : — when they came to a check, you stood still and interrupted them not : — they were afterwards at fault ; you made your cast with judgement, and lost no time. You now must let them hunt. With such a cold scent as this you can do no good : they must do it all themselves. Lift them now, and not a hound will stoop again. Ha ! a high road at such a time as this, when the tenderest- nosed hound can hardly own the scent ! — Another fault ! That man at work, then, has headed back the fox. Huntsman ! cast not your hounds now ; 52 The Chase you see they have over-run the scent : have a h'ttle patience, and let them, for once, try back. We must now give them time. See where they bend towards yonder furze brake ! — I wish he may have stopped there ! — Mind that old hound, how he dashes o'er the furze ; I think he winds him ! — Now for a fresh entapis ! Hark ! they halloo ! Aye, there he goes ! It is nearly over with him : had the hounds caught view, he must have died. He will hardly reach the cover. See how they gain upon him at every stroke ! — It is an admirable race ! — yet the cover saves him. Now be quiet, and he cannot escape us : we have the wind of the hounds, and cannot be better placed. How short he runs ! — He is now in the very strongest part of the cover. What a crash ! — every hound is in, and every hound is running for him. That was a quick turn ! — Again another ! — he's put to his last shifts. Now Mischief is at his heels, and death is not far off. Ha ! they all stop at once : all silent, and yet no earth is open. Listen ! now they are at him again ! — Did you hear that hound catch view ? — They over-ran the scent, and the fox had laid down behind them. Now, Reynard, look to yourself! — How quick they all give their tongues ! — Little Dreadnought^ how he works him ! — The terriers, too, they are now squeaking at him. How close Vengeance pursues ! how terribly she presses ! — It is just up with him ! — Gods ! what a crash they make ! the whole wood resounds ! — That turn was very short ! — There ! now — aye, now they have him ! — Who-hoop ! Peter Beckford, Notable Runs 53 Hunting Song ^> ^^:> >:^> I OF all the recreations with which mortal man is blest, Go where he will, fox-hunting still is pleasantest and best ; The hunter knows no sorrow here, the cup of life to him A bumper bright of fresh delight filled sparkling to the brim. Chorus. Away, away we go With a tally, tally-ho, With a tally, tally, tally, tally, tally, tally ho ! 2 O ! is it not — O ! is it not — a spirit-stirring sound. The eager notes from tuneful throats that tell a fox is found ? O ! is it not — O ! is it not — a pleasant sight to see The chequer'd pack, tan, white, and black, fly scudding o'er the lea ? Chorus. 3 How keen their emulation in the bustle of the burst, When side by side the foremost ride, each struggling to be first ; Intent on that sweet music which in front delights their ear. The sobbing loud of the panting crowd they heed not in the rear. Chorus. 54 The Chase 4 The field to all is open, whether clad in black or red, O'er rail and gate the feather-weight may thrust his thorough-bred ; While heavier men, well-mounted, though not fore- most in the fray, If quick to start and stout of heart, need not be far away. Chorus. 5 And since that joy is incomplete which Beauty shuns to share, Or maid or bride, is skillM to ride, we fondly welcome there ; Where woodland hills our music fills, and echo swells the chorus. Or when we fly with a scent breast-high, and a galloping fox before us. Chorus. R. E. Egerton-Warhurton. " A Merry Go-Rounder " ^i> AMILE-and-a-half of grass, some six or eight fences, and the sustained brilliancy of the pace, had their usual effect on the moving panorama. A turn in his favour, of which his old experience has prompted him to take every advantage, enables Mr. Sawyer to pull Hotspur back to a trot and look about him. He is in a capital place, and has every reason to believe the new horse is a " flyer." Notable Runs 55 Hitherto he has only asked him to gallop, best pace, over sound turf, and take a succession of fair hunt- ing fences in his stride. Hotspur seems to know his business thoroughly, and though a little eager, he allows his rider to draw him together for his leaps, and the way in which he cocks his ears when within distance denotes a hunter. Mr. Sawyer is full of confidence. He has been riding fence for fence with the Honourable Crasher, whose pale face wears a smile of quiet satisfaction. The latter has indulged Topsy-Turvy with two awkward bits of temper and an unnecessary gate ; the mare is consequently tolerably amiable, and though she throws her head wildly about if any other horse comes near her, may be considered in an unusually composed frame of mind. The hunts- man has been riding close to his hounds, in that state of eager anxiety which the philosopher would hardly consider enjoyment, and yet which is never- theless not without its charms — all his feelings are reflected, in a modified form, in the breast of the Master. The latter, riding his own line, as near the pack as his conscience will permit him, is divided between intense enjoyment of the gallop and a host of vague apprehensions lest anything should turn up to mar the continuance of the run. . . . The hounds, having overrun the scent a trifle, swing to the line again with dashing confidence, and take it up once more with an energy that seems but increased by their momentary hesitation. They might have been covered with a sheet hither- to ; now they lengthen out into a string, and the leaders scour along, with their noses in the air and their sterns lowered. Every yard increases their distance from the pursuing horsemen. 56 The Chase They are pointing to a dead flat surface of old yellow grass with patches of rushes and ant-hills interspersed. There would appear to be a mile or more of plain without a fence ; but Mr. Sawyer spies a tell-tale willow here and there, and wishes in his heart that he was quite sure Hotspur could jump water ! Presently the hounds disappear and emerge again, throwing their tongues as they take to running, and looking darker and less distinct than before. " Is there a ford, Charles ? " halloos Major Brush, who has shaken to the front, and would fain continue there without a wetting. " Never a one for miles ! " answers Charles with inconceivable rapidity, catching his horse by the head, and performing a running accompaniment with his spurs. In a few seconds he is over with a considerable effort, a certain flourish and scramble when they land, showing there are very few inches to spare. The ill-fated Major has no idea of refusing. His horse, however, thinks differently ; so they com- promise the matter by sliding in together and climbing out separately — draggled, disgusted, and bemired. "There is no mistake about it," thinks Mr. Sawyer ; " I must jump or else go home ! " He may take a liberty, he hopes, with a friend ; so he puts the roan's head close behind the Honourable Crasher, and, devoutedly trusting that gentleman will get over, drives Hotspur resolutely at the brook. Topsy-Turvy, wild with excitement, throws her head in the air and takes off a stride too soon. Consequently, she drops her hind-legs and rolls into the opposite field. The roan, who jumps as Notable Runs 57 far as ever he can, lands on Crasher's reins, of which the latter never lets go, and drives them into the turf. " Line, sir, line ! " expostulates the Honourable, not knowing who it is. " Oh ! it's you, is it ? " he adds, picking himself up and remounting. " All right ! Go along, old fellow ! The hounds are running like smoke ! " Mr. Sawyer apologises freely as they gallop on. In his heart he thinks Crasher the best fellow he ever met, and contrasts his behaviour with that of Sir Samuel Stuffy in the Old Country, on whom he once played the same trick, and whose language in return was more Pagan than Parliamentary. The Master and Struggles get over also, the latter not without a scramble. Those who are not in the first flight wisely diverge towards a bridge. For five minutes and more there are but half-a-dozen men with the hounds. These run harder than ever for another mile, then throw their heads up and come to an untoward check. " What a pity ! " observes Mr. Sawyer. Not that he thinks so exactly, for Hotspur wants a pufF of wind sadly. " Turned by them sheep ! " says Charles, and casts his hounds rapidly forward and down wind. No ; he has not been turned by the sheep ; he has been coursed by a dog. Charles wishes every dog in the country was with Cerberus, except the nineteen couple now at fault. " Pliant has it," observes the Master, as Pliant, feathering down the side of a hedge, makes sure she is right, and then flings a note or two off her silvery tongue, to apprise her gossips of the fact. They corroborate her forth- with, and the chorus of female voices could scarce be outdone at a christening. Nevertheless, they 58 The Chase are brought to hunting now, and must feel for it every yard they go. . . . Hounds are apt to be a little unsettled after so rapid a burst as I have attempted to describe, and it takes a few fields of persevering attention to steady them again. After this, however, I think we may have remarked they made but few mis- takes, and a fox well rattled up to the first check, huntsmen tell us, is as good as half killed. The description of a run is tedious to all but the narrator. What good wine a man should give his guests, who indulges in minute detail of every event that happened ! — how they entered this spinney and skirted that wood, and crossed the common, and finally killed or lost or ran to ground, or other- wise put an end to the proceedings of which the reality is so engrossing and the account so tedious. I have seen young men, longing to join the ladies or pining to smoke cigars, forced to sit smothering their yawns as they pretended to take an interest in the hounds and the huntsman, and the country, and their host's own doings, and that eternal black mare. I can stand it well enough myself, with a fair allowance of '41 or '44, by abstracting my attention completely from the narrative, and wandering in the realms of fancy cheered by the blushing fluid. But everyone may not enjoy this faculty, and you cannot, in common decency, go fast asleep in your Amphitryon's face. Again, I say, nothing but good wine will wash the infliction down. Let him, then, whose port is new or whose claret unsound, beware how he thus trespasses on the forbearance of his guests. Of course they killed their fox. After the first check they gradually took to hunting, and so to running once more, Mr. Sawyer distinguishing him- Notable Runs 59 self by describing a very perfect semicircle with Hotspur, over some rails near Stamford Hall. The roan was tired and his rider ambitious, so a downfall was the inevitable result. Nevertheless, he fell honourably enough, and hoped no one but himself knew how completely the accident was occasioned by utter exhaustion on the part of his steed. There is no secret so close as that between a horse and his rider. Up to the first check, Hotspur had realised his owner's fondest anticipations. " He's fit for a king ! " ejaculated the delighted Sawyer, when they flew so gallantly over the brook. Even after the hounds had run steadily on for the best part of an hour, the animal's character had only sunk to " not thoroughly fit to go " ; but when they arrived at the Hemplow Hills, and the pack, still holding a fair hunting pace, breasted that choking ascent, he could not disguise from himself that the roan was about "told out." They are indeed no joke, those well-known Hemplow Hills, when they present themselves to astonished steeds and ardent riders after fifty minutes over the strongest part of Northamptonshire. A sufficiently picturesque ob- ject to the admirer of nature, they prove an unwelcome obstacle to the follower of the chase, and it was no disgrace to poor Hotspur that, al- though he struggled gamely to the top, he was reduced to a very feeble and abortive attempt at a trot when he reached the flat ground on the summit. Ere long this degenerated to a walk, — and I leave it my reader, if a sportsman, to imagine with what feelings of relief Mr. Sawyer observed the now distant pack turning short back. The fox was evidently hard pressed, and dodging for his life. The Rev. Dove, with an exceedingly red face, 6o The Chase a broken stirrup-leather, and a dirty coat, viewed him crawling slowly down the side of a hedgerow. In an instant his hat was in the air, and Charles, surrounded by his hounds, was galloping to the point indicated. Two sharp turns with the fox in sight — a great enthusiasm and hurry amongst those sportsmen who were fortunate enough to be present, and who rode^ one and all, considerably faster than their horses could go — a confused mass of hounds rolling over each other in the corner of the field — Charles ofF his horse and amongst them, with a loud " Who-whoop ! " — and the run is concluded, to the satisfaction of all lookers- on, and the irremediable disgust of the many equestrians who started " burning with high hope," and are now struggling and stopping over the adjoining parish, in different stages of exhaus- tion. The Honourable Crasher congratulates Mr. Sawyer on his success ; also takes this opportunity of introducing his friend to the M.F.H. A few courteous sentences are interchanged ; Messrs. Savage, Struggles, and Brush propose a return to Harborough ; cigars are offered and lit ; everybody seems pleased and excited. John Standish Sawyer has attained the object for which he left home — he has seen a good run, made a number of pleasant acquaintances, launched once more into that gay world which he now thinks he abandoned too soon. He ought to be delighted with his success ; but, alas for human triumphs ! Ay ! even in the fount of joy Some bitter drops the draught alloy, and our friend, with many feigned excuses and a dejected expression of countenance, lingers behind his companions and plods his way homewards alone. G. /. Whyte-Mehille. Notable Runs 6i Tarwood ^^ ^i:^ ^:> ^^ (A Run with the Heythrop) HE waited not — he was not found — No warning note from eager hound, But echo of the distant horn, From outskirts of the covert borne, Where Jack the Whip in ambush lay, Proclaim'd the fox was gone away. Away ! ere yet that blast was blown. The fox had o'er the meadow flown ; Away ! away ! his flight he took, Straight pointing for the Windrush brook ! The Miller, when he heard the pack. Stood tiptoe on his loaded sack, He view'd the fox across the flat. And, needless signal, wav'd his hat ; He saw him clear with easy stride The stream by which the mill was plied ; Like phantom fox he seem'd to fly. With speed unearthly flitting by. The road that leads to Witney town. He travell'd neither up nor down ; But straight away, like arrow sped From cloth-yard bow, he shot ahead. Now Cokethorpe on his left he past. Now Ducklington behind him cast. Now by Bampton, now by Lew, Now by Clanfield, on he flew ; At Grafton now his course inclin'd. And Kelmscote now is left behind ! Where waters of the Isis lave The meadows with its classic wave. 62 The Chase O'er those meadows speeding on, He near'd the bridgeway of St. John ; He paused a moment on the bank, His footsteps in the ripple sank, He felt how cold, he saw how strong The rapid river rollM along ; Then turn'd away, as if to say, " All those who like to cross it may." The Huntsman, though he view'd him back, View'd him too late to turn the pack. Which o'er the tainted meadow prest, And reach'd the river all abreast ; In with one plunge, one billowy splash, In — altogether — in they dash. Together stem the wintry tide. Then shake themselves on t'other side ! " Hark, hallo back ! " that loud halloo Then eager and more eager grew. Till every hound recrossing o'er, Stoop'd forward to the scent once more ; Nor further aid, throughout the day. From Huntsman or from Whip had they. Away ! away ! uncheck'd in pace. O'er grass and fallow swept the chace ; To hounds, to horses, or to men. No child's play was the struggle then ; A trespasser on Milward's ground. He climb'd the pale that fenc'd it round ; Then close by Little Hemel sped. To Fairford pointing straight ahead. Though now, the pack approaching nigh. He heard his death-note in the cry. They view'd him, and then seem'd their race The very lightning of the chace ! Notable Runs 63 The fox had reached the Southropp lane, He strove to cross it, but in vain, The pack roll'd o'er him in his stride, And onward struggling still — he died. This gallant fox, in Tarwood found. Had crossed full twenty miles of ground ; Had sought in cover, left or right. No shelter to conceal his flight ; But nigh two hours the open kept. As stout a fox as ever stept ! That morning, in the saddle set, A hundred men at Tarwood met ; The eager steeds which they bestrode PacM to and fro the Witney road. For hard as iron shoe that trod Its surface, the unyielding sod ; Till midday sun had thaw'd the ground And made it fit for foot of hound, They champ'd the bit and twitch'd the rein, And paw'd the frozen earth in vain, Impatient with fleet hoof to scour The vale, each minute seem'd an hour ; Still Rumour says of that array Scarce ten lived fairly through the day. When younger men of lighter weight Some tale of future sport relate. Let Whippy show the brush he won, And tell them of the Tarwood run ; While Rival's portrait on the wall. Shall oft to memory recall The gallant fox, the burning scent. The leaps they leapt, the pace they went ; 64 The Chase Then long may courteous Redesdale live ! And oft his paclc such gallops give ! Should fox again so stoutly run, May I be there and see the fun ! R. E. Egerton-Warhurton. A Day with the Surrey Hounds <^ OUR ball had failed so completely, that Jenny, who was bent still upon fashion, caught eagerly at Tagrag's suggestion, and went down to Tug- geridgeville. If we had a difficulty to find friends in town, here there was none ; for the whole county came about us, ate our dinners and suppers, danced at our balls — ay, and spoke to us too. We were great people, in fact ; I a regular country gentleman ; and, as such, Jenny insisted that I should be a sportsman, and join the county hunt. " But," says I, " my love, I can't ride." " Pooh ! Mr. C," says she, "you're always making diffi- culties J you thought you couldn't dance a quadrille ; you thought you couldn't dine at seven o'clock ; you thought you couldn't lie in bed after six ; and haven't you done every one of these things ? You must and you shall ride !" And when my Jenny said "must" and "shall," I knew very well there was nothing for it : so I sent down fifty guineas to the hunt, and, out of compliment to me, the very next week, I received notice that the meet of the hounds would take place at Squashtail Common, just outside my lodge-gates. I didn't know what a meet was ; and me and Mrs. C. agreed that it was most probable the dogs were to be fed there : however, Tagrag explained this matter to us, and very kindly promised to sell me a horse, a delightful animal of his own ; which, Notable Runs 65 being desperately hard up for money, he would let me have for a hundred guineas, he himself having given a hundred and fifty for it. Well, the Thursday came ; the hounds met on Squashtail Common ; Mrs. C. turned out in her barouche to see us throw off; and, being helped up on my chestnut horse. Trumpeter, by Tagrag and my head groom, I came presently round to join them. Tag mounted his own horse ; and, as we walked down the avenue, "I thought," he said, "you told me you knew how to ride ; and that you had ridden once fifty miles on a stretch ? " "And so I did," says I, " to Cambridge, and on the box too." " On the box ? " says he ! " but did you ever mount a horse before ? " " Never," says I, " but I find it mighty easy." "Well," says he, "you're mighty bold for a barber ; and I like you, Coxe, for your spirit ; " and so we came out of the gate. As for describing the hunt, I own, fairly, I can't. I've been at a hunt, but what a hunt is — why the horses will go among the dogs and ride them down — why the men cry out "yooooic" — why the dogs go snuffing about in threes and fours, and the huntsman says, " Good Towler — good Betsy " ; and we all of us, after, say, " Good Towler — good Betsy " in chorus ; then, after hearing a yelp here, and a howl there, tow, row, yow, yow, yow ! burst out, all of a sudden, from three or four of them, and the chap in the velvet cap screeches out (with a number of oaths I shan't repeat here), " Hark, to Ringwood ! " and then, " There he goes ! " says someone ; and, all of a sudden, belter skelter, skurry hurry, slap bang, whooping, screeching, and hurraing, F 66 The Chase blue coats and red coats, bays and greys, horses, dogs, donkeys, butchers, bare-knights, dustmen, and blackguard boys, go tearing, altogether, over the common after two or three of the pack that yowl loudest. Why all this is, I can't say, but it all took place the second Thursday of last March, in my presence. Up to this I'd kept my seat as well as the best, for we'd only been trotting gently about the field until the dogs found ; and I managed to stick on very well ; but directly the tow-rowing began, off went Trumpeter like a thunderbolt, and I found myself playing among the dogs like a donkey among the chickens ! " Back, Mr. Coxe," holloas the huntsman ; and so I pulled back very hard, and cried out " Wo," but he wouldn't ; and on I went galloping for the dear life. How I kept on is a wonder ; but I squeezed my knees in very tight, and shoved my feet very hard in the stirrups, and kept stiff" hold of the scruff" of Trumpeter's neck, and looked betwixt his ears as well as ever I could, and trusted to luck, for I was in a mortal fright, sure enough, as many a better man would be in such a case, let alone a poor hair-dresser. As for the hounds, after my first riding in among them, I tell you, honestly, I never saw so much as the tip of one of their tails ; nothing in this world did I see except Trumpeter's dun-coloured mane, and that I gripped firm ; by the blessing of luck, safe through the walking, the trotting, the galloping, and never so much as getting a tumble. There was a chap at Croydon, very well known as the " Spicy Dustman," who, when he could get no horse to ride to the hounds, turned regularly out on his donkey ; and, on this occasion, made one of us. He generally managed to keep up with the Notable Runs 67 dogs, by trotting quietly through the cross-roads, and knowing the country well. Well, having a good guess where the hounds would find, and the line that sly Reynolds (as they call the fox) would take, the Spicy Dustman turned his animal down the lane, from Squashtail to Cutshins Common, across which, sure enough, came the whole hunt. There's a small hedge and a remarkably fine ditch here ; some of the leading chaps took both in fine style ; others went round by a gate, and so would I, only I couldn't ; for Trumpeter would have the hedge, and be hanged to him, and went right for it. Hoop ! if ever you did try a leap ! Out go your legs, out fling your arms, off goes your hat ; and the next thing you feel, that is, I did, is a most tre- mendous thwack across the chest, and my feet jerked out of the stirrups; me left in the branches of a tree ; Trumpeter gone clean from under me, and walloping and floundering in the ditch under- neath. One of the stirrup-leathers had caught in a stake, and the horse couldn't get away ; and neither of us, I thought, ever would have got away ; but all of a sudden, who should come up the lane but the Spicy Dustman ! " Holloa ! " says I, " you gent, just let us down from this here tree ! " "Lor!" says he, "I'm blessed if I didn't take you for a robin ! " " Let's down," says I ; but he was all the time employed in disengaging Trumpeter, whom he got out of the ditch, trembling and as quiet as possible. " Let's down," says L "Presently," says he ; and taking off his coat, he begins whistling and swishing down Trumpeter's sides and saddle ; and, when he had finished, what 68 The Chase do you think the rascal did ? — he just quietly mounted on Trumpeter's back, and shouts out, " Git down yourself, old Bearsgrease ; you've only to drop ; I'll give your 'oss a hairing arter them 'ounds ; and you, vy you may ride back my pony to Tuggeridgew^eal ! " And v^^ith this, I'm blest if he didn't ride aw^ay, leaving mc holding as for the dear life, and expecting every minute the branch would break. It did break too, and down I came into the slush ; and, when I got out of it, I can tell you I didn't look much like the Venuses or the Apollor Belvi- dearis what I used to dress and titivate up for my shop window, when I was in the hair-dressing line, or smell quite so elegant as our rose-oil. Faugh ! what a figure I was ! I had nothing for it but to mount the dustman's donkey (which was very quietly cropping grass in the hedge), and to make my way home ; and after a weary, weary journey, I arrived at my own gate. A whole party was assembled there. Tagrag, who had come back ; their Excellencies Mace and Punter, who were on a visit ; and a number of horses walking up and down before the whole of the gentlemen of the hunt, who had come in after losing their fox ! " Here's Squire Coxe ! " shouted the grooms. Out rushed the servants, out poured the gents of the hunt, and on trotted poor me, digging into the donkey, and everybody dying with laughter at me. Just as I got up to the door, a horse came galloping up, and passed me ; a man jumped down, and taking off a fantail hat, come up, very gravely, to help me down. "Squire," says he, " how came you by that there hanimal ? Jist git down, will you, and give it to hits howner." Notable Runs 6g " Rascal ! " says I, " didn't you ride off on my horse?" " Was there ever such ingratitude r " says the Spicy, " I found this year 'oss in a pond, I saves *im from drowning, I brings him back to his master, and he calls me a rascal ! " The grooms, the gents, the ladies in the balcony, my own servants, all set up a roar at this ; and so would I, only I was so deucedly ashamed, as not to be able to laugh just then. And so my first day's hunting ended. Tagrag and the rest declared I showed great pluck, and wanted me to try again ; but " No," says I, " I have been." TF. M. Thackeray. Forty Minutes with Lord Hardman's Hounds o o o A GREAT straggly bull-finch, dark as a thunder cloud, reared its solid branches like a black wall. Lord Hardman crashed through on his gallant chestnut, who went at it straight as an arrow shot from a bow, whilst the unyielding blackthorn closed behind him, looking more impenetrable than ever. There was no time to pick and choose ; the smallest hesitation would have proved fatal, and if the huntsman would not lose sight of his hounds altogether, he must not attempt to decline any awkward obstacle to-day. No one, however, was better fitted to ride straight across country than his lordship ; perfect hands and perfect horses combined to render him well nigh invincible. Lord Blaston, with an oath, a jab of the spurs, and an accom- panying jerk of the bridle, followed in his wake, forcing the reluctant Battle-axe to cleave the thorns yo The Chase asunder. Valentine was just behind, her fair face flushed and her great eyes all aglow with excitement. " Don't come," he shouted out, half-turning in his saddle. " It's a beastly place for a lady." But she had no notion of being so easily defeated. She clenched her little white teeth, and sublimely indifferent to his warning, pointed Beauty-boy's small head at the thick, unyielding barrier. He quickened his stride bravely in response. Animals of his class do not know what it is to refuse. There was a shock, a forcible bearing backwards which almost wrenched Valentine from the saddle and tore the reins from her grasp, accompanied by a smarting sensation in the face, and the next instant she was sailing gaily along, a few yards in the rear of Lord Blaston. " Well done ! " he exclaimed, with a smile of commendation. " Bravo, old lady ! Crackington to the fore as usual." She gave a little resolute laugh. They were galloping too hard to render conversation feasible, but his praise was sweet, for she honestly felt that it was well-earned, and that Beauty-boy (if not herself) was entitled to applause. . . . The whole party were now bearing rapidly down towards a very nasty, unnegotiable-looking place. It consisted of a thickly-grown hedge with a deep- cut ditch on the near side, guarded by a stout ash rail, and with a second oxer in the landing field, that stood unpleasantly far out from the fence. It was just possible for an extra clever hunter to drop into the open space separating the hedge from the further rail, and so take it at a double ; but at best the obstacle was neither a very pleasant nor a very jumpable one. Still it is wonderful what horses and Notable Runs 71 men can do when thoroughly aroused, and there was nothing for it but to go at this very formidable impediment, since hounds were holding on straight ahead, hunting both fast and prettily over the large water meadows bordering Calverly Canal. Lord Hardman glanced swiftly up and down, then his quick eye perceiving it to be a case of necessity, took in the situation without delay. The fence must either be jumped, crashed into, or tumbled over. The former for choice, though the latter if imperative. So he shortened his reins, laid hold of Red Rover's head, and drove him at it as hard as he could, half hoping to fly the whole thing, and half trusting to the usual rottenness of timber palings. If it had been possible for five hundred guineas' worth of courageous horseflesh thus to have jumped the fence, most certainly Red Rover would have done it. Few if any could beat him, but, good and bold as he was there are limits to the powers of even the very best hunter in this world. He threw himself far into the air, making a truly magnificent bound, but only succeeded in landing with his toes right on the top of the second oxer. As bad luck would have it, however, the rail happened to be brand new, and as thick round as a man's arm. It never gave an inch. Red Rover staggered, stumbled, fell, almost recovered, made a gallant effort to right himself, then, once more losing his balance, fell headlong to the ground, sending his noble owner flying from the saddle. But Lord Hardman stuck manfully to the reins, and never slackened his hold upon them, although just at first it looked as if the horse would roll over his master's prostrate form. In less time than it takes to tell his lordship had remounted, and was 72 The Chase galloping full speed after the hounds, who mean- while kept on their way with undiminished speed. After this catastrophe people began coasting up and down, trying to discover a more practicable place, but none seemingly was to be found, whilst every moment was precious, as the sight of the already lessening pack rendered patent. " We must chance it," said Valentine hurriedly to Mr. Macdonald, who happened at that instant to be close by her side. " If we don't we shall lose the run, and get left behind altogether." He looked into her face, and saw that it was bright with pleasure, whilst her small delicate features wore an expression of unusual decision. " All right," he said. *' Let me have a shy at it first. Tippety-witchet may very likely make a gap or break down the far rail, in either of which cases it will be easier for you to follow." But the words were hardly out of his mouth before she tightened her rein, pulled Beauty-boy back almost into a trot, and set him straight but very slowly at the fence. The beautiful creature seemed to know by instinct what his mistress re- quired of him, for he went quietly up to it, steadied himself deliberately on his haunches before taking off, made a powerful spring, and then, when in the air, seeing the double obstacle, dropped down like a hawk on to its prey, and popped cleverly over the far oxer. It was a masterly performance, denoting wonder- ful confidence on the part of both rider and horse. Without it such an achievement would have been an impossibility. " Bravo ! " shouted the lookers- on after their receding forms, whilst Valentine, her heart big with triumphant elation, leant forward and patted Beauty-boy's warm neck. Notable Runs 73 " Oh, you darling ! " she cried, enthusiastically. " What a lamb you are, to be sure ! " . . . They were now clattering helter-skelter along the tow-path of the canal, with the hounds in full view just ahead, plunging into and swimming the cold water in a long white line. A friendly bridge enabled the riders to cross in safety, whereupon they tore down a couple of raking pastures, at the further end of which an ominous line of pollard willows indicated the close proximity of a brook, whose deep waters flashed like a streak of silver in the pale wintry sunlight. The country was quite new to Valentine, else she might have known that this was the famous Calverly Brook, celebrated in the annals of the hunt and the death-place of many a good hunter, whose back had been broken by its steep and treacherous banks. It was a brook of formidable dimensions, measuring close upon sixteen feet in width, and with a nasty shelving take-ofJ and landing. Its size was proved by the hounds, instead of jumping, being forced to swim to the . opposite side, nothing but a row of mottled heads and waving sterns appearing in sight. . . . Flanks were heaving, tails jerking, lungs sobbing, necks stretching, and heads dropping, whilst more than one good horse relapsed into a laborious trot only too significant of utterly exhausted powers. Little Tippety-witchet, who still struggled gamely to the front, looked as if she had completely changed colours. Even Beauty-boy, although still com- paratively fresh, and far too high-mettled to show any symptoms of fatigue as long as hounds con- tinued to carry so good a head, was now lathering freely, and not going with quite his accustomed elasticity. For pace will tell, and the best horse ever foaled, after thirty to thirty-five minutes' run 74 The Chase at almost racing speed, commences to hold out signals of distress towards the end of them. And now for the first time to-day hounds in their eagerness flashed over the scent, and threw up their noses. A slight check ensued, which enabled the poor, gasping steeds to get a few welcome whiffs of fresh air. The beauties themselves, though still very busy, were pretty well blown, seeing which his lordship, in defiance of long- established rules, and being like his hounds bent on blood, lifted them, and made a quick, galloping, backward cast, which succeeded in promptly re- covering the line — much sooner in fact than was acceptable to the tired horses, who now found themselves forced to make fresh efforts before they had half recovered from their recent exertions. Fortunately for the pursuers another five minutes made it evident that the fox was dead beat ; for he now resorted to many a shift disdained up to this point. But both his heart and strength were failing him at last, and merciful riders rejoiced in the prospect of a speedy kill. For by this time most of the horses still to the fore were chancing their fences most terribly, crashing through top binders in a truly alarming manner. The majority were utterly pumped, whilst one poor creature, who con- tinued to make gallant struggles to the end, suddenly dropped down dead in the midst of a field. Luckily the obstacles were no longer of a very formidable nature, else many a gallant hunter would have bitten the dust. On, on, on they toiled in pursuit, with the pleasures of the chase rapidly turning into downright pain. For now gaps were eagerly sought for and as keenly taken advantage of. Thrusting was a thing Notable Runs 75 of the past. Nobody disdained getting down to tear away the binders and force a passage through the fences, whilst in this conjunction to keep one's place in any fashion, however ignominious, was all that could be essayed. Over an agonizing turnip-field they crawled, hounds and horses all reduced to a trot, when suddenly, to the universal relief, Lord Hardman espied a stiff, black, mud-bespattered object dragging its weary limbs along the side of a thick hedgerow. " Tally-ho ! tally-ho ! yonder he goes ! Forrard, forrard, little bitches ! Have at him, my beauties," yelled Lord Hardman delightedly, cheering on the pack with all the strength of which his lungs were capable. A bloodthirsty chorus echoed his words, as each bristling hound sped murderously after the failing quarry. Even the poor exhausted horses plucked up fresh courage, and at the invigorating sound pricked their ears and broke into a canter. There is always something magnificent in the courage of despair — something which, whenever and wherever it is exhibited, calls forth human sympathy. Finding that his last moment had come, this grand old dog fox, as straight-necked and as bold a fellow as ever stood up before hounds, turned and faced the foe like a lion. For one brief second he remained in this position, with his yellow eyes gleaming fiercely and his parched black lips drawn tightly back, showing two rows of sharp shining white teeth. Then, with a convulsive death-agony, he buried them deep in the shoulder of the foremost hound. A minute afterwards he rolled over and over on the ground, a rigid and motionless mass. Hastily Lord Hardman jumped from Red Rover's 76 The Chase back, and sounded a long and triumphant who- whoop that rang out shrill on the clear, frosty air. Forty brilliant minutes had Reynard given the field, winding up with a kill in the open. What more could the heart of man — or for the matter of that, of woman either — desire ? Only one small worthless life pitted against the enjoyment of three or four score human beings, and yet somehow Valentine's first sensation was one of sorrow for the fox. An hour ago he had enjoyed the full possession of his vulpine faculties. His limbs then were supple, his body lithe and active, his instincts keen ; and now of all that strong and gladsome vitality what was left ? Nothing but a " hundred tatters of brown," strips of torn skin and bleeding flesh, gnawed at and quarrelled over by a pack of ravenous hounds. Even as she stood there — warm, flushed, happy — the awful fragility of that stupendous mystery called Life, and the slenderness of the threads on which it hung, afforded her food for reflection. She had enjoyed herself immensely, but all the same she felt sorry for the fox and wished that his life could have been spared. But then she was only a girl, and rather a soft-hearted one to boot. Mrs. Edward Kennard. HUNTING LORE Good sportsman means good fellow. R. Browning. Alongside Hounds ^^> x£> <::> NOT behind hounds, but alongside of them — if only you can achieve such position — it should be your honour and glory to place yourself; and you should go so far wide of them as in no way to impede them or disturb them, or even to remind them of your presence. If thus you line with them, turning as they turn, but never turning among them, keeping your distance, but losing no yard, and can do this for seven miles over a grass country in forty-five minutes, then you can ride to hounds better than nineteen men out of every twenty that you have seen at the meet, and will have enjoyed the keenest pleasure that hunting, or perhaps, I may say, that any other amusement, can give you. Anthony Troilope. Viewing the Fox .c^ ^o ^o^ F a member of the Field views a fox, he should J^ turn his horse's head in the direction the fox has taken, stand up in his stirrups, and point with his hat in hand. It may be remarked in passing, that he cannot do this if he has a hat-string. If he is at a place where the huntsman cannot see him, he should holloa. Never mind if it is a fresh fox ; 77 78 The Chase the huntsman need not come to the holloa if he Is engaged in doing something else. If nothing happens, it is well to ride back to the huntsman and give him the fullest information. This should still be done even if the huntsman answers the holloa. Ride back to him, meet him, and place him in possession of everything you know, so that he may know how to act when he arrives on the spot. If you see any one on foot who has seen a fox, the cardinal questions to ask him are where he last saw the fox, which way his head was, and, above all, how long ago. The huntsman is sure to ask you this last question directly you get into touch with him, and it creates an unfortunate lapse in your information to be obliged to confess that you did not ask. Lord Willoughby de Broke. Riding in the Hill Country -£> -o THE hill country is easy to ride over as far as fencing is concerned, and is particularly suited to persons whose nerves have lost a little of their steel. It is true, that, taking the hills in general, an accomplished hunter is not often wanting. There are no doubles — no ox-fences — no stiles with foot- bridges, and no timber unless you like it, except sheep hurdles, which ought not to throw a horse down (unless blown) with a horseman on his back. A quick, well-bred horse that can go well upon wind, leap four feet in perpendicular height, and face a brook now and then, is all that is requisite here — but he must be well-bred. When I say a horse is only required to leap four feet in height, I do not mean to say that higher walls are not met Hunting Lore 79 with ; but the top stones are so loosely placed, that if he does not clear them, they fly before him. . . . The greatest danger arises from the quarries, out of which the stone is procured to build them. They are opened close to the side of the wall, which in that place is generally lower than any other part, and consequently tempting to ride at. It is, there- fore, sometimes necessary to " look before you leap," though a man who is accustomed to the country knows how to guard against the danger. In many places there are small apertures in the walls, either for the purpose of letting hares pass through them, or for water-courses ; and a sportsman cannot do better than ride at them where they are to be found, if the wall is high, as through them he can see the ground on the other side. Horses unaccustomed to walls cut a bad figure at them at first ; but the raps on the shins which they get soon make them clear them. I have often been astonished at seeing a horse take half the wall with him into the next field, and not have a mark on his legs. Horses which have been accustomed only to the hills are often unsafe fencers in any other country, as they are apt to leap high, but not to extend them- selves sufficiently to clear a wide ditch. . . . There is a very peculiar circumstance attending these hills which has often been a matter of observa- tion ; and that is, wherever a fox has reached them after a run over a lower country, the scent has generally failed on running over them. This must be attributed partly to atmospheric causes, and partly to the difference in the mean temperature of the earth. Nimrod {C. J. Apperley). 8o The Chase A Tired Fox ^:> .^> o A HUNTED fox is a most difficult thing to be certain about, and at times even the most ex- perienced will be deceived. A fox that is very tired indeed will at times, and especially if he is being holloaed at, look and move exactly like a fresh one ; but if you are lucky enough to get a good view of him without his seeing you, you can generally tell. If you are a good way ahead of the hounds, and the hunted fox comes up to you and lies down, and you hear the pack hunting up to him, let him lie ; watch him, but do not say a word. Every minute he lies there is bringing his enemies nearer to him, and making his death more certain. Of course, if the hounds are manifestly at fault, or have changed on to a fresh fox, you must attract the huntsman's attention somehow. In the open this can generally be done by holding up your cap without moving the fox ; in covert you will probably be obliged to give him a holloa, but you must not do so till other means have failed. Henry Verney^ XFIIIth Baron IV i I lough by de Broke. 'Ware Babble ! <^ <:> ^^p^ WHEN your hounds are at fault, let not a word be said : let such as follow them ignorantly and unworthily, stand all aloof, — Procul^ O procul este profani I — for whilst such are chattering, not a hound will hunt. " A-propos^ Sir," a politician will say ; " What news from America ? " " A- propos. Do you think both the admirals will be tried ? " — or, " a-propos. Did you hear what has happened to my grandmother ? " Such questions Hunting Lore 8i are, at such a time, extremely troublesome, and very mal-a-propos^ — amongst the ancients, it was reckoned an ill omen to speak in hunting : I wish it were thought so now. Hoc age^ should be one of the first maxims in hunting, as in life : and I can assure you, when I am in the field I never wish to hear any other tongue than that of a hound. A neighbour of mine was so truly a hare-hunter in this particular, that he would not suffer anybody to speak a word when his hounds were at fault. A gentleman happening to cough, he rode up to him immediately, and said: *-^ I wish^ Sir, with all my hearty that your cough was better.^* Peter Beckford. Cub Hunting ^^:> ^^ ^^ DURING at least the first month of Cub- hunting, hounds should be kept in covert and not allowed to see daylight. This for two reasons : first the puppies learn to depend on the old hounds and go to the cry much better in covert than in the open. They cannot stare about, and are forced to use their ears and their intelligence. Second, the whole pack learns how to correct its own faults without holloas and assistance — the most valuable of all lessons — when the Cub makes a sharp turn, and the scent is overrun. In addition to this, the Staff cannot keep near hounds in the open until at least the middle of October. What happens? The training and condition of the old hounds gives them the lead ; the puppies follow them, not rightly knowing what they are after ; sooner or later a check occurs; a hare jumps up, offering a tempta- tion which impetuous youth cannot resist, even in its second season, and a general demoralization G 82 The Chase ensues. The old hounds are disgusted, and the puppies, after running the hare as long as sight will serve, throw up their heads and lie down to lap in the nearest pond. The Huntsman and Whippers- in will probably not get all parties together again until such mischief has been done that will take many mornings of steady work in covert to correct. ... During the month of October, when the country is a little more practicable for mounted pursuit, and after the puppies have been well drilled in covert for some weeks, if the whole pack come out of covert well together on the line of their Cub, then they may be allowed to go, when a sharp burst or two in the open will teach them to get through the fences, and improve their condition by opening their pipes. But before the ist of November they should never be holloaed away on the first fox that leaves the covert. This fox is nearly sure to be the old dog fox, who will probably lead his pursuers so far away from home that it may be impossible to get back to the covert in time to deal with the Cubs ; and in the second place it is a golden rule laid down by a great authority that during the Cub- hunting season hounds should always be made to find their own fox. Lord Willoughhy de Broke. Leicestershire for Hunting ! o ^^ LEICESTERSHIRE may justly be denomi- nated the Montpelier of hunting countries : in the eye of the sportsman it is the Vale of Cashmere, and in comparison with it all others retire longo intervallo. Both nature and art have contributed to render Hunting Lore 83 Leicestershire the country for fox-hunting. To the former, it is indebted for the depth and richness of its soil — favourable to holding a scent ; and to the latter, for the large size of its inclosures, for the general practicability of its fences, for the greatest portion of the land being old pasture, and for the numerous gorse coverts made for the purpose of breeding and preserving foxes. There is another circumstance also which gives Leicestershire a decided advantage over other countries ; and that is the few large coverts which the better part of it contains, thereby affording such room for sport, that if a fox once gets away, and is a good one, a run [barring accidents] must be the consequence. He has nowhere to hide his head — he must fly for his life. Woodland foxes are generally supposed to be better and stouter than those bred above ground ; but every one who has hunted in large coverts must be aware what an advantage both hounds and horses must have by coming away at once with a fox from a small piece of gorse, over those which may have been, perhaps, three or four times up and down a large covert, where the hounds have had to contend with strong underwood, and the horses with deep and boggy ridings, to say nothing of the certainty of gentlemen getting well away in the one case, and the chance of not getting away at all in the other. . . . These artificial coverts being, of course, properly arranged as to distance from each other, a burst is secured. If the fox live to reach one of them, a check for a minute or two make take place ; but this check may be beneficial to the sport of the day. Hounds and horses get a pufF, tail hounds come up, and those who were not fortunate in getting away with the pack, secure a place. The fox, finding 84 The Chase delays are dangerous, and that he has nothing for it but to fly, makes his point for some distant earths, the attainment of which nothing but death will prevent. Having said this, it is not to be wondered at, that, besides being encroached upon by other hounds, Leicestershire, though a small county, should contain three packs of fox-hounds, which are attended by the best and hardest riders in England ; to which it may be added, without any reflection upon other establishments, that no other country could find such hounds to ride to. What benefit must they derive from such a country ! Nimrod (C. /. Apperley). THE FOX All through the centuries the fox has been a person, with a personal name, and a claim on the sympathy of those who hunt him. And this, both in life and in literature, is a point of vital importance ; for without a feeling for his own duty towards his quarry or his ad- versary, no man is a sportsman. Sir Henry Neivbolt. Trimbush the Hound on the Fox ^^> " TV /T OST foxes hang in cover as long as they J[yJ|[dare or can. It is their nature to screen themselves as much as possible, and they face the open only when compelled and pressed. A fox that has been often hunted, however, is of course more shy than one who has not, and the devil's own, having invariably met with a precious rattling whenever he attempted to thread the covers, never hangs fire now, but sweeps straight through them. In order to be on good terms with him, therefore, we must act in the same manner, and to lose no precious second of time, remember, that the moment we reach a cover, the chances are a hundred to one that he is already through. If not, we shall instantly know that the pull is in our favour by his hanging, for, if it was not for the general rule of foxes hanging in covers, they would serve us, in nineteen cases out of twenty, as the devil's own does, and run us clean out of all scent." " Being so crafty," returned I, " I'm surprised 85 86 The Chase that they don't depend more upon that which would save them, their speeds " The reason is this," added Trimbush. *' Al- though much faster than we are, and with power of equal endurance, they cannot bear the heat of the day as well as we can. It should be recollected also, that we have rested the night before, and commence our work with empty bellies in the morning ; but the fox has been on the pad foraging for food when we were asleep, and, perhaps, is gorged at the moment we unkennel him. He, therefore, feels himself in no condition for racing, and tries all his cunning to elude us in preference to facing the open. I don't know," continued he, " how the devil's own regulates his meals ; but I fancy he must sup early, and go to bed long before cock-crow." John Mills. Aha ! The Fox <:^ ^> ^c^ AHA the fox ! and after him they ran ; And eke with staves many another man, Ran Coll our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerlond, And Malkin with her distaflFin her hand. Ran cow and calf, and eke the veray hogges. So fered were for berking of the dogges. And shouting of the men and women eke. They rounen so, hem thought her hertes broke. Chaucer. Shakespeare on Reynard o o FOR treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherish'd and lock'd up. Will have a wild trick of his ancestors. / Henry IV, V. 2, 9. The Fox 87 Troublesome Neighbours ^:^ o HAVING by this time learnt from my mother all that she could teach me, I followed her example in many things. Amongst them I remarked, that on a wet and windy night she almost always chose, for various reasons, to lie in a gorse-covert. It is generally dry and without droppings from trees ; it is also more quiet and freer from the roaring of the wind than when near to them. Besides this, we are not so liable to be disturbed by the shooters, and though we should be so, are out of sight. We are also there out of sight of our troublesome feathered neighbours, the crows, magpies, and jays, who would betray us when moving abroad during the daytime. They are always moving with the first appearance of daylight, and we are glad to get out of their sight as soon as we can and go into our kennel, lest they should betray us to the keepers, who are also often abroad at that time. The worst is, that at times, when we think we have got away from hounds that are hunting us, these birds, by making a noise and darting down almost upon us, as they continue to do where we run along, point out to the hunters exactly where we are. It has often happened that I have been betrayed by an old cock pheasant. No bird has a quicker eye than he has, and directly he saw me he would begin kuckupping, and continue to make this noise as long as I remained near him, obliging me to move away, Thomas Smith. 88 The Chase A Glimpse ^i> y^> ^> ^^> IT so happened, my friends, that for some time I was not hunted by hounds, and contrived to extend my rambles till I was acquainted with a great part of the country. Occasionally lying in my kennel, if in an open covert, and hearing a pack of hounds in full cry near, I moved ofF in an opposite direction, but sometimes not without being seen by some of the wide and skirting hunters, who lost their day's sport in riding after me and hallooing " Tally-ho ! " but I always kept quiet in my kennel when I found hounds in full cry if I happened to be in a strong gorse-covert. Thus passed off the greater part of the first winter of my life. On one occasion I was lying in rather an exposed place by the side of a pit, in the middle of a field, when I saw a man pass by on horseback, who, on seeing me, stopped, and after looking for a short time, rode on. Till the noise of his horse's feet was out of hearing I listened, and then stole away, which was most fortunate, for in the course of a few hours the hounds were brought to the pit, the man having told the huntsman where he had seen me, as he thought, asleep ; though we foxes, however it may seem, are seldom otherwise than wide awake. When the month of February arrived, I showed my gallantry by going and visiting an interesting young friend of mine of the other sex in a large covert some distance off, and there, to my chagrin, I met no less than three rivals. One morning we were surprised to hear the voice of Foster, drawing the covert with his hounds, and giving his peculiar " E-dhoick ! e-dhoick ! kille-kid- hoick " (probably for Eloe-in-hoick !). It seems that none of us felt very comfortable or much at The Fox 89 home here, and all must have left our kennels about the same time ; for the hounds were soon divided into several packs and running in full cry in different directions. Fortunately, those that were following me were stopped ; at which I rejoiced not a little, having travelled twenty miles the night before, besides my wanderings in and about the covert. These travellings and wanderings are the cause why so many more of us dog-foxes are killed by hounds in the month of February than in any other three months of the year. Two dog-foxes which had come from a great distance were killed by the hounds that day. I had had reason to be jealous of them, as they had for the last week or two been tracing and retracing the woods in pursuit of a female incessantly each night, until daylight appeared, when they were obliged through fatigue to retire to their kennels. Thomas Smith. THE HARE You, who the sweets of rural life have known Despise the ungrateful hurry of the town. . . . 'Tis not that rural sports alone invite, But all the grateful country breathes delight. John Gay. The Haunt of the Hare ^o e> IT is never so much winter in the country as it is in the town. The trees are still there, and in and about them birds remain. " Quip ! whip ! " sounds from the elms ; " Whip ! quip ! " Redwing thrushes threaten with the "whip" those who advance towards them ; they spend much of the day in the elm-tops. Thick tussocks of old grass are conspicuous at the skirt of a hedge ; half green, half gray, they contrast with the bare thorn. From behind one of these tussocks a hare starts, his black- tipped ears erect, his long hinder limbs throwing him almost like a grasshopper over the sward — no creature looks so handsome or startling, and it is always a pleasant surprise to see him. Pheasant or partridge do not surprise in the least — they are no more than any other bird ; but a hare causes quite a different feeling. He is perfectly wild, unfed, untended, and then he is the animal in the world to be shot in the fields. A rabbit slips along the mound, under bushes and behind stoles, but a hare bolts for the open, and hopes in his speed. He leaves the straining spaniel behind, and the distance 90 The Hare 91 increases as they go. The spaniel's broad hind paws are thrown wide apart as he runs, strikino; outwards as well as backwards, and his large ears are lifted by the wind of his progress. Overtaken by the cartridges, still the hare, as he lies in the dewy grass, is handsome ; lift him up and his fur is full of colour, there are layers of tint, shadings of brown within it, one under the other, and the surface is exquisitely clean. The colours are not really bright, at least not separately ; but they are so clean and so clear that they give an impression of warmth and brightness. Even in the excitement of sport regret cannot but be felt at the sight of those few drops of blood about the mouth which indicate that all this beautiful work- manship must now cease to be. Had he escaped the sportsman would not have been displeased. Richard Jefferies. The Hunting of the Hare ^> ^> (From Venus and Adonis) AND when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles. How he outruns the wind, and with what care He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles : The many musets through the which he goes Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep. To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell. And sometime where earth-delving conies keep. To stop the loud pursuers in their yell ; And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer : Danger deviseth shifts ; wit waits on fear : 92 The Chase For there his smell with others being mingled, The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled With much ado the cold fault cleanly out ; Then do they spend their mouths ; Echo replies, As if another chase were in the skies. By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill. Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear. To harken if his foes pursue him still : Anon their loud alarums he doth hear ; And now his grief may be compared well To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell. Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way ; Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch. Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay ; For misery is trodden on by many. And being low never relieved by any. TVilliam Shakespeare, Breaking the Ranks ^^> -*i> o WE reached camp at 2 p.m., and the regiment drew up on some ground covered with low bushes and tufts of grass. Here an amusing incident occurred. Just as the officers were told to fall out, a dog that belonged to a man of my company, a sporting character, started a hare. The owner got so excited by the prospect of a little sport, that, quite forgetting where he was, the rigid discipline of parade, and the awful presence of the colonel- sahib, out he started from the ranks, down went his musket, ofF went his cap, and away he ran, cheering on the dog, to the great delight of all the regiment, and the amusement of the colonel himself. The Hare 93 who, notwithstanding the breach of discipline, could not help laughing. After a short run, the hare, bothered by the camp-followers, got bewildered, and the dog caught it. Ramdeen, whose sudden fit of sporting enthusiasm had now somewhat cooled, came back, looking rather sheepish and askance at the colonel, who had dismissed the regiment. Of course he got a good blowing-up for his escapade, but I believe the colonel accepted the hare. Major-General Sir Thomas Seaton. Harmony ^> xis> ^i> ^> OF all delights that Earth doth yield, Give me a pack of hounds in field ; Whose echo shall throughout the sky Make Jove admire our harmony, And wish that he a mortal were To view the pastime we have here. An Old Ballad, 1635. Hunting the Hare ^:^ ^> <:> YET, if for sylvan sports thy bosom glow, Let thy fleet greyhound urge his flying foe. With what delight the rapid course I view ! How does my eye the circling race pursue ! He snaps deceitful air with empty jaws ; The subtle hare darts swift beneath his paws ; She flies, he stretches ; now with nimble bound. Eager he presses on, but overshoots his ground ; She turns ; he winds, and soon regains the way. Then tears with goary mouth the screaming prey. John Gay, 94 The Chase Tame Hares ^:> ^:> ^is>> 1"^HE hares [Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. One hid her form under my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir, — thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers in her hurry. They used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the colour of the ground that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window. When I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move ; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow crust, straightening its body and its limits into graceful length, and soon put forest between me and itself, — the wild free venison, asserting its vigour and the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. H, D. Thoreau. The Hare 95 Epitaph on a Hare ^> ^^ <:> (Cowper had three tame hares — Bess, Tiney, and Puss) HERE lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue. Nor swifter greyhound follow ; Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew, Nor ear heard huntsman's halloo. Tiney, the surliest of his kind ! Who, nursed with tender care, And to domestic bounds confined. Was yet a wild Jack hare. Though duly from my hand he took His pittance every night. He did it with a jealous look. And, when he could, would bite. His diet was of wheaten bread. And milk, and oats, and straw ; Thistles, or lettuces instead. And sand to cleanse his maw. On twigs of hawthorn he regaled, On pippins' russet peel ; And, when his juicier salads failM, Sliced carrot pleased him well. A Turkey carpet was his lawn ; Whereon he loved to bound, To skip and gambol like a fawn, And swing himself around. His frisking was at evening hours, For then he lost his fear ; But most before approaching showers, Or when a storm drew near. g6 The Chase Eight years and five long rolling moons He saw thus steal away, Dozing out all his idle noons, And every night at play. But now, beneath his walnut shade. He finds his long last home ; And waits, in snug concealment laid. Till gentler Puss shall come. He, in his turn, must feel the shocks From which no care can save ; And, partner once of Tiney's box, Be partner of his grave. IV, Cowper, THE HORSE Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse. Shakespeare's *' Henry A'." The Glory of the Horse ^^> .«^> HAST thou given the horse strength ? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder ? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper I The glory of his nostrils is terrible ; He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength, He goeth on to meet the armed men ; He mocketh at fear and is not affrighted, Neither turneth he back from the sword ; The quiver rattleth against him, The glittering spear and the shield ; He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage. Neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet ; He saith among the trumpets. Ha, ha ! And he smelleth the battle afar off. The thunder of the captains and the shouting. Job, Pure Air and Fire ^o o ^i^^ Dauphin. I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ca ha ! He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs ; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, chez les narines de H 97 98 The Chase feu ! When I bestride him I soar, I am a hawk : he trots the air : the earth sings when he touches it : the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes. Oil He's of the colour of the nutmeg. Dau. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus : he is pure air and fire ; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him : he is indeed a horse ; and all other jades you may call beasts. Con. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse. Dau. It is the prince of palfreys ; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage. ... I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus : " Wonder of Nature." ^Shakespeare, '^ Henry ^," III. 7, 1 1. The Best Companion ^^ ^:> <::> ""IT THEN you are a gentleman," said he, after W a pause, "the first thing you must think about is to provide yourself with a good horse for your own particular riding ; you will perhaps keep a coach and pair, but they will be less your own than your lady's, should you have one, and your young gentry, should you have any ; or, if you have neither, for madam, your housekeeper, and the upper female servants, so you need trouble your head less about them, though, of course, you would not like to pay away your money for screws ; but be sure you get a good horse for your own riding ; and that you may have a good chance of having a good one, buy one that's young and has plenty of belly — a little more than the one has that you now The Horse 99 have, though you are not yet a gentleman ; you will, of course, look to his head, his withers, legs and other points, but never buy a horse at any price that has not plenty of belly ; no horse that has not belly is ever a good feeder, and a horse that a'n't a good feeder, can't be a good horse ; never buy a horse that is drawn up in the belly behind ; a horse of that description can't feed, and can never carry sixteen stone. " When you have got such a horse be proud of it — as I dare say you are of the one you have now — and wherever you go swear there a'n't another to match it in the country, and if anybody gives you the lie, take him by the nose and tweak it off, just as you would do if anybody were to speak ill of your lady, or, for want of her, of your housekeeper. Take care of your horse, as you would of the apple of your eye — I am sure I would if I were a gentleman, which I don't ever expect to be, and hardly wish, seeing as how I am sixty- nine, and am rather too old to ride — yes, cherish and take care of your horse as perhaps the best friend you have in the world ; for, after all, who will carry you through thick and thin as your horse will ? not your gentlemen friends, I warrant, nor your housekeeper, nor your upper servants, male or female ; perhaps your lady would, that is, if she is a whopper, and one of the right sort ; the others would be more likely to take up mud and pelt you with it, if they saw you in trouble, than to help you. So take care of your horse, and feed him every day with your own hands ; give him three- quarters of a peck of corn each day, mixed up with a little hay-chafF, and allow him besides one hundred- weight of hay in the course of a week ; some say that the hay should be hardland hay, because it is loo The Chase wholesomest, but I say, let it be clover hay, because the horse likes it best ; give him through summer and winter, once a v^^eek, a pailful of bran-mash, cold in summer and in winter hot ; ride him gently about the neighbourhood every day, by which means you will give exercise to yourself and horse, and, moreover, have the satisfaction of exhibiting your- self and your horse to advantage, and hearing, per- haps, the men say what a fine horse, and the ladies saying what a fine man : never let your groom mount your horse, as it is ten to one, if you do, your groom will be wishing to show ofF before company, and will fling your horse down. I was groom to a gemman before I went to the inn at Hounslow, and flung him down a horse worth ninety guineas, by endeavouring to show ofF before some ladies that I met on the road. Turn your horse out to grass throughout May and the first part of June, for then the grass is sweetest, and the flies don't sting so bad as they do later in the summer ; afterwards merely turn him out occasion- ally in the swale of the morn and the evening ; after September the grass is good for little, lash and slur at best ; every horse should go out to grass, if not his blood becomes full of greasy humours, and his wind is apt to become affected, but he ought to be kept as much as possible from the heat and flies, always got up at night, and never turned out late in the year — Lord ! if I had always such a nice attentive person to listen to me as you are, I could go on talking about 'orses to the end of time." George Borrow. The Horse loi Horses and Men ^> ^^> .«^ A MAN who does not love a horse, a great horse lover once said, is incapable of a genuine emotion. The motor-car, the motor-lorry, and the steam plough may ultimately oust the horse from the road and the field as a beast of traction ; but in this country, at any rate, we do not keep dogs (for instance) only for utilitarian purposes, but chiefly because we love them. It would be a queer England, too, without hunters and racehorses. *' What a glittering confusion in the pack," wrote Hazlitt, " what spirit in the horses ! " There is something in the spirit of a horse which man cannot resist, for he finds it akin to his own spirit, when he is in the open air and his best and happiest. If horses were as easy to house, as cheap to feed, and as simple to manage as the domestic dog, every man who has ever known the joy of sitting astride a good horse would keep one in his back garden for the rest of his life. Anon. The Horse ^> ^^ ^:> s£> (From P^enus and Adonis) BUT, lo, from forth a copse that neighbours by, A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud, Adonis' trampling courser doth espy. And forth she rushes, snorts, and neighs aloud : The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree, Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he. Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, And now his woven girths he breaks asunder ; I02 The Chase The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds, Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven's thunder; The iron bit he crusheth 'tween his teeth, Controlling what he was controlled with. His ears up-prick'd ; his braided hanging mane Upon his compass'd crest now stands on end ; His nostrils drink the air, and forth again. As from a furnace, vapours doth he send ; His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire, Shows his hot courage and his high desire. Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps. With gentle majesty and modest pride ; Anon he rears upright, curvets, and leaps. As, who should say, " Lo, thus my strength is tried ; And this I do to captivate the eye Of the fair breeder that is standing by." What recketh he his rider's angry stir. His flattering " Holla " or his *' Stand I say " ? What cares he now for curb or pricking spur ? For rich caparisons or trapping gay ? He sees his love, and nothing else he sees. For nothing else with his proud sight agrees. Look, when a painter would surpass the life In limning out a well-proportion'd steed, His art with nature's workmanship at strife. As if the dead the living should exceed ; So did this horse excel a common one In shnpe, in courage, colour, pace, and bone. Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, The Horse 103 High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong. Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide : Look, what a horse should have he did not lack. Save a proud rider on so proud a back. Sometime he scuds far ofF, and there he stares ; Anon he starts at stirring of a feather ; To bid the wind a base he now prepares. And whe'r he run or fly they know not whether; For through his mane and tail the high wind sings. Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings. He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her ; She answers him, as if she knew his mind ; Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her, She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind ; Spurns at his love, and scorns the heat he feels. Beating his kind embracements with her heels. Then, like a melancholy malcontent, He vails his tail, that, like a falling plume. Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent : He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume. His love, perceiving how he is enraged, Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag'd. IVill'iam Shakespeare. A Splendid Animal THE half-bred horse or the early part of the last century was, when highly broken to his work, a delightful animal to ride ; in many respects more accomplished, as a hunter, than the generality of those of the present day. When in his best form, he was a truly-shaped and powerful animal, possessing prodigious strength, with a fine com- manding frame, considerable length of neck, a slight curve in his crest, which was always high and firm, and the head beautifully put on. Possess- ing these advantages, in addition to the very great pains taken with his mouth in the bitting, and an excellent education in the school or at the bar, he was what is termed a complete snafHe-bridle horse, and a standing as well as a flying leaper. Held well in hand — his rider standing up in the stirrups, holding him fast by the head, making the best of, and being able, from the comparatively slow rate at which hounds then travelled, to pick or choose his ground — such a horse would continue a chase of some hours* duration at the pace he was called upon to go, taking his fences well and safely to the last ; and he would frequently command the then large sum of one hundred guineas. But all these accom- plishments would never have enabled a horse of this description to carry the modern sportsman, who rides well up to hounds, on a good scenting day, over one of our best hunting countries. His strength would be exhausted before he had gone ten minutes, by the increased pace at which he io6 The Chase would now be called upon to travel, but to which his breeding would be quite unequal ; and his true symmetry, his perfect fencing, his fine mouth, and all his other points^ would prove of very little avail. Nimrod [C, J. Jpperley). Mainstay's Summering ^^> • o SEE there, with countenance blythe, And with a courtly grin, the fawning hound Salutes them cow'ring ; his wide op'ning nose Upwards he curls, and his large sloe-black eyes Melt in soft blandishments and humble joy : His glossy skin, or yellow pied, or blue. In lights or shades, by Nature's pencil drawn. Reflects the various tints : his ears and legs Fleckt here and there in gay enamel'd pride. Rival the speckled pard ; his rush-grown tail O'er his broad back, bends in an ample arch. On shoulders clean upright and firm he stands : His round cat feet, straight hams, and widespread thighs And his low drooping chest, confess his speed. His strength, his wind, or on the steepy hill Or far extended plain ; on every part So well proportioned, that the nicer skill Of Phidias himself can't blame thy choice. Of such compose thy pack. Somerville. The Hounds ^> <:> m^ (From renus and Adonis) THIS said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove, Musing the morning is so much o'erworn. And yet she hears no tidings of her love : She barkens for his hounds and for his horn : Anon she hears them chant it lustily ; And all in haste she coasteth to the cry. iio The Chase And as she runs, the bushes in the way Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face. Some twine about her thigh to make her stay ; She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace. Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache, Hasting to feed her fawn, hid in some brake. By this, she hears the hounds are at a bay : Whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder Wreath'd up in fatal folds just in his way, The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder ; Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds Appals her senses and her spirit confounds. For now she knows it is no gentle chase. But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud. Because the cry remaineth in one place. Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud : Finding their enemy to be so curst. They all strain court'sy who shall cope him first. Here kennell'd in a brake she finds a hound. And asks the weary caitiff for his master ; And there another licking of his wound, 'Gainst venom'd sores the only sovereign plaster ; And here she meets another sadly scowling, To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling. When he hath ceas'd his ill-resounding noise, Another flap-mouth'd mourner, black and grim, Against the welkin volleys out his voice ; Another and another answer him. Clapping their proud tails to the ground below, Shaking their scratch'd ears, bleeding as they go. IViUiam Shakespeare. The Hounds in First Pack of Fox-Hounds xO^ o . . . was with Hercules and Cadmus once, When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear Such gallant chiding ; for, besides the groves. The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. Midsummer Night^s Dream^ IV. I, 117. Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth. Taming of the Shrew, Ind. 2, 46. The Hounds 113 Whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds, Replying shrilly to the well-tun'd horns, As if a double hunt were heard at once, Let us sit down and mark their yelping; noise. Tit. Judn.ll. 3, 17. LonJ. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds : Brach Merriman, the poor cur is embossed ; And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd Brach. Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault ? I would not lose the dog for twenty pound. First Huntsman. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord ; He cried upon it at the merest loss. And twice to-day pick'd out the dullest scent ; Trust me, I take him for the better dog. Lord. Thou art a fool ; if Echo were as fleet, I would esteem him worth a dozen such. Ta??iing of the Shrezv, Ind. i, l6. The Grafton Hounds ^> o THE Grafton hounds early in the present century, were managed by old Joe Smith, and were different from any hounds of the present day. They were rather round than deep in their bodies, had good legs and feet, were very stout, but wild as hawks. No fox could live before them if he hung, and they did not change ; but over the open, when the morning flash was on them, they could not hold it, and could never pinch him. They ran by ear more than by nose ; and when they got to a ride half the pack would leave the cry, hop round to the next ride, cock up their ears till they heard the 114 The Chase others bringing it on, and then throw themselves in at his brush. In the latter days of Joe Smith, Tom Rose hunted them, and for many years after- wards had the whole control over them. He bred them much larger, but never altered their character. He was a fine joyous old fellow as ever cheered a hound, and no one knew better what he was about. Being once asked why he bred his hounds so wild — *'Why!" says he; "I'll tell you why. Nihe days out of ten I am in a wood. Every fox I find I mean to kill, and these hounds are the sort that will have him. An open country and a wood- land pack are different things. What you call a good pack will never catch a bad fox, and as I want to hunt him instead of his hunting ??ie, I think my hounds best calculated for my country." In the afternoon when the fly was off them, no hounds would hunt better ; but, as we all know, in the afternoon the bloom is off — then men, horses, and hounds have had their first sweat, and the only one of the party who is fresh is the fox. You may hunt him till dark, but if he be good for aught you will never grab him. After the old Duke's death, the late Lord Southampton took them, and Tom Rose continued to hunt them. They were kept much in the same form, and with the same result : in short, he killed his foxes in the woodlands, and they beat him in the open. The Druid [H. H, Dixon). Admiration ! ^:> «<:> ^:> I WAS lately in a company of very worthy people, where we had the Pleasure of a small Consort of^ Musick ; a good hand on the Violin, and a Young Lady [esteemed a top Mistress] sung and The Hounds 115 play'd on a very fine Harpsichord. 'Tis the fashion [you know] for every one to commend ; and the most insensible Auditor, for fear of discovering his ovi^n Ignorance, must seem to be in Raptures. The Lady performed to Admiration ; one stared, another talked of Angels and the Spheres, a third wept, a fourth was ready to drop into a trance. At last a very honest Gentleman that sat by in a musing posture, having his Ears shaken with a longer and louder quiver than ordinary, look'd abroad, and gave me a nod and a wink, with this ingenious remark — " By Jingo^ I never heard anything better but a Cry of Dogs ; she draws out her note like my old TolerT The Lady herself was not unacquainted with the Attractions of Hunting, and [as she told me after- wards] she was more proud of this sincere com- pliment from Tolers master than all the rest she received on the occasion. A Squire'' s Essay on Hunting. The Sportsman's Distress o o I'VE lost my friend, my dog, and wife. Saved only horse and purse ; Yet when I think on human life, Thank heaven it is no worse. My friend was sickly, poor, and old. Was peevish, blind, and crippled ; My wife was ugly and a scold, — I rather think she tippled. My dog was faithful, fond, and true. In sporting gave me pleasure ; I shouldn't care for t'other two. If I had saved this treasure. Anon. HUNTING THE STAG Hark forward, hark, forward, tantivy ! This day a stag must die. Anonymous l%th-Century Song. Hunting the Deer in Olden Times <:> THEN the chase was followed through glen and glade, dell and dingle, by lonesome windings of the thicket, where, at other times, no sound but the voices of wild beasts and birds was heard, or the roaring of the wind among the trees, or the low murmuring of the forest-brook, as it flowed on through chequered light and shade. For there were spots in these dreaming old woods, where a deep twilight ever reigned — twilight caused by the trees that rose high one above another, branch over-shadowing branch, until all below was dim green darkness, and you could not see what flowers bloomed beneath the buried under- wood. Past these solitudes the hunter rode, and the hounds went baying in pursuit of the panting stag, who sometimes broke his horns through the speed with which he dashed among the overhanging branches. And lovely ladies, who have been dead and buried long centuries ago, quitted their strong castles and old feudal halls, and galloped with the cavalcade through the green forest-paths in pursuit of the deer. Thomas Miller, ii6 Hunting the Stag 117 The Haunt of the Deer ^o <::> I HAVE seen Beauty walking in the green woodland, In the early Spring when the trees are all aflame, And o'er the hills and the lonely purple moorland, Birds are calling in the dusk, and delight is felt half pain. I have seen the shy wild-deer threading through the forest. Flitting through dim glen and through faery wood- land glade, Seen through latticed branches in the purple gleam- ing west, Sunset in its crimson splendour, joy that cannot fade. Samuel J. Looker. Old Towler <:> y:^ ^^^ <:> BRIGHT Chanticleer proclaims the dawn And spangles deck the thorn. The lowing herds now quit the lawn. The lark springs from the corn ; Dogs, huntsmen, round the window throng. Fleet Towler leads the cry. Arise the burden of my song. This day a stag must die. Chorus, With a hey, ho, chevy ! Hark forward, hark forward, tantivy ! Hark ! hark ! tantivy ! This day a stag must die. 1 1 8 The Chase The cordial takes its merry rounds The laugh and joke prevail, The huntsman blows a jovial sound, The dogs snufF up the gale ; The upland wilds they sweep along, O'er fields, through brakes they fly, The game is roused, too true the song. This day a stag must die. Chorus. Anonymous iZth-Ccntury Song. The Run \ >c^ <^ ^::> THERE is an old keeper named Adams, whose great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than a hundred years. This person assures me, that his father has often told him, that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the Forest of Wolmer beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and, reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that 122 The Chase purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer Pond, and still called Queen's Bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign ! But he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks or, to use his own expression, as soon as they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumber- land. It is now more than thirty years ago that his Highness sent down a huntsman and six yeoman- prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds ; ordering them to take every deer in this forest alive, and to convey them in carts to Windsor. In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of which showed extraordinary diversion : but in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried ofF, such fine chases were exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeoman- prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything in Mr. Astley's riding-school. The exertions made by the horse and deer much exceeded all my expectations ; though the former greatly excelled the latter in speed. When the devoted deer was separated from his companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for twenty minutes ; when, sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued. The Rev, Gilbert White. Hunting the Stag 123 The Wildgrave ^:> ^:^ ^:> THE Wildgrave winds his bugle-horn, To horse, to horse ! halloo, halloo ! His fiery courser snufFs the morn. And thronging serfs their lord pursue. The eager pack, from couples freed. Dash through the bush, the brier, the brake ; While answering hound, and horn, and steed, The mountain echoes startling wake. The beams of God^s own hallow'd day Had painted yonder spire with gold, And, calling sinful man to pray. Loud, long, and deep the bell had toll'd : The Wildgrave spurr'd his ardent steed. And, launching forward with a bound, " Who, for thy drowsy priestlike rede. Would leave the jovial horn and hound ? " Up springs, from yonder tangled thorn, A stag more white than mountain snow ; And louder rung the Wildgrave's horn, " Hark forward, forward ! holla, ho ! " O'er moss and moor, and holt and hill. His track the steady blood-hounds trace ; O'er moss and moor, unwearied still. The furious Earl pursues the chase. Sir Walter Scott. Mr. Jorrocks and the Surrey Staghounds " l^TOW to 'orse — to 'orse ! " exclaimed he, J_\| suiting the action to the word, and climbing on to his great chestnut, leaving the Yorkshireman to mount the rat-tail brown. " Let's have a look 124 The Chase at the 'ounds" — turning his horse in the direction in which they were coming. Jonathan Griffin took off his cap to Jorrocks as he approached, who waved his hand in the most patronising manner possible, adding, " How are you, Jonathan ? '* " Pretty well thank you. Mister Jorrocks, hope you're the same." " No, not the same, but I'm werry well, which makes all the difference — haw ! haw ! haw ! You seem to have but a shortish pack, I think — ten, twelve, fourteen couple — 'ow's that ? We always take nine-and-twenty in the Surrey." " Why, you see. Mister Jorrocks, stag- hunting and fox-hunting are very different. The scent of the deer is very ravishing, and then we have no drawing for our game. Besides, at this season there are always bitches to put back — but we have plenty of hounds for sport — I suppose we may be after turning out," added Jonathan, looking at his watch, " it's past eleven." On hearing this, a gentleman off with his glove and began collecting, or capping^ prior to turning out — it being the rule of the Hunt to make sure of the money before starting, for fear of accidents. " Half-a-crown if you please, sir." " Mr. Jorrocks, shall I trouble you for half-a-crown ? " " Oh, surely," said Jorrocks, pulling out a handful of great five-shilling pieces, " here's for this gentleman and myself, and I shan't even ask you for discount for ready money." The capping went round, and a goodly sum was collected. Meanwhile, the deer- cart was drawn to the far side of a thick fence and, the door being opened, a lubberly-looking animal as big as a donkey blobbed out, and began feeding very composedly. " That won't do," said Jonathan Griffin, eyeing him, " ride on, Tom, and whip him away." Off went the whip, followed by a score Hunting the Stag 125 of sportsmen whose shouts, aided by the cracking of their whips, would have frightened the devil himself; and these worthies, knowing the hounds would catch them up in due time, resolved them- selves into a hunt for the present, and pursued the animal themselves. Ten minutes having expired, and the hounds seeming likely to break away, Jonathan thought it advisable to let them have their wicked will, and accordingly they rushed ofF in full cry to the spot where the deer had been uncarted. Of course there was no trouble in cast- ing for the scent, indeed they were very honest and did not pretend to any mystery ; the hounds knew within an inch where it would be, and the start was pretty much like that for a hunters* plate in four-mile heats. A few dashing blades rode before the hounds at starting, but otherwise the field was tolerably quiet, and was considerably diminished after the first three leaps. The scent improved, as did the pace, and presently they got into a lane, along which they rattled for five miles as hard as ever they could lay legs to the ground, throwing the mud into each other's faces, until each man looked as if he was rough-cast. A Kentish waggon, drawn by six oxen, taking up the whole of the lane, had obliged the dear animal to take to the fields again, where at the first fence most of our high-mettled racers stood still. In truth, it was rather a nasty place, a yawning ditch with a mud bank, and a rotten landing. " Now, who's for it ? Go it, Jorrocks, you're a fox-hunter," said one who, erecting himself in his stirrups, was ogling the opposite side. "I don't like it," said Jorrocks ; " is never a gate near r " " Oh yes, at the bottom of the field," and away they all tore for it. . . . 126 The Chase Everyone seemed to consider it a desperate job. They were all puzzled ; at last they heard a desperate, terrible halloaing about a quarter of a mile to the south, and immediately after was espied a group of horsemen galloping along the road at full speed, in the midst of which was Jorrocks ; his green coat wide open, with the tails flying a long way behind that of his horse, his right leg was thrust out, down the side of which he kept applying his ponderous hunting-whip, making a most terrible clatter. As they approached, he singled himself out from the group and was the first to reach the field. He immediately burst out into one of his usual energetic hunting strains. "Oh, Jonathan Griffin!" said he, "here's a lamentable occurrence — a terrible disaster ! Oh dear, we shall never get to Tunbridge — that un- fortunate deer has escaped us, and we shall never see nothing more of him — rely upon it, he's killed before this ! " " Why, how's that ? " inquired Griffin, evidently in a terrible perturbation. " Why," said Jorrocks, slapping his whip down his leg again, " there's a little girl tells me that as she was getting water at the well just at the end of the wood, where we lost him, she saw what she took to be a donkey jump into a return post-chaise from the Bell at Seven Oaks, that was passing along the road with the door swinging wide open ! and you may rely upon it, it was the deer. The landlord of the Bell will have cut his throat before this, for, as you know, he vowed vengeance against us last year, because his wife's pony-chaise was upset, and he swore we did it." " Oh, but that's a bad job," said the huntsman, " what shall we do ? Here, Tom," calling to the whipper-in, "jump on to the Hastings coach (which just came up) and try Hunting the Stag 127 if you can't overtake him, and bring him back, chaise and all, and I'll follow slowly with the hounds." Tom was soon up, the coach bowled on, and Jonathan and the hounds trotted gently forward till they came to a public-house. Here, as they stopped lamenting over their unhappy fate, and consoling themselves with some cold sherry negus, the post-chaise appeared in sight, with the deer's head sticking out of the side window with all the dignity of a Lord Mayor ! R, S. Surtees. From Hart-Leap Well -^^ ^o A ROUT this morning left Sir Walter's Hall, That as they galloped made the echoes roar ; But horse and man are vanished, one and all ; Such race, I think, was never seen before. Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind. Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain : Blanch, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind. Follow, and up the weary mountain strain. The knight hallooed, he cheered and chid them on With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern ; But breath and eyesight fail ; and, one by one. The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern. Where is the throng, the tumult of the race ? The bugles that so joyfully were blown ? — This chase it looks not like an earthly chase ; Sir Walter and the Hart are left alone. 128 Hunting the Stag The poor Hart toils along the mountain-side ; I will not stop to tell how far he fled, Nor will I mention by what death he died ; But now the Knight beholds him lying dead. Dismounting, then, he leaned against a thorn ; He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy : He neither cracked his whip, nor blew his horn, But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy. Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned, Stood his dumb partner in this glorious feat ; Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned ; And white with foam as if with cleaving sleet. Upon his side the Hart was lying stretched : His nostril touched a spring beneath a hill, And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched The waters of the spring were trembling still. And now, too happy for repose or rest, (Never had living man such joyful lot !) Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west. And gazed and gazed upon that darling spot. And climbing up the hill (it was at least Four roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found Three several hoof-marks which the hunted Beast Had left imprinted on the grassy ground. Sir Walter wiped his face, and cried, "Till now Such sight was never seen by human eyes : Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow, Down to the very fountain where he lies." William Wordsworth. Hunting the Stag 129 The Chase Begins ^:> ^:> ^o NEWLY risen from his couch of fern, the noble hart would rush at full speed through the most intricate parts of the forest, threading leafy- mazes only known to himself, dashing through the yielding hazels, which would close again with a spring that would fell a stout stripling to the earth, now pausing for a brief moment with his antlered head erect to listen to his pursuers ; then, finding their loud whoop and halloo drawing nearer, hurry- ing off again with redoubled speed. Now he would gallop along by the wild forest brook at which he had so many times quenched his thirst ; but, though his hot ton2;ue hun2;out of his mouth, not daring to pause an instant to drink, nor look down either at the blue sky, the broad branches, or the beautiful flowers mirrored in the stream, and which his own image for a moment darkened, as he swept along. Thomas Miller. The Chase Ends ^^^^ ^o o BEHOLD him now ! The chase has continued for two long hours ; his mouth is black and dry, his tongue hangs out, his eyes turned backward, as if measuring the space that intervenes between him and his pursuers. How heavily he seems to drag his weary limbs along ! You see he is longer passing over the shadow of a tree and into the break of sunshine beyond, than he was when he first sprang from his ferny couch, and no wonder, for he has run over many miles of weary forest-ground. The hounds draw nearer ; there are but three or four couples ; all the rest have fallen off; some are lost in the forest mazes ; only two or three horse- K 130 The Chase men are able to come up ; the rest are far behind, in bowery hollows, deep dingles, or briery thickets : their steeds foundered, their garments torn, they could no longer keep up with the chase, which is again far out of sight, for the noble stag has still strength enough to keep ahead of his pursuers. Slower, at longer intervals, the stems of the trees are passed ; for we are now standing at the head of a long forest avenue, up which the wearied chase is approaching. The former swift flight of the poor stag is now changed into a slow, heavy trot, as if it were a pain to him to drag one leg before another. There are but three hounds in sight out of all the number that started in pursuit when the day was in its prime. Only one solitary horseman has been able to keep up with these hounds, and he seems to rock and reel from fatigue in his saddle like a drunkard, while his horse is ready to founder at every step. You hear the call of a solitary horn somewhere in the distance, telling that another hunter is still on the track, though far, far behind. . . . But see a couple of the strongest hounds have reached the exhausted stag ; they have scarcely strength enough left to tug at his throat, nor has the noble animal power to butt at them with his antlers, both breathing alike heavily. At length the hunter alights ; he plunges the blade of his buck-handled knife into the throat of the dying stag, and, sounding three blasts on his horn, called in the language of the chase the " death mot," the hunt is ended. Thomas Miller. Hunting the Stag 131 The Chase is O'er, the Hart Is Slain ,o (The Laureate of Hunting) WARBURTON, himself, had a kindly sympathy with all field-sports, but his darling pursuit was fox-hunting. As he tells us himself in one of his best songs : — Fishiiii^, though pleasant, I sing not at present, Nor shooting the pheasant, nor fighting of cocks ; Song shall declare a way how to drive care away, Pain and despair away — hunting the fox. He generally rode thoroughbred horses bred by himself, and bestowed incessant care upon breaking and training them ; but one cannot read his poems without feeling convinced that his affection was bestowed as ardently upon hounds as it was upon horses. It was one who rode to hunt, not one who hunted to ride, that wrote the following stanza (less musical than most from that pen) : — The fox takes precedence of all from the cover ; The horse is an animal purposely bred After the pack to be ridden — not over ; Good hounds are not rear'd to be knocked on the head. Though the prowess of others in the hunting field is liberally celebrated and humorously criticised in Warburton's lays, upon his own quality as a horseman he is modestly silent. Almost alone among field-sports, fox-hunting is free from the detestable taint of record-breaking, and owing to its very nature, must remain so while it endures. How long that may be defies computation. . . . His later years were darkened by a grievous affliction. No more might his eye rest lovingly on the shapes of horse and hound, nor be gladdened by Writers on Hunting 139 the gleam of scarlet in the autumn woodland, nor could he seek the solace which he knew so well how to find in his library. For seventeen long years Warburton was stone-blind from glaucoma. It was then a pathetic sight to see him still moving about through the beautiful garden he had created and the landscape which he had embellished. Moving briskly too ; for he used to take as his guide a life-long friend, an aged gardener called Peter Burgess, who wore a leathern belt upon which his master kept a firm hold as they wandered through the woods and lanes. But so greatly did his master appreciate open-air exercise to the last, that old Burgess was not able to give him enough ; so a terrace was made 220 yards long, with a wire beside it. With his stick on the wire Warburton would pace to and fro here alone, a bell at each end of the wire warnins; him when he reached the end of his tether. . . . Rowland Egerton-Warburton breathed his last at Arley Hall on 6th December, 1891. No pomp of plumes or gloomy mourning-coaches were suffered to mark the close of this gentle life. The body was laid on a lorry draped with scarlet cloth and drawn by the workmen on the estate for three miles through the leafless woods to its resting-place in the churchyard of Great Budworth. The Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart. THE POETRY OF HUNTING Song shall declare a way How to drive care away, Pain and despair away — Hunting the Fox. Egerton-fVarburton. The Hunting of the Stag o ^^> NOW when the Hart doth hear The often-bellowing hounds to vent his secret lair, He rousing rusheth out, and through the brakes doth drive. As though up by the roots the bushes he would rive. And through the cumb'rous thicks, as fearfully he makes, He with his branched head the tender saplings shakes. That sprinkling their moist pearl do seem for him to weep ; When after goes the cry, with yellings loud and deep, That all the forest rings, and every neighbouring place : And there is not a hound but falleth to the chase. Rechating with his horn, which then the hunter chears. While still the Stag — his high-palm'd head up-bears, 140 The Poetry of Hunting 141 His body showing state, with unbent knees upright, Expressing (from all beasts) his courage in his flight. But when th' approaching foes still following he perceives, That he his speed must trust, his usual walk he leaves ; And o'er the champain flies : which when th' assembly find. Each follows, as his horse were footed with the wind. But being then imbost, the noble stately deer When he hath gotten ground (the kennel cast arere) Doth beat the brooks and ponds for sweet refreshing soil : That serving not, then proves if he his scent can foil. And makes among the herds and flocks of shag- wooU'd sheep. Them frighting from the guard of those who had their keep. But when as all his shifts his safety still denies. Put quite out of his walk, the ways and fallows tries. Whom when the plow-man meets, his team he letteth stand T' assail him with his goad : so with his hook in hand, The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hollow : When, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and huntsmen follow ; Until the noble deer through toil bereav'd of strength, His long and sinewy legs then failing him at length, The villages attempts, enrag'd, not giving way To anything he meets now at his sad decay. 142 The Chase The cruel rav'nous hounds and bloody hunters near, This noblest beast of chase, that vainly doth but fear. Some bank or quickset finds : to which his haunch oppos'd, He turns upon his foes, that soon have him inclos'd. Michael Drayton. A-Hunting We will Go *^> o THE dusky night rides down the sky, And ushers in the morn ; The hounds all join in glorious cry, The huntsman winds his horn. And a-hunting we will go. The wife around her husband throws Her arms to make him stay ; " My dear, it rains, it hails, it blows ; You cannot hunt to-day." Yet a-hunting we will go. Away they fly to 'scape the rout. Their steeds they soundly switch ; Some are thrown in, and some thrown out, And some thrown in the ditch. Yet a-hunting we will go. Sly Reynard now like lightning flies, And sweeps across the vale ; And when the hounds too near lie spies. He drops his bushy tail. Then a-hunting we will go. The Poetry of Hunting 143 Fond Echo seems to like the sport, And join the jovial cry ; The woods, the hills, the sound retort. And music fills the sky. When a-hunting we do go. At length his strength to faintness worn, Poor Reynard ceases flight ; Then hungry, homeward we return. To feast away the night. And a-drinking we do go. Ye jovial hunters, in the morn Prepare then for the chase ; Rise at the sounding of the horn, And health with sport embrace. When a-hunting we do go. Henry Fielding. The Devoted Three <^ o •o UP rose the sun o'er moor and mead ; Up with the sun rose Percy Rede ; Brave Keeldar, from his couples free Career'd along the lea : The palfrey sprung with sprightly bound, As if to match the gamesome hound ; His horn the gallant huntsman wound : They were a jovial three ! Man, hound, or horse, of higher fame To wake the wild deer never came, Since Alnwick's Earl pursued the game On Cheviot's rueful day ; 144 The Chase Keeldar was matchless in his speed, Than Tarras, ne'er was stancher steed, A peerless archer, Percy Rede ; And right dear friends were they. The chase engrossed their joys and woes, Together at the dawn they rose. Together shared the noon's repose. By fountain or by stream ; And oft, when evening skies were red. The heather was their common bed. Where each as wildering fancy led. Still hunted in his dream. Sir Walter Scott. Simon Lee ^:^ ^:> ^^^ The Old Huntsman IN the sweet shire of Cardigan, Not far from pleasant Ivor-Hall, An old man dwells, a little man, — 'Tis said he once was tall. Full five-and-thirty years he lived A running huntsman merry ; And still the centre of his cheek Is red as a ripe cherry. No man like him the horn could sound, And hill and valley rang with glee When Echo bandied, round and round. The halloo of Simon Lee. In those proud days, belittle cared For husbandry or tillage ; To blither tasks did Simon rouse The sleepers of the village. The Poetry of Hunting 145 He all the country could outrun, Could leave both man and horse behind ; And often, ere the chase was done. He reeled, and was stone-blind. And still there's something in the world At which his heart rejoices ; For when the chiming hounds are out. He dearly loves their voices. JViUiam Wordsworth. Hunting Song ^o^ ^^o^ ^:^ WAKEN, lords and ladies gay, On the mountains dawns the day, All the jolly chace is here, With hawk and horse and hunting-spear ; Hounds are in their couples yelling. Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling. Merrily, merrily, mingle they, " Waken, lords and ladies gay." Waken, lords and ladies gay. The mist has left the mountain gray, Springlets in the dawn are steaming, Diamonds on the brake are gleaming : And foresters have busy been. To track the buck in thicket green. Now we come to chaunt our lay, " Waken, lords and ladies gay." Waken, lords and ladies gay. To the green-wood haste away ; We can show you where he lies, Fleet of foot and tall of size ; We can show the marks he made. When 'gainst the oak his antlers fray d ; 146 The Chase You shall see him brought to bay, " Waken, lords and ladies gay." Louder, louder, chaunt the lay, " Waken, lords and ladies gay ! " Tell them youth, and mirth, and glee Run a course as well as we ; Time, stern huntsman ! who can baulk, Staunch as hound and fleet as hawk ; Think of this, and rise with day. Gentle lords and ladies gay. Sir IValter Scott. Hark ! Hark ! ^:^ ^^ < THE stag at eve had drunk his fill. Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, And deep his midnight lair had made In lone Glenartney's hazel shade ; But, when the sun his beacon red Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head. The deep-mouthed bloodhounds' heavy bay Resounded up the rocky way, And faint, from farther distance borne. Were heard the clanging hoof and horn. The antler'd monarch of the waste Sprang from his heathery couch in haste ; But, ere his fleet career he took, The dewdrops from his flanks he shook ; Like crested leader proud and high, Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky ; A moment gazed adown the dale, A moment snuffed the tainted gale, 148 The Chase A moment listened to the cry, That thickened as the chase drew nigh ; Then, as the headmost foes appeared, With one brave bound the copse he cleared. And, stretching forward free and far. Sought the wild heaths of Uam-Var. Yelled on the view the opening pack — Rock, glen, and cavern paid them back ; To many a mingled sound at once The awakened mountain gave response. An hundred dogs bayed deep and strong, Clattered an hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rang out, An hundred voices joined the shout ; With hark, and whoop, and wild halloo, No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew. Far from the tumult fled the roe. Close in her covert cowered the doe. The falcon, from her cairn on high, Cast on the rout a wondering eye. Till far beyond her piercing ken. The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint, and more faint, its falling din Returned from cavern, clifF and linn. And silence settled, wide and still, On the lone wood and mighty hill. Sir Walter Scott, The Proud King .£> s^;> <:> SO for the hunt was he apparelled. And forth he rode with heart right well at ease ; And many a strong, deep-chested hound they led. Over the dewy grass betwixt the trees. And fair white horses fit for the white knees The Poetry of Hunting 149 Of Her the ancients fabled rides a-nights Betwixt the setting and the rising lights. Now following up a mighty hart and swift The king rode long upon that morning tide, And since his horse was worth a kingdom's gift, It chanced him all his servants to outride, Until unto a shaded river-side He came alone at hottest of the sun. When all the freshness of the day was done. Dismounting there, and seeing so far a-down The red-finned fishes o'er the gravel play, It seemed that moment worth his royal crown To hide there from the burning of the day. Wherefore he did dofF his rich array. And tied his horse unto a neighboring tree. And in the water sported leisurely. William Morris, The Wind's in the South <::> .<£> THE wind's in the south, and the first faint blushes Of morn amid clouds dispers'd, As a stream in its strength through a floodgate rushes. The hounds from their kennel burst. The huntsman is up on his favourite bay. The whips are all astride, Leisurely trotting their onward way To the distant cover side. Sweetly the blackbird, and sweetly the thrush, Greeting them, seem to say, In the chorus that rings from each hawthorn bush, " Good sport to the pack to-day." 150 The Chase Lads from the village now after them race, Asking with eager shout, And ruddy with joy at the thoughts of a chace, " Where do the hounds turn out ? " Now masking the slope with its dusky screen, A wood in front appears, And a Hall high-gabled, the glittering sheen Of its vane-deck'd turrets rears. The chimney-shafts, wreathed with smoke, betoken Full many a guest within, While words of welcome in honesty spoken The heart of each stranger win. A white hand unlatches her casement bar ; A murmur of joy resounds : They're coming ! they're coming ! see, yonder they are ! They're coming ! the hounds ! the hounds ! Hark ! from the cover a fox halloo'd ; The hounds to the open fly ; Horses and men, as they crash through the wood, Made mad by the merry cry. Fainter and fainter in distance died The tumult of the chace ; Till silent as death was the green hill-side. The Hall a deserted place. I follow them not ; the good fox they found Sped many a mile away ; That run was the talk of the country round For many an after day. R. E. E ger ton-TV arhur ton. The Poetry of Hunting 151 The Three Jovial Huntsmen ^^> s:> IT'S of three jovial huntmen, an' a hunting they did go ; An' they hunted, an' they hollo'd an' they blew their horns also. Look ye there ! An' one said, " Mind ye'r e'en, an' keep ye'r noses reet i' th' wind. An' then, by scent or seet, we'll leet o' summat to our mind." Look ye there ! They hunted, an' they hollo'd, an' the first thing they did find Was a tatter't boggart, in a field, an' that they left behind j Look ye there ! One said it was a boggart, an' another he said " Nay ; It's just a ge'man-farmer, that has gone an' lost his way." Look ye there ! They hunted, an' they hollo'd, an' the next thing they did find Was a two-three children leaving school, an' these they left behind. Look ye there ! One said that they were children, but another he said " Nay ; They're no' but little angels, so we'll leave them to their play." Look ye there ' 152 The Chase They hunted, an' they hollo'd, an' the next thing they did find Was a fat pig smiling in a ditch, an' that, too, they left behind ; Look ye there ! One said it was a fat pig, but another he said " Nay ; It's just a Lonnon Alderman, whose clothes are stole away." Look ye there ! They hunted, an' they hollo'd, an' the next thing they did find Was two young lovers in a lane, and these they left behind. Look ye there ! One said that they were lovers, but another he said " Nay ; They're two poor wanderin' lunatics — come, let us go away." Look ye there ! So they hunted, an' they hollo'd, till the setting of the sun ; An' they'd nought to bring away at last, when th' huntin'-day was done. Look ye there ! Then one unto the other said, "This huntin' doesn't pay ; But we 'n powler't up and down a bit, an' had a rattlin' day." Look ye there ! Anon. The Poetry of Hunting 153 The Little Red Rover ^o^ o THE dewdrop is clinging To whin-bush and brake, The skylark is singing " Merrie hunters, awake ; " Home to the cover, Deserted by night, The Little Red Rover Is bending his flight. Resounds the glad hollo ; The pack scents the prey ; Man and horse follow Away ! Hark, away ! Away ! never fearing, Ne'er slacken your pace : What music so cheering As that of the chase ? The Rover still speeding, Still distant from home, Spurr'd flanks are bleeding. And cover'd with foam ; Fleet limbs extended, Roan, chestnut, or grey, The burst, ere 'tis ended. Shall try them to-day ! Well known is yon cover, And crag hanging o'er, The little Red Rover Shall reach it no more ! The foremost hounds near him, His strength 'gins to droop : In pieces they tear him. Who — whoop ! Who — who — whoop ! R. E. Egerton-JVarhurton. 154 The Chase The Huntsman's Dirge ^:> THE smiling morn may light the sky, And joy may dance in beauty's eye, Aurora's beams to see ; The mellow horn's inspiring sound May call the blithe companions round, But who shall waken thee, Ronald ? Thou ne'er wilt hear the mellow horn, Thou ne'er wilt quaff the breath of morn, Nor join thy friends with glee ; No glorious sun shall gild thy day. And beauty's fascinating ray No more shall shine on thee, Ronald ! Anon. WISE SAWS AND MODERN INSTANCES Given good nerve, good fox, good horse, and who would change with a king ? Mrs. Edivard Kennard. The Wholesome Smell of the Stable >^?^ OF one thing I am certain, that the reader must be much delighted with the wholesome smell of the stable, with which many of these pages are redolent ; what a contrast to the sickly- odours exhaled from those of some of my con- temporaries, especially of those who pretend to be of the highly fashionable class, and who treat of reception-rooms, well may they be styled so, in which dukes, duchesses, earls, countesses, arch- bishops, bishops, mayors, mayoresses — not forgetting the writers themselves, both male and female — congregate and press upon one another ; how cheering, how refreshing, after having been nearly knocked down by such an atmosphere, to come in contact with genuine stable hartshorn. George Borrow. Fox-Hunting in the Old Days o >o WHAT sport is there to equal that of fox- hunting, with its healthy exercise, change of scene, sociability, and excitement ? Was it not Lord Palmcrston who said the finest thing for 155 156 The Chase the inside of a man was the outside of a horse ? Personally, I don't think he was far wrong. I don't want to be sour, but very different is the hunting of the present day of which some young men think so much, from the sport of our grand- fathers, in the days when railways were unheard of, and every face was known at a meet. Now- adays many people go out for the sake of pace and jumping fences rather than for love of the good old sport of fox-hunting. How many of our modern sportsmen know the name of one hound from another, or which are most reliable or throw their tongue in cover ? Imagine yourself living at the early part of the nineteenth century, when our forefathers set out at daybreak with their friends and neighbouring squires, having heard of damage done to hen-roosts ; they would unkennel their hounds and try to get on the drag of the old fox, and slowly hunt up to where he was sleeping off the effects of his midnight feast. What hound work ! What music from those old- fashioned, deep-throated packs ! The huntsmen knew every hound and cheered them on by their names ; many long runs they had, and surely it was better sport than running into a fox after twenty minutes, as with present-day hounds, for very few foxes nowadays will stand up before them longer if there is a scent. . . . Many of the packs in the early days were trencher fed, and on a hunting morning were collected by a man who went through the villages blowing a horn. I know an old man who still takes a keen interest in all matters connected with sport, although he has grown too old and feeble to do much himself. When a boy he managed to persuade his father, rather against the latter's will, Wise Saws 157 to keep a hound. One morning, when working in the forge, the old dog, who was lying on the floor, heard the sound of the horn in the distance. " Father," said the boy, " shall I let Trueman out?" "You go on with your work," was the father's reply, " and let the hound bide. It costs enough to fill his belly now without a-hunting." Presently the horn sounded again, this time nearer. There was a crash and a sound of broken glass ; the old hound had jumped through a lattice window. " Blame it," said the father, " it would have been cheaper to let old Trueman a' gone hunting than a' kept him." Hubert Garle. ^:> '' Who would Change with a King } " CAUTION has no place at times like these ; when you have secured a good start, halt the field are out-manoeuvred, and it is just as much as ever you can do to keep the tail hounds in view. How mutely they run ! With what a deadly and bloodthirsty purpose ! Sit down in your saddle and let the good steed beneath you extend himself to the full, or else never again this day hope to see the flying and ever diminishing pack. Strain every nerve, use every artifice, ride all you know to keep with them, for a scent like this comes but once or at most twice in a season. The pace is simply tremendous, neither as the minutes go by does it show any symptom of slackening. The frost is going fast, leaving a slight moisture twinkling in the sunshine ; but even although the ground on 158 The Chase the shady sides of the hedges rattles under the horses' hoofs as they land, nobody any longer gives it a thought. All such minor considerations are swept into the background by the intoxicating delight of the moment. What glorious excite- ment, worth years of ordinary hum-drum existence ! There is nothing to equal it while it lasts, and those who have never realised its pleasures are sadly to be pitied. How it warms the blood, thrills the frame, and lightens the heart. Given good nerve, good fox, good horse, and who would change with a king ? Mrs. Edward Kennard. Too Gentle ! <^ <:> «^:> LADIES are great offenders, and not entirely from their own fault. If they are properly " entered " — that is to say, if they have a relative or friend who knows all about the sport of fox- hunting, and studies how to avoid doing damage to crops, and will pass on his knowledge to them, then all is well. I have noticed that women so educated are quite as thoughtful for hounds, hunt servants, and farmers' interests as any man, if not more so. But such women are rather the exception. If an ignorant lad comes out, he will soon get well sworn at if he does stupid things ; but most men are very loath to find fault with women in the hunting-field. Therefore the woman who is not well " entered " has much less chance of learning how to behave from being cursed at large than a man has. So it is up to the ladies, I think, to make a point of learning something about hunting, if they mean Wise Saws 159 to hunt, and they can then do much for the sport by their influence and by setting a good example. They might also remember that their dear favourite horses hurt people just as much when they kick them as if they were ordinary hunters. Ladies will not, as a rule, punish their horses for kicking ; they are too gentle with them. Major W. Fraser-Tytler, Ignorance ^i:> ^> h^> <:^ ALL men who are fox-hunters are not sportsmen ; and that some even wish not to be thought so, the following anecdote may prove. In the year 18 — , the writer was staying at Melton during the season, with only a short stud of hunters and a hack of his own, besides what he hired. As may be supposed, he never thought of seeing a second run with the hounds the same day. On one occasion, having seen a good fox killed, he merely stopped to see the second found, and then went home. Some time during the afternoon he met two men, well known in the hunt, who had gone the second run, and inquired of them if they had killed their second fox ; but neither of them knew, although they came part of the way with the hounds. This was men- tioned to the master of the pack next day, and the reply was : " You may not be aware of it, but many men here would consider it an insult to be supposed to know anything about it. Had you asked them who had gone best during the run, you would have had a story as long as your arm." He then told the fact, that the second fox was killed. Thomas Smith. i6o The Chase A Joomp ! ^i> o ONE sez, "Moy 'oss a wunna joomp;" another sez, *' Young mon, Will your 'oss joomp ? fur if a will, Oi wish as you'd go hon." Sez Oi, " Oi niver 'oss'd afore, bur louk oup, fur 'ere goes," And Smiler med a rood raight threough and landed on his nooze. F. Cotton. Lost ! ^> xi> H^> I SHALL end with an anecdote of a late huntsman of mine, who was a great slip-slop, and always called successively successfully. One day, when he had been out with the young hounds, I sent for him in, and asked him. What sport he had had, and how the hounds behaved ? "Very great sport, Sir, and no hounds could behave any better." — " Did you run him long?" — "They ran him, and please your honour, upwards of three hours successfully.'^ — " So, then, you did kill him ?" — " 0/?, no^ Sir^ we lost him at last.''' Peter Beckford. A Hunt Breakfast .^> ^> ^i> THERE are worse moments in life than those passed at a hunt breakfast. Seated at a table decorated with flowers of surpassing brilliancy and freshness, and covered with viands which afford every facility for the gratification of the more material tastes ; the windows overlooking the lawn, dotted all over with scarlet coats ; the Master dis- Wise Saws i6i mounted, and surrounded by twenty-two couples of " varmint "-looking hounds, watching attentively his every movement ; the whips now and again re- calling some wandering members of the pack, with an occasional and musical cry of " 'Ware horse ! " as some straggler approaches too nearly a fiery and impatient steed, who, in his eagerness to commence the business of the day, is lashing out dangerously with his hind legs ; the arrival of the men on hacks, and carriages of all descriptions — notably a four-in- hand wagonette drawn by four very neat cobs ; ladies mounted on likely-looking nags ; pedestrians, and the usual number of" loafers " who are always to be found at a " meet " — these things, together with a background of evergreens and a merry sunshine, form the materials for a pleasant picture. Add as a further advantageous ingredient an invitation to mount a six-year-old horse of fine form and fashion, whose subsequent performances prove that he makes light of such a trifle as sixteen stone, and you have all the incidents that promise a good time. F. F. JVhitehurst. Beating Cover ,^7^ ^^^ ^^^ IT is a hackneyed enough remark, that both ancient and modern writers make sad work of it when they attempt a description of heaven. To describe a run with fox-hounds is not a much easier task ; but to make the attempt with any other county than Leicestershire in our eye, would be giving a chance away. Let us then suppose ourselves to have been at Ashby Pasture in the Quorn Country, with Mr. Osbaldeston's hounds, in the year 1826, when that pack was at the height of its well-merited celebrity. Let us also indulge ourselves with a fine M 1 62 The Chase morning in the first week of February, and at least two hundred well-mounted men by the cover's side. Time being called — say a quarter past eleven, nearly our great-grandfathers' dinner-hour — the hounds approach the furze-brake, or the gorse, as it is called in that region. " Hark hi^ hark ! " with a slight cheer, and perhaps one wave of his cap, says Mr. Osbaldeston, who long hunted his own pack, and in an instant he has not a hound at his horse's heels. In a very short time the gorse appears shaken in various parts of the cover — apparently from an unknown cause, not a single hound being for some minutes visible. Presently one or two appear, leaping over some old furze which they cannot push through, and exhibit to the field their glossy skins and spotted sides. " Oh, you beauties ! " exclaims some old Mel- tonian, rapturously fond of the sport. Two minutes more elapse ; another hound slips out of cover, and takes a short turn outside, with his nose on the ground and his stern lashing his side — thinking, no doubt, he might touch on a drag, should Reynard have been abroad in the night. Hounds have no business to think^ thinks the whipper-in, who observes him ; but one crack of his whip, with " Rasselas, Rasselas, where are you going, Rasselas ? Get to cover, Rasselas J " and Rasselas immediately disappears. Five minutes more pass away. " No fox here," says one. " Don't be in a hurry," cries Mr. Cradock ; " they are drawing it beautifully, and there is rare lying in it." These words are scarcely uttered, when the cover shakes more than ever. Every stern appears alive, and it reminds us of a corn-field waving in the wind. In two minutes the sterns of some more hounds are seen " flourishing " above the gorse. " Have at him there,'^ holloas the Squire, — the gorse still more alive, and hounds leaping over each other's Wise Saws 163 backs. " Have at him there again^ my good hounds ; a fox for a hundred ! " reiterates the Squire ; putting his finger in his ear, and uttering a scream which, not being set to music, we cannot give here. Jack Stevens (the first whipper-in) looks at his watch. At this moment two or three of the fast ones are seen creeping gently on towards a point at which they think it probable he may break. " Hold hard, there," says a sportsman ; but he might as well speak to the winds. " Stand still, gentlemen ! pray stand still," exclaims the huntsman ; he might as well say so to the sun. During the time we have been speaking of, all the field have been awake — gloves put on — cigars thrown away — the bridle-reins gathered well up into the hand, and hats pushed down upon the brow. At this interesting period, a Snob,^ just arrived from a very rural country, and unknown to any one, but determined to witness the start, gets into a conspicuous situation : ^' Come away, Sir ! " holloas the master. " What mischief are you doing there ? Do you think you can catch the fox ? " A breathless silence ensues. At length a whimper is heard in the cover — like the voice of a dog in a dream ; it is Flourisher, a noted finder, and the Squire cheers him to the echo. In an instant a hound challenges — and another — and another. 'Tis enough. " Tally-ho ! " cries a countryman in a tree. " He's gone," exclaims Lord Alvanley. Nhnrod {C. J. Apperley). The Peerless Sport ^c^ ^:> ^o HUNTING is the most democratic of all sports, and brings together good fellows of all classes. The penniless younger son may take a better place ^ Stranger. 164 The Chase on his cheap hunter, when hounds run, than the lord-lieutenant on a five-hundred-guinea one. The smallest farmer can ride clean away from the biggest landlord, provided he is the better man. Money tells in providing good hunters, but it also provides French cooks and too many luxuries, and that soon takes away the nerve to make use of them. To really enjoy hunting, we must keep ourselves fit and hard. There is no sport like it on this old earth of ours, and I often think of the remark made to me by an enthusiast I met in Rio Janeiro, of all strange places : " I have been over a great deal of the world," said he, " in search of sport, but when all is said and done, give me the little stinking fox." Major W. Fraser-Tytler. The Huntsman ^> ^> y:> WHO can hear the cheer of the huntsman, added to the cry of the hounds and the blowing of the horn, without being inspired ? Indeed it is quite a source of regret whenever a clever huntsman has not naturally a pleasant, melodious voice, instead of one probably that may be compared to the grunting of a pig — which has been the case before now. When this is the case, he should try every method to improve it. It should be recollected that many men who go out with hounds have no opportunity of enjoying the sport beyond the find, which is, with the assistance of the voice, often one of the best parts of the day's sport ; but to make it so vox et prceterea nihil will not do, for unless he has a soul for sport, even when most in earnest he cannot cause such delightful sensations to thrill through you as ought, and as Wise Saws 165 always did, by the voice of such a man as old Luke, huntsman to the late Duke of Richmond, and Lord Egremont. To be perfect, a huntsman should possess the following qualifications : health, memory, decision, temper, and patience, a good ear, voice, and sight, courage and spirits, perseverance and activity ; and with these he will soon make a bad pack a good one : if quick, he will make a slow pack quick ; if slow, he will make a quick pack slow. But first, to become a good one, he must have a fair chance, and should not be interfered with by any one after he leaves the place of meeting ; previous to which, on all occasions, it would be best if the master of the hounds was to arrange with him which covers should be drawn first, etc. It rarely happens that two men think exactly alike, and unless he is capable of judging for himself after the above arrangement (which had much better be made overnight) the master is to blame in keeping him ; for if he is capable, the master is to blame for interfering ; for, consequently, the man will be ever thinking — what does master think ? and will not gain that independence of thought and action so necessary on most occasions to be a match for a fox. . . . It is necessary for a huntsman to be thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the animal he is hunting, and also that he hunts with ; for he will learn more from them than from the whole world besides. From the fox he will learn cunning ; and from an old hound, sagacity. In short, he will do well when in chase to consider what he would do was he himself the fox he is hunting ; thereby he will always anticipate a check, and cast his hounds the way he should have gone had he been the fox, — 1 66 The Chase which, it may generally be observed, will be a line of country where he would avoid being seen, unless there is some local cause for it. By attending to this, he will be prepared for a check in many instances a mile before he gets to it, if he knows the country, and keeps his eyes open ; he must, to do this, have only half an eye for the pack, and the other eye and half beyond it ; and he will also soon discover whether the fox is one he has hunted before by the line he takes, and other peculiarities, — even the ring he takes in cover, the rack he uses in fences, — which observations are of great assistance a second time, but more particularly so later in the season, for a whole litter of young foxes have been known to run the same line of country. . . . Different men have different ways of drawing covers, but there can be no doubt that the best way to make a pack draw well is to go steadily through covers with hounds, where it is possible ; if not, then to take the best side-wind of it first. When a cover is supposed to be drawn, a huntsman will do well to notice whether he has got all his hounds. If any old ones are left back, he may depend on it there is some good cause — no doubt a stroke of a fox or drags keeps them — and a little patience, and even encouragement by name, may be thought right, particularly if they happen to be the hounds that usually find, and in all packs there are a few of that sort. Thofnas Smith. In Brief <:> ^£> ^d:> ^^:?* w HAT are other sports, compared with this, which is full of enthusiasm ? Beck ford. Wise Saws 167 Sit tight, and be tactful, and your horse will do what you want. Major TV. Fraser-Tytler. Gentlemen who hunt for the sake of a ride, who are indifferent about the hounds, and know little about the business, if they do no harm, fulfil as much as we have reason to expect from them. Bedford. Give me a man to whom nought comes amiss, One horse or another, that country or this ; Who through falls and bad starts undauntedly still Rides up to the motto, "Be with them I will." Egerton-JFarburton. A tired fox ought not to be given up ; for he is killed sometimes very unexpectedly. Beckford. The interference of the amateur or volunteer huntsman with his uncouth noises and grotesque gestures must at all times be sternly repressed. Was there ever a happier rebuke than the one administered by the late Sir Richard Sutton to a stranger, whom he found gesticulating with out- stretched fingers to the puzzled pack ? " When you have quite done feeding your chickens, Sir, perhaps you will allow me to cast my hounds ! " The Badminton Hunting. An acquaintance of mine, when he hears any of his servants say, ^^''Ware horse J " halloos out, " 'Ware horse ! ^ware dog! and be hanged to you ! " Beckford. 1 68 The Chase Whoever has followed hounds has seen them frequently hurried beyond the scent. Beckford. Changing from a hunted fox to a fresh one is one of the worst accidents that can happen to a pack of fox-hounds. Beckford, GIANTS OF THE PAST Better to hunt in fields for health unbought, Than fee the Doctor for a nauseous draught. Dryden. The Antiquity of the Chase o ^:> IN the remotest period of our history, hunting is mentioned as the principal diversion of our fore- fathers ; and it forms a somewhat singular exception to the laws of mutability, which appear to govern all things beneath the moon, that, notwithstanding the changes of laws, customs, usages, religion, governments, habits, occupations, and of everything of every kind connected with the inhabitants of Great Britain, there is no time when the ardour of the chase abated. After the expulsion of the Danes, and during the restoration of the Saxon monarchy, the sports of the field still maintained their ground. Edward the Confessor, who was more suited for the cloister than the throne, would join in no secular amuse- ment but the chase. This, however, he took great delight in, and " loved to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game," says William of Malmsbury, "and to cheer them with his voice." William the Conqueror, and his two sons who succeeded him, were greatly devoted to the chase ; and increased the restrictions concerning the killing of game. . . . 169 170 The Chase King John was particularly attached to the sports of the field. Edward III. took so much delight in hunting, that even at the time he was engaged in war with France, and resident in that country, he had with him sixty couple of stag-hounds, and as many for hunting the hare ; and every day he amused himself with hunting or hawking. James I. preferred the amusement of hunting to hawking or shooting, and it is said of this monarch, that he divided his time between his standish, his bottle, and his hunting. That last had his fair weather ; the two former, his dull and cloudy. John Mills. A Master of Hounds of 1726 e> IN the old, but now ruinous mansion of Berwick Hall, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, once lived the well-known William Draper, Esq., who bred, fed, and hunted the staunchest pack of fox- hounds in Europe. Upon an income of only 700/. he brought up creditably eleven sons and daughters ; kept a stable of excellent foxhounds, besides a carriage with horses suitable for the convenience of my lady and her daughters. He lived in the old honest style of his country, killing every month a good ox of his own feeding, and priding himself on maintaining a substantial table, but with no foreign kickshaws. His general apparel was a long, dark drab hunting-coat, a belt round his waist, and a strong velvet cap on his head. In his humour he was very facetious, always having some pleasant story, both in the field and in the hall, so that his company was much sought after by persons of good condition, and which was of great use to him in Giants of the Past 171 the advancement of his children. His stables and kennels were kept in such order, that sportsmen observed them as schools for huntsmen and grooms, who were glad to come there without wages merely to learn their business. When they had obtained proper instruction he then recommended them to other gentlemen, who wished for no better character than Squire Draper's recommendation. He was always up during the hunting season at four in the morning, mounted on one of his nags at five, himself bringing forth his hounds, who knew every note of their old master's voice. In the field he rode with judgment, avoiding what was unnecessary, and helping his hounds when they were at fault. After the fatigues of the day, which were generally crowned with the brushes of a brace of foxes, he entertained those who would return with him, and which was sometimes thirty miles distance, with old English hospitality. Good old October was the liquor drunk ; and his first fox-hunting toast was All the brushes in Christendom. At the age of eighty years this gentleman died as he chiefly lived, for he died on horseback. As he was going to give some instructions to a friend who was rearing up a pack of foxhounds, he was seized with a fit, and dropping from his old favourite pony, he expired ! There was no man, rich or poor, in his neighbour- hood but lamented his death, and the foxes were the only things that had occasion to be glad Squire Draper was no more. The Hunting Directory. 172 The Chase Fox-hunting ^> ^o^ ^c^ 1790-1810 THE closing and opening decades of the two centuries found hunting sound to the core. Meynell was " King of Quorn." Tom Oldaker, of " Huntsman's Hall," in his yellow plush coat almost to his ankles, woke up the beech woods of Chilton and the wild ridings of Easthamstead, with the sharp bugle notes, which told that he had gone away, and the still more tuneful La Mort. The lady of Hatfield was first in the field, and last at the ball. Mr. Coke's hounds hovered between Castle Hedingham, Holkham, and Epping. The Duke of Grafton's dwarf pack were busy in Salcey Forest and the vast Whittlebury woodlands. Dick Knight's cheer was heard in Sywell Wood, and foxes were dying an honourable death of old age in Bedford Purlieus, despite all the talent of Will Dean. Petworth, Woburn, Brocklesbury, and Belvoir, had each a family pack ; and Cheshire mourned for its Bluecap, to which it subsequently erected an obelisk. Tom Grant was getting up and down the hills of Sussex like a flash on his chamois-footed steeds. Mr. Chute took everything that was too small for Tom, and kept up the glories of The Vine, which " The Iron Duke" nurtured so well in after years, and three times saved from grief. Lord Stawell was in the Holt Forest country, and Mr. St. John gradually changed back from hare to fox. Mr. Poyntz looked upon the killing of a May fox and a dance round the May-pole, when the Prince was at Albury Grange, as two vital points before he returned to Cowdray. The hounds and Tom Crane were always kept on the right of the line. Giants of the Past 173 whenever the army changed quarters in the Penin- sula ; and later still with Burdett, Whitbread, Canning, and Romilly, as the line-hunters in St. Stephens, The sport of all sport was reserved for the day, When out of a bag they turned Lord Castlereagh. The Druid [H. H. Dixon). Lord Sefton ^^> <:> .,iS> WHEN Lord Sefton retired from the sporting world, it lost one of its brightest stars. The splendour of his establishment gave to spectators more the idea of an imperial hunting party in a foreign country than that of an English pack of fox-hounds. It brought to our recollection Dido's hunting party to the godlike yLneas. If the covert was accessible to a carriage, he always appeared in his barouche-and-four, accompanied by several others ; and ladies were often of the party, though they never quitted the carriages. His hounds were perfect, and well they might be so. The celebrated John Ravan hunted one pack ; and the no less celebrated Stephen Goodall [afterwards many years huntsman to Sir Thomas Mostyn] hunted the other, both pupils of Mr. Meynell. Mr. Beckford observes, that were he obliged to have either a good huntsman and a bad whipper-in, or a bad huntsman and a good whipper-in, he should decidedly prefer the latter. Of what impor- tance then must he have considered a good whipper-in ; and what advantages must Lord Sefton's hounds have possessed in having two such whippers-in as Joe Harrison and Tom Wingfield, besides other assistance ; for a feeder was always 174 The Chase out well-mounted, as also young Raven, on one of Lord Sefton's spare horses, both ready to act when wanting. The command which these hounds were in could only be compared to that of a regiment on parade. A whip was scarcely ever used ; and as far as a "yo-go-it" could be heard, nothing more was wanting to bring them back. A horn also was scarcely ever heard to sound. I was particularly struck with the latter circumstance, having never heard it for six days in succession ; and it was only had recourse to on the seventh, in consequence of Stephen Goodall, whose voice was never strong, giving a blow for a hound, called " Cruiser," who was missing in a fog. This, in some degree, is connected with the nature of the country, for we all know that in woodlands a horn is as necessary as a hound. N'lmrod [C. J. Apperley). The Redoubtable Jack Musters ^> ^o HUNTING was his study and delight, and no man knew more about it. He was as much alive to the wiles of a fox as he was quick in dis- covering the sagacity of a hound. When his fox was beat, and began to play tricks, no man was so patient, so quiet, or ever killed more often after a run. He had the knack of keeping their heads down ; as he well knew that if they once got them up, by hallooing and lifting, he never could get them down again, which is the cause of being so often beat after a fine run. He was a capital horse- man, though rather too heavy for the first flight, but he was always there when wanted, and never upset his horse. The best evidence of his knowledge and judge- Giants of the Past 175 ment was that, although he was for ever changing his hounds, he always, after a time, had them good. He had a happy method of making them fond of him, and he made them do what he liked. In short, he was at the very top of his profession — a very senior wranR;ler in the science. The Druid {H. H. Dixon). Mr. Stubbs of Beckbury, Shropshire ^y- WITH hat in his hand looking out for a gate, Neither looking nor riding by any means straight ; Mr. Stubbs, a crack rider no doubt in his time, But who hunting on Sunday once deemed it no crime ; Making desperate play through some fine muddy lanes, And by nicking and skirting got in for his pains ; High waving the brush, with pleasure half mad. Roaring out, " Yoicks ! have at 'em ! We've killed 'im, my lad ! " Edward Goulhurn. ^:> A Notorious Hunting Squire o THOUGH the private lives of the majority of the Masters of Hounds at the beginning of the century were beyond reproach, yet it must be confessed that some of them took advantage of the latitude which was allowed to fox-hunting squires. The most notorious of these was " Squire " George Forester of Willey ; yet he was a thorough specimen of "a fine old English gentleman, who had a great estate," during the first decade of the nineteenth century. He was like a moving plant which receives its nourishment from the air, and 176 The Chase he lived chiefly through his senses. His passion for fox-hunting was unbounded. He hunted the country from the Clee Hills to the Wrekin in Shropshire, with the famous Tom Moody as whipper-in. The hospitality of the Willey Squire, as he was called, was unbounded. His home at Willey has been immortalised by Dibdin as " Bachelor's Hall." It is no exaggeration to say that few names are better known in the annals of fox-hunting than those of the Willey Squire and Tom Moody. Was it not Thackeray who wrote " The England of our ancestors was a merrier England than the island we inhabit " ? In many respects it was a healthier England, in spite of the hard-drinking customs of the age, as can be proved by the statistics of longevity. Mr. Forester belonged to the old school of fox-hunters. On hunting mornings he never breakfasted later than four a.m., and would be in the saddle at five a.m. ; then home again to dinner at three p.m. After dinner, eaten with an appetite which only fox-hunting can produce, the carousals were often long and deep. Hark away ! Hark away ! While our spirits are gay, Let us drink to the joys of next meeting day! was his motto. But it must not for a moment be supposed that Mr. Forester was what would be termed in these days a drunkard. He only drank after dinner, and not always then, as the following incident will prove. On one occasion Mr. Dansey, Mr. Childe, and Mr. Stubbs were staying with him at Willey, and they had arrived home earlier than usual after their morning's sport. Dinner was served on their arrival, and Mr. Forester proposed an after-dinner run. Needless to say, the proposal Giants of the Past 177 was carried nefn. con.^ and Tom Moody was given his instructions. At three p.m. they drew for their fox, found him, and hounds accounted for him by moonlight. . . . I should not make any references to his adven- tures in the field of Love if they were not connected with his adventures in the field of sport. It was said of the Willey Squire that Venus herself could not have kept him by her side. But, though he never married, he always spoke of his offspring as his children and grandchildren, and took care that they were provided for in life. He kept his mistresses openly at Willey, and insisted that they should accompany him in the hunting-field. In fact, he chose them for their horsewomanship as much as for their beauty. The most celebrated was Miss Phoebe Higgs, probably the most reckless horsewoman who ever rode to hounds. She would jump seemingly impossible places, and challenge the Squire and Tom Moody to follow her. On one occasion she confronted the Squire with a loaded pistol, and threatened to shoot him if he did not give her a bigger allowance than he was giving to one of her rivals. The Squire was a wise man, and complied with her request. But Phoebe Higgs was and still has the reputation of having been a good woman. When she was not hunting she devoted her time to visiting — and helping — the poor at Willey. The only portrait of her which I have seen depicts her as a handsome woman, with a daring expression on her face. Phoebe Higgs and the other objects of the Squire's admiration lived in the village, so the Squire had a pavement walk made alongside the drive to the hall, so that the rustic beauties should not wet their ankles. George F. Under hi II. N lyS The Chase A Quorn Story <:> s^> ^> MANY years ago, when he hunted the Cottes- more country, Sir Richard Sutton's hounds had been running hard from Glooston Wood along the valley under Cranehal by Stourton to Holt. After thirty minutes or so over this beautiful but exceedingly stiff line, their heads went up and they came to a check, possibly from their own dash and eagerness, certainly at that pace and amongst those fields not from being overridden. "Turn 'em, Ben !" exclaimed Sir Richard, with a dirty coat and Hotspur in a lather, but determined not to lose a moment in getting after his fox. "Yes, Sir Richard," answered Ben Morgan, running his horse without a moment's hesitation at a flight of double posts and rails, with a ditch in the middle and one on each side ! The good grey having gone in front from the find was perhaps a little blown, and dropping his hind legs in the farthest ditch rolled, very handsomely, into the next field. " It's not your fault, old man ! " said Ben, patting his favourite on the neck as they rose together in mutual goodwill, adding in the same breath, while he leapt to the saddle and Tranby acknowledged the line — "Forrard on, Sir Richard! — Hoic, together. Hoic ! He's a Quorn fox and he'll do you good." I had always considered Ben Morgan an unusually fine rider. For the first time I began to understand why his horse never failed to carry him so willingly and so well. G, J. JFhyte-Mehille. Giants of the Past 179 Tom Moody .0 ^> ^^^ YOU all know Tom Moody, the whipper-in, well— The bell just done tolling was honest Tom's knell : A more able sportsman ne'er followed a hound. In a country well known to him fifty miles round. No hound ever challenged so deep in the wood, But Tom knew the sound and could tell if 'twas good; And all with attention would eagerly mark When he cheer'd up the pack with, " Hark, Rattler boy, hark ! " Hie cross him and wind him, now " Rattler boy, hark ! " Six worthy earth stoppers, in hunter-green dressed. Supported poor Tom to an earth made for rest ; His horse, whom he styled " his old soul," next appeared. On whose forehead the brush of his last fox was reared. Whip, cap, boots and spurs, in trophy were bound, And here and there followed an old straggling hound ; Ah ! no more at his halloa ye vales will they brace. Or the Wrekin resound his first scream in the chase With, hie over, now press him, tally-ho ! tally-ho ! Tom thus spoke to his friends ere he gave up his breath — "Since I see you're resolved to be in at the death, One favour bestow, 'tis the last I shall crave. Give a rattling ' view-holloa' thrice over my grave ; i8o The Chase And unless at that warning I raise up my head, My lads, you may fairly conclude I am dead." Honest Tom was obeyed, and the shout rent the sky, For ev'ry voice joined in th' enlivening cry With tally-ho, forward ! tally-ho ! tally-ho ! Anon, Sir Thomas Mostyn and Big Stephen Goodall, with their Mute Hounds SIR THOMAS MOSTYN, who hunted Ox- fordshire, had a splendid pack — perhaps as powerful a one as ever hunted ; they had, however, very little sport, and were the victims of uncon- querable prejudice. Sir Thomas seldom saw any hounds except his own, and had a great dread of tongue ; the consequence was that they were nearly mute. He had a bitch called Lady, a draft from Lord Lonsdale, from whom sprang most of his pack : she bred them nearly mute, and notwith- standing, he continued to breed from her blood almost entirely. They would go hopping on a scent two or three fields together without speaking, so that a person who was not accustomed to them would hardly know whether they were on scent or not. They could not hold the line, solely from want of tongue ; and unless they got away close to him and had a burning scent, they could never catch him : the moment they came to hunting the game was up. Stephen Goodall, the huntsman, was a clever man, and knew hunting thoroughly. He must have been fully aware of their great defect, but he had nothing to do with the breeding, as Sir Thomas, we believe, managed that department entirely himself. Stephen weighed upwards of Giants of the Past i8i twenty stone, and could of course never be there at a critical moment. Sir Thomas was unlucky in his huntsmen. In early days he had the great Mr. Shawe — a fine horseman, and a cheery one over the country if things went well ; but if they could not hunt him, he tried to hunt him himself, and he soon got their heads up. He afterwards had a huntsman named Teesdale, who had been a coachman, and knew better how to handle the ribbons than to handle a scent. Hence he was driven to old Stephen, who, if he could have been reduced ten stone, would have been invaluable ; but except as a kennel huntsman, he did him little good. Although Stephen had little sport with Sir Thomas, he had an extraordinary season in Oxford- shire in 1 799-1 800 with Lord Sefton. They had a pack of hounds, the refuse of every kennel, and tainted with every fault — pushers, skirters, some which had not power to go up to a scent, and some which would go without one. However, it being a wonderful scenting season, they had such a year's sport as was probably never known in Oxfordshire before or since. Stephen went with Lord Sefton into Leicestershire, where he hunted the young pack, and showed the greatest science in breaking them ; and he afterwards came to Sir Thomas, where he remained till he gave it up. The Druid [H. H. Dixofi), Thomas Assheton-Smith <7^ -o ""IT TILL you not wait for Captain Cold- V V stream ? " said an officious yeoman, as Mr. Smith was moving on to draw Clatford Oakcuts. " I have had three hundred Captains out before now, sir," was the response, " but never better sport 1 82 The Chase for it." On another occasion he exclaimed, " Why- do you lie there, howling and exposing yourself?'* addressing a rustic whom his horse had slightly- kicked. " My dear Tom," remarked his more feeling friend, Mr. Henry Pierrepont, "the man is hurt, and why so rough on him ? " "On principle^'' rejoined the Squire. " If I had pitied him, he would have been there for a week, but now you see he is up and well already." "I like to see Squire Smith with the horn on his saddle," said Marsh the sporting shoemaker, "for he does things as should be. If he kills a fox he kills him, and if he loses one he loses him. He does not do as Ben Foot [the Craven huntsman] does — go muttering after him all day long, and worriting him to death at last." Persons in Marsh's sphere of life form a very accurate estimate of men and things, and as they can feel no jealousy there is no faintness in their praise. . . . " As a huntsman," said one who well knew what a combination of qualities is necessary for the attainment of excellence in that department of the science of fox-hunting, " I fearlessly put Mr. Smith in the first class ; he has all the requisites to make him such : zeal, quickness of perception, untiring perseverance, a ready judgment when in difficulty, and horsemanship quite unequalled for daring and duration by any man of this or any other age. . . ." The following anecdote was related by Mr. Child, a Hampshire yeoman of the right sort, who always had a fox for Mr. Smith in Wilster Wood: "The first time Mr. Smith ran a fox into the Newbury Vale, I and some friends, seeing he pointed for the meadows near East Woodhay, got forward to a tremendous leap, that had often stopped the whole Craven Hunt. Giants of the Past 183 It was a stile, bank, and hedge, and a liberal allowance of water on the far side. Down came the Squire on Screw-driver, and took it in his stroke. This did not so much surprise us, but what did was, that he never once turned round to look at it ; whereas, had one of our fellows got over it, he would have looked at it for a week and talked of it for a year." His notion of a huntsman was that he should always be with his hounds. On this principle he invariably acted ; for he well knew that unless a master of fox-hounds, hunting them himself, had head, hand, and heart, and could be close to his hounds when they were close to their fox, he could not do his duty as it should be done. One day when he had the Quorndon, after a sharp affair of forty minutes, the fox, quite beaten, ran into a small covert with a lane half round it. The field kept the lane, the Squire exclaiming : " They will have him in five minutes ! " leapt into the adjoining paddock, at the further end of which there was a tremendously thick bull-fincher. Unused to denial, he rode at it, and fell with his horse on a heap of rough stones on the other side, tearing his white cords most piteously. He was up again in a moment, and as unconcerned as if he had fallen out of his arm-chair, and did kill his fox within five minutes. Mr. Smith had a great contempt for a man who attempted to hunt a pack of fox- hounds and could not ride to them ; and he never scrupled to express his opinion whenever any such instances came under his own observation, as no man was more fairly entitled to do. . . . It is well known what a number of brooks there are in the Quorn and Belvoir counties. Mr. Smith once charged the river Welland, which divides the i84 The Chase counties of Leicester, Northampton, and Rutland, and is said to be altogether impracticable, at the end of one of the most desperate runs ever known. This knack he had of getting across water is to be attributed to his resolute way of riding to hounds, by which his horses knew that it was in vain to refuse whatever he might put them at. A remark- able example of this occurred in the Harborough country. He was galloping at three-parts speed down one of the large grass fields which abound in that district, in the act of bringing his hounds to a scent, and was looking back to see if they were coming. Exactly in the middle of the field, and in the line immediately before his horse, was a pool of water, into which the animal leaped, thinking it useless to refuse, and of course being unaware that he was not intended to take it. This horse would doubtless have jumped into the Thames or the Severn in a similar manner, had they been before him. This wonderful influence over his hunters was strongly exemplified at another time, but in rather a different manner. He had mounted, on his celebrated horse Cicero, a friend, who complained of having nothing to ride : A sportsman so keen, that he rides miles to covert, To look at a fence he dares not ride over. The hounds were running breast-high across the big pasturelands of Leicestershire, and Cicero was carrying his rider like a bird, when a strong flight of rails had almost too ugly an aspect of height, strength, and newness, for the liking of our friend on his "mount." The keen eye of Assheton- Smith, as he rode beside him, at once discerned that he had no relish for the timber, and seeing that he was likely to make the horse refuse, he Giants of the Past 185 cried out, *' Come up, Cicero ! " His well-known voice had at once the desired effect, but Cicero's rider, by whom the performance was not intended, left his seat vacant, fortunately without any other result than a roll upon the grass. Sir John E. Eardley-JVilmot. "Good Sport" ^^ <^ <^ Burghclere, near Newbury, Hants, Tuesday [Evening], Oct. 30, 1821. AT the end of this scene of mock grandeur and mock antiquity I found something more rational — namely, some hare-hounds ; and, in half an hour after, we found, and I had the first hare- hunt that I had had since I wore a smock frock ! We killed our hare after good sport, and got to Burghclere in the evening to a nice farmhouse in the dell, sheltered from every wind, and with plenty of good living ! though with no gothic arches made of Scotch fir ! Wednesday, October 31. A fine day. Too many hares here ; but our hunting was not bad — or, at least, it was a great treat to me, who used, when a boy, to have my legs and thighs so often filled with thorns in running after the hounds, anticipating with pretty great certainty, a " waling " of the back at night. William Cobbett. Wells and Maiden ^i> •<^ WELLS was a huntsman of the old school, whose like is seldom seen in these degenerate days. He appears to have adopted the maxim of the old Cornish huntsman — " Master finds horse. 1 86 The Chase and I find neck." He doated upon every hound in his pack, with as much fondness as a father feels for his children. In the course of his career he fractured his ribs twice, and broke his collar-bone seven times. After living six-and-thirty years under different managers of the Bedfordshire Hounds, during twenty-four of which he hunted them him- self, he came to Mr. Wicksted, with whom he remained during the eleven years that he hunted the Woore Country. He was then engaged by Sir Thomas Boughley, and died in his service March 30th, 1847. • • • Joe Maiden was Huntsman to the Cheshire Hounds from the year 1 832-1 844. In that capacity, as far as my experience extends, I have never seen his equal. He was moreover as pleasant a companion to ride home with after a run as any gentleman could desire. After continuing in Mr. White's service for two years, and after having acted, during the interval, as Host of the Bluecap at Sandiway Head, he was engaged in 1846 by Mr. Davenport to undertake The North Staffordshire Hounds. During the time that he hunted the North Warwickshire, under Mr. Shaw, he met with the accident which crippled him for the remainder of his life, slipping with one leg into the boiling copper. Suffering more severely from the effects of this as he advanced in age, he underwent the amputation of his leg in the year i8$6. He died on 20th Oct., 1864, aged 69, and was buried at Maer. R. E. Egerton-Warhurton, Giants of the Past 187 Tom Sebright in Old Age at Milton Park o WE loved to stroll out with the old man and the hounds into Milton Park, and by judiciously leading up to her, induce him to talk of " Relish," a name which he used to pronounce with as much unction as Robert Hall was wont to throw into " Mesopotamia " ; and we mischievously got him to say it for the last time, just before we bade him good-bye on the show ground at Yarm. He was of those fine, sterling characters which well repaid the study ; and the whole place and its accessories seemed so exactly in keeping with him. The rick-backed church, with its crooked wooden belfry, the Fox Hounds sign nailed to the elm, the straggling thorn clumps at the edge of the park, over which, under a cold December sky the withered clematis was hanging in rich tracery, like the veil of a bride, the Nen creeping on its " lazy Scheldt "- like course along the broad meadows of Overton, the white sun-dial on the wall of the steward's house, and the quaint intermixture of the martello tower, with the thatch and the ivy at the kennels, all blended so thoroughly with him, and his honest pride of being part and parcel of an old English home. The Druid [H. H, Dixon), Anthony Trollope as Fox-hunter .^> I GOT home in December 1872, and in spite of any resolution made to the contrary, my mind was full of hunting as I came back. No real resolutions had in truth been made, for out of a stud of four horses I kept three, two of which were absolutely idle through the two summers and winter 1 88 The Chase of my absence. Immediately on my arrival I bought another, and settled myself down to hunting from London three days a week. At first I went back to Essex, my old country, but finding that to be inconvenient, I took my horses to Leighton Buzzard, and became one of that numerous herd of sportsmen who rode with '' the Baron " and Mr. Selby-Lowndes. In those days Baron Meyer was alive, and the riding with his hounds was very good. I did not care so much for Mr. Lowndes. During the winters of 1873, 1874, ^^id 1875 I had my horses back in Essex, and went on with my hunting, always trying to resolve that I would give it up. But still I bought fresh horses, and, as I did not give it up, I hunted more than ever. Three times a week the cab has been at my door in London very punctually, and not unfrequently before seven in the morning. In order to secure this attendance, the man has always been invited to have his breakfast in the hall. I have gone to the Great Eastern Railway — ah ! so often with the fear that frost would make all my exertions useless, and so often too with that result ! And then, from one station or another station, have travelled on wheels at least a dozen miles. After the day's sport, the same toil has been necessary to bring me home to dinner at eight. This has been work for a young man and a rich man, but I have done it as an old man and comparatively a poor man. Autobiography, Some Past Dianas <:> >£> HERE and there in the old writers we find allusions to ladies who hunted and took a forward place. There were, for example, Lady Giants of the Past 189 Cleveland and Lady Augusta Milbanke, who must have made a brave show in their scarlet habits. They hunted three times a fortnight and had been used to hunting from the time when they were children, but the general opinion of the day is reflected in Nimrod's remark, " Tet it would be difficult to produce too more amiable or accomplished persons." Then in 1841 came Miss Nellie Holmes, " topping the fences like a bird, to the admiration of all." Then the Misses Loraine Smith, " who rode in scarlet bodices and grey skirts, and Lady Eleanor Lowther, who used to be piloted with the Ouorn and Cottesmore by Dick Christian. I know of no more thrilling touch in all the famous hunting lectures than Dick's account of their ride up Burrough Hill, one of the steepest of the many acclivities of Leicestershire. " Near the top if I didn't think she and the horse would come back- ward. I says, * Do, my lady, catch hold of the horse's mane and lean forward more,' so we gets up safe, and my word the gentlemen did stare when they see us." I suggest that the moral of that story is that a mane on a horse is very convenient sometimes, and indeed big horses should never be hogged. Then there was Miss Manners of Goadby, who was sure " papa would be very angry if she went home without seeing the end of the run " ; and the brilliant Frenchwoman Mrs. Shakerley, who went well over Warwickshire and Leicestershire on the famous horse Golden Ball. But it was not till the seventies that ladies began to take a regular part in hunting. There was Mrs. Arthur of Desborough hunting with the Pytchley. She had an eye like a hawk, a nerve like a lion, and was always ready to lend the huntsman a hand, Mrs. Arthur was one of those ladies, of whom we see many nowadays, who I go The Chase understand hunting as well as riding, and doubled her fun by taking an interest in the working of the hounds. A little later came those two brilliant sisters, the ex-Queen of Naples and the late Empress of Austria. r. F. Dale. Old Martin Round ^^ ^^ .c?^ IT was a theory of old Martin Round, supported by unexceptionable practice, that a quiet tongue evinced strong proof of a wise head ; and con- sequently it will readily be believed that his attention was more directed to the employment of his eyes and ears than to making a great and unnecessary noise. In truth, nothing could be more mute, not even a mole, than he was upon throwing hounds into cover, and during the draw his voice was only now and then heard, intimating a desire that a find might be made with as little loss of time and patience as possible. But when the find was made, old Martin Round's cheer could be heard with remarkable distinctness a full mile up wind. In the conclusion of drawing a blank, too, he touched his horn with a force of no ordinary kind ; and his halloo to " Come awa-a-ay," let every hound know where he was expected without delay, or the alternative of receiving a less agreeable hint through the medium of Will Hall's double thong. It is difficult to describe the method he adopted ; but let hounds be where they might, there was old Martin Round at their heads, or close to their sterns. In cover or out, picking along a cold scent, or flying from scent to view, there he was, the leader of the foremost flight, with his loose seat and slack rein, paying almost as little attention to Giants of the Past 191 the horse carrying him as if that particular animal was specially engaged in bearing the weight of somebody else, within neither the range of his sight nor memory. Whatever obstacle presented itself must be either got through or over — it mattered not which to Martin, so long as he maintained his place : and there he might be seen, creeping over a bank, floundering through a brook, and never clearing anything handsomely ; but always with hounds. John Mills. PERSONALITIES The joys that life's best hours prolong, Are those of hunting. Hunting from London ^> <::> AND now appear, dim at first and distant, but brightening and nearing fast, many a right good fellow, and many a right good horse. I know three out of four of them, their private histories and the private histories of their horses, and could tell you many a good story of them, but shall not, being an English gentleman, and not an American litterateur. They may not all be very clever, or very learned, or very anything except gallant men ; but they are all good enough company for mc, or any one ; and each has his own specialite^ for which I like him. That huntsman I have known for fifteen years, and sat many an hour beside his father's death-bed. I am godfather to that whip's child. I have seen the servants of the hunt, as I have the hounds, grow up round me for two generations, and I feel for them as old friends, and like to look into their brave, honest, weather-beaten faces. That red-coat there, I knew him when he was a schoolboy ; and now he is a captain in the Guards, and won his Victoria Cross at Inkerman ; that bright green coat is the best farmer, as well as the hardest rider, for many a mile round ; one who plays, as he works, with all his might, and might 192 Personalities 193 have been a beau sabreur^ a colonel of dragoons. So might that black-coat, who now brews good beer, and stands up for the poor at the Board of Guardians, and rides, like the green-coat, as well as he works. That other black-coat is a county banker, but he knows more of the fox than the fox knows of himself ; and where the hounds are, there will he be this day. That red-coat has hunted kangaroo in Australia ; that one, as clever and good as he is brave and simple, has stood by Napier's side in many an Indian fight ; that one won his Victoria at Delhi, and was cut up at Lucknow with more than twenty wounds ; that one has — but what matter to you what each man is ? Enough that each can tell one a good story, welcome one cheer- fully, and give one out here, in the wild forest, the wholesome feeling of being at home among friends. Charles Kingsley. The Clerical Hunter h£> <:^ ^:> FAYRE for the maistrie. A An outrider that loved venerie ; A manly man to bell an abbot able. Full many a deinte hors hadde he in stable. Therefore he was a prickasoure a right : Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight : Of pricking and of hunting for the hare Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare. Chaucer. King Edward VII (187 1-2) <^ <^ I WAS asked by Lord Charles Fitzroy to pilot the Prince of Wales. I was fully sensible of the honour, but felt it to be a responsibility. On join- o 194 The Chase ing his Royal Highness, he graciously mentioned our last meeting. Having long before made up my mind that, when a man is upon a hunter, the safest place in the hunting field is close to the hounds, I asked the Prince to gallop fast to get to the front ; and this, the pace not being great, we accomplished in a few fields. The hounds then began to run over the large pastures near to Bradden. A real good stake-and- bound fence presented itself to us, with the ditch on the taking off side. Over the Prince went ! and I never saw a fence better jumped. On reaching the top of the hill, there was a very nasty double fence which had to be jumped, so I gave the lead over, and the Prince landed well into a large grass field where there was every sign of a run. Hounds had settled down and matters were going very nicely, when the hounds turned right-handed and set their heads straight for a brook. Having made up my mind, I raced down, jumping a fence into the meadow, and charged the brook, and was no sooner over than I turned round and called out, " Send him at it ! " The Prince rode readily at it, and jumped the brook in gallant style. The pack ran up to Blakesley village, and did not do much after- wards. His Royal Highness was charmed ; he declared that he had never jumped such a good piece of water in his life. Lord Royston and another gentleman in attendance got into trouble over the same place. The Prince informed me that Lord Royston was not content with fewer than two falls in a day ! J. M. K, Elliott, Personalities 195 The ex-Queen of Naples (1876) >c^ QUITE unexpectedly I was asked by the Queen herself to act as her Majesty's pilot. From l^ike's Gorse a fox went away, which happened to be the first her Majesty had seen going away from covert. To my great amusement, she exclaimed with great excitement : " I do see a fox ! I do see a fox ! " I then requested her Majesty's attention, and rode over a few small dipped fences. I soon found, however, that my part was to get out of the way, and on the many occasions when I had the honour of piloting the Royal Lady she never seemed to find the fences too large. We had a good day's sport and killed a fox. When the hounds caught the fox the Queen said : " Let us go away, I do not care for this part of it." Her behest was, of course, obeyed. As time went on it became apparent that the ex- Queen was passionately fond of hunting, and the bigger the fence the better she liked it ! We were away with a fox in a hurry one day, when a fence and a brook came early in the run. The huntsman and the Field did not face it. I took it, and went over ; the Queen jumped it with a good start ; we then jumped more fences, and were riding along when I heard myself called by name, and, greatly excited, her Majesty said : "There is nobody with the hounds but ourselves ; if my sister were here she would love it ! " I often heard remarks of this kind, and in the spring it was announced that the Empress of Austria intended to pay a visit to England. From time to time most amusing remarks would fall from the ex-Queen's lips. Once she said, " I do see some of the gentlemen go and look at the ig6 The Chase hedge, then they go to another place and look, and then they go over, — is that better for them ? " J. M, K. Elliott. The " Iron Duke " as Fox-hunter <^ IT is well known that the Duke of Wellington, in choosing his aides-de-camp^ always preferred fox-hunters, because he said they knew how to ride straight to a given point, generally had good horses, and were equally willing to charge a big place or an enemy. His Grace was no less liberal in supporting fox-hunting. On one occasion, when the subscrip- tion to a good pack fell ofF and some lukewarmness showed itself among the contributors, being asked to give his assistance, he said laconically, " Get what you can, and put my name down for the difference." That difference was ;^6oo a year I Yet, notwithstanding the great Duke was a fox- hunter, no man presumed to doubt his master mind, either as a General or as a Statesman. Sir y. E. Eardley-Wilmot. The Brocklesby .^p^ <:> xi> WHAT other Hunt could put from sixty to seventy scarlet-coated tenant farmers in the field ? The present Lord Yarborough's great- grandfather was once asked where he got his tenants from. " Get them ! " replied his lordship, " get them ? I don't get them ; I breed them.'* And so it was ; the same farms, the same love of high farming, and of sport of all kinds, descending from father to son and from generation to generation. But things have altered since then, and the iniquitous burdens placed on the land, and the Personalities 197 decline of prices consequent upon foreign preference, are rapidly crushing the life out of England's oldest and once its most important industry. Gone are the landlords of the old school, " the backbone of England, the fox-hunting squires," are few and far between ; gone are the sport-loving farmers of fifty years ago, and gone that charming old country life that made so many great Englishmen. G. E. ColUns. Song to the New Year ^z^ ^> ^:> o IF foxes are not gifted with reason, they have a cunning instinct which answers the same purpose. They know at once the sounds which herald the approach of the hunt, and a veteran will often leave a covert when the cavalcade is two or three miles away ; but he reasons that on previous occasions when he heard those same sounds before, he had a very narrow escape, and he therefore now accepts the warning to flee in good time. I remem- ber a certain day, one very dry cub-hunting season, when there was neither scent in covert nor out, and it was quite hopeless expecting to hunt a cub to death. Hounds, however, marked a fox to ground in an artificial earth, and this seemed an excellent opportunity of getting blood, which it would be impossible to attain by other means. The whips were left in charge of the pack some distance away, whilst the huntsman and myself set about the task of eviction. I put the terrier in the earth, and a few seconds later a beautiful fox was noosed by the huntsman's whip, but as there was still another inside, we decided to catch both and sacrifice the worst. I therefore held the first fox whilst the second was being captured. Before the second had 198 Humour in the Chase 199 bolted into the deftly handled noose, the one 1 was holding had apparently died from strangulation by my whip. I was very much concerned at having, as I thought, killed a fox, and loosing the whip, held him up by the back of the neck. The eyes were closed, the jaws gaped, and the body hung limply down from my hand ; every appearance of death was there. I laid him down on the ground, as I thought, a corpse, but the instant I let go of his neck, he jumped up and dashed off into the covert! /. Otho Paget. When Bucks a-Hunting Go <^ o HOW sweet is the horn that sounds in the morn When bucks a-hunting go, When bucks a-hunting go. While all my fancy dwells upon Nancy, I'll sing tally-ho ! The Fox jumpM over the gate so high, And the hounds all after him go. The hounds all after him go. While all my fancy dwells upon Nancy, I'll sing tally-ho ! How happy is my wife and I, When that we homeward go. When that we homeward go. While all my fancy dwells upon Nancy, I'll sing tally-ho ! Now since it's so let's merry be. We will drink before we go. We will drink before we go. While all my fancy dwells upon Nancy, I'll sing tally-ho ! Old Ballad. 200 The Chase Tit for Tat y^ <:> GEORGE BEERS was in his zenith, hunting a rare pack in the Oakley country ; it was in 1838. Carter, a great fox-catcher, doing the same in the Grafton country. Both packs were on the eastern side from the Grafton. Beers found a fox one afternoon, a long way down in the Chase, and ran him for his life up to Salcey Forest. He had no sooner reached the forest than he found Carter's hounds breaking up his fox. Beers behaved better than one might have expected, knowing his failing, a hasty temper. He said to Carter, ''I will be even with you, old boy, one day." During the following season, the two packs were hunting in the same district. Carter's fox ran into the Chase ; Beers heard them coming, collected his hounds, and set his whippers-in to look out. It was not long before they viewed Carter's fox ; Beers took up the line, and killed him. The latter came up and said to Beers : " You have killed my fox ! " " Yes, old man, now we are quits ! " /. M. K, Elliott. The Cleveland's Foundation (Nov. 13, 1772) WHEREAS the happiness of all Countrys does chiefly consist in a Correspondence and friendship of one Neighbour with another, and nothing contributing so much towards it as the frequent conversing of the Gentlemen together, who may thereby quash all Idle Stories that we too often spread about the Country to the Disuniting of some Families and the great prejudice of others. And we having our Forefathers in this Neighbour- Humour in the Chase 201 hood as a pattern, who did formerly Live in the most Intimate and Amicable manner, open, friendly, and obliging to each other, and being desirous to imitate so good an Example, and Conceiving Visits at our private Houses not so frequent as desirable besides being unavoidably subject to something of Ceremony they cannot be so conducible to that good end as a free meeting at some publick-House would be under proper Regulations to prevent disorders. Have therefore mutually agreed to meet Weekly on Tuesdays at some publick-House, as shall be agreed on from Time to Time And to conform our Selves to the following Rules : . . . That no person be admitted to be a Member of the Society but such as shall first publickly lay his Right Hand upon a Hunting Horn and declare himself no Enemy to Cocking, Smocking, Fox- hunting and Harriers. And shall endeavour to discover all poachers, and shall promise to the utmost of his power to promote the Interest of the Society, and shall Subscribe his Name owning his Consent to the Underwritten Rules. Clergymen to be excused of the word Smocking and laying their hand on the Hunting Horn. Rules of the Cleveland ^^ Friendly Society''' Lord Lonsdale's Harriers ^> 'O IT was an Earl of ancient name Who hunted the fox, but preferred him tame ; Though his sire had been a hunter free As bold as e'er rode o'er a grass countrie. This sire once mounted his high-bred horse. And viewed the wild fox from hillside gorse j His son had come down by the second-class train, Worried a bagman and home again. 202 The Chase 'Tis half-past twelve by the railway clocks, And the Earl he has called for his horse and his fox ; And behind the Earl there rides the Earl's groom, And there comes a man with a big birch broom — Clad in the Earl's discarded breeches — To tickle the fox when he comes to the ditches. The Earl's admirers are ranged in Brown's yard ; They all wear top-boots and intend to ride hard ; Whether the wily fox or the timid hare Be the game to-day, they none of them care. — 'Twas well for the Earl he had called for his fox. And brought him from Tring in a little deal box ; For three hours and more they drew for a hare — They drew in vain, all was blank despair. Then said the Earl to the elder Brown, Open your box and turn him down. So they turned him down in Aylesbury Vale, In sight of a fence called a post and rail. To suit the views of a certain gent Who rather liked rails and thought he went. Over the fence the first to fly Was the gent, of course, but the fox was shy And would have declined, but the Earl and his groom And the field, and the gent, and the man with the broom, Two boys in a cart, and the Browns, Sam and John, Would not hear of his shirking, and drove him on. A pleasant line the captive took. Would not have doubles, avoided the brook ; As you may imagine he went by rule. Only taking the leaps he learnt at school. Two hounds, of Baron Rothschild's breed, Unmatch'd for courage, strength, and speed, Humour in the Chase 203 Close on his flying traces came And almost won that desperate game, When, just as the Earl prepared to sound The death who-whoop, he ran to ground. So they dug him out — and the Earl and his groom And the Browns, and the gent, and the man with the broom. And the fox and the hounds are at Tring again, And the Earl has gone home by the four o'clock train. Anon. The Bedale " Rules of Advice " «^o (Drawn up by W. Daubuz, Master of the Bedale, 1840-54) TO all Western sporters, greeting ; For this Cornwall is a ticklish hunting ground. To all who ride to meet with the hounds. Take especial care not to ride over them : take care of their precious feet. Do not talk to the Huntsman or Whipper. Lords, Gentlemen, and Yeomen. — When the hounds are drawing a covert, keep together in one place : do not talk, do not laugh, above all things. Aristocrats, Democrats, Whigs, Radicals, Tories, for Heaven's sake do not whistle ; that whistling creates bitter confusion. When you hear a hound challenge, do not sing out " huic huic," which is your custom. If you think the Huntsman does not hear the challenge, go quietly and quickly to him and tell him, then allow him to cheer the challenger, do not add your voices. 204 The Chase The fox has broken covert, you see him. Gentlemen, Gentlemen, do not roar out " tally- ho," do not screech horribly. If you do he will turn back, even under your horses' feet in spite of the sad and disappointed look on your handsome or ugly faces. Do not crack your infernal whips. Be silent. If the chase runs the road — Gentlemen, allow the Huntsman to take the lead. You must be particularly careful in the roads and lanes ; they are the devil, and spoil many a good chase. Gentlemen, when the Huntsman is making a cast, sit quietly and sedately on your horses, do not ride after him. Hounds have mended the fault, they are going again, but the scent is not so good. Gentlemen, give them room. The scent mends, dead beat the fox gains a small covert. Now, Gentlemen, be not rash, do not holloa — do not meet him in a ride or path. I once unwittingly saved the life of a fox when Mr. Bulteel's hounds were in the very act of catching him. He ran under my horse, in another moment the hounds would have had him. I roared most lustily. The hounds stopped one moment, to ask me what the devil I made such a noise about ; that half minute's check saved the fox's life. Who-whoop. " Triumph " has him. Tear him and eat him, my beauties. Yet even in this last act, so very delightful after a good run to blood- thirsty hounds and screaming men ; take care — keep your panting steeds away from the "melee," or they will cripple their fellow steeds (let alone the brush and pad seizcrs), and kick the hounds, and maybe occasion more deaths than one. Humour in the Chase 205 Go out in the morning with a sunny counte- nance. Whilst out, keep your temper — rather a difficult matter sometimes. Never quit until the hounds do. Go home ; dine, enjoy your life ; do not get drunk, then you will be as fresh as roses next morning, and not as seedy as old cucumbers. TALLY-HO The hounds all join in glorious cry, The huntsman winds his horn. And a hunting we will go. Fielding. The First Day of the Season ^^ ^> ''T^IS come — 'tis come — my gallant steed, J_ No longer shalt thou pine ; From stall and bower to-day we're freed, And swift as mountain-breeze shall speed Once more o'er hill — and mount — and mead Those stalwart limbs of thine ! 'Tis come — 'tis come — my hounds so true ! — The light cloud is on high — Pale autumn gently crisps the dew, Where leaves have donned their russet hue, And gales sigh soft, as though they blew The welcome of the sky ! 'Tis come — 'tis come — that soul-felt thrill ! My straining courser bounds ; And echoing wide o'er copse and rill, The maddening chorus sounds ! By Heaven ! He scales the distant hill ! And hark ! the horn's wild summons shrill — On, on ! my steed ! We're laggards still — On, on ! my gallant hounds ! New Sporting Magazine ( 1 83 1 ). 2o5 Tally-ho 207 The Find ^^> >^:> >o YON sound's neither sheep-bell nor bark, They're running — they're running, Go hark ! The sport may be lost by a moment's delay ; So whip up the puppies and scurry away. Dash down through the cover by dingle and dell, There's a gate at the bottom — I know it full well ; And they're running — they're running;, Go hark ! They're running — they're running, Go hark ! One fence and we're out of the park ; Sit down in your saddles and race at the brook, Then smash at the bullfinch ; no time for a look ; Leave cravens and skirters to dangle behind ; He's away for the moors in the teeth of the wind. And they're running — they're running. Go hark ! They're running — they're running. Go hark ! Let them run on and run till it's dark ! Well with them we are, and well with them we'll be. While there's wind in our horses and daylight to see : Then shog along homeward, chat over the fight. And hear in our dreams the sweet music all night Of — They're running, they're running. Go hark ! Charles Kings ley. 2o8 The Chase The Longest Run ? m^> SQUIRE FRITH, of Bank Hall, near Chapel- en-le-P rith, kept harriers for many years in the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries. He was a very famous old sportsman, who, after fifty years of the chase, was in 1826 still to be seen mounted on a square-built cob, ambling over the fine turf of his native hills with the Buxton Harriers. ... In December, somewhere about 1786, word came to the Squire that a fox had been marked to earth and " made in " as they call it up north near a cottage called Hole House, not far from Chapel-en-le-Frith. Next morning, when the Squire turned out with his hounds and field, the frost had rendered the ground much fitter for foot-work than for hunting a fox over the rugged and steep moorlands and through the rocky dales of North Derbyshire. All the earth round had been stopped, and the fox was duly unkennelled and the pack laid on. As sometimes happens in frost there was a ravishing scent, and a marvellous chase ensued. The fox took them by Taxal, near Whaley Bridge, over the Duke of Devonshire's moors, skirting Axe Edge, the highest range in the county, on to Macclesfield Forest : thence by Tag- sneys, Crookward, and Langly and Gracely Woods, to Swithingly, where they sustained a short check. Hitting off the line again they followed him to Horsly and Gawsworth, and finally ran into and killed this wonderfully stout fox at Clouds Hill, near Congleton. The fox had stood up before his pursuers for just under forty miles. The horses got their riders back as far as the Cat and Fiddle Inn on Axe Edge, the highest inn in England, but were so beaten that they had to be left there for Tally-ho 209 the night. This is by far the finest and longest run with a pack of harriers that I ever heard of. Few, if any, packs of foxhounds have ever beaten it. H. A. Bryden. The Hunting Song ^z> o THE Sun from the East tips the Mountains with Gold, And the Meadows all spangled with Dew-drops, behold How the Lark's early Matin proclaims the new Day, And the Horn's cheerful Summons rebukes our Delay ; With the Sports of the Field there's no pleasure can vie, While Jocund we follow, follow, follow, follow. Follow, follow, follow the Hounds in full Cry. Let the Drudge of the Town make Riches his Sport, And the Slave of the State hunt the Smiles of the Court, Nor care nor Ambition nor patience annoy, But Innocence still gives Zest to our joy. With the Sports of the Field, etc. Mankind all are hunters in various Degree, The Priests hunt a Living, the Lawyer a Fee ; The Doctor a Patient, the Courier a place, They often like us are flung out with Disgrace. With the Sports of the Field, etc. The Cit hunts a Plum, the Soldier hunts Fame, The Poet a Dinner, the Patriot a Name, 2IO The Chase And the artful Coquette, tho' she seems to refuse, Yet in Spite of her Airs she her Lover pursues. With the Sports of the Field, etc. Let the Bold and the Busy hunt Glory and Wealth, All the Blessing we ask is the Blessing of Health ; With Hounds and with Horns thro ' the Woodlands to roam. And tired Abroad find Contentment at Home. With the Sports of the field, etc. Sweet Polly s Garland. The British Horse of 1616 sC^ I DO daily find in mine experience, that the virtue, goodness, boldness, swiftness, and en- durance of our true-bred English horses is equal with any race of horses whatsoever. Some former writers, whether out of want of experience, or to flatter novelties, have concluded that the English horse is a great strong jade, deep-ribbed, sid- bellied, with strong legs and good hoofs, yet fitter for the cart than either saddle or any working employment. How false this is all English horse- men know. The true English horse, him I mean that is bred under a good clime, on firm ground, in a pure temperature, is of tall stature and large proportions ; his head, though not so fine as either the Barbary's or the Turk's, yet is lean, long, and well-fashioned ; his crest is high, only subject to thickness if he be stoned, but if he be gelded then it is firm and strong ; his chine is straight and broad ; and all his limbs large, lean, flat, and excellently jointed. For their endurance I have seen them suffer and execute as much and more than ever I noted of any foreign creation. I have Tally-ho 2 1 1 heard it reported that at the massacre of Paris (St. Bartholomew) Montgomerie, taking an English mare in the night, first swam over the river Seine, and after ran her so many leagues as I fear to nomi- nate, lest misconstruction might tax me of too lavish a report. Again, for swiftness, what nation has brought forth that horse which hath exceeded the English — when the best Barbarys that ever were in their prime, I saw them overrun by a black hobby at Salisbury ; yet that hobby was more overrun by a horse called Valentine, which Valen- tine neither in hunting or running was ever equalled, yet was a plain-bred English horse both by sire and dam ? Again, for infinite labour and long endurance, which is to be desired in our hunting matches, I have not seen any horse to compare with the English. He is of tolerable shape, strong, valiant, and durable. Gervase Markham. The Coal-black Steed <:> ^ WHOEVER is fond of a hunting lay Has heard of the neck-or-nothing grey ; The "horse of all horses" that carried the Squire, Which the hardest day could never tire. Now, I have a nag that a king from his throne Might jump with rapture to call his own — For beautiful shape, for courage and speed, I challenge the world with my coal-black steed. The blood of Eclipse runs free in his sire : His dam's descended from old High Flyer ; And none who know her would ever dare Attempt to throw a stain on the mare. 212 The Chase But it can be proved, some years ago, That a little was tinged the crimson flow ! Yet ne'er do I wish for a better breed Than this of my famous coal-black steed. He's just as high as a horse should be, Not missing an ace of fifteen-three ; But his chest's so deep and his back so wide, He seems a devilish big one to ride ; For in spite of the succeeding dips, He retains the withers of old Ech'pse : To judge by what we in history read. He'd just the back of my coal-black steed. His head ! what a beautiful head he's got ! And his tail's put on in the proper spot ; While four such legs, for muscle and bone, You may travel a week and not be shown. His mouth's so good ; he's so easy to ride, A child may safely be trusted to guide ; For when put out to his utmost speed, A thread would pull up my coal-black steed. Talk of water-jumpers — I've ridden him o'er A place that never was crossed before ; And when on the stream there's an overflow, The edge of the river he seems to know. At timber he measures his leaps so true That gate or stile he tips with his shoe. As a standing leaper or taking at speed, I ne'er rode horse like my coal-black steed. One day last spring we'd a ten-miles burst. And up to the hounds he carried me first. At starting we mustered a hundred or more — When Reynard was killed there were only four ! Tal]y-ho 213 And just at the finish I beat them all By showing him over a five-feet wall. Some called him a devil, but all agreed They'd never seen nag like my coal-black steed. A gentleman who, the week before, Had ofFer'd three hundred, now bid me four ; But to all his tempting my ears were shut When he asked me only the price to put ; For nothing on earth shall make me sell A favourite nag that carries me well. No ! perish the thought of such a deed As parting with thee, my coal-black steed ! When nature fails (and one day she will), My gallant old horse, I'll keep thee still ; In summer thy food and shelter shall be The verdant mead and the leafy tree ; In winter a roomy shed, with law To run in a yard well filled with straw ; And every night and morn a feed Of corn will I give to my coal-black steed. Until the fire of that eye is gone, And death hath claimed thee for his own. Thus shalt thou live from slavery free, In return for the sport you have shown to me. Nor butchering knife, nor fang of hound, Shall on thy body inflict a wound ; Nor ravenous bird or beast e'er feed On the cold remains of my coal-black steed ; But deep in the earth I'll see thee laid Beneath the spot where thou oft hast strayed ; Thy favourite shady tree shall wave Its spreading branches above the grave ; 214 The Chase And that thy deeds may in memory dwell, An epitaph over the place shall tell, To every one who chooses to read, The wondrous feats of my coal-black steed. G. /. IVhyte-Mehille. Hare v. Fox <:> s^ o A LOVER of hunting almost every man is, or would be thought ; but twenty in the field after an hare find more delight and sincere enjoyment than one in twenty in a fox-chase, the former consisting of an endless variety of accidental delights, the latter little more than hard riding, the pleasure of clearing some dangerous leap, the pride of be- striding the best nag, and showing somewhat of the bold horseman ; and (equal to anything) of being first in at the death, after a chase frequently from county to county, and perhaps half the way out of sight or hearing of the hounds. So that, but for the name of fox-hunting, a man might as well mount at his stable-door, and determine to gallop twenty miles on end into another county. John Smallman Gardiner. A Frequent Cause y^^^ ^:> e> THE most frequent cause of failure in the pur- suit of a hare is changing. Just when the one you are hunting is getting tired, up jumps another fresh from her form, and away go the pack in full view. There is very little hope of stopping them, and when you do succeed the chances are you will not be able to recover your original quarry, either that the lapse of time has allowed the scent to disappear, or "puss" stole away when her enemies* Tally-ho 2 1 5 backs were turned. It is a very common occurrence for a hunted hare to squat alongside another, and of course the fresh one is certain to get up first. There is not the slightest doubt this is done intentionally and I believe it is a regular custom — an instinct bred by experience — to defeat the dog species — at least the fresh hare always appears to take up her burden cheer- fully, as if it were merely the performance of an ordinary duty. When a hare has run for about a mile and still finds she is pursued, she generally visits every field and form in which some of her friends reside, so that there will soon be two or three afoot where you thought they were very scarce. Your best chance of success, both in killing and having a good run, is to force her out of her country, and then she will probably go quite straight. Hares will run straight sometimes even when they have not lost themselves, but this sort is like the travelling fox — hard to find. /. Otho Paget. The Good Grey Mare <^ e> (Dedicated to the Hon. R. Grimstone in kindly remembrance of many happy days and pleasant rides) OH ! once I believed in a woman's kiss, I had faith in a flattering tongue. For lip to lip was a promise of bliss When lips were smooth and young. But now the beard is grey on my cheek And the top of my head gets bare. So little I speak, like an Arab sheik, And put my trust in my mare. For loving looks grow hard and cold. Fair heads are turned away, 2i6 The Chase When the fruit has been gathered, the tale been told, And the dog has had his day. But chance and change 'tis folly to me. Say I, the devil may care ! Nor grey nor blue is so bonny and true As the bright brown eye of my mare. It is good for the heart that's chilled and sad With the death of a vain desire, To borrow^ a glow that shall make it glad From the warmth of a kindred fire. And I leap to the saddle a man indeed ! For all I can do or dare. In the power and speed that are mine at need While I sit on the back of my mare. With the free wide heaven above outspread, The free, wide plain to meet. With the lark and his carol high over my head And the bustling pack at my feet, I feel no fetter, I know no bounds, I am free as a bird in the air. While the covert resounds in a chorus of hounds Right under the nose of the mare. We are in for a gallop ! Away, away ! I told them my beauty could fly. And we'll lead them a dance ere they catch us to-day. For we mean it — my lass and I ! She skims the fences, she scours the plain, Like a creature winged, I swear, With snort and strain on the yielding rein ; For I'm bound to humour the mare. They have pleached it strong, they have dug it wide. They have turned the baulk with the plough, Tally-ho 217 The horse that can cover the whole in its stride Is cheap at a thousand, I vow ! So I draw her together, and over we sail, With a yard and a half to spare ! Bank, bull-finch, and rail, it's the curse of the Vale ! But I leave it all to the mare. Away, away ! they've been running to kill ! With never a check from the find. Away, away, we are close to them still, And the field are furlongs behind ! They can hardly deny they were out of the game. Lost half " the Fun of the Fair," Though the envious blame and the jealous exclaim " How that old fool buckets his mare ! " Who-whoop ! They have him ! They're round him ; how They worry and tear when he's down ! 'Twas a stout hill-fox when they found him : now 'Tis a hundred tatters of brown ! And the riders, arriving as best they can, In panting plight declare, " That first in the van was the old grey man Who stands by the old grey mare." I have lived my life ; I am nearly done ; I have played the game all round ; But I freely admit that the best of my fun I owe to horse and hound. With a hopeful heart and a conscience clear I can laugh in your face. Black Care ! Though you're hovering near, there's no room for you here. On the back of my good grey mare. G. J. Whyte-Mehille, HERE AND THERE Happy and free, right merrily, We'll mount and ride away. Lord Sands. A French Boar-hunt ^:> ^z^ ^o^ IN the meantime, Louis followed contentedly the chase of the wild boar, which was now come to an interesting point. It had so happened, that a sounder {i.e. in the language of the period, a boar of only two years old) had crossed the track of" the proper object of the chase, and withdrawn in pursuit of him all the dogs, except two or three couple of old staunch hounds, and the greater part of the huntsmen. The King saw, with internal glee, Dunois, as well as others, follow upon this false scent, and enjoyed in secret the thought of triumphing over that accomplished knight in the art of venerie, which was then thought almost as glorious as war. Louis was well mounted, and followed close on the hounds ; so that, when the original boar turned to bay in a marshy piece of ground, there was no one near him but the King himself. Louis showed all the bravery and expertness of an experienced huntsman ; for, unheeding the danger, he rode up to the tremendous animal, which was defending itself with fury against the dogs, and struck him with his boar-spear ; yet, as the horse shied from the boar, the blow w^as not so effectual as either to kill or disable him. No effort could 218 Here and There 219 prevail on the horse to charge a second time ; so that the King, dismounting, advanced on foot against the furious animal, holding naked in his hand one of those short, sharp, straight, and pointed swords which huntsmen used for such encounters. The boar instantly quitted the dogs to rush on his human enemy, while the King, taking his station, and posting himself firmly, presented the sword, with the purpose of aiming it at the boar's throat, or rather chest, within the collar-bone ; in which case, the weight of the beast, and the impetuosity of its career, would have served to accelerate its own de- struction. But, owing to the wetness of the ground, the King's foot slipped, just as this delicate and perilous manoeuvre ought to have been accomplished, so that the point of the sword encountering the cuirass of bristles on the outside of the crea- ture's shoulder, glanced off without making any impression, and Louis fell flat on the ground. This was so far fortunate for the monarch, because the animal, owing to the King's fall, missed his blow in his turn, and in passing only rent with his tusk the King's short hunting-cloak, instead of ripping up his thigh. But when, after running a little ahead in the fury of his course, the boar turned to repeat his attack on the King at the moment when he was rising, the life of Louis was in imminent danger. At this critical moment, Quentin Durward, who had been thrown out in the chase by the slowness of his horse, but who, nevertheless, had luckily distinguished and followed the blast of the King's horn, rode up and transfixed the animal with his spear. The King, who had by this time recovered his feet, came in turn to Durward's assistance, and cut the animal's throat with his sword. Before speaking a word to Quentin, he measured the huge creature 2 20 The Chase not only by paces, but even by feet ; then wiped the sweat from his brow and the blood from his hands ; he then winded his horn, which brought up Dunois and several attendants, whose compliments he received on the slaughter of such a noble animal, without scrupling to appropriate a much greater share of merit than actually belonged to him ; for he mentioned Durward's assistance as slightly as a sportsman of rank, who, in boasting of the number of birds which he has bagged, does not always dilate upon the presence and assistance of the gamekeeper. Sir Walter Scott. Pig-Sticking in India <^ o <^ HOG-HUNTING is the king of sports. Fox- hunting in England is all very well — a mob of pretty dogs, yow-yowing musically after a poor little beast that is only too glad to escape if he can. The only excitement is the gallop and the jumps, the raspers, flying over a brook or tumbling into it ; and perhaps, after losing the poor vermin, the sportsman, on a cold winter evening, discovers himself miles from home, on a jaded horse, a cold sleety shower driving in his face. Still, when he finds himself at his own fireside, he expatiates on the "glorious sport" he has had. Glorious sport, indeed ! The hypocrite ! let him go to India and try a turn or two at hog-hunting. Put him on a good horse, place in his hand a sharp, nicely- balanced seven-foot spear, and station him just inside the edge of the jungle, with a bit of open before him. Let him hear the elephants coming, trumpeting, and the beaters giving their warning cry ; let him see the sounder break cover, and get into the open J then let him gallop after them, and with Here and There 221 a friend single out the big boar, and try for the first spear. If the boar is a good one, he will go a splitting pace for perhaps a couple of miles, and if he finds he can't escape, will stop all at once, turn, and charge down like lightning, with a fierce grunt, upon one of the two. Let it be our sports- man. He may perhaps stop the brute's charge, but he won't kill him, and then, when he turns and tries for the second spear, the really dangerous one, he will see what a devil a wounded boar is. He won't think much of fox-hunting after he has once succeded in despatching the more formidable animal. If the mere riding at the raspers and the brooks, and the chances of a break-neck tumble are his delight, he will find an agreeable variety in hog- hunting, and as many chances of maiming himself as he can in the pursuit of the fox, with the additional zest of perhaps coming across a tiger, or finding himself in the middle of a herd of wild buffaloes, by whom both his horse and himself may be ripped up. It requires firm nerves, a steady hand, a correct eye, and presence of mind to spear a good boar properly. The boar is a cunning, knowing, fierce, revenge- ful brute, as the following anecdote will to some extent prove. An officer of the regiment we relieved, one day singled out a boar from a sounder that came through cantonments, to the upper part of which he ran him. The bank there shelves down and joins a spit of sand that runs out into the river. The officer was close on the hog, but not close enough to plant the spear. The two went down the bank, but where it and the sand joined there was a bit of quick-sand, and the horse beginning to flounder in it, the officer, as a 222 The Chase last chance, threw the spear, and, of course, missed his aim. Presently, not hearing the tramp of the horse at his heels, the hog slackened his pace, then stopped, turned round, and sat down on his hind quarters ; after which, advancing, he charged down on the horse, cut him, and made off. After a short flight he again turned round, and seeing the horse still floundering, he charged down a second time, and ripped him right open. The poor animal died on the spot. Had the officer retained his spear (which under no circumstances should be thrown or parted with) he would have killed the hog instead of losing his horse. Major-General Sir Thomas Seaton. A Kangaroo Hunt <:> ^^ ON our return to Melbourne, we went out one day with the "Melbourne Hunt," after Kangaroo, but were unfortunate. The morning was bad for the scent, and it was not until late in the afternoon, and when we were on the point of returning home, that a Kangaroo was accidentally put up. As this occurred at some distance from the dogs, his huge bounds took him some way before they could be laid upon his track. It was a pretty sight, however. There were some splendid horses in the field, and some good riders ; and, indeed, both had need to be of the best, for the timber is stiff to a degree undreamt of in England. Even an elephant would have some difficulty in breaking the thick, solid, "ironwood" bars of the high fences ; so that, among the best riders and horses, there were some ugly falls. Some of the coverts were of such dense scrub, that when riding through them, all that was visible of persons close Here and There 223 by was the tip of a horse's nose, a bit of red coat, or here and there the crown of a hat. In other places we came upon open glades, with trees growing round them, and withered bracken on the ground, reminding one of December days in England. And again, in other parts, the soil was boggy, with stumps of trees and partially-hidden roots sticking out of it, in a way that was anything but pleasant for fast riding. Alice M. Frere. The Wild Boar ^:> ^^^ <::> SO through the city all the rout rode fast, With many a great black-muzzled yellow hound ; And then the teeming country-side they passed, Until they came to sour and rugged ground, And there rode up a little healthy mound. That overlooked the scrubby woods and low. That of the beast's lair somewhat they might know. And there a goodman of the country-side Showed them the places where he mostly lay ; And they descending, through the wood did ride, And followed on his tracks for half the day. And at last they brought him well to bay. Within an oozy space amidst the wood. About the which a ring of alders stood. So when the hounds' changed voices clear they heard. With hearts aflame towards him straight they drew. Atys, the first of all, of nought afeard, Except that folk should say some other slew The beast ; and lustily his horn he blew, Going afoot ; then, mighty spear in hand, Adrastus headed all the following band. 2 24 The Chase Now when they came unto the plot of ground, Where stood the boar, hounds dead about him lay Or sprawled about, bleeding from many a wound, But still the others held him well at bay. Nor had he been bested thus ere that day. But yet, seeing Atys, straight he rushed at him. Speckled with foam, bleeding in flank and limb. Willi am Morris, Hunting the Antelope in Persia ^> vi> IF we were amused by the field-diversions of the Persians and Arabs, they were equally so with our mode of hunting. The Elchee had brought a few couples of English fox-hounds, intending them as a present to the heir-apparent, Abbas Meerza. With this small pack we had several excellent runs. One morning we killed a fox, after a very hard chase ; and while the rest of the party were exult- ing in their success, cutting off poor reynard's brush, praising the hounds, adding some two feet to a wall their horses had cleared, laughing at those who had got tumbles, and recounting many a hair- breadth escape, I was entertained by listening to an Arab peasant, who, with animated gestures, was narrating to a group of his countrymen all he had seen of this noble hunt. "There went the fox," said he, pointing with a crooked stick to a clump of date trees ; " there he went at a great rate ; I hallooed, and hallooed, but nobody heard me, and I thought he must get away ; but when he was quite out of sight, up came a large spotted dog, and then another and another ; they all had their noses on the ground, and gave tongue, whaw, whaw, whaw, so loud that I was frightened : — away went these devils, who soon found the poor animal ; after them galloped the Faringees, shouting and trying to make a noise louder than the dogs ; no wonder they killed the fox among them ; but it is certainly fine sport." Sir John Malcohn Here and There 227 The Mountain Bull ^> <^> FADES slow the light ; the east is grey ; The weary warder leaves his tower ; Steeds snort ; uncoupled stag-hounds bay, And merry hunters quit the bower. The drawbridge falls — they hurry out — Clatters each plank and swinging chain, As, dashing o'er, the jovial rout Urge the shy steed, and slack the rein. First of his troop the Chief rode on ; His shouting merry-men throng behind ; The steed of princely Hamilton Was fleeter than the mountain wind. From the thick copse the roebucks bound. The startled red-deer scuds the plain. For the hoarse bugle's warrior sound Has roused their mountain haunts again. Through the huge oaks of Evandale, Whose limbs a thousand years have worn. What sullen roar comes down the gale. And drowns the hunter's pealing horn ? Mightiest of all the beasts of chase, That roam in wooded Caledon, Crashing the forest in his race, The Mountain Bull comes thunderins; on. '& Fierce on the hunter's quiver'd band, He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow. Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand, And tosses hio-h his mane of snow. o Q 2 228 The Chase Aim'd well, the Chieftain's lance has flown ; Struggling in blood the savage lies ; His roar is sunk in hollow groan — Sound, merry huntsmen ! sound the pryse ! Sir fValter Scott. At Walden sip»« s^ v£> IN dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting-horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actaeon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he would run in a straight line away no fox-hound could overtake him ; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by them- selves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and bound without regarding me, Here and There 229 as if afflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this. One day a man came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, " What do you do here ? " He had lost a dog, but found a man. One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood ; and as he walked the Wayland road he heard a cry of hounds approach- ing, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward Fair-Haven still pursuing the fox ; and on they came, their hounding cry, which made all the woods ring, sounding nearer and nearer, now from Well-Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground, leaving 230 The Chase his pursuers far behind ; and leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the latter's arm ; but that was a short- lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang! — the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock ; but spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased her hound- ing, as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him in silence ; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush awhile, and at length turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston Squire came to the Con- cord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from Weston Woods. The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the skin ; but the other declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a farm-house for the night, whence having been well fed, they took their departure early in the morning. H. D, Thoreau. Here and There 231 The Hunt Is Up ^:y^ s^:?- ^o THE hunt is up, the hunt is up, And it is well nigh day ; Harry, our King, has gone hunting. To bring the deer to bay. The east, is bright with rosy light. And darkness it is fled ; The merry horn awakes the morn. To leave his idle bed. Tantarra ! Tantarra ! Arise, arise, unclose your eyes, To meet the golden ray ; Happy and free, right merrily. We'll mount and ride away. The birds they sing, the deer they fling. The eager hunters fly ; The merry horn awakes the morn. Then up and join the cry. The hunt is up, the hunt is up, And now 'tis perfect day ; Harry, our King, has gone hunting. To bring the deer to bay. Tantarra ! Tantarra ! Lord Sands and Thomas Oiiphant. WHALE HUNTING Hunting the Whale ^^ -^^ ^^^ IT was a sight full of quick wonder and awe ! The vast swells of the omnipotent sea ; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green ; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two ; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows ; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill ; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side ; — all these, with the cries of the headsman and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her scream- ing brood ; all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle ; not the dead man's ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world ; — neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale. The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more visible, owing to the 232 Whale Hunting 233 increasing darkness of the dim cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of vapour no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to right and left ; the whales seemed separating their wakes. Our sail was now set, and with the still rising wind, we rushed along, the boat going with such madness through the water, that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the row-locks. Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist ; neither ship nor boat to be seen. " Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet of his sail ; " there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes. There's white water again ; — close to ! Spring ! " Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that the other boats had got fast ; but hardly were they overheard, when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said : " Stand up ! " and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprung to his feet. Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come ; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound, as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents. " That's his hump. There^ there^ give it to him ! " whispered Starbuck. A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat — it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from 2 34 The Chase astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge, the sail collapsed and exploded ; a gush of scalding vapour shot up near by ; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together ; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward-gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean. The wind increased to a howl ; the waves dashed their bucklers together ; the whole squall roared, forked and crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning — immortal in these jaws of death ! In vain we hailed the other boats ; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night ; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the oflfice of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern ; then stretching it on a waif-pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard- bearer of this forlorn hope. Therfe, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of whale Hunting 235 that almighty forlornness ; — there, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boot. Suddenly Oueequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer ; the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a distance of not much more than its length. Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a ship at the base of a cataract ; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our perishing, — an oar or a lance-pole. Herman Melville. Killing the Whale e> ^^ ^^ THE next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod\ crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep 236 The Chase induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian ocean, through which we were then voyaging, is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dol- phins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the inshore ground off Peru. It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head ; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it : in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body continued to sway, as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn. Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the main and mizzen mast-heads were already drowsy, so that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests ; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all. Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes ; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds ; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me ; with a shock I came back to life. And lo ! close under our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the whale looked like a portly whale Hunting 237 burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it at once started into wakeful- ness ; and more than a score of voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air. " Clear away the boats ! Luff! " cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes. The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale ; and ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the lee- ward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers. So, seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along : the calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the monster perpen- dicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up. " There go flukes ! " was the cry, an announce- ment immediately followed by Stubb's producing his match and lighting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honour of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All silence or cautiousness was therefore 238 The Chase no longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And, still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault. Yes ; a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy, he was going " head out " ; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he brewed. " Start her, start her, my men ! " Don't hurry yourselves ; take plenty of time — but start her ; start her like thunder-clap, that's all," cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. " Start her now ; give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tash- tego. Start her, Tash, my boy — start her all. ..." " Woo-hoo ! Wa-hee ! " screamed the Gay- Header in reply, raising some old war-whoop to the skies ; as every oarsman in the strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tre- mendous leading-stroke which the eager Indian gave. But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. " Kee-hee ! Kee-hee ! " yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage. " Ka-la ! Koo-loo ! " howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard — " Stand up, Tash- tego ! — give it to him ! " The harpoon was hurled. " Stern all ! " The oarsmen backed water ; the same moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb Whale Hunting 239 had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up, and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead, so also, just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch. " Wet the line, wet the line ! " cried Stubb to the tub-oarsmen, who, snatching off his hat, dashed the sea-water into it. More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew through the boiling water, like a shark, all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places — stem for stern — a staggering business truly in that rocky commotion. From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more tight than harp-string, you would have thought the craft had two keels — one cleaving the water, the other the air — as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows ; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake ; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed ; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam ; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. . . . 240 The Chase " Haul in — haul in ! " cried Stubb to the bows- man ; and, facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish ; at the word of command, the boat alternately steering out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then ranging up for another fling. The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun played upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement pufF after pufF from the mouth of the excited headsman ; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale. " Pull up — pull up ! " he now cried to the bow- man, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath, "Pull up ! — close to ! " and the boat ranged along the fish's flank. When, reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning. . . . And now it is struck ; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his " flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, over-wrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle Whale Hunting 241 out from that frenzied twilight into the clear air of the day. And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view ; surging from side to side ; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respira- tions. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air ; and falling back again, ran down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst ! " He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo. " Yes ; both pipes smoked out ! " and with- drawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water ; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made. Herman Melville. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Editor desires to express his thanks to the following authors and publishers for their kind permis- sion to use copyright material : — Lord Willoughby de Broke for several extracts from Hunting the Fox, published by Messrs. Constable. Miss Ethel M. Dell and Messrs. Fisher Unzvin for an episode from The Knave of Diamonds. Mrs. Edward Kennard for passages from her novel Killed in the Open, published by Messrs. Ward, Lock ifj Co. Messrs. Chatto and Windus for a passage from The Open Air, by Richard Jefferies. Printed in Grf.at Britain by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine Cumminas School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University 200 Westboro Road North Grafton. MA 01536 From an htcHing by Sir R. Frank land, Bart