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THE VINE HUNT

ETC.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EARLY DAYS

OF THE

VINE HUNT

AND OF ITS FOUNDER

WILLIAM JOHN CHUTE, ESQ., M.P.

OF THE VINE

TOGETHER WITH BRIEF NOTICES OF THE ADJOINING HUNTS

BY

A SEXAGENARIAN

LONDON

PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE & CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE, E.C.

1865

St
!S4»5

PREFACE,

INCE these Letters were prepared for
the press, the writer has seen the far
fuller and more useful work entitled
' Sporting Reminiscences of Hampshire, by
^sop.' It maybe well to state that the nearly
simultaneous appearance of these two books is
entirely accidental. The writers have had no
communication, and are not personally known
to each other. Whenever, therefore, they both
state the same fact, or concur in the same opinion,
they must claim to be considered as perfectly
independent authorities. If there should be any
points on which they may be found to differ, the
reader must judge for himself, which of the two
writers probably possessed the best means of
ascertaining the truth on that particular point.

CONTENTS.

LETTER I.

PAGE

NOTICES OF HUNTING IN THE LAST CENTURY . . I

LETTER IL
OLD STORIES l6

LETTER IIL

THE ORIGIN OF THE VINE HUNT 3 1

LETTER IV.

THE HOUNDS AND HORSES 45

LETTER V.

THE MEN 54

LETTER VL

WILLIAM JOHN CHUTE, ESQ., OF THE VINE, M.P. . . 69

LETTER VI L

THE VINE HUNT, 1 824— 1 834 81

vlli Contents.

LETTER VIII.

MR. WARDE'S hounds IN THE CRAVEN COUNTRY . .91

PAGE

LETTER IX.

TRUMAN VILLEBOTS, ESQ., AND THE H.H. . . . I02

LETTER X.

SIR JOHN COPE'S HOUNDS.— MR. ASSHETON SMITH.— MR.

THOMAS SMITH 112

LETTER XL

MR. MULLENS AND HIS HARRIERS. — AGRICULTURAL

IMPROVEMENTS.— CONCLUSION . . . .121

RECOLLECTIONS

OF

THE VINE HUNT.

LETTER I.

NOTICES OF HUNTING IN THE LAST CENTURY.

June 1864.

Y DEAR FRIEND, — When you met me lately
at Hampton Court, and asked me to sup-
ply any recollections that I might retain
about the early days of the Vine Hunt, and
of its popular founder, Mr. Chute, my first impression
was that I could produce little or nothing to the pur-
pose. But on further consideration I am inclined to
believe that, if such particulars are worth recording at
all, there is no one now living better qualified for the
task than myself: for I was intimate with Mr. Chute
from my childhood to the time of his death ; I con-
versed much with sportsmen whose recollections went
back a generation before my birth; and I lived in
familiar intercourse with many masters of hounds. I
dare say I am acquainted with some facts, the memory

B

Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

of which is fast fading away, and can tell some curious
stories that are known only to myself I will therefore
attempt the work that you have been pleased to im-
pose upon me, and will so far enlarge it as to include
some brief notices of what I saw in countries adjoining
to the Vine. You must expect a little egotism when
you call on a sexagenarian to recount his own recol-
lections ; but I will try to say as much of other people
and as little of myself as I can.

But before I enter on the proposed subject, I must
try to give some idea of the different styles of hunting
which prevailed in the last century and in the present.

I believe that, a hundred years ago, though there
was abundance of hunting, yet it was not conducted
so systematically, nor generally on so grand a scale,
as it is now. The sport was diffused amongst many
smaller establishments, instead of being concentrated
into a few large ones. This was especially the case
with harriers, of which most country squires, and some
tenant farmers, kept each his own cry of hounds, more
or less numerous according to his means ; and came
near to a realisation of that ideal old English gentle-
man in the song,

Who never hawked nor hunted but on his own ground.

For instance : late in the last century, two neighbour-
ing squires, Terry of Dummer and Harwood of Dean,
kept each a regular pack of harriers, scarcely five
miles apart ; yet the Digweed family, who then, as now,
rented nearly the whole parish of Steventon, had a few
couples of beagles, with which they hunted over the
ground that they occupied midway between the two.

But, besides the numerous packs of harriers belong-
ing to individual proprietors, there was a peculiar

Hunting in the last Centiiry.

kind, called a town-pack, or a town-cry, not quite
extinct now, but then kept in many country towns
and villages. These hounds had no kennel, but were
billeted, as it were, amongst the tradesmen and
other principal inhabitants of the place, and were
often to be seen lying about before their owners'
doors. On hunting days, they were collected to-
gether by a horn blown in the street. A friend of
mine recollects seeing this operation performed in
the town of Crawley, in Sussex. He says : ' A man
on foot, with hobnailed boots, went blowing a horn
through the town and hamlet to the place of meeting,
and collecting the drowsy blue-mottled southern har-
riers.' These hounds were followed by men on foot,
carrying long poles to help them over the great banks
and ditches, the country being then considered im-
practicable for horses. Crawley, however, is now the
centre of a well-appointed pack of foxhounds.

Nor was it at all unusual, in those days, to hunt
both hare and fox with the same hounds. Mr. Chute
and Mr. St. John had both done this, before they kept
regular packs of foxhounds and laid the foundations
of two permanent foxhunting countries. Mr. Villebois,
also, before he was master of the H. H., kept harriers
in the Candover country, which certainly were not
altogether guiltless of vulpine blood ; for I remember,
in his dining-room at Harmsworth, a painting repre-
senting a few couples of these hounds running into a
fox, nearly as big as themselves, on an open down,
and Mr. Villebois himself in the act of springing from
his horse.

Less than fifty years ago, there lived near Hailsham,
in Sussex, Mr, King Sampson. This gentleman was

B 2

Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

an excellent sportsman and exceedingly popular, and
is indeed still looked back to with respect, as the father
of foxhunting in that country ; but his mode of fox-
hunting was peculiar. He kept a pack of powerful
harriers with a cross of the foxhound ; and with these
he hunted hare habitually, and fox occasionally ; that
is to say, whenever he thought he could find one. On
these occasions he met very early in the morning,
keeping the body of his pack in couples, and trusting
to two or three steady old foxhounds for finding.
With these he would go quietly round the gorse covers
on the Southdown Hills ; and if there was no drag, nor
any symptom of a fox having gone into the cover, he
did not waste time in drawing it, but went on to
another. As soon as a fox was found, the rest of the
hounds were uncoupled, and, when once put on the
scent of the fox, were sufficiently steady to it through
the day. In this way Mr. King Sampson is said to
have shown excellent sport ; and I have no doubt that
he killed many a fox which a modern pack of hounds,
with a modern Brighton field of some hundreds of men,
women, and children in the midst of them, must needs
have lost. I need scarcely add that this same country
has long been hunted by an excellent pack of regular
foxhounds.

Late in the last century, some friends of my father
attempted to hunt fox with a pack of harriers on the
Nettlebed Hills in Oxfordshire. At the beginning of
the season they succeeded well enough ; but after
Christmas, when foxes had become stronger and more
dispersed, these hounds proved unequal to the great
distances and long draws required of them, and were
generally half tired before the fox was found.

Hunting in the last Century. 5

But besides these irregular and desultory modes of
foxhunting, of which I have given so many instances,
I believe that even regular packs of foxhounds were
more frequently kept on a small scale, and differed
more from each other, according to the means and
sportsmanship of the owner, than is usual in these
days, when everybody has the advantage of knowing
how other hunts are conducted, and everyone at least
aims at one common standard of perfection. In those
days a pack of foxhounds was considered to be private
property, which the owner was as free to manage ac-
cording to his own will and pleasure as he was to
settle the arrangements of his own shooting or fishing.
Hounds were not then advertised in the newspapers.
Railroads did not bring men and horses from places
twenty or thirty miles distant to the meet. Bad roads
and imperfect means of communication confined each
hunt within narrow limits. The field usually consisted
of a few near neighbours of different ranks, to whom
the master might, or might not, send notice, accord-
ing to his convenience. Mr. Chute, in his earlier
days, seems to have had no scruple in taking out his
hounds without notice to anyone. A gentleman now
living informs me that, when he was a young lad,
he had gone to the Vine, believing that the hounds
were to hunt that day ; but either he had mistaken,
or Mr. Chute had changed the day — the one was as
likely as the other. At any rate, the hounds were
not to go out. On his appearance, however, Mr.
Chute, finding that they had not been fed, good-
naturedly took them out and found a fox for him.
There are also letters from Mr. Chute, written about
1795 from the House of Commons, when he found

Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

that he could get away the next day, desiring that
the hounds might meet him in the afternoon with
a bag fox, in order to get a gallop on his way home.
Beckford, who wrote soon after the middle of the last
century, must certainly have considered masters of
foxhounds at liberty to act in this independent
manner ; for he recommends that the place of meet-
ing should not be fixed till the probable state of the
weather could be known ; and that, when any day
proved a very bad scenting one, the master should
take his hounds home at once, and go out the next
day instead.

The consequence of this independence was a great
development of individual character, so that many
hunting establishments reflected strongly the peculiar
humours and oddities of their owner. Take, for ex-
ample, the celebrated miser, Mr. Elwes, whose bio-
grapher records that his whole foxhunting establish-
ment never cost him so much as 300/. a year; who
obliged his tenants to maintain his hounds for him
during the summer at their several farms ; whose one
man-servant, old Thomas, for four pounds a year,
milked the cows, groomed the horses, looked after and
hunted the hounds, and attended at his master's meals,
yet could not escape frequent reproaches from his
master as ' an idle dog, who wanted to be paid for
doing nothing.' *

This was an extreme case ; but the establishment
of Mr. Poyntz, whom I shall have to mention after-
wards, though maintained, I believe, on a scale suf-
ficiently liberal, was yet imbued with much of the

* See the ' Life of John Elwes, Esq.,' by Edward Topham, Esq.

Hunting in the last Century.

eccentricity cf the master — whose pleasure it was to
do nothing as other people did — and was conducted in
a manner with which, in these days, no subscriber would
put up for a single season, and for which indeed few
owners of property would now preserve foxes, even if
the master kept them, as Mr. Poyntz did, at his own cost.
The boundaries of each hunt, also, were more vague
and fluctuating, and more dependent on the personal
influence of the master. In some places different
packs almost jostled each other, whilst in some parts
large districts remained unoccupied, or only occasion-
ally visited : so that there are many instances on re-
cord of foxhounds being taken for a time into dis-
tant places quite unconnected with their home coun-
try. In these days almost all the huntable portion
of England is parcelled out into different hunts, with
definite boundaries ; and, moreover, most countries
are now supposed to belong not so much to the master
of the pack as to the general body of gentlemen of
whose landed property it consists. Consequently
these boundaries are not only more accurately defined,
but are also held by a more permanent tenure, and
with a firmer grasp ; a larger number of persons are
interested in preserving them ; any intrusion would be
an offence not only against a single brother sports-
man, but against a whole neighbourhood ; while the
unwritten law of foxhunting has taken such strong
possession of the public mind, that such an intrusion
would be considered to be as ungentlemanlike as if a
man had killed partridges on his neighbour's home
farm. But in those days people took their hounds
without scruple wherever there seemed to be an open-
ing for them ; and a popular country gentleman, with

8 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

some landed property of his own, could usually obtain
the command of sufficient country for his purpose.

When I was a boy, there was a very old sporting
farmer who still came out occasionally to see a fox
found. I have heard him declare that, when he was
young, a man did not always know, when he left home,
with what pack he should hunt ; but that, if he got
up to some high ground, such as Popham Beacons
for instance, he would be pretty sure to hear hounds,
of some kind or other, running. And when he was
asked whether such numerous packs did not some-
times interfere with each other, he replied : *Well,
it might just come to this — that they who got first
found their fox or their hare, and they that came
afterwards had none to find.'

The following story will show how harriers at least
might, in those days, clash with each other : —

About the year 1795, a period when many foreign
potentates were uprooted from their native soil, and
transplanted for awhile into England, there was lodg-
ing at Dummer, in obscurity and I fear in poverty, a
German prince. One day he chanced to fall in with
some hounds in the act of kilHng a hare just outside
a wood ; no horseman was in sight, and the prince,
glad to secure such an unexpected dainty for his din-
ner, took away the hare, and was proceeding joyfully
homewards when, at a sudden turn of the road, he
unluckily fell in with my father with a few couples of
small beagles which he then kept. The prince, who
perhaps had not much eye for a hound, imagined that
he stood detected before the master of the same pack
that he had robbed ; so, with admirable presence of
mind, he made a virtue of necessity, and, presenting

Hunting in the last Cent7iry.

the hare to my father, explained to him, in the best
English that he could command, how he had saved the
game from the jaws of the dogs, and how delighted
he was to have this opportunity of restoring it to
Monsieur ; but as my father, far from having killed,
had not even found a hare that morning, the truth
necessarily came out to the great discomfiture of the
prince. I do not recollect whether the hounds, which
he had thus defrauded of their blood, were Mr. Terry's
or Mr. Digweed's, nor am I able to say who finally
ate the hare.

It is also certain that, quite in the beginning of this
century, at least* four packs of foxhounds were draw-
ing covers within the limits which now form the H. H.
and the Vine countries, the former country being
then divided between the H. H. and Mr. Russell, the
successor of Lord Stawell, and the latter between
Mr. Chute and Mr. Poyntz ; while a few years earlier
a pack of foxhounds had been kept by Mr. Smith at
Cruxeaston. I can therefore well believe that when
the old farmer was young there might have been
many packs of foxhounds, as well as of harriers, which
would be continually running into each other's coun-
tries, and in some cases drawing the same cover,
a practice of which a remnant still exists in the

* I say ' at least four,' because Mr. Powlett also at one time
hunted the Freefolk wood country, in which he is reported to
have had a remarkable continuance of good sport ; but I have
never been able to ascertain whether this was while he was
master of the H. H., or when he was keeping a separate pack at
Lainston House. If the latter were the case, then there was a
third pack of foxhounds within the present limits of the Vine
Hunt, for it is certain that at the same time Mr. Poyntz had
possession of the Aldermaston and Kingsclere woodlands.

I o Recollections of the Vine Htmt.

neutral covers which continue to be drawn by dif-
ferent packs.

It must, however, be admitted that, on the other
hand, there were instances of the same pack occupy-
ing large tracts of country for a long period. The
foundations of the Craven country must have been
laid a hundred and forty years ago by Fulwar
Lord Craven ; and as he and his two next successors
kept the hounds for about half a century continuously,
their family influence and long possession enabled
them to draw together the extensive country which
they bequeathed to the members of the Craven Hunt.
But I imagine that much of this was acquired gra-
dually ; for if Fulwar Lord Craven had occupied it
all, he would scarcely have brought his hounds to
Dummer, as he certainly did, about the middle of the
last century. Nor is this the only instance of packs
thus migrating from one distant quarter to another ;
for a gentleman is still living who remembers Lord
Stawell bringing his hounds from his home country
near Farnham to Andover. It is probable that, though
foxes were plentiful in some districts, yet they were
not then spread so equably over the whole country as
they are in these days of artificial preserving. The
venerable founder of the H. H., Mr. Ridge, is said
to have kept hounds for forty-six years (from 1749 to
1795), and to have hunted from Farnham to Romsey.
It was an extraordinary length of time for the same
person to have hunted the same country, and it
spread over nearly the whole period that the three
successive Lords Craven kept their hounds ; but I
believe there is no doubt of the fact, and that the
books of the H. H. contain authentic evidence of it.

Htmtijig in the last Century. 1 1

It is, however, rather difficult to understand exactly
what is meant by the tradition that Mr. Ridge hunted
from Farnham to Romsey. It cannot mean that he
regularly hunted all that extent of country during
the whole forty-six years, because it is well known
that, for many years previous to 1795, Lord Stawell
drew the country from Farnham to Hackwood, and
Mr. Gilbert the Romsey and Hursley country. But
I suppose that what is meant is this — that there were
times, during those forty-six years, when there was no
impediment to Mr. Ridge going where he liked within
those limits ; that, in point of fact, he really did at
times hunt over the whole ; and that, by so doing, he
may be supposed to have established a claim for the
H. H. over all that extent of country. But this could
only have been done by migrating, in the manner that
I have already mentioned, from one kennel to another.
It is clearly impossible that so large a tract could
have been reached from any one centre, especially in
days when hounds were expected to be at the cover's
side soon after daybreak.

On the whole, whether we consider the manner in
which some packs were crowded together, or the tracts
of country which were left either quite unoccupied, or
only occasionally visited, I think we shall come to one
conclusion— namely, the extreme irregularity of hunt-
ing arrangements one hundred years ago, compared
with the practice of the present age.

I think also that it is easy to show that hounds, in
those days, required fewer foxes, and therefore less
country, supposing it to be equally well stocked, than
are now necessary for the same number of days'
hunting.

1 2 Recollections of the Vine Htint.

In the first place, the earlier hour at which they
hunted, often leaving the kennel in the dark, and
reaching the cover's side soon after daybreak, made
it easy for them to find all the foxes that were in the
country. If one only had been moving about the
cover during the night, they were sure to get on his
drag, and, if he was anywhere above ground, could
scarcely fail to find him. It is not too much to say
that the present generation hunt during altogether a
different portion of the twenty-four hours from that
used by their great grandfathers. Now the majority
of foxes are found after twelve o'clock ; then the ma-
jority had been either killed or lost before that hour.
It was towards the close of the last century, when the
hour of meeting was probably nine o'clock, that an old
sporting yeoman, who had hunted with three succes-
sive Lords Craven, was heard to express in coarse lan-
guage the indignation which he conceived the first of
them would feel if he could look out of his grave
and see his degenerate descendants going out at so
late an hour. ' We,' he added, ' took care to be by
the cover's side by peep of day ; and we went home
again to dinner before one o'clock, and so we got a
good long afternoon for drinking.'

Next we must take into account how much less
frequently a second fox was required. Hounds were
slower, and horses were slower, and, accordingly, the
average of runs must have been longer. They neither
killed nor lost their fox so quickly as modern packs
do. They must often have had two or three hours'
running by eleven o'clock. But even if the run had
been shorter, I believe that, after killing one fox with
fair sport, our ancestors were seldom disposed to draw

Hunting in the last Century. 1 3

for another. To take hounds home on their blood
was a favourite maxim with them ; and therefore they
usually left off, not only actually earlier, but earlier
compared with their hour of meeting than is now
customary. Beckford says that he would never draw
for a fresh fox after one o'clock, yet he intimates that
he did not meet at so early an hour as some did, nor
so early as he himself considered desirable for hounds.
Even in my recollection there has been a change in
that respect. In my youth, a master of hounds was
thought justified in declining to draw again if a fox
had been killed after a fair hour's run. I have known
both Mr. Chute and Mr. Villebois act on this rule, and
leave off between twelve and one o'clock.

Now compare all this with present usages. Hounds
now throw off at eleven o'clock. By that time there
can be no drag to assist hounds in finding. The men
must trust to the chance, that they and the hounds
between them may walk up a fox, and get him upon
his legs. They can draw none but the most likely
places, and have no clue to guide them to those
foxes, — numerous when a country has been much
disturbed, and particularly well worth finding, —
that lie in strange out-of-the-way places. The hunts-
man now knows of the existence of such foxes only
by hearing that one has been accidentally moved
by greyhounds or shepherds' dogs, or by finding that
his hounds have changed, he knows not where, in
running across the open. Consequently, whereas nearly
every fox within the boundaries of a hunt was for-
merly available for sport, in these days a pack must
draw well, and have good luck to find half of them.

But even this difference, great as it is, is trifling

14 Recollections of the Vine H^int.

compared with the consumption of country caused by
the practice of drawing very late In the day, which, In
some hunts, Is now carried to an excess. After a fox has
been killed between two and three o'clock with a con-
siderable run, hounds are kept drawing for another till
it is nearly dark : long lines of covers are stained, and
rendered useless for some weeks ; and at last, perhaps,
a good fox is moved when there is not light enough
to do anything with him. I do not mean to say that
this Is wrong (provided always that the country is suf-
ficiently large and well stocked to bear It without
producing blanks), any more than I say that It is
wrong to meet at eleven o'clock, in conformity to
modern habits ; I am only pointing out the Inevitable
effects of these changes. The custom of having a
second horse out, scarcely ever practised In my youth,
may save those animals from being Injured by such
long days ; while I believe that foxhounds in good
condition will endure almost any amount of work to
which they are accustomed without suffering. They
will only require longer rest before they hunt again,
and a more numerous pack must be kept. But the
consumption of country caused by this late drawing
is undeniable ; it will be as if the pack hunted an ad-
ditional day in the week ; and, taking both these
changes into account, I believe that a pack of fox-
hounds now require twice as much country, and at
least three times as many foxes, as our ancestors
found necessary for the same number of hunting
days.

To these speculations upon former times I can add
one fact which may be interesting to the naturalist.
I believe that the martin-cat became extinct in the

Hunting in the last Century. 1 5

woods of Hampshire somewhere about the close of the
last century. I began to hunt and to be observant of
such matters in 18 14, but I never witnessed nor heard
of a single instance of that animal being found by
hounds; whereas, in the preceding generation, this was
a frequent source of disappointment to sportsmen.
The steadiest foxhounds would run this scent, and on
such occasions they were generally supposed to have
found a fox, till they were heard baying round some
tree on which the creature had taken refuge. My
father, when a boy, had sometimes climbed the tree
for the purpose of shaking or beating it down. One
would have supposed that the fate of the little animal,
dropping down amongst twenty couples of expectant
dogs, must have been certain and immediate ; yet
Beckford declares that there are few instances of a
martin-cat being caught in such a situation — and he
must have had considerable experience of them, for
they were so plentiful in his country that he sometimes
entered his young hounds to them. My father's tes-
timony confirmed this assertion. He told me that
they usually escaped by creeping and turning quickly
under the beUies of the hounds. When found in a
thick furze-brake, free from trees, they would baffle
hounds for a long time, and occasionally beat them
by running in thick places where the hounds could
scarcely penetrate.

LETTER II.

OLD STORIES.

HE old stories to which this letter is devoted
are of various dates, and stand on very
different degrees of evidence. Like the
earliest records in some graver histories,
they seem to commence in the legendary age,
and to have something mythic about them; but
they will be found to improve both in internal pro-
bability and in external evidence as they proceed,
till they arrive at the period when I can myself gua-
rantee their truth.

Fulwar, the first of the three Lords Craven of
whom I have made mention, was a mighty hunter,
and kept foxhounds from about the year 1740 till his
death in 1764. During part of that period he used to
bring his hounds every season to Dummer, and hunt
the adjoining country. It was from this kennel that
the extraordinary but well-authenticated circumstance
occurred, which I have read, when a boy, in some
book of natural history, though I know not where to
find it now. Two or three draft hounds had been
sent by Lord Craven to Blair Athol in Scotland, and
had been taken part of the way by sea, but found

Old Stories. 1 7

their way back to the kennel at Dummer in some
marvellously short space of time.*

In those times, and long afterwards, Nutley (in the
Vine Country), was famous for producing long runs.
A large tract adjoining that cover, towards Frost Hill,
was then a rabbit warren : I can just remember the
rabbits, as well as the old gates and palings. I think
the land was brought under the plough before the
year 18 10, under the stimulus of war prices. These
rabbits attracted foxes from all quarters, and those
who had the luck to escape the warrener's traps would
naturally take up their quarters in Nutley or Kings-
down, and, when found by hounds, go back to their
old haunts far away.

Now there is a legend that, one season. Lord Craven
had frequently found a fox at Nutley who always beat
him by going to ground in Petersfield Hanger, which
must be considerably more than twenty miles from
Nutley. He took the same line every time ; and there
was a field, a little beyond Preston Oakhills, which he
never failed to go through. So, one fine hunting
morning, his lordship sent on servants, with hounds

* A relation of mine knew of an instance somewhat similar.
A neighbourof his, who kept harriers on the Cotswold Hills, had
sent a hound to a pack in Essex, about twenty miles beyond
London. The hound had been taken through London ; I do not
know whether on foot or in a carriage. When he was taken out
with the pack in Essex, he was observed to be with them when
the first hare was killed, but was missed soon afterwards. Some
time in the next day, he was found at his old kennel in
Gloucestershire. Both these cases seem to prove that dogs are
directed to their point by some inexplicable instinct, though
they know nothing of the intermediate space which they have to
traverse.

C

1 8 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

and horses, to lie in wait near that spot, while he went
with another pack to Nutley, where he found his old
friend as usual. As soon as the fox showed himself
in the well-known field the fresh hounds were laid on ;
the men, as they came up, mounted their fresh horses,
and by means of this sharp practice the ill-used animal
was killed just as he w^as reaching the earths at Peters-
field Hanger. This story was told to my father by
an old gentleman of the neighbourhood who professed
to have been in the run. He was not a person remark-
able for veracity, but I think he would hardly have
invented the tale, though he may have embellished it.
In the days of the last William Lord Craven, a
pack of foxhounds was kept at Cruxeaston, as I
mentioned in my first letter. Their master was
known by the name of ' Dick Smith.' There seems
to be something in the name of Smith which ensures
superiority in the hunting field. We have known it
combined with the names of Assheton and Thomas ;
but the popular sportsman of that generation was
' Dick Smith.' It was usual to compare his pack with
the more costly establishment of the neighbouring
peer, rather to the disparagement of the latter. This
feeling seems to have found its expression in the
following whimsical story : —

One day, Lord Craven, being on rather bad terms
with his fox in Highclere Park, asked a labourer
whether he had seen the fox. The man, being a wag,
and sharing the popular opinion as to the superiority
of Mr. Smith's hounds, replied, ' O aye, I seen un, and
he stopped and had a bit of chat with me.' ' Indeed,'
said Lord Craven, * and what did he say to you } '
Why, he axed me if I could tell un, whether it was

Old Stories.

my Lord's hounds or the Squire's, as was a'ter un : so
I told un it was most Hkely my Lord's, abin* the Squire
was out yesterday. Ah ! says he, I thought so : that's
just how 'tis : that's the reason why I can stop and
have a bit of chat with you ; abin, you see, when the
Squire is a'ter me, I never have no time to spare.' But
the remainder of the story records, with great impar-
tiahty, how Lord Craven got the laugh on his side at
last; for he killed the fox, and, on his return home
through Highclere Park, told the labourer that his
friend had staid chatting with him too long.

I do not pretend to guarantee the truth of either of
these tales ; like the old minstrel,

I cannot say how the truth may be,
I tell the tale, as 'twas told to me.

But I have no doubt of the truth of the following
circumstances relating to Lord Stawell and his men,
for I had them from my father, who had hunted with
him, and whose accuracy might be depended on.

Lord Stawell kept a capital pack of foxhounds, and
occupied the eastern and northern parts of the present
H. H. Country, together with some parts now hunted
by Mr. Garth. He resided in the Holt Forest, between
Alton and Farnham, but used to stay a good deal
with the last Duke of Bolton at Hackwood. He lived
to the year 1820, but had discontinued hunting a few
years before the end of the last century.

His pack was exceedingly well managed. Harrison
the huntsman, and Sharpe the first whipper-in, were
excellent sportsmen, and worked well together. If

* In my youth, the old Hampshire peasants still used the word
' nhiv ' for ' becmise'

C 2

20 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

hounds came away from a cover on Sharpe's side, he
was competent to hunt them, and would always fall
back into his right place, when Harrison came up ;
while Harrison, quite free from jealousy, and satisfied
that all was right whilst Sharpe was forward, would
come on quietly waiting for a turn in his favor, instead
of distressing his horse by trying to catch hounds.

The Duke of York (brother to George IV.) at one
time kept a pack of foxhounds at Weybridge, and
had obtained permission, I know not from whom, for
some days' hunting in what is now the Vine Country.
Lord Stawell went to meet them from Hackwood,
much displeased at their coming, because he appre-
hended that the same favor might next be asked from
him. Accordingly he was in no very gracious mood,
and when on his return to dinner at Hackwood he was
asked his opinion of the pack, he is reported to have
replied, ' Sir, they are worse than you can possibly
imagine ; they can neither draw, nor run, nor hunt :
they all stink, and want brimstone ; there is only one
dog amongst them that looks in the least like a fox-
hound ; and the only thing worth going out for was to
hear old Squire Harwood grumbling and cursing the
huntsman for a fool'

Between the years 1788 and 1795, George IV., then
Prince of Wales, rented Kempshott, and hunted deer.
He wished to have Sharpe for his huntsman. Lord
Stawell informed the man of the promotion offered
him : but Sharpe declined it ; he urged that he had a
good place already ; that he was fond of foxhunting,
and knew that he could give satisfaction at it ; but
that he knew nothing of staghunting, and did not at
all fancy it. Lord Stawell is said to have replied to

Old Stories. 2 1

this effect. * That is all very well, Sharpe, but that is
not the point. You do not want to go, and I do not
want to lose you ; but neither you nor I must say no
to a Prince ; you must take the offer, and if you con-
tinue steady and respectable, it may be the making
of your fortune.* What makes this story interesting
is, that it gives the origin of a dynasty which has con-
tinued to this day, more than seventy years since the
conversation must have taken place. Sharpe became
huntsman to the Prince, and on the breaking-up of
his hunting establishment retired for awhile from the
royal service on a pension. During this time he was
huntsman to Mr. Hanbury in the Puckeridge Country,
and I believe to some other master of hounds : but in
18 1 3 the Duke of Richmond, leaving England to take
the government of Canada, presented his celebrated
pack of foxhounds to the Prince of Wales, then Prince
Regent. This was a great era in the history of the
Royal hunt. The old heavy staghounds, with which
King George III. had delighted to gallop leisurely
over the yet uninclosed country between Sandhurst
and Bray, were discarded ; the old fashioned yeomen
prickers shared their fate. All the foreign accessories
of hunting, which had prevailed, I suppose, since the
days of WiUiam III., were swept away; and Sharpe,
recalled to the Royal service, came out as huntsman to
a pack of light, quick foxhounds, attended with his
whippers-in, a style as nearly resembling English
foxhunting as staghunting can possibly assume. The
well-known Mr. Davis married his daughter, and still
holds the office of huntsman to the Royal staghounds,
which he may be considered as having inherited from
his father-in-law. All who have seen a print of Mr.

2 2 Recollections of the Vine Hunt,

Davis must know that his seat and figure present a
perfect model of a horseman, and all who have con-
versed with him will agree in thinking that his dig-
nified civility of manner, equally respectful and self-
respecting, is exactly adapted to his position, as the
head of the hunting servants of England.

The Prince, before he left Kempshott, attempted
to make his staghounds hunt fox, of which I must
say more hereafter. I believe that this did not con-
tinue long; probably it was in the season of 1794-5.
The first attempt was made by turning down a bag-
fox at Southington Scrubs. On this occasion, a sports-
man in that country, a fussy man, who liked to make
himself of consequence, took upon himself to lecture
Sharpe, who, be it remembered, had been whipper-in
to a firstrate pack of foxhounds, as to how he should
proceed. * Now, Sharpe, you must take care to kill
him, whatever you do ; never mind about sport to-
day, your business is to give your hounds blood. If
I were you, / would not give him more than five
minutes law.' Sharpens brief answer was a complete
set-down. ' You make yourself easy, and keep quiet ;
I am not going to give him more than one!'^

In December, 1808 (or 1809), occurred a very ex-
traordinary run with some harriers, belonging to Mr.
Jervoise, of Heriard House; the same gentleman who,

* Having written down these anecdotes from memory, fifty
years after I had heard them from my father, I had lately an
opportunity of asking Mr. Davis whether he thought them
correct. He told me that he had often heard Sharpe himself
tell the story of his retort in Southington Scrubbs, nearly in
the same words ; and that every thing else which I related about
Lord Stawell and Sharpe was quite consistent with what he
knew of his father-in-law's life.

Old Stories. 23

in 1820, succeeded Mr. Chute as Member for the
county of Hants. It was communicated to me by
Mr. Terry, now Hving near Maidenhead — the only
man who saw it.

The hounds were in Mr. Jervoise's cover, Henwood,
when Mr. Terry viewed away a fox, closely pursued by
three couple and a half of the hounds. As he was alone,
and down wind, and it was a windy mizzling day, Mr.
Terry was unable to make himself heard, and went
away alone. He crossed the Alton Road, near Wins-
lade, and went along Ellisfield Down, by Moundsmore
Farm, leaving the Oakhills to his left, and straight on
in the direction of Medsted. Here, however, Mr.
Terry got out of his knowledge, and can give little
account of the line taken. He seems to have crossed
the Alresford Road, between Windmill Hill and
Ropley, but he does not know at what point he
crossed the Gosport Road. At last he found himself,
according to the statement of a labourer, within two
miles of Petersfield. Here hounds and fox were
together in a wheat field, but both parties so ex-
hausted, that neither could mend their pace : it was
like the conclusion of the celebrated chase in the
Lady of the Lake —

Nor nearer could the dogs attain,
Nor farther could the quarry strain ; —

till Mr. Terry, having a little still left in his horse,
was able to head the fox into the hounds' mouths.
During this extraordinary run, which lasted about
three hours, and could scarcely have been accom-
plished in less than twenty miles, no one joined him.
Seven hounds and one horseman, not in scarlet, might

24 Recollectio7is of the Vi7ie Hunt.

slip through a country without attracting notice of
eye or ear. It is more remarkable that the hounds
never checked, but hung on the scent throughout; but
it is to be observed that they had the advantage of
running from a worse into a better scenting country,
so that the scent probably increased in proportion as
the hounds declined in strength. After giving himself,
his horse, and his little pack food and rest at Aires-
ford, Mr. Terry reached the kennel at Heriard between
ten and eleven o'clock ; but it must have been near
midnight before he regained his own home near Tun-
worth. Mr. Terry added that these seven hounds
ever afterwards showed an attachment to him, and
would leave the pack and come round his horse
whenever he hunted with them.

A little before I began to hunt, a man named
Cowley had been Mr. Chute's huntsman. I was told
that he was a very good one; and that, as George
Hickson, who was whipper-in to him, was excellent
in that office, the pack had been very successful during
this period. A curious circumstance took place while
Cowley was huntsman.

There was a gentleman well known in the hunt who
w^as a very good sportsman, but who, having been
bred a harehunter, entertained some notions which
sounded heretical in the ears of orthodox foxhunters.
Amongst others, he held that horseflesh was unne-
cessary and injurious to foxhounds ; that they would
be quite up to their work, and undoubtedly have
tenderer noses if they were fed only on oatmeal. Mr.
Chute's brother partly believed this, and between
them they persuaded the Squire to give the thing a
trial. In order to put the theory to the severest test,

Old Stories. 2 5

a day was chosen when they were to meet at Freefolk
Wood, twelve miles off, and by no means the easiest
of covers to encounter. On the previous day, the two
Mr. Chutes saw the hounds fed on their vegetable
diet, in order to be secure against any mistake ; but
as soon as they were safe in the house again, Cowley
said, ' Now, George, I tell you how it is, I won't stand
this nonsense ; I am not going to take my hounds to
Freefolk Wood on this catlap ;' and immediately he
threw down to the hounds some raw horseflesh which
he had cut up for the purpose. It chanced that the
hounds killed their fox handsomely at the end of a
very long day's work, to the great delight of the
gentleman who had suggested the experiment, and
who naturally considered it a conclusive proof of the
soundness of his theory. It is probable that no one
ever knew this secret till many years afterwards.
George, who, after Mr. Chute's death, became coach-
man to his widow, confided it to me as we were sitting
together in the barouche box, driving over Rooksdown.
I imagine, however, that this whim was not repeated.
Certainly, in my time, there was no want of horseflesh,
nor any deficiency in the condition of the hounds.

It is amongst the earliest of my hunting recollections
that Mr. Chute once gave Mr. St. John a few days'
hunting in his country. I think it must have been
about the year 18 12 or 18 13 that I saw Mr. St. John
find a fox at Waltham Wood, and after running
through Ashe Park, Dean Wood, and Nutley, lose him
in the open fields behind Quidhampton. Full thirty
years afterwards, as I was sitting with Mr. St. John at
the Board of Guardians, in the old Townhall of Wo-
kingham, I asked him if he recollected the circum-

26 Recollections of the Vme Hunt.

stance. His answer amused me : ' Recollect it ! to be
sure, I do. Now, do you know, I never could make
out to this day, where that fox could have gone to ;'
as if he had been thinking of it ever since.

I cannot put the date of my personal observation
of Mr. Chute's hounds later back than the season
1 8 1 3- 14, though I had been out with them occasionally
earlier. At that time, George Hickson had become
the huntsman. The first good run that I remember
was on the breaking up of the long frost of that
season, while the ground was still rotten, and the
snow lying on the north side of the fences ; but there
was a great scent. The meet was at Shothanger,
which was then a larger wood than it is now. After
a sharp, short burst in the morning, the hounds found
a second fox somewhere near Hannington ; went
down Freemantle Hill, over the common fields be-
tween Kingsclere and Wolverton, and, after two hours
very hard running, killed at Harridens. On that day
I first saw with hounds Mr. Thomas Smith, since so
well known as the head of the Hambledon, the Craven,
and the Pytcheley Hunts; one of the best riders, and
decidedly the ablest huntsman that I ever saw. He
was then a very young man, and probably did not
know an inch of the country, for he lived twenty miles
off, and chanced, I think, to be staying at the Vine ;
but his performances that day were worthy of his
future fame. He rode his grey mare straight down
Freemantle Hill, probably the safest way, but one
which no one else had nerve enough to attempt, as
the fourteen weeks' frost was not out of that northern
slope. Everyone else dismounted, and men and
horses were seen separately sliding down on their re-

Old Stories. 27

spective haunches. Of course Mr. Smith went away
by himself, nor was there much better chance of
catching him when he got amongst the small enclo-
sures and large fences of the woodlands. For myself,
a raw schoolboy, on a rawer four-year-old pony, I rode
in a state of great excitement, chiefly along lanes — in
which, however, I must plead in excuse that most of
my seniors were with me — content to catch sight now
and then of a tail hound crossing a road, till at last we
found Mr. Smith standing alone in a green space in
the middle of Harridens, with the brush in his hand,
and the hounds breaking up the fox around him. I re-
turned home with an ear of the animal in my pocket ;
for the pads had all been appropriated by my
betters, fully believing the whipper-in's solemn assur-
ance that, ' next to the brush, the lug was the most
sporting part of the fox, and well convinced that I had
been taking a part in the most glorious achievement
ever performed by hounds.

It happened that on May 6, 18 14, after regular
hunting had ceased, by some arrangement between
the two masters, Mr. Chute's hounds were to have a
private meet at Mr. Villebois' cover, Chilton Wood.
My father was invited to it. He was then preparing
me at home for Winchester School, and, to my great
disappointment, declined the invitation ; but in order
to console me wrote the following lines, which though
destitute of the poetry which is to be found in some
of his compositions, yet contains plenty of good sense.

' Why must this day be spent in books ? '
If I interpret right his looks,
My Edward seems to say :

28 Recollections of the Vine Hu)it.

' Why rest our horses in the stable,
To carry us completely able,
Oh, why not hunt to-day ? '

I'll tell you, boy, at once my reason ;
' For all on earth there is a season,'

So said an ancient prince.
Who had for wisdom some small credit ;
And that with perfect truth he said it.

Experience will convince.

When corn is housed, and fields are clear ;
And Autumn's various tints appear.

None more enjoy than I
To see the pack diffusely spread.
Or jostling press to gain the lead

With loud and cheerful cry.

The farmer then no cares molest,
He rides and halloos with the rest

Across his very farm ;
And if a field of new-sprung wheat
Just feel the print of horse's feet,

He knows we do no harm.

But when the wheat is higher grown,
And pease and oats and barley sown.

And fences made up tight,
To gallop all the country over.
And cut up sainfoin, corn, and clover,

Is neither fair nor right.

And small the joy, when new-sown grounds.
And dry roads puzzling oft the hound.

All hope of sport present ;
When violets in hedgerows growing.
And primroses in copses blowing

Must take away the scent.

Besides, thus still to persevere
In hunting almost round the year

Has but an awkward look ;
Might lead our neighbours to suspect.
That all improvement we neglect,

And rarely touch a book.

Old Stories. 29

Then over bank and hedge and ditch,
Let Members great and Brewers rich

Bound, the fleet pack to follow ;
Leading by turns the varying crash,
Let Haughty and let Gamester dash,

And George to Welcome halloo.

Let you and me meanwhile, my boy.
In work at home our hours employ.

And learn what we are able ;
At Winton else you'll roughly fare.
When you are placed beneath the care

Of Dr. Henry Gabell.

And when at Christmas, Wykeham's rule
Sends boys from Homer and from school,
To ponies and mincepies ;

0 may no frost your sport prevent.
But hazy, mild, and good for scent

Be January's skies.

May you, in every rapid burst.

Be near enough, though not the first.

Each leading hound to mark ;
And, when with eager haste they fling,
Light bounding o'er the Ha Ha spring

That fences Farley Park.

If near they meet, and fine the weather.
We will a gallop take together,

But do not wait for me :
The time has been when to be last

1 should have scorned, but that is past,
And ne'er again can be.

About the lanes I'll ride and skirt,

And sometimes be well splashed with dirt,

By half the passing field :
If quite thrown out, I'll home return.
Well satisfied from you to learn,

In what a style they killed.

And now having given my ideas concerning the
hunting of the last century, and having finished this

30 Recollections of the Vine Hu7it.

miscellany of Old Stones, I must turn to the graver
work of history. I must first try to trace out the origin
of the Vine Hunt ; next, give some account of the
hounds, horses, and men, as I first knew them myself
in the year 1814; and, lastly, record the history of
the pack from Mr. Chute's death in 1824, to the time
when I left off hunting in 1834.

LETTER III.

THE ORIGIN OF THE VINE HUNT.

NOW propose to trace out the origin of
Mr. Chute's foxhounds, and the boundaries
of the countries which he hunted at different
times; and also to ascertain who was his
immediate predecessor in each portion of them. No
.other parts of my letters are likely to give me half the
trouble which this has done. I doubt whether Mr.
Chute ever hunted up to a fox on the coldest scent
more laboriously than I have worked, in searching in
various quarters for facts almost buried in oblivion,
and in guarding myself from asserting anything that
did not rest on good authority. However, by the aid
of some kind friends, I think I have been enabled to
establish all the three points that I have mentioned.

The hounds first kept by Mr. Chute were large
harriers ; though it is probable that both he and they,
according to the irregular habits of those days, were
quite willing to go after a fox whenever they might
chance to come across one. He seems to have changed
the character of his pack gradually, procuring draft
foxhounds, and retaining some of his harriers to run
with them ; but never, so far as I can learn, breeding

The Origin of the Vine Hunt.

from the latter. Soon after Mr. Chute commenced
foxhunting, the Prince of Wales took the fancy which
I mentioned in my last letter of hunting foxes instead
of stags ; and Mr. Chute was required to give up to
his Royal Highness the country which he had so
lately acquired. With much reluctance he complied,
and again condescended to hare-hunting, not changing
his pack, but making a reduced number of the same
hounds hunt hare. But this state of things did not
last long; scarcely, I believe, through an entire season.
The Prince never fully occupied the country which he
had induced Mr. Chute to resign; and though professing
to hunt foxes, never entirely left off stag-hunting. Nor
was he very likely to go much into the Vale. The
rough Hampshire woodlands would have little at-
traction to one whose chief object in hunting was an
appetising gallop before dinner. There is no royal-
road through Bramley Frith, or Newlands, any more
than there is through Euclid. Accordingly, Mr. Chute
soon found Pamber forest full of foxes, which had been
driven from the hills. He and his pack were very
willing to return to their old game. He procured
fresh drafts of foxhounds, and declared, with a strong
asseveration, that he would never again give up his
country to prince, or peer, or peasant.

I obtained these particulars from Will. Biggs, who
had been Mr. Chute's huntsman through all these
changes, and had afterwards passed into the service
of Mr. Villebois, master of the H.H., as feeder, and
was then living on a pension from his latter master
near my house, in Berkshire. I got this information
from him about twenty years ago, at the request of
Mr. Fellowes, then master of the Vine hounds, who

Origin of the Vine Hunt. 33

wished to ascertain the date whence their existence
as a pack of foxhounds might be claimed. Will. Biggs
was as like a fox as a man could well be, with sharp
twinkling eyes, and a remarkably sly expression of
countenance. I believe that he had been a clever
huntsman. There was a story that, after he had killed
nineteen foxes in succession, Mr. Chute turned him
off for missing the twentieth. I need scarcely add
that this was a mere joke, and that there were more
valid reasons for discharging him. The old man
looked back with great regard to this early pack, and
evidently considered it to consist of more powerful and
effective hounds than those which Mr. Chute after-
wards bred.

I do not know exactly when Mr. Chute first began
to keep harriers. In one of Nimrod's letters in the
Sporting Magazine (April 1824), he speaks of him as
having been a master of hounds from a boy. This can
scarcely be literally true ; because Mr. Chute had been
no * home-keeping youth,' but had spent his early
years at Harrow and Cambridge, and on the Con-
tinent. It is certain, however, that he had kept
harriers during his father's lifetime, and, I think, equally
certain that he began to change them into foxhounds
very soon after succeeding to the property in 1790.
In the same article of the magazine it is stated, that
Mr. Chute had at that time been a master of fox-
hounds for thirty-two years. This would take us back
to the hunting season of 179 1-2. As Mr. Apperly
lived for two or three years near the Vine, I have
little doubt that he obtained this date from Mr. Chute
himself; and it agrees very well with the date which
I should arrive at by the following calculation. Ac-

D

34 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

cording to the evidence of Will. Biggs, Mr. Chute had
resumed hunting foxes, while the Prince was still at
Kempshot, and it is known that the Prince ceased
to reside there in 1795. Now the interval between
1 79 1 -2 and 1795 is not more than sufficient for all the
changes that I have mentioned, viz. the first change
from harriers to foxhounds ; the brief return to hare-
hunting ; and the final resumption of foxhunting. I
think, therefore, that we may fix on the season of
1 79 1 -2 as the date when they first became foxhounds,
and the season of 1794-5 as the time when they finally
ceased to hunt hare; so that, at any rate, the Vine
Hunt may now claim an uninterrupted existence of
seventy years.

Next to showing the origin of the pack, I have to
trace out the countries which Mr. Chute occupied at
different times ; fix the dates of his occupation, and
show who was his immediate predecessor in each ; and
for this task I happen to possess a peculiar advantage.
Circumstances put me in possession of Mr. Chute's
diary for the year 1798, in which are entered his places
of meeting for the latter half of one season, and the
first half of another. The authentic information
supplied to me by the accidental preservation of this
little pocket-book for nearly seventy years, seems to
exemplify the truth of an old proverb, and to multiply
it by ten, * Keep a thing seven years, and you will be
sure to find a use for it'

From this document, confirmed as it is in parts by
living testimony, it appears that Mr. Chute then drew
all the covers north of the Great Western Turnpike
Road, from Basingstoke to Nutley. His western and
northern boundary included North Oakley and Han-

Origin of the Vine Htmt. 35

nington, with the Dean's woods, Evvhurst, Pamber,
Ufton Park, Sulhamstead and Pinge wood ; his
eastern boundary seems to have been formed by the
River Loddon. On the south of the turnpike he drew
the St. John's and Bull's bushes country; but he did not
cross the lanes which run from Dean Gate to Pop-
ham Lane into what may be called the Freefolk wood
country ; nor did he draw the Pole's wood country,
Wolverton, the Kingsclere woodlands, Aldermaston
or Wasing. Mr. Chute seems to have been most fre-
quently between Pamber and Sulhamstead, at which
latter place he had an intimate friend and valuable
supporter in the father of the present Mr. Thoyts. All
that district was then far more favourable for hounds
than it now is. It presented a wide extent of heath
and scattered furze, with wet boggy bottoms ; very
little interrupted by enclosures and quite free from the
fir plantations, which have now swallowed up so much
of it. It seems also to have been well stocked with
foxes, for I find that in February, 1798, the hounds
met twice in one week at Mortimer, and killed a fox
each day.

But, though Mr. Chute's diary proves that he drew
the St. John's and Bull's bushes country, and though,
there is evidence* that Mr. Sclater Mathew drew them
before him, yet I ought to mention that the H.H.
conceived that they had a right to draw it also. I
think it must have been as late as the year 18 12 that
Mr. Villebois, having run a fox into that country,
drew those covers in his way home, for the purpose of

* Mr. Sclater Mathevv's nephew, the present Mr. Sclater of
Hoddington House, remembers that his uncle used to speak of
St. John's wood as his favourite meet.

D 2

36 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

asserting that right. I well remember the disturbance
which this caused amongst Mr. Chute's friends. The
claim, however, was strenuously resisted by the owners
of the woods at Manydown and Oakley Hall, and I
do not believe that it was ever revived.

Mr. Chute's immediate predecessor in all, or* nearly
all this country, was Mr. Sclater Mathew, an uncle
of Mr. Sclater of Hoddington House, who kept a pack
of foxhounds at Tangier Park. He lived to the year
1809, but had left off hunting many years before. I
can just remember him, and also his old huntsman,
John Adams, who remained as a sort of pensioner on
the family, and practised as a farrier and cow doctor,
whenever he was sober enough to exercise his calling.
There is a story that, on one occasion, when he was
especially drunk, he cut off a cow's tail at Oakley
Hall, and sent it into the house on a plate, declaring
that it would serve for Squire Bramston's dinner.

The country from Freefolk wood up to the road
from Dean Gate to Popham Lane, seems to have been
formerly separate from the rest of the present Vine
country. As such it was once held by Mr. Powlett,
though I am unable to say positively with what other
country he united it, or exactly when he ceased to
hunt it. However, my business is only to ascertain Mr.
Chute's immediate predecessor, and it is certain that,
quite at the beginning of the century, if not earlier, it
was held by Mr. Poyntz, who united it with the Pole's
wood country, the Kingsclere and Wolverton wood-
lands, Wasing, and Aldermaston. He hunted also

* I say nearly all, because I am not certain whether Mr.
Sclater Mathew hunted as far towards the Kennet and the
Loddon as Mr, Chute did.

Origin of the Vine Hunt. 37

good deal of country north of the Kennet, from his own
house at Midgham, and must have possessed a narrow-
strip of great length, from Freefolk wood and Black-
wood on the south to Bucklebury, if not farther, on
the north. Mr. Poyntz was a gentleman of large
property, and of a very old family. He was a very
odd and whimsical character; but his eccentricities
seem to have been of a kind and easy nature. I
have been told that he was by no means a scrupulous
respecter of boundaries ; but that, as water will find
its way into every vacant place, so his hounds were
sure to appear wherever they were not carefully
stopped out; but I suspect that this laxity of pro-
ceeding was a characteristic of the times rather than
of the man. Mr. Poyntz was much with the Prince at
Kempshot, a society for which he was quite qualified
by his birth and connections ; but perhaps, in common
with some other gentlemen of the country, he did not
come out, quite uninjured, from that Royal lion's den.
For many seasons he used to bring his hounds to Over-
ton, and establish himself at an inn, now pulled down,
but which I remember by the name of the Poyntz's
Arms. Here he, who had consorted with princes, made
a crony of the landlord, old Paice ; with whom, when he
became too infirm for riding, he used to be driven in
a chaise along the line which the hounds were to
draw. I have heard from various quarters that the
whole thing was strangely conducted. The master
left the men, and the men left the hounds, very much
to themselves. The huntsman was seldom sober : by
the end of the day the hounds were usually scattered
along the whole line of country which they had drawn ;
and the men were often content to return home with

38 Recollections of the Vine Hmit.

such hounds as they could easily get together, leaving
the rest to find their own way back to the kennel.
It may be remembered that Beckford declares himself
unable to enumerate all the evils which ensue when
hounds are thus left behind.

On Mr. Poyntz's death, which took place in May,
1809, Mr. Chute came into possession of the Freefolk
and Pole's wood country on the hills, and of Wolverton,
the Kingsclere woodlands, Wasing, and Aldermas-
ton in the Vale ; so that his immediate predecessors
in the Vine country were Mr. Sclater Mathew and
Mr. Poyntz.

But probably few people know that Mr. Chute did,
for a few seasons, occupy a country eastward of the
Loddon, towards Hartley Row. I do not know how
far he went in that direction ; but there does not seem
to have been any other pack just then to prevent his
going as far as he pleased. This district must have
formed part of the country hunted by Lord Stawell,
and his successor, Mr. Russell*, who lived at Hod-
dington House, and kept his hounds at Greywell ;
then always pronounced ' Gruel.' In 1805, Mr. Russell
gave up his country to Mr. Villebois, and the bulk of
it became incorporated in the H.H. country. It is
probable that the H.H. might plead an old right to it,
on account of Mr. Ridge having hunted it before the
establishment of Lord Stawell's pack. However this

* I remember Mr. Russell hunting regularly with the H. H.
and occasionally with Mr. Chute : he was a fine looking old man
with white hair, and was considered an authority on hunting
matters. I remember also his lady, who hunted as regularly,
attended by a well-mounted groom. She wore a dark skirted
habit with a scarlet body, adorned with the H.H. button. I
believe she was an honorary member of the club.

Origin of the Vine HunL 39

may be, the H.H. seemed not to have claimed, or at
least not to have cared to go across the Turnpike
road ; so that this district remained vacant for Mr.
Chute's occupation. I have heard George regret the
loss of this country, where, he said, there was almost
always scent enough to secure blood whenever it was
wanted. But when Mr. St. John established his fox-
hounds, Mr. Chute gave up to him this district, to-
gether with a strip of country on the west of the
Loddon, from Sherfield to Pinge wood, including
Beech Hill and Strathfieldsaye. Mr. St. John pur-
chased his foxhounds in 18 10* though he had pre-
viously attempted to kill foxes over the heaths with
his harriers, aided by one steady old foxhound. The
time, therefore, when Mr. St. John would have re-
quired this accommodation, agrees exactly with the
time when Mr. Chute acquired, on the other side of
his country, the places vacated by the death of Mr.
Poyntz. All circumstances, therefore, agree in point-
ing out the year 18 10 as that in which the Vine
country acquired its present boundaries. Since that
time it has experienced no permanent alterations.
Some temporary changes took place, by mutual
agreement between Mr. Assheton Smith, and Mr.
Fellowes, as to the occupation of Wherwell, Doles
and Doyley woods.")- During the few seasons that the

* My authority for the time when Mr. St. John purchased his
hounds is his son, the Rev. Edward St. John of West Court :
my authority for his previous attempts at foxhunting with his
harriers is his old friend and fellow sportsman, Mr. Blackall
Simonds.

t In Mr. Fellowes' times, the Vine hunted several times at
Crookham hangings, Sidmonton, and Adbury, but this was by
no general permission, but only by special invitation for the day.

40 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

Earl of Portsmouth kept the Vine hounds, he held
also some parts of the Craven country; but only
by a temporary arrangement, and not so as to
amalgamate the two countries together. Some of
the oldest portions of the Vine country have, of late
years, been occupied, by permission, by the South
Berks. Blackwood has always been neutral between
the Vine and the H.H. The triangle formed by
Knightsbridge, Kingsclere, and Dairy House, in-
cluding Frow Park, has always been neutral between
the Vine and the Craven ; but with these exceptions,
the Vine country has been held unchanged, in undis-
puted possession for more than fifty years. I have,
indeed, heard of other masters of foxhounds of a still
earlier date, occupying the same countries. Of Lord
Craven, Lord Stawell, and Mr. Smith of Cruxeaston,
I have already made mention. I believe, though I
am not certain, that previous to the days of Mr.
Sclater Mathew, a predecessor of his, Mr. Limbrey,
kept foxhounds at Tangier, in the old days, when it
was a deer park : I have also heard my father speak
of a Mr. Evelyn, a descendant of the celebrated John
Evelyn, a very polished and popular gentleman, who
kept hounds somewhere in that neighbourhood. But
all these are like shadowy objects looming indistinctly
through a fog, of which I am unable to fix the out-
lines. I have told all that I can hope to establish as
authentic history ; and I shall be well content if I have
been able to show, on good evidence, —

1st. The origin of the Vine hounds.
2nd. The countries occupied by them at different
times.

Origin of the Vine Hunt. 41

3rd. Mr. Chute's immediate predecesssor in each
portion of his country.

I shall close this letter with an account of a long
run from Pamber Forest to Laverstock wood, written
by Mr. Chute to his brother Thomas, then a captain
in the Hants Light Dragoons, stationed at Lewes.
The run took place on Tuesday, Nov. 20, 1798, within
a few days of my birth. The original letter is in my
possession.

' The Vyne, Wednesday.
^Dear Bro :

' Such a touch yesterday as never seen before in my

time. At \ past twelve (a hard frosty morning),

found his honor of immense size in the long copse

in Spring Lane in Pamber forest, with a pretty little

drag. Will talio'd him across y® lane, but hounds

would not come to halloo, however, with very bad

scent, only 2 or 3 dogs owning it, hunted him by

Timber gate and to y® Turnpike road, for Lee Copse,

and back through y® forest, by Gander brook, along

y® hollow copse on left of Spring Lane. This took

j of an hour, recovered him in y^ copse next y®

mill, on right of Lord's Lane, came off at his brush,

y® same track back, but came to picking thro' y®

Forest, till we crossed y® Turnpike, and then came

prettily for Lee Copse, Tadly Place, and down to

Witch Lane, where I believe he stopped again, for

he was only 2 or 3 minutes before them over West

Heath, where the water flew beautifully whilst they

caught it carrying a head, and took a burst to Han-

ington Scrubs, where we overtook them. I think

you will say, pretty well, but it is nothing to what I

have to say. Going thro' Macreth's copse on this side

42 Recollections of the Vme Hunt.

the water, I stopped to get Will's mare over the rails,
and so lost the fine run over y® Lawn*, and to y® top
of his shrubbery, when I overtook Curtis, and heard
y^ curs going into y® Dean's Woods, down y® hill and
thro' y® wood into second long field, across to y^ gap
into y® heavy stony field that was turnips last year,
up to y® barn. Here I stopped Black Mare for wind,
but she soon recovered, and spun up y® steep stony
lane for Hanington, where I overtook them going into
first scrubs all together, but rather slack. He turned
then into y^ green lane again, at this end of the second
scrubs, to y® end of it, and then bore for Canon Park,
hunting it across fallows, in y® open, curs recovered
their wind and laid on again, but came to a fault by
overrunning it in a path (from Hannington Scrubs to
y® end he seemed at a loss as he could not find a gap
and run down the hedges instead of topping them
and not going straight). Here a halloo on y^ Warren
showed Will's stupidity, for instead of going as he
ought up to the man with hounds close by him, he
encourages them to spread, by which means away
they go after rabbits, and then on forward where the

* The lawn and shrubbery of Ewhurst, where lived Sir Robert
Macreth, an Indian Nabob. Two men, named Macreth and
Rumbold, after having been fellow-servants at an hotel in Lon-
don, acquired large fortunes in India ; but Rumbold, who had been
the under-servant in England, became the richer and greater of
the two in India. This change in their relations to each other
was celebrated in the following epigram : —

When Bob Macreth, with upper-servant's pride,
* Here fellow, clean my shoes,' to Rumbold cried,

He meekly answered, ' Yea, Bob.'
But since returned from India's plundered land,
The purse-proud Rumbold, at the same command,

Would stoutly answer, ' Na-Bob.'

Origin of the Vine Hunt, 43

man pointed for the chance of getting y® scent, so we
were left at a loss where to find it, back to y® man
and then forward again, and at last casting beyond
the Warren, we got on again slowish, but pretty
hunting over North Oakley Down, thro' Nutley,
Kingsdown to Quidhampton, back of Lefroy's *
house, cross over y® Turnpike at y® hill beyond
Lefroy's to y^ cottage in y® lane, and up y® lane
thro' y^ copse, I believe this is Burydown, next to
Ash Park, left Bramdown, y® large wood to y® left
(I don't know which is which of Burydown, Bram-
down and Burleigh), and took y® open country at
back of Overton, turned to y® left (large fields) thro'
Ouidham, Southleys, and across to Laverstock Wood,
where y® sun down, all animals moving, we had 2
or 3 scents, and so called away, — had there been
light I think we must have killed, curs not tired, and
fox ran four hours and a half, and frost against us in
the hill. Curtis dished, Black Mare worth any money,
Vanity (Ld. Eg.) incomparable, y^ old hounds kept us
back very often.

' Yours, in haste,

' W. Chute.'

This letter may be considered interesting, not only
as a specimen of Mr. Chute's style of writing, but as
indicating the state of the hunt in those early days,
through which I have been attempting to trace it.

It implies the scantiness of the field. No one figured
in this long run but Curtis, the landlord of the Angel
Inn at Basingstoke. I have been told that he was,
about this time, by far the most constant attendant in

* Lefroy's house was Ashe Parsonage.

44 Recollections of the Vifie Hunt.

the field, and that he was often useful in assisting the
hounds. It betrays the imperfect constitution of the
pack, consisting probably of drafts from different
kennels, with some unsteady hounds flashing at rab-
bits, and some old and worn-out ones keeping the
others back. It incidentally confirms the fact that
Mr. Chute did not then possess the Freefolk wood
country; for he describes minutely the woods and
fields up to the turnpike road at Ashe ; but as soon
as he has passed that boundary, he is uncertain as to
the names of some of the principal covers, because he
had got out of his own country.

LETTER IV.

THE HOUNDS AND HORSES.

HATEVER might have been the style of
hound with which Mr. Chute began his fox-
hunting career, he had brought them to the
standard which he desired before I began to
observe them. Mr. Chute, though by no means a
good sportsman in the field, had a nice eye both for the
shape and the condition of a hound ; and, at any rate,
knew precisely the kind of animal which he himself
preferred ; and certainly he succeeded in breeding a
pack peculiar in their shape and character, and ex-
ceedingly well adapted for the country in which they
were to work. They were very small, or, at least, very
low. The dogs were about twenty-one inches in height,
the bitches about nineteen or twenty, though I have
known him enter some much lower. But, as it has
often been said that the size of a horse has little to
do with his height, so the real power of Mr. Chute's
hounds was far greater than these measurements
would indicate. They were long and deep in the
body, with backs slightly arched, excellent fore-legs
and feet, and the very best set of loins and thighs that
I ever saw got together. They were all bone and
muscle, without any lumber to carry , and I never

46 Recollections of the Vine Hnnt.

saw a coarse or throaty hound amongst them. Mr.
Chute loved to boast no man could make his finger
and thumb meet round the arm of his model dog,
Larkspur, yet Larkspur was by no means the tallest
dog in the kennel. They were perhaps rather too
short in the neck : the back part of the head was
broad, the nose long and pointed ; and as the kennel
mark was a slit cut in the upper lip, there was a pecu-
liarly sharp expression in their countenance. In colour
they were very dark, of rich tan and black, but many
of them had small white flecks sprinkled, like snow
flakes, over their black and tan coats. A yellow or
badger-pied hound was rarely seen amongst them ; and
Mr. Chute had a peculiar aversion to a hound who had
one side of the head and face white. I remember his
entering one such who proved too good to be drafted ;
but his master was never reconciled to him, and I fear
that poor Romulus often got a cut from his whip in
consequence of his bald face. They were chiefly bred
from the Egremont blood ; but as Mr. Chute oftea
visited at Castle Ashby, not far from the Duke of
Grafton's kennel, he sometimes obtained there a very
useful cross of a somewhat larger type. He always
considered ' Newforest Jasper' to be the chief ancestor
of his pack, and the model to which he desired to
bring them. Newforest Jasper was a hound of great
fame in his day, and much bred from. He was bred
by Lord Egremont, but obtained his name and fame
as one of the pack of Mr. Gilbert, of the Newforest,
a cotemporary and friend of the grandfather of the
present Sir William Heathcote.* Mr. Chute had a

* There is at Hursley Park a half-length painting, by Gardiner,
of this Mr. Gilbert, together with his friend Sir W. Heathcote

The Hounds and Horses. 47

picture of this beautiful hound painted by Mrs.
Chute, and hung up In his hounds' lodging room.
He said that as great families had the portrait of
some distinguished ancestor, the judge, or the general,
or the statesman, in their rooms, he did not see why
the dogs should not have their family pictures also.
Of these hounds I think he generally had about thirty
couples ; and the establishment well deserved the
motto which he had painted over the kennel-door,
' Multum in parvo.'

It is more difficult to describe their style of work
than their form. Mr. Apperly, who wrote popular
articles for the Sporting Magazine, between thirty
and forty years ago, under the name of Nimrod, gives
an account of them in one number, which, if I re-
member right, begins with nearly these words, * When
I lived at Beaurepaire, I had a neighbour who kept
a very neat little pack of foxhounds, which used to
blaze away over the Hampshire Hills, whenever they
could catch hold of a scent ; and, small as they were,
it was not a bad nag who could enjoy himself for an
hour in their company.'* Over a country they were

and one of Sir William's sons, the father of the present baronet.
Mr. Gilbert is holding in his hand the head of a fox just killed,
to which a little terrier is jumping up. Parts of their horses ap-
pear behind, and fill up the back-ground of the picture.

* Mr. Apperly himself was apt to be much nearer to them at
the beginning than at the end of the hour. He was frequently
seen going very well for a short time, but he never cared to ride
up to hounds throughout a run. No doubt he could have done
so if he had chosen, for he was good horseman, and bold enough
to encounter greater difficulties than Hampshire usually presents ;
but he hunted more for business than for pleasure. A little, per-
haps, to sell his horse, but much more for the purpose of col-
lecting materials for his very cleverly written articles, so that his
object was to get out as often as he could with few horses.

48 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

very quick and lively, spreading wide at a check, but
carrying a better head, and covering less ground when
running hard than most hounds do ; and this pecu-
liarity, together with their uniformly dark colour, oc-
casioned more difficulty in distinguishing one hound
from another in a run, than in any other pack that I
ever saw. They had plenty of tongue, but it was of
a lighter and more treble tone than that of ordinary
foxhounds. The faults chiefly to be watched against
were unsteadiness, wildness, and overrunning the scent.
Their peculiar merit was in cover, while their faults
came out chiefly in the open. They spread very wide
in drawing, yet got together with wonderful rapidity
when a fox was found. I never saw hounds who
could push through a strong cover so quickly. In a
run, they generally came out of a large wood on better
terms with their fox than when they entered it. It
was not unusual for strangers, who had gone well with
them over the country, to be completely thrown out
by a cover like Bramdown or Waltham Trinlies : they
would imagine that the wood aflbrded an opportunity
for a pull at their horses, and consequently slacken
their pace, and see no more of the run. A gentle-
man from a distant country, who chanced to be
hunting one season with the Vine, was much struck
by this quality in the pack. He said he should
like to see ten couple of these hounds, ten couple of
the Duke of Beaufort's, and ten couple of any other
crack pack, put into a large wood to find a fox, and
he was confident that a large majority of the ten
couple that came out first with him would be the
Vine hounds.

I had once a remarkable opportunity of testing the
merits of this breed of hounds in cover. It was in

The Hounds and Horses. 49

January, 182 1, that I had three days' roebuck-hunting
with a gentleman near Blandford, in the large woods
on his own estate, and round Milton Abbey, into
which the roebuck had been introduced many years
before. This gentleman had originally kept harriers,
and had not thought fit to alter his kind of hound
when he made this important change in the game that
they were to pursue. They were large powerful harriers,
without any apparent cross of the foxhound; but he
had received from Mr. Chute a brother and sister
named Valiant and Vanity. These were very good
and handsome, and in their prime, having been drafted
by Mr. Chute at the end of the first season only be-
cause they were rather too small to satisfy even him.
They were not higher than the average of the pack ;
and I was told that over the open they did not run
away from them. On that point, however, I can say
nothing ; for we never got half a mile away from the
woods in the course of the three days. But the manner
in which these two foxhounds beat the whole pack
of harriers in the woods was remarkable. From the
moment that the game was found, their light tongues
were heard at head. Whenever the scent crossed a
ride, they were over it, and out of sight, before the
rest had appeared. The longer the work continued,
the greater became the interval between them and the
others ; till at last it came to be Vanity and Valiant
pressing the roebuck, and the rest of the pack making
much noise and little progress on the line behind them.
I thought that this might have taught their owner
that he was breeding the wrong sort of animal for his
purpose.

I was assured, indeed, that these hounds not unfre-
E

50 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

quently had long runs over the Dorsetshire hills ; or,
still better, into the Vale of Blackmore ; and that on
such occasions they usually killed. I learnt also that
the roebuck, when beaten, does not stand at bay, like
a stag, but runs his head into some hedge or thicket,
and kicks violently with his hind legs. I suppose his
instinct tells him that his short horns, leaning back-
wards, and having no point projecting forwards, could
not be brought to bear effectually on an enemy. I
did not see a roebuck killed, nor much distressed ;
nor was it very likely that I should, as in those large
woods we were continually changing, and there were
only two hounds in the pack that could press their
game hard.

There is little to be said about Mr. Chute's horses;
they were very inferior to his hounds, both in quality
and condition. He could not afford to give high
prices for them, and was often content to pick up for
a moderate sum any young horse which he had seen
going tolerably well with a farmer. Accordingly,
they were apt to be either underbred, or undersized,
or in some way or other below the mark. He kept
six horses for himself and his two men ; a number
scarcely sufficient, even if the horses had been of a
higher quality ; but the Vine is not a severe country
for horses, and Mr. Chute did not generally make long
days.

From early in May to the middle of August these
horses were turned out, day and night, without corn,
in the pasture between the house and the water, which
was never mown. This was a good pasture, sound
and cool for their feet, affording plenty of shade and
water; and where they were constantly under the

The Hou7ids and Horses. 5 1

master's eye ; but they generally became too fat. Mr.
Chute had a custom of physicking them, while out at
grass, with some mild medicine which he procured
from a man at Norwich. In those days clipping was
unknown, nor were the advantages of hot water and
flannel bandages generally appreciated. The differ-
ence between good and bad grooming was much more
apparent then than it is now, and the grooming at
the Vine was not first-rate. Accordingly, it was a
general remark that Chute's horses were seldom fit
to go till the season was half over. From this cir-
cumstance, as well as from a general deficiency of
riding power in the field, it often happened that the
hounds got away by themselves. I remember that in
my boyish enthusiasm for Mr. Chute's hounds, and in
my inexperience of other packs which were better
ridden to, I used to consider this as a great honour to
the hounds, and a sure proof of their superiority in
speed over the H.H., who were not in the habit of
beating their field in the same manner.*

And this may be as good a place as any to give
a few miscellaneous particulars connected with the
pack.

They generally hunted five times in a fortnight.
That is to say, they took a third day in the week
whenever they could. Mr. Chute never advertised,

* At that time there was no want of good riders with the H.H.
Besides others well deserving to be mentioned, if that hunt were
my subject, there were the Greenwoods of Brookwood House, ac-
complished in every kind of horsemanship, military or sporting,
by land or by water ; and Knight of Chawton House, whose quiet
effective style of getting across a country was a model of sports-
manlike and gentlemanlike riding : always with hounds, and
never over them.

E 2

52 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

and seldom fixed more than one day at a time. Even
when hunting with him, you could not always learn the
next day's meet till late in the day. It depended on the
work done, and the number of hounds which happened
to be cut by flints, whether he would hunt twice or
three times in that week, and whether on the hills or in
the vale. They did very little in cub-hunting, nor was
that little conducted in a manner beneficial to the
hounds; in the dryest and hottest morning in Sep-
tember, Mr. Chute would leave a half-beaten cub in
cover, to go after an old fox over a country quite
unfit for riding. Often, when regular hunting began
in the last week of October, they had not killed more
than two brace of foxes. No doubt his hounds would
have been steadier and better if his entry had been
allowed to kill a reasonable number of cubs, and had
not been taken staring over an open country before
they had learned to trust to their noses in cover. Mr.
Chute's country was amply sufficient for his number
of hunting days, and was well stocked with old foxes.
A blank was rare, and most of the foxes that he killed
were after good runs, and were well deserved by
hounds. I think he usually killed from fifteen to
eighteen brace in a season, and the hounds were not
often long out of blood. Halfcrowns were collected
for the men whenever a fox was killed after a fair
run. The men wore round hats, and long scarlet
coats, which could lap over and defend their knees
against wet or cold. The huntsman carried a small
twisted bugle, slung over his shoulder by a strap — a
more melodious instrument, but less convenient, than
the straight horn usually carried at the saddle-bow.
It is not heard so far off", is less easily handled when

The Hounds and Horses,

53

galloping-, and might cause injury if a man were to
fall with it under him. I believe Mr. Chute generally
carried such a one in his coat-pocket, and I know
that one was always to be seen lying about in the
gunroom at the Vine ; but he seldom used it, and was
not very successful in his attempts to blow it.

LETTER V.

THE MEN,

FTER the hounds and horses, I must at-
tempt some description of the men — ser-
vants, gentlemen, and others — whom I found
in Mr. Chute's field when first I began to
observe them. I reserve the master for a Letter to
himself; and therefore first in importance comes the
huntsman. George Hickson had been so long known,
as whipper-in, by the name of * George,' that when he
became huntsman he never attained to the dignity of
a surname, but was still called ' George.' He was a
light, neatly-made man, with a handsome counte-
nance, and a most melodious voice. He possessed
also, in a high degree, two very useful qualifications
for his office: a long sight, which could discern objects
at a great distance ; and, what was more important,
an accuracy of ear which enabled him to distinguish
the tongue of almost every hound in his pack. Yet,
with these natural advantages, he was far from being
a very good huntsman, at least after the fox was
found ; for up to that point, I do not know that I ever
saw a better. He brought out his hounds in faultless
condition, and drew a cover remarkably well : not

The Men. 55

according to the new system, in which the huntsman
walks almost silently through the cover, with every
hound in sight, covering only the small space between
him and the whippers-in, on each side of him; but
according to the old system of leaving hounds to find
the fox by themselves, trusting them to draw wide,*
allowing them plenty of time for the operation, and
frequently speaking to them loudly and cheerily, that
they may always know where their huntsman is, and
have no fear of being left behind. George's accuracy
of ear secured him from ever being mistaken in en-
couraging a hound, though his pack in general was
far from being steady from riot. To see these hounds
spread themselves into all the angles and recesses
of Great Dean, or of Sandford wood, find their fox
in some remote corner, and get together like a flock
of starlings, was as satisfactory a thing, in its way,

* Mr. Codrington, who hunted the Old Berkshire country about
the year 1820, carried this style of drawing a wood to an extreme.
People were surprised to see how long he would remain in one
spot, in the middle of a strong cover, while his hounds were
spreading far and wide round him. He trained his horses to
stand perfectly still, so that he might be sure to hear any distant
challenge ; but he had acquired a ludicrous habit of continuing
this training after it had ceased to be required, and was often to
be heard expostulating with his horse in this manner : ' Whoo !
stand still, you brute ; be quiet, can't you ? ' — when the animal
had not moved a muscle. Mr. Codrington hunted his hounds
himself ; and though too heavy to ride well up to them, was es-
teemed a first-rate judge of hunting. His pack was by far the
most unsizeable I ever saw, containing specimens of almost
the largest and the smallest possible foxhounds. So long as
they ran and worked well together, about which he was very
particular, he did not object to this disparity of size ; but perhaps
rather prided himself on being able to get animals so dissimilar
in appearance to pack perfectly well together.

56 Recollections of the Vine Htmt.

as a sportsman could witness. But as soon as they
began to run across a country, little dependance
could be placed on George : not so much, I think,
from any deficiency in clearness of head, or in know-
ledge of the habits of the fox, as from the fatal
fact that, when hounds ran hard, he was seldom with
them. On the hills, this might have been chiefly the
fault of his horses ; in the vale, it was caused by his
wretched style of riding, getting off and leading
his horse over the most ordinary fences. Now, a
huntsman who is not habitually with his hounds
cannot hope to keep them long on good terms with
their fox. Whatever other good qualities he may
possess must be neutralised by this one defect. Such
a man may, perhaps, occasionally recover a lost fox
by a wide cast, and may show talent and judgment
in so doing ; but though he may thus get them out of
difficulties^ he cannot perform the rnore important
office of keeping them f'oin getting into difficulties :
he cannot give them immediate assistance at the mo-
ment when it could be most easily rendered, and
would be most effectual. Moreover, if neither master
nor huntsman is sufficiently forward to keep the field
in order, further mischief is sure to ensue. Ignorant
or over-eager horsemen press on, and carry the hounds
beyond the point where the scent had failed ; the
huntsman comes up in total ignorance how far the
hounds had made it good, which way they were lean-
ing, how far they had probably been overridden ;
whether there had been anything ahead likely to
turn the fox; ignorant, in short, of every circum-
stance which might have directed him in making his
cast. From such causes it often happened that the

The Men. 57

/.rst check which Mr. Chute's hounds came to lost
the fox.

George, however, retained his place, except for a
very brief interval, during his kind master's life. Once,
indeed, Mr. Chute was persuaded to supersede him ;
and to procure a huntsman named Cane from some
distant county, I think Norfolk. I do not believe that
he was a man of much ability, but it must be con-
fessed that he was scarcely allowed a fair trial in a
strange country. Mr. Chute had deposed George
most reluctantly, and was very glad in his heart
when the new man did not seem to succeed. About
Christmas, when, according to the laudable custom
which now seems to be obsolete, a hard frost set
in. Cane asked leave to go home and see his friends.
Mr. Chute told him that he was most welcome to go,
but that he need not take the trouble to come back
again. The man was discharged, and when the frost
broke, George came out again at the head of the
hounds ; and Tom Chute observed, ' My brother was
delighted to find himself " cum canibus, sine Called '

It was Mr. Chute's foible that he permitted his
servants to use familiar and disrespectful language
towards him, and I cannot acquit George of great
blame for taking an undue advantage of this
indulgence. The two instances which I will record
may seem to some scarcely credible ; but I assure
you that on both occasions I was close by, and
heard the words myself

Mr. Chute had bought a horse called Whiskey, and
mounted George on him for one season. This horse
proved to be a capital hunter, by far the best that I
remember in his stables. The next season Mr. Chute,

58 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

to George's great disgust, took Whiskey for his own
riding. Early in that season we had a very good ring
from Nutley, by Somerdown, through Manydown and
Tangier Parks, and round by Long Coppice and North
Oakley back to Nutley. The first part was slow, from
the going off of a white frost, but in Tangier Park
hounds suddenly began to run hard, and slipped away
from most of the field, including Mr. Chute on Whiskey.
George and I, with two or three others, chanced to be
well with them. On approaching Nutley we came to
a large fallow, where the hounds, though not actually
brought to a check, had to feel their way across it,
feathering on a weak scent which they could scarcely
speak to. George was giving them his whole atten-
tion, as at such a critical moment he ought to do,
when up came Mr. Chute in the parallel furrow by
George's side, and began vexing him with questions.
* George, where have you been } What hounds have
been at head .-* Which of them have been doing it }
George, why don't you answer me .'' ' George, still
intent on his hounds, vouchsafed neither look nor
word. At last, as the master reiterated his questions,
the servant turned round to him and said, ' You have
gone and taken away my best horse from me : why
don't you ride up and look for yourself, if you want
to know what hounds are about .-* '

On another occasion we were drawing Blackwood,
a cover very full of riot, neutral between Mr. Chute
and the H. H. As Mr. Villebois himself and several
other members of that hunt were out with us, it was
desirable that everything should go well : but alas !
in a short time more puppies were running hare in
various directions than any one whipper-in could pes-

The Men. 59

sibly cope with. Amidst all this disturbance, how-
ever, George's fine ear could distinguish Larkspur,
throwing his tongue from time to time on the drag of
a fox : to this he was giving his full attention, cheer-
ing the old hound, and trying to get the others up to
him : but his master persisted in riding close to him,
and pestering him with ill-timed questions — ' George,
is that right ? What hound is that ? Will it do,
George ? ' — till the man, not unreasonably provoked,
retorted, ' How can I tell unless I listen ? and how
am I to listen if you keep chattering so ? Do be quiet
for a minute. You make a worse noise to-day than
ever you did.'

I may add that these words were also heard by
Mr. Villebois, who told me afterwards the following
circumstance connected with them, Mr. Chute had
begun that season with remarkable success, having
killed many foxes with short quick runs. A gentle-
man, a great champion of the hunt, who had a habit
of speaking of the pack almost as if it was his own,
had boasted of this to Mr. Villebois, saying, ' You
really ought to come and look at tis : we are got to
such a pitch of perfection that we cannot lose a fox!
* Well,' said Villebois, with his peculiar look, when re-
lating this to me, * this made me open my eyes, for I
had hunted in Hampshire for twenty years, and I had
always found it easy enough to lose a fox : so I went
to Blackwood to have a look at these invincibles ; and
you well remember that what we learned there was
only what we knew before — our good old friend's easy
temper, and the way in which his servants take ad-
vantage of it.' I cannot help adding, however, in
justice to the gentleman who had boasted of the pack,

6o Recollectio7is of the Vine Hunt.

that, though nothing was done with the Blackwood fox,
yet that same day ended with a fast forty minutes,
and a kill in the open.

The only whipper-in of whom I have anything to
record was a good-humoured broad-shouldered fellow
known to us only by the nickname of Pop, which he
had inherited from his father, a veteran post-boy at
Overton. Pop had been huntsman to a powerful
pack of harriers kept by Mr. Twinam at Whitchurch,
which used to go very fast over the open country be-
tween that town and Winchester Race-course. Pop,
however, occupied a higher position after leaving the
Vine, for he became huntsman to Mr. Charles Craven,
of Brighton, who was master of the foxhounds then
called the East Sussex, but now the Southdown ; the
title of East Sussex being transferred to another
pack occupying a country between Eastbourne and
Hastings. Mr. Craven was an excellent sportsman,
and a patient and considerate master, and under his
guidance Pop became a very fair huntsman. When
he rose to this dignity, his nickname dropped from
him, and he became known by his proper appellation
of George Hennessey. Being inland bred, he never
could clearly comprehend the law of tides. On one
occasion, when the day's sport had ended under the
Newhaven cliffs, George proposed to go home along
the beach, by a track passable only at low water.
Lord Gage — who knew most things, whether by land
or sea, in that country — expressed some doubt as
to the state of the tide. ' Well, my Lord,' replied
George, ' I fancy the tide generally is out about this
time of day.'

And now I must try to recall the principal persons

The Men. 6i

who constituted Mr. Chute's field when I first hunted.
I say nothing of the various alterations which were
continually taking place afterwards. The habitual
red-coats are soon enumerated. First I must place
the two Mr. Portals : for they and Sir Peter Pole's
family, having large landed property, and being very
friendly to hunting in general, and to Mr. Chute in
particular, were his most influential supporters. In-
deed I have been told that at a time when Mr. Chute's
income was known to be scarcely equal to his ex-
penses, they, and a few other friends, wished to sub-
scribe towards the maintenance of an establishment
from which they obtained so much amusement, but
the friendly offer was declined. And of the two
brothers I must place

1st. The younger, Mr. John Portal, of Freefolk
House, for he was by far the most regular attendant
of the two, and knew and cared the most about
hunting. He was himself, at different times, master
of excellent packs of harriers. He, on his beautiful
thorough-bred bay horse Sultan,* could go any pace,
and last any time, and had a singular power of keep-
ing close to hounds without taking many fences. He
seldom came into the vale, from which his residence
was distant.

2nd. The elder brother, Mr. William Portal, of La-
verstoke House ; sitting very erect on his horse, and

* Sultan was once sold for a very high price to a gentleman
near Windsor, but proved useless to him, because, though he
possessed eminently the speedy and lasting qualities of a racer,
together with the hunter's power of going through heavy ground,
yet he was deficient in one accomplishment which is generally
thought essential to a hunter : he could not be made to fence. I
believe that he eventually returned to the Freefolk stables.

62 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

generally attended by a groom; not equal to his
brother as a sportsman, but liking the sport, and very
ready to ride over fences.

3rd. Mr. Apletree, of Goldings, near Basingstoke ;
not very fast, nor very forward.

4th. Mr. Edward Golding, of Maiden Earley, near
Reading; then lately married, and living at Quid-
hampton. He, with his gray Arabian, presented a very
neat specimen of a light weight and his hunter : he
went admirably, but did not remain long to adorn
our field.

5th. Mr. Sclater, of Hoddington House ; then a
young man, living with his aunt at Tangier Park.

6th. Mr. Abraham Pole, who was often staying
with his family at Wolverton Park, but did not reside
in this country.

7th. Mr. Wither, of Manydown* father of the present
Mr. Lovelace Wither, of Tangier, hunted frequently.

Then comes a list of black-coats, including some
of the best sportsmen in the field : —

I St., and far first, I must put Mr. Henry Pole, of
Wolverton, now living at Waltham Place, near Maiden-
head. He had at one time managed a pack of harriers

•^ I well remember this Mr. Wither's father, Mr. Bigg Wither,
grandfather to the present Sir Wm. Heathcote, from whom I re-
ceived kindness when a child. I do not believe that he had ever
been a sportsman, but he was held in high respect throughout
the country, for his strong sense and high principles. It is
said that on one occasion, at some county meeting, when Mr.
Bio-c Wither, and a magistrate remarkable for the loudness of
his voice, had been in the minority, another gentleman who had
also been on the losing side observed, ' Well, though we were
outvoted, yet we may have the comfort of thinking that both the
voice and the sense of the meeting were really with us.'

The Men. 63

for his father, Sir Peter Pole ; and I have been told
that they were very perfect, both in themselves, and
in the manner in which they were handled. He was
an excellent sportsman, and, what was more rare with
us, was really a good rider across a country. I have
often seen him go away from us all, on his beautiful
little bay horse Bonaparte, who always carried his
long neck and small head very high, like a giraffe,
and went as if he enjoyed fast pace and heavy
ground.

2nd. Mr. Edward St. John, of Ashe Park, brother to
the master of hounds at Finchampstead. He had a
full share of the family taste for hunting. He rode
very quietly : always knowing what hounds were
about ; and when to turn, and when to make play :
without looking to anyone else, or showing the least
jealousy of others being before him.

3rd. Mr. John Orde, of Winslade ; on a brown horse,
who had a strange trick of carrying his tongue pro-
truding out of his mouth, just above the bit, where it
soon got covered with dirt. Mr. Orde was a sports-
man, and went in a fair place both on the hills and in
the vale.

4th. The old Rector of Baughurst, a gentleman of
the most wooden and inexpressive countenance im-
aginable. He seldom spoke, unless spoken to ; and
was rarely seen within a field or two of hounds : but
he loved hunting in his own way, and went quite as
well in the vale as on the hills.

5th. I must not omit our master's brother, Mr.
Thomas Chute ; for though he was with us only half
the season, yet he was an important member of the
hunt. He resided on the family property in Norfolk,

64 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

but, about Christmas, used to bring his horses to
the Vine, for the remainder of the season. He was
a better sportsman, and a far bolder rider, than his
brother. His horses were well bred, and good in
themselves, but had generally the fault of being not
quite up to his weight.

Then follow some neither red nor black. Mr
Deersley, father-in-law to Mr. St. John, and living with
him, hunted a good deal. He was a fine old man,
and a bold rider for his age; he was always well
mounted, and perhaps a little too much inclined to be
diffuse on the merits and value of his horse. I re-
member, one day when a young man was looking
doubtfully at a low drop leap, Mr. Deersley rode over
it, saying, ' Come along. Sir, you will be ashamed
not to follow an old man of seventy.'

Mr. William Wickham, of Bullington, with two neat
little horses, a bay and a gray, used to hunt with us
whenever the hounds came on his side of the country.
His brother James more rarely.

My old friend Charles Harwood, of Dean, came out
as often as he could, on a well shaped but not perfectly
sound old horse, called ' The Kicker,' * which had
been given to him by Mr. Chute. Charles farmed the

* ' The Kicker ' was so-called on account of the consequences
which followed every attempt to touch him on the rump. George
made a curious use of this peculiarity. Mr. Chute's huntsman
and whipper-in used to clear the course at the Basingstoke Races,
in their scarlet coats, where they cut as conspicuous a figure pro-
portionately, at this little meeting, as Mr. Davis and his attendants,
in their royal liveries, do at Ascot. When George, mounted on
The Kicker, found the mob inclined to close in again too soon
after he had passed along the ropes, he just touched The Kicker
on the rump, who immediately justified his name, and compelled
the crowd to keep their distance.

The Men. 65

family property; but he loved hunting better than
farming, and, I suspect, knew much more about it.
He certainly was no exception to the low standard of
riding which prevailed in that field ; and the present
hard-riding generation would scarcely believe at how
small a fence he would dismount ; but he really knew
a great deal about hunting, by hereditary instinct I
suppose, and would have been an excellent sports-
man if he had enjoyed a wider field of observation ;
but he had scarcely seen any other pack, except oc-
casionally the H.H., which he thought it his duty to
undervalue, out of loyalty to Mr. Chute ; and so he
rested in an undisturbed conviction that ^ Chute's
hounds were the very best that ever had been, and
that ever would be.'

Alas ! while I write these letters, I learn that the
Dean property is sold, and that the name of Harwood
is no longer to be found amongst the landed gentry of
Hants. As an old Hampshire man, I must be permitted
to regret this loss. The Harwoods were an old family,
with some racy peculiarities of character. They had
supplied the county with a sheriff in the days of
Queen Anne. I believe that I was acquainted with the
sixth and the seventh John Harwood, who had held
the estate in uninterrupted succession. On the death
of the last John, who was a clergyman and an excellent
man, his brother Charles succeeded to the property,
and was the last male who possessed it. It has been
supposed that Fielding took the idea of his Squire
Western from the John Harwood of his day ; and as
Fielding used to visit at Oakley Hall, it is not impro-
bable that some features of his immortal Tory Squire
might have been copied from this original.

F

66 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

The town of Basingstoke supplied several foxhun-
ters. Mr. Warne the lawyer, more than one member
of the May family, and now and then, for a short
time, between one patient and another, Mr. Charles
Lyford the surgeon, * enjoying it exceedingly. Two
generations of the Curtis family, who kept the
Angel Inn and farmed largely, were regular attend-
ants ; with a large number of Tubbs and other farmers,
all keen sportsmen, and some of them good ones.

But the most remarkable person of this class, or
rather of a class peculiar to himself, was old Wyse, a
civil, respectful mannered, elderly man, exceedingly
fond of hunting, who drove Rogers' coach every day,
Sundays excepted, from Southampton to Popham
Lane in the morning, and back to Southampton in the
afternoon. He arrived at the Flower Pots, Popham
Lane, soon after tenVclock, and left it between three
and four. Either the H.H. or Mr. Chute was sure
to be within a few miles of this central place, two or
three days in the week. Thus he was able to see the
whole or part of many runs. He always had a rea-

* Charles Lyford really knew something about hunting. Not
so his father, the old doctor. I remember him a fine, tall, old
man, with such a flaxen wig as is not to be seen or conceived by
this generation. This wig he used to ' dispart with biennially^
(as Sir Walter Scott expresses it), and to bestow the reversion of
it, every second year, on an old man in our parish, as tall and fine
looking as himself, producing thereby a ludicrous resemblance
between the peasant and the doctor. It is recorded of him that,
having accidentally fallen in with the hounds when checked, he
caused great confusion by galloping up in a very excited state,
waving his hat, and exclaiming, ' Tally-ho ! Mr. Chute. Tally-
ho ! Mr. Chute.* Not that he had seen the fox, but because he
imagined that ' Tally-ho ! ' was the word with which foxhunters
ordinarily greeted each other in the field.

The Men. 67

sonably good horse standing at the Flower Pots.
Sometimes he sold one to a gentleman of either hunt,
who all knew and noticed him. The first time I was
allowed to go out hunting without my father, I was
placed especially under his care ; and as he used also
to drive me to and from Winchester School several
times in the year, I came to look upon him as an old
friend.

There were, of course, others whom I have forgotten;
but these, I think, were the chief notables in the field
at the time of which I am writing. The ordinary
number might have been from twenty to thirty horse-
men, though on some occasions there were many
more.

If I had written a generation or two earlier, I might
probably have had to record that a general improve-
ment in the manners and language of sportsmen had
taken place within my recollection. Beckford indeed
claims this improvement for his own times. He ob-
serves, in his fourteenth letter, that ^ the intemperance,
clownishness, and ignorance of the old foxhunter
are quite worn out ; ' and that * foxhunting is now
become the amusement of gentlemen, nor need any
gentleman be ashamed of it' How far this was gene-
rally true of the sportsmen of his day, I do not pre-
tend to say. Mr. Beckford himself was undoubtedly
an instance of a foxhunter of cultivated mind, literary
taste, and no inconsiderable talent ; but this I can
positively assert, that, in my youth, the manners and
language of the hunting field were as refined and
gentlemanlike as in the dining and drawing rooms of
the neighbourhood. One great change, however, has
taken place, within my recollection, in the society of

F 2

68 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

the hunting field, from the almost total withdrawal of
the clergy from it. In Mr. Chute's field they chanced
to form almost a majority of the gentlemen who re-
gularly hunted with him, because there happened to
be several unbeneficed clergymen, of private fortune,
residing in the country, who were fond of hunting.
But in those days, any country clergyman was ex-
pected to hunt, if he liked it, just as much as he was
expected to dine out with his neighbours ; nor was he
supposed to derogate from his character, or to impair
his influence with his parishioners, by the one indul-
gence more than by the other. The withdrawal of
the clergy from the hunting field in these days has
doubtless been accompanied with a general elevation
of their character, and with a greater devotion to
their peculiar duties ; but to the society in the hunt-
ing field the loss of this class of men may perhaps
have rather a lowering tendency.

LETTER VL

WILLIAM JOHN CHUTE, ESQ., OF THE VINE, M.P.

T is with much diffidence that I attempt a
description of the person and character of
Mr. Chute himself. FamiHar as I was with
him from my earliest childhood, I have my-
self a distinct image of him before my eyes; but I can
present to others only a faint and vague reflection of
that image ; and indeed few now remain, after a lapse
of forty years, who could judge of the likeness, or
take any interest in the picture. It might be easy to
hit off some of the broader features of his character ;
but it contained also some more delicate traits, without
which the sketch would be a mere caricature ; and how
am I to describe the singular mixture of shrewdness
and weakness, original humour, high animal spirits,
and perfect temper, all combined with the manners
and good taste of a true gentleman, which made
Mr. Chute exactly what he was, and entirely unlike
any other person .^

Mr. Chute had a fair, round face, with a most agree-
able countenance, expressive of good humour and
intelligence. He was rather short, but remarkably
well-made, with full, well-rounded limbs, indicating

70 Recollections of the Vine Hunt,

both strength and activity. I wish I could make
others see him, as I can fancy that I see him myself,
trotting up to the meet at Freefolk Wood, or St. John's,
sitting rather loose on his horse, and his clothes rather
loose upon him — the scarlet coat flapping open, a
little whitened at the collar by the contact of his hair
powder and the friction of his pig-tail ; the frill of
his shirt above, and his gold watchchain and seal
below, both rather prominent, the short knee-breeches
scarcely meeting the boot-tops. See ! he rides up ;
probably with some original amusing remark, at any
rate with a cheerful greeting to his friends, a nod
and kindly word to the farmers, and some laughing
notice of the schoolboy on his pony.

Or I could give quite a different picture of him in
his parish church — standing upright, tilting his heavy
folio prayer-book on the edge of his high pew, so that
he had to look tip rather than down on it. There he
stands, like Sir Roger de Coverley, giving out the
responses in an audible tone, with an occasional glance
to see what tenants were at church, and what school
children were misbehaving; and I am sorry to add,
sometimes, especially when the rustic psalmody began
its discord in the gallery, with a humour which even
church could not restrain, making some significant
gesture to provoke a smile from me and other young
persons in the pew.

Mr. Chute was educated. at Harrow, where Mr.
Spencer Perceval, afterwards the murdered prime
minister, was his fag ; and the elder brother. Lord
Arden, his cotemporary and friend. I believe that he
always kept up as much intimacy with the Perceval
family as their different courses through life per-

William John Chute, Esq. 71

mitted ; and his old schoolfellow's son, Mr. Arthur
Perceval, was the clergyman who ministered to him
in his last illness. From Harrow he went to Clare
Hall at Cambridge, and afterwards spent some time
at Angers in France. The consequence was that he
could speak French with a very good accent, and
was fond of burlesquing the shrugs and grimaces of
the old-fashioned French mode of salutation.

Mr. Chute succeeded to the family property on the
death of his father in 1790; and in the same year
was returned on the Tory interest for the county of
Hants, together with Sir William Heathcote, the
grandfather of the present baronet ; but this success
was sullied by a great affliction to Mr. Chute in the
death of his beloved brother Chaloner, who was
carried off by a fever contracted by his exertions in
canvassing. His opponents had been Lord John
Russell, father of the late Duke of Bedford and of the
present Earl Russell, and Mr. Clarke Jervoise of Ids-
worth House, and the contest had been a severe one.
Mr. Chute lost his seat for a few months in 1806,
when the death of Pitt gave occasion for the short-
lived administration of Fox and Grenville, known at
the time by the title of ' All the Talents.' On this
occasion Sir WilHam Heathcote retired, and Mr.
Chute fought the Tory battle in conjunction with
Sir Henry Mildmay of Dogmersfield Park ; but in
those war-times the Portsmouth Dockyards supplied
so many voters who were nominees of the existing
administration, that they could generally turn the
balance between the Whig and Tory constituencies
of the county ; and accordingly Mr. Chute and his
colleague were beaten by Mr. Herbert, the great

72 Recollections of the Vine Htmt,

uncle of the present Earl of Carnarvon, and Mr.
Thistlethwaite of Southwick Park, after a very sharp
contest, which is the first political event that I can
recollect. As soon as the Duke of Portland became
minister, shortly after the death of Fox, the two
Tory candidates were returned without difficulty. In
1 808, Sir Henry Mildmay died, and his place, as
county member, was occupied by Mr. (afterwards Sir
Thomas) Heathcote. He and Mr. Chute retained
their seats without any serious opposition tilfthe year
1820, when both, though still unopposed, voluntarily
resigned, and were succeeded by Mr, Fleming of
Stoneham Park, a Tory, and Mr. Jervoise of Herriard
House, a Whig.

In 1793, Mr. Chute married Elizabeth, daughter of
Joshua Smith, Esq., of Earle Stoke, Wilts, and mem-
ber for Devizes ; a woman of rare excellence, whose
memory I cherish with so much respect and gratitude
that I am unwilling to connect it more than is neces-
sary with the subjects of these light memoirs. Of
her I will only record that, while her secret good deeds
were countless, the only one displayed to the world
was the spire which she added to the parish church of
Sherborne St. John. Mr. Chute's health and strength
seemed to remain unimpaired to the end of the
hunting season in the spring of 1824 ; but very soon
afterwards appeared the first symptoms of the malady
which terminated his life, at the house of a near re-
lation in Portland Place, London, on December 13,
1824, in the 68th year of his age.

Mr. Chute's pursuits were very far from literary ;
but he showed natural good taste, both in music and
in his appreciation of the merits of any book that he

William yohn Chute, Esq, J2>

might have been induced to read. I have been told
that he wrote the following graceful and appropri-
ate epitaph on his sister, Miss Chute, still to be seen,
I suppose, in the churchyard of Oakley, in which
village she had spent the latter years of her life : —

With all who did her bounties know or share

A decent sorrow ever will remain :
A grateful village owns her fostering care ;

A grateful village mourns her loss in vain.

I know that, to the very last, he would occasionally
send me Latin verses, of which perhaps neither the
grammar nor the prosody would be quite defensible,
on any sporting event which had taken hold of his
fancy — the last lingering relics of his Harrow school-
days ! ' Servabit odorem Testa diu.'

Under his light and joyous manners, Mr. Chute
concealed much sensibility of feeling, and strong
family affections. His attachment to his surviving
brother was great ; and he could never speak of his
deceased brother Chaloner without emotion ; but such
feelings were seldom displayed by him, grave and
painful thoughts were alien from his disposition. He
loved rather to extract amusement for himself and for
others out of the daily occurrences of life, and to
diffuse cheerfulness around him. His influence on
the home circle was well expressed to me, almost in
the words of the old song, by one who had lived with
him from childhood — ' the very sound of his step upon
* the stairs was like music in the house.'

He was exceedingly temperate in his habits. Few
men, who take such strong exercise, eat or drink so
sparingly as he did. A few slices of thin bread and

74 Recollectio7is of the Vine Hunt,

butter, and sometimes a small sausage roll, with a cup
of green tea, was the breakfast on which he usually set
forth on his long day's work, but the little which he
took must be of the very best quality. He had more
than a woman's delicacy of taste, and was even fanci-
ful in his eating and drinking. He would send away
his plate in disgust, if he was told that the rabbit
which he was eating was a homebred and not a wild
one. He disliked the idea of bread and butter spread
by a man ; the rule at the Vine was that this operation
should be performed by one of the maid servants. His
few glasses of wine must be of the best old port. For
claret he had a great contempt, and I have heard him
declare that his butler, old Bush, could make as good
stuff as that out of the washings of his port wine
glasses.

I must try to give some idea of Mr. Chute's peculiar
vein of humour, his readiness in repartee, and his
oddities ; and I know no other way of doing this than
by giving a few instances. Each one perhaps singly
may seem to be trivial, and scarce worth record-
ing ; but it is only by many minute touches that a
likeness can be produced, either by the pen or the
pencil.

Sir John Cope, who professed Radical politics, once
wrote to Mr. Chute, that he had a litter of five dogs
in that year's entry, whose names all had pretty much
the same meaning, for they were Placeman, Parson,
Pensioner, Pilferer, and Plunderer. But the Tory
Squire, with ready invention, retorted that he would
show him a litter of which the five names were equally
synonymous, being Radical, Rebel, Regicide, Ruffian,
and Rascal.

^ William yohn Chute, Esq. 75

In a long run from St. John's to Chawton Park, Mr.
Chute got into trouble at the fence out of Bradley-
Wood. He slipped as he was leading his horse, and
the animal trod heavily on his thigh. We who were
near were in great alarm, but he got up with no other
injury than a bruise. Mr. John Portal expressed his
delight that it was no worse, saying, ' Egad, I thought
we were going to lose our member^ * Did you } '
replied Mr. Chute, rubbing the injured part. * Well, I
can tell you / thought I was going to lose mme'

One day, paying his coal bill in Basingstoke, he
complained of the high price charged. 'Well, sir,'
replied the coal merchant rather pertly, ' you must re-
member that coals is coals, in these times.' * Indeed,'
rejoined Mr. Chute, * I am glad to hear you say so :
for what you have sent me lately have been mostly
s/aUs.^

But his peculiarities perhaps came out more in his
oddities than in his wit. He was very fond of sending
notes and messages by any chance conveyance, rather
than by a servant or the post. It often happened
that such communications miscarried, so that the earth
which he had intended to have stopped remained open,
to the injury of the next day's sport. When I was
living near Newbury, he wanted, one day, to let me
know where his hounds were to meet ; so falling in
with a beggar, who professed to be going towards
Newbury, he gave him some money, and a note to be
delivered to me. Of course the man found out my
residence, in hopes of receiving a second donation ; of
course too the note came too late to be of any use,
and cost more both to Mr. Chute and to me than the
postage, even in those ante-Rowland Hill days, would
have amounted to.

76 Recollections of the Vine Htmt,

Mr. Chute had a whimsical objection to seeing a
horse lying down in the stable in the daytime. If he
found the horses which had been hunted the day before
in this comfortable and salutary posture, he would stir
them up with his stick, saying that it was not respect-
ful in a horse to lie down before his master; and that
it looked as if they were tired, which was just what
they were, and what they had a right to be. I can
say nothing in favour either of the good sense or the
humanity of this strange fancy.

But some of his most characteristic oddities came
out in his manner of quizzing his old bailiff, Coxe,
who managed the home farm, in the success of which
his own interests were concerned. Mr. Chute took an
actual pleasure in this man's failures, and was most
especially delighted whenever the hay intended for
farm purposes was injured, after he had secured all
that he required for his hunters in good condition. I
once expressed to him my concern at having seen
some of his hay long out in the rain. * My hay ! ' said
he, * what do you mean } I've no hay out. I got up
all mine famously last week.' I mentioned the field
of his in which I had observed it. ' O, pooh ! 'said he,
' that was not my hay, that was Coxe's ! Silly fellow !
it serves him right, and I am glad of it ; he might have
got it all up a week ago, if he had had any sense.'

But though Mr. Chute was thus bright and amusing,
yet it cannot be said that he succeeded eminently in
any of his main objects of pursuit in life. It always
seemed to me to be the fault of his mind that he
fixed his attention on little, instead of on great matters,
and often mistook exceptions for rules. He was acute
in observing minute points, in which he thought he

William yohit. Chute, Esq. 77

could improve on the common practice, while he dis-
regarded the great principles by which success is to
be attained. Thus, he was devoted to hunting, but
he was neither a good rider,* nor, as I have before
intimated, a good sportsman. He was regardless of
some of the fundamental rules of foxhunting ; he
interfered too much, and often injudiciously with his
huntsman ; he had a kind of boyish eagerness for the
immediate pleasure of a scurry across the country,
without any consideration for the good of his hounds.
But, in spite of all this, his popularity with his field
was unbounded ; and I have heard it said, ^ After all,
one would rather have middling sport with Chute,
than better with any one else.*

Perhaps it would not be fair to reckon success in
public life amongst the objects of his pursuit, and to
pass judgment on him for failing to attain distinction
in it ; for though he held for thirty years the high posi-
tion of representative of the undivided county of Hants,
yet he was brought into this situation by circumstances
without much desire on his part, and he never really
put forth his energies in that direction ; but it must
be confessed that, excepting his great popularity, he
manifested none of the qualities which would now be
thought requisite for such an office. He was not a
good man of business, and paid little attention to it.

* Beckford would have admired Mr. Chute's style of riding ;
for he says, in his seventeenth letter, that ' the best way of riding^
is to ' dismount at once when you come to a leap which you do
not like to take, for in looking about for easier places much time
is lost.' Mr. Chute was very decided in dismounting at once,
and was quick and active in the whole operation ; so that though
never well with hounds through a fast thing, he was seldom
actually thrown out.

78 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

he was a very poor speaker in public, and could not
even express with fluency the common-places which
many men, very inferior to him in intelligence, acquire
the habit of uttering with ease. But he served his
generation ; he was a steady supporter of Government
under Pitt, Portland, Perceval, and Liverpool : ministers
could always reckon on his vote, and his constituents
were satisfied with him.

But his most remarkable and most important
failure was in the management of his own estate. He
was always in want of money ; for he kept foxhounds,
represented the county, and maintained a very large
old house, and a prominent position in the neigh-
bourhood, on an income which many would have
thought scarcely sufficient for any one of these de-
mands on it ; and no doubt all these services might
have been better performed, if his means had been
more ample. On the other hand, his estate was sin-
gularly capable of improvement. Its clay soil and
small enclosures were overrun with oak timber ; it re-
quired clearing like an American forest, and draining
like an Irish bog. In those days oak timber was of
great value ; and he might have cut many thousand
pounds' worth of it, and have increased the annual
rents of his estate by doing so. But he never could
bring himself to make any change. Conservative
as he was in his politics (though the word was not
then invented), he was still more conservative in
his tastes and feelings. By him no hedgerow was
grubbed, no sunshine let in upon his woodland fields,
no land drained, no roads improved. His delight
was to keep everything exactly as he had found it,
and he loved to take his visitors to a stately grove

William Johi Chute, Esq. 79

of oaks near his kennel, and tell them that it was his
* picture gallery/

But though Mr. Chute might be defective in these
points, yet was he eminently successful, and that
without effort or design on his part, in winning the
affection of all who knew him. It was not what he
did, but what he was, which secured this success to
him. He was the very personification of cheerfulness
and friendliness. No one ever saw him out of temper,
out of patience, or out of spirits. No one ever heard
him utter an ill-natured remark, or a coarse expression.
If there was little in his talents or his tone of mind to
command admiration, yet was there much to attach,
and nothing to be afraid of. Accordingly he was re-
garded with an affection which grew in proportion as
he was longer or better known. The servant who
took undue liberties with him when alive, was miser-
able at his death ; and the agony of grief shown by
his brother at his funeral was the most terrible thing-
of the kind that I ever witnessed, and recalled to my
mind Scott's observation in Marmion, how fearful a

thing it is,

When
We see the tears of bearded men.

NOTE.

The Vyne (or Vine, for it has been spelt each way at dif-
ferent times) appears to have been the habitation of man
before the commencement of English history. Its vicinity to
Silchester, and its position near the great road leading from
that station to Winchester, could scarcely fail to bring it
early under the notice of the Romans ; and accordingly tra-
dition says that it was one of the places where they attempted
to introduce the culture of the Vine under the sunless skies of

8o Recollections of the Vine Hunt

Britain in the reign of the Emperor Probus. The plant it-
self probably deteriorated, but the name took firm root, and
has flourished through nearly sixteen centuries. The spade
and pickaxe continually discover the foundations of buildings
in various directions, and probably of many different dates ;
but history knows nothing of the place before the reign of
Henry VIII., when the present house was built by Lord
Sandys, whose family had for some time previously possessed
the property, and occupied a smaller mansion on nearly the
same site. In spite of many changes effected in the edifice
in the course of the innovating eighteenth century, unmis-
takable marks of the Tudor style are still to be found in the
chapel and some other parts of the house. The fine stained
glass in the chapel is said to have been plundered from
a religious house in France, when Lord Sandys accompa-
nied Henry VIII. at the siege and capture of Boulogne in
1544. When Queen EHzabeth, late in her reign, visited the
Marquis of Winchester at Basing House, the French Am-
bassador and his suite were received at the Vine, for the
convenience of being near her Majesty.

In 1654 the estate was purchased by Chaloner Chute, a
lawyer of eminence and of moderate politics, who was re-
tained in some of the state trials of those troubled times, and
at last died occupying the high office of Speaker of the
House of Commons in Richard Cromwell's brief parliament.
There is in the chapel a monument representing him in his
speaker's robes, recumbent on a high altar tomb, admirably
executed by a sculptor named Banks, who went afterwards to
Russia. This monument was erected in 1776 by Mr. John
Chute, the friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole, who
also made many alterations and designed many others, in
more questionable taste, both inside and outside the house.

Since the year 1654, this estate has never been sold, but
transmitted, either by inheritance from father to son, or by
bequest to more distant relations, who have always borne the
name of Chute.

LETTER VII.

THE VINE HUNT, 1824— 1834.

URING the remainder of the season, after
Mr. Chute's death, the hounds went out
occasionally, with only a groom acting as
whipper-in, and very few of Mr. Chute's
friends had any heart or inclination to go out with
them. The pack had become the property of his
brother, the Rev. Thomas Vere Chute ; and he told
me that, if he had been a layman, he would certainly
have continued them himself. As it was, it became a
matter of some anxiety to settle into whose care they
were to be confided. Undoubtedly, * the first choice!
as they say at Eton, was Mr. John Portal. His pro-
perty in the hunt, his long experience as a sportsman,
his old and intimate friendship with the late master,
all combined to point him out as his most appropriate
successor. I do not know whether Mr. Chute had,
during his illness, expressed any such wish to his
brother, though I think it not improbable that he did
so ; but it is certain that Mr. Thomas Chute offered
to give the pack to Mr. Portal. That gentleman,
however, declined to accept the onerous gift, and
it was still necessary to look out for a master.

G

82 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

A very fit one was found in Mr. Abraham Pole,
brother to Sir Peter Pole of Wolverton Park. The
following extract from a letter addressed to me by Mr.
T. Chute, dated March 13th, 1825, will show the con-
ditions which he annexed to the gift. * The hounds
are gone to the care of Mr. Abraham Pole, for whom
was raised a sum of 800/. by twelve of the gentlemen
present at the meeting at Overton, some giving 100/.,
some 50/., some 25/. ; and, as they complimented me
as considering me present, I gave them 100/. also, and
I believe the required sum was immediately obtained.
I have parted with the pack on certain conditions.
That if the country is not hunted to the satisfaction
of the gentlemen of the country, or when the gentle-
man who takes the hounds wishes to decline the
management, they are to be returned to me again,
consisting of the same number of efifective hounds as
when received, and also of the same number of un-
entered ones ; the same breed and sort to be continued ;
as it was the wish and desire of my poor brother, the
last time we talked about them, being well convinced,
from long experience, that none could be better cal-
culated for the country which they hunted ; so that
we still have ensured a continuance and preservation
of the old sort, I hope, for many years.'

Mr. Abraham Pole purchased West Ham, added
largely to the house, and built stables, which still
remain, together with kennels and a huntsman's resi-
dence, which stood only a short time. He was a good
sportsman, and the establishment with which he com-
menced was a very effective one, with horses of a class
superior to those which Mr. Chute had possessed.
Circumstances induced him to give up the hounds at

The Vine Hunt, from 1824 to 1834. 83

the close of his first season, but not before he had
conferred permanent benefits on the hunt, by the
introduction of some valuable blood from the Duke
of Beaufort's kennel, and, still more, by having brought
Adamson into the country as huntsman. In the
spring of 1826, the hounds were made over to the
gentlemen of the country ; but as no one of them
chose to undertake the management, Mr. Beaver, a
gentleman not much connected with the neighbour-
hood, was appointed to act as master : but this
arrangement did not give entire satisfaction, and
lasted only one year. In the spring of 1827, Mr.
Henry Fellowes, then presiding over the establish-
ment at Hurstbourne Park, was induced to undertake
the management, and the pack, under the title of * The
Vine Hounds! * emerging from the difficulties which
such a continual change of masters could not but
cause, began a long career of success. Mr. Fellowes
retained the management, with a brief interval, for
some time after I had ceased to hunt, in 1834. I do
not remember precisely in what year he made it over
finally to a Committee. Subsequently Captain Main-
waring was the master for several seasons. For a few
seasons they were kept by the present Earl of Ports-
mouth, and once they unhappily fell into the hands of
a low person, who brought discredit upon the hunt.
I rejoice to know that the country is now again hunted
by a gentleman and a sportsman ; and though I am

* When the gentlemen of the country received the pack from
Mr. Abraham Pole, they gave it this title ; for the purpose of
perpetuating the memory of the old friend who had founded it.
The Vine leaf on the button had been worn in Mr. Chute's
days, but the hounds had been called simply ' Mr. Chute's.'

G 2

84 Recollections of the Vine Hunt,

never likely to see his hounds, I always hear with
satisfaction of the sport which he has shown, and the
popularity which he enjoys.

I knew pretty well all that the Vine hounds did
during the first six or seven years of Mr. Fellowes's
administration, for I hunted with him during some
part of all those seasons, and corresponded with him
when absent. I will try to record some particulars of
that period.

Mr. Apperly, writing for the ' Sporting Magazine ' in
Nov. 1827, nearly three years after Mr. Chute's death,
observes the great improvement in size and power
which had taken place in the pack during that interval,
and seems to attribute the change to the huntsman
Adamson. The improvement is true, but it was a mis-
take to suppose that it was due to Adamson. As the
opinion which Mr. Apperly there expresses about the
appearance of Mr. Chute's hounds, as he had known
them in 1822-23, is far less favourable than that which
I have given of them a few years earlier, I must offer
some explanation of the difference. In that interval the
pack had deteriorated. A terrible malady had broken
out in the kennel, which, though pronounced on medi-
cal authority not to be hydrophobia, yet bore a fearful
resemblance to that disease. A great many hounds
died of it ; and much anxiety was felt for the hunts-
man, who was supposed to have been bitten by one
of them. It became necessary for Mr. Chute to recruit
his numbers, which he did, partly by drafts from Mr.
Lumley Saville, of which, however, only two hounds
proved to be of much value ; and partly by retain-
ing in his own entries for two or three years hounds
which, under other circumstances, would have been

The Vine Hunt y from 1824 /^ 1834. 85

rejected as being under the mark. It must also be
admitted that Mr. Chute had for some years been
breeding too exclusively from his own dogs, without
infusing that fresh blood which is continually required;
not to change the sort, but to keep it up to its proper
standard, and to prevent the degeneracy which is
the sure consequence of breeding ' in and in' Thus
not only the size and beauty of the pack, but also
their quality, had suffered. The faults inherent in
the breed had come out more strongly. When
Adamson took the pack in hand, they were inferior
to what they had been five years before, and be-
came five years later. There were three high-flying
bitches, of whom he did not like to take out any two
together; because, when they began to race jealously
against each other, they cared little how far they left
the scent behind them. But the slow process of im-
provement was already begun. In the last year of Mr.
Chute's life I had persuaded him, chiefly through the
influence of his brother, to try a cross from the cele-
brated John Warde, at the Craven kennel, which was
certainly going at once to the fountain-head, both for
power and for steadiness. Mr. T. Chute went to Mr.
Warde's kennel, and selected two dogs. Voucher and
Dragon, and the produce of each was a litter of
excellent hounds, who were afterwards bred from.*

* One of these hounds, called Villager, became celebrated for
his beauty and goodness, and was much bred from in his own
and in other kennels. My old friend, William Windham of
Dinton, an excellent judge, but whose prepossessions were all in
favour of a larger style of hound, pronounced the Vine Villager
to be the handsomest foxhound he had ever seen. This hound
never would enter to a scent till late in his first season.

86 Recollections of the Vine Hunt,

Mr. Pole did equal good by obtaining, I know not
by what influence, 'a first-rate dog called Racer, from
the Duke of Beaufort. He certainly could not have
been drafted for any fault, for he had none : he was
only a two or three years' hunter, perfect in shape and
in work. This hound ran for several seasons in the
pack, and helped to improve them by his stock. Mr.
Fellowes continued this good beginning by sending
occasionally, though sparingly, to some dog in the
kennel of Mr. Assheton Smith, Mr. Villebois, or Sir
John Cope. The result was that, during the six or
seven years of which I am now speaking, the Vine
hounds were more full of power than they had been
when Mr. Apperly had first known them : not that any
individual hound was larger, or of a different stamp
from what Mr. Chute had originally bred, but that all
were brought up to nearly the same standard, and
no under-sized bitches were allowed amongst them.
Certainly their old character remained unimpaired :
their brilliancy in cover and their industry in hunting
were generally admitted. The master of another pack
of foxhounds, an excellent judge, observed to me, at
that time, that the Vine hounds seemed to him to do as
much work at a check, in one minute, as most hounds
do in tzvo ; and if I were to be asked which I con-
sidered the best pack of foxhounds I had ever hunted
with, though I might hesitate to answer the question,
yet certainly there are none whom I could set before
the Vine hounds during the first five years of Mr.
Fellowes' mastership. I do not know exactly at
what time, or by what degrees, their character was
altered ; but I know that the change was completely
effected by the year 1 848. I do not mean to say that

The Vine Hunt, from 1824/^ 1834. '^'j

they had become a worse pack of hounds, for of that
I had no means of judging ; but that they had become
a very different pack. In the February of that year
I hunted with them one day, for the last time, not
having seen them for several years previously. Two
brothers, named Cox, were then the huntsman and
whipper-in. Cox told me that the pack then consisted
almost entirely of drafts from Mr. Assheton Smith,
and that he did not believe there was a drop of the old
Vine blood remaining in it. The appearance and the
action of the hounds quite confirmed this statement.
They did their work that day well, but in a style
totally different from that of the old Vine ; and I went
away with rather a sad conviction, that my dear old
friend's sort of hound was lost to the sporting world.

When Mr, Fellowes accepted the charge of the
pack, he was very little experienced in hunting ; but
he was a man of great vigour of mind and earnest-
ness of purpose, and possessed remarkable talent for
organisation and command. He was fortunate in his
huntsman ; and the control which his peculiar position
at Hurstbourne Park gave him over a large property
was a great advantage to him. He soon learned
enough of the business to be a very efficient and
successful master of hounds.

Adamson was, for some years, an excellent hunts-
man, till he unhappily impaired his faculties by
drinking. He was an admirable rider, always close
to his hounds, whether in cover or out, whether on
the hills or in the vale, without ever distressing his
horse or overriding the hounds. This was the great
secret of his success, just as the opposite fault had
been the chief cause of George's comparative failure.

88 Recollections of the Vine Htmt.

Adamson was always at ..hand to give assistance at
the moment when it was wanted; and the conse-
quence was, that the Vine hounds, during this period,
were more frequently running hard, and on good
terms with their fox, than any other pack that I have
hunted with. Adamson's retirement very nearly coin-
cided with the time when I left off hunting in the
year 1834, beyond which date I do not carry these
observations.

The country hunted at this time was nearly the
same with that which Mr. Chute had occupied ; in-
cluding, of course, all that is now given up for a time
to the South Berks ; but Mr. Fellowes, by an agree-
ment made with Mr. Assheton Smith, gave up to him
that portion of Doiley Wood which the Vine had
drawn, and received in return Doles' Wood, which
again was afterwards given back to Mr. Smith in
exchange for Wherwell Wood. Either of these great
covers was very useful, not only for cubbing, but also
for an occasional day to get hounds into wind after a
frost, or when the better parts of the country required
rest. A large wood suited the Vine ; and they seldom
came away from either Doles or Wherwell, at any
time of the year, without blood. It is remarkable
that, while parts of Doiley Wood never hold a scent.
Doles, on the opposite side of the same valley, at
about the same elevation, and apparently on a similar
soil, is one of the best scenting covers in Hampshire.
I have seen the Vine hounds in that wood run into
a healthy dog fox, after thirty-five minutes' racing,
without ever leaving the cover.

The pack consisted of about forty couples of
hounds, and they hunted three times a week : on

The Vine Hunt, from 1824 to 1834. 89

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday ; and on Monday,
Thursday, and Saturday in the alternate weeks. Each
day had its own country appropriated to it. Monday
was always on the south side of the Great Western
Road; Thursday in the Dean's Wood country, be-
tween that road and the Vale; Wednesday, in the
Pole's Wood and Hurstbourne Park country ; the last
day in the week, whether Friday or Saturday, some-
where in the Vale. The Monday country could
hardly stand the weekly demands made upon it ; and
would have been altogether insufficient had it not
been for the aid of many a good day's sport with
foxes driven away by the H.H., and going back into
that country.

For the first two seasons after the loss of Mr.
Chute, foxes were very scarce. The interest in hunt-
ing seemed for a time to be gone; no system of
preserving had been established, and many litters of
foxes were stolen or destroyed ; but the few that were
found, being mostly old foxes, afforded capital sport.
In Adamson's first season, under Mr. Pole, he drew
fourteen blanks and killed fourteen brace of foxes,
with many excellent runs. The result of his second
season, with Mr. Beaver, was nearly the same; but
when Mr. Fellowes assumed the command, things
rapidly mended. There was generally a fair supply
of foxes ; and he often killed about twenty-four brace,
and sometimes more, in a season. The pack was
seldom out of blood, though Mr. Fellowes very rarely
dug a fox after regular hunting had commenced. He
considered that a fox was generally of more use to
him alive than dead. I have only to add that the
riding in the Vine Hunt was greatly improved at

90 Recollections of the Vine Hunt,

this time. Adamson set an excellent example; Mr.
Fellowes himself was no mean performer across a
country, being very quick and decided, with only,
perhaps, too great an anxiety to be first. I need not
mention names, but you must well remember that, at
this period, there were generally some ten or a dozen
men out, who rode in a good style, and from whom it
was very difficult for hounds to get away.

LETTER VIII.

MR, WARDENS HOUNDS IN THE CRAVEN
COUNTRY,

HEN I began to reside near Newbury, in
November 1820, the celebrated John Warde
occupied the Craven country. Mr. Warde
irresistibly reminded one of Sir John Fal-
staff, for not only might he have represented the genial
knight without stuffing, but he could almost have
rivalled him in wit, and in some other qualities in his
conversation, which savoured more of the taste of the
Elizabethan age than of that of the nineteenth cen-
tury. He was a gentleman of old family and good
connections, and possessed a considerable estate and
place in Kent. He had much of the finished manner
belonging to a former period, with more of what may
be termed outside varnish, more of studied courtesy,
and especially of compliment towards ladies, than
would now be thought to be in the best taste. His
manners and temper in the field were excellent ; and
if ever he had occasion to check an unruly sportsman,
it was done by wit and ridicule, and not by abuse or
oaths. Mr. Warde had kept hounds so long, in so
many countries, and with so high a reputation, that he

92 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

was sometimes called * The father of foxhunting.*
The Craven was the last country that he held. It
would scarcely have satisfied him in his hard-riding
days ; but, with the age and weight to which he had
then attained, he did not object to its large woods,
uncertain scent, and short-running foxes, while it had
certainly much to recommend it. It was, in every
sense, a friendly country. A blank was unknown ;
if a second or a third fox was required, it could
generally be found; while the sociability of its ex-
cellent neighbourhood exactly suited Mr. Warde's
tastes, and afforded ample scope for his remarkable
powers of amusing conversation, whether by the
cover's side or at the dining table.

Mr. Warde's kennels and stables were at Hunger-
ford ; and though rather rough and unsightly to the
eye, yet contained every provision necessary for the
well-being of the animals which inhabited them.
His stable arrangements were peculiar. His horses,
to the number, I think, of about a dozen, stood all
together in one undivided building, which seemed to
have been once a barn, and to have been adapted by
him to his present purpose. I believe that their
allowance of hay was limited ; but the more a horse
would consume of old oats and beans, the better did
Mr. Warde like him ; for it was a favourite maxim of
his, that 'the goodness of a hunter goes in at his
mouth.' The horses wore no clothing of any kind;
but the temperature of the stable, from so many
animals standing together, was high. The result, so
far as I was able to observe, was that they were bright
in their coats and in good health. Clipping was only
just beginning to be known, and was not practised in

Mr. Wardes Hounds. 93

this stable. For keeping up the circulation and
brightening the coats of his horses, Mr. Warde
trusted to hard manual labour; for he was fond of
another old maxim, — ' It is elbow-grease that makes
the horse shine.' I have heard him say, ' I like to sit
on the corn-bin, when the helpers are strapping their
horses, and see that they put out their whole strength,
and that they sweat well themselves \ and then I like
to wind them as they pass by me : a fellow who does
not stink after rubbing down a hunter will never do
for me.*

Mr. Warde hunted four times a week, with an
occasional fifth day, which his large and well-stocked
country could well stand, and for which he kept a
very sufficient number of hounds and horses. If I
remember right, the pack consisted of rather more
than fifty couples. These hounds were in many
respects remarkable. First, for their great size.
They seemed to have been bred for the purpose of
carrying weight, rather than for only carrying a scent.
There was one huge animal, called Maniac, upwards
of twenty-seven inches high, who could carry the
huntsman's son, a boy about eleven or twelve years
old, round the kennel on his back. Of course it was
scarcely possible to breed dogs of such a size with-
out some degree of heaviness and coarseness ; but it
must be allowed that many of the dogs, and nearly
all the bitches, were beautifully formed, and were
really magnificent animals.

They were also remarkable for the closeness and
accuracy with which they would hunt a bad scent, and
for the impossibility of driving them beyond it, or of
lifting them to a halloo. When Mr. Warde was

94 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

taking possession of the Craven country, he was warned
by an old sportsman in that hunt, that at certain times
of the year, when the fields were full of labourers, he
would be more troubled with halloos than he had been
accustomed to in grass countries. He replied, * They
may halloo their hearts out, without doing any harm :
my hounds do not know what a halloo means ; they
take no notice of any sound except the voice or horn
of their huntsman.' This was no exaggeration, but
the exact truth ; and both the excellencies and defi-
ciencies of the pack were connected with this pecu-
liarity. I have heard Mr. Warde laughingly justify
his preference for a large heavy hound by saying,
*■ Those big heads and throaty necks of theirs are such
a weight, that when they have got their noses well
down to the ground, it is not very easy for them to lift
them up again.' Mr. Warde had a strong opinion, that
while hounds continued on the line of their fox, with
their noses/?/// of scent, as he termed it, they would
hunt through ground on which they would be quite
unable to pick up the scent again, if they were lifted ;
and he would tell the following instance, which I give
on his authority. Once when hunting a fox with a
failing scent, they came to a long check in the open.
The huntsman made three circular casts, each wider
than the preceding one, in vain. The hounds were
then brought back to the spot where they had first
checked ; where, after a little while, they again took
up the scent, and hunted it slowly through every
one of the three rings which had been made in the
casts.

But perhaps their most eminent and useful quality
was their entire steadiness from riot of every kind, to

Mr. Wardes Hounds. 95

a degree which I never saw equalled, or approached
by any other pack. Probably this arose partly from
the nature of the animal (large foxhounds being, I
think, generally less inclined to riot than small ones) ;
partly by the fact, that the country which they hunted
was very full both of hare and deer, so that the hounds
were accustomed to them ; partly by the abundance
of foxes, and the great number that they killed in cub-
hunting. Certainly, by the time that regular hunting
began, there was scarcely a puppy who could not be
trusted when he spoke ; and a rate was very seldom
heard. Consequently, the confidence which the hunts-
man placed in his hounds was implicit, and was of
great service on critical occasions. If, when they were
picking out a cold scent in Savernake Forest, some
well-meaning man took upon himself to warn the
huntsman that he had seen a hare or a deer go along
that way, the answer would be, * Well, sir, I cannot
help that; my hounds must hunt their fox, whatever else
may have gone along the same way.' I once received
a lesson on that point. We were drawing Bedwin
Brail, when I saw a hare come into a ride, and ob-
served a hound, called Dowager, rushing through the
bushes after her, but without giving tongue. I thought-
lessly cried out, * Ware hare ! ' a sound of which the
huntsman did not approve : so he immediately cor-
rected me, saying, ^ Don't rate her, sir ; she is doing
no harm, poor thing ; she only wants to get a look at
it to see what it is.' And, sure enough, as soon as
Dowager got into the ride, and saw the hare scudding
away, she turned quietly back to draw for a fox. I
should observe, however, that in drawing preserves
these hounds contrived to chop and eat a considerable

96 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

number of hares or rabbits, though they said nothing
about it, and never pursued them.

There were always two whippers-in in the field ; but,
when Mr. Warde was out, one of them was a good deal
occupied in attending on him with his second horse ;
for though he no longer rode hard, yet his weight
was such as to render this relief very acceptable to his
horses. The men wore green coats, with black velvet
caps, and were hardly so smart in their appointments
as would be expected in these days. The huntsman
was generally well mounted, but the whips badly.
Their horses, like everything else in the establish-
ment, were of a large size ; but generally under-bred,
and sometimes nearly worn out. Will Hidden, the first
whip, rode a huge creature above seventeen hands
high, called by the appropriate name of ' Hill-top.' 1
remember that one of his horses fell down dead in
Chadleworth Wood one day, before the hounds had
found ; and when Will appeared, wading through the
underwood, with the saddle and bridle on his arm,
and announced the event, Mr. Warde coolly observed,
'Well, I have no right to be surprised; to my know-
ledge, he was twenty-three years old.' Will Hidden
was an uncouth-looking fellow, with an ugly face, an
awkward figure, and a cracked voice. He could halloo
so as to be heard all over the Welford Woods, but could
scarcely speak so as to be understood. He was a very
good whipper-in, but was the only good kennel servant
I ever knew who did not like his business. He said
that, as it was the only work that he had learned to
do, he must stick to it for a livelihood; but that, for his
part, he would rather, any day, go to plough.

The huntsman was about fifty years old : his name

Mr. Wardes Hounds. 97

was Neverd, a name which became a proHfic source
of jest : he was called '■ 'NcwQr-right! and * Never-r/<?'^ ;
but whatever wit there might have been in these
appellations, there certainly was very little truth in
them. He was right quite as often as could be ex-
pected of any man in so difficult a country ; and those
who taunted him with being too fond of trying back
seemed ta be incapable of observing the fact that,
three times out of four, especially in the forest, the
fox actually was behind him * Nor was he a bad
rider : he had not the quickness of a young man, but
he was always going steadily somewhere among the
first flight of horsemen, and was generally with his
hounds as soon as he was wanted. Mr. Warde's
system of hunting did not admit of taking hounds in
hand very quickly, while the close hunting nature of
the hounds ensured to huntsmen the advantage of
knowing exactly how far they had made it good ; so
that, on the whole, I do not think the sport ever
suffered from the huntsman not being forward enough ;
while, whenever the pace became serious, and the fences
were severe, Neverd was sure to be much closer to the
hounds than most of those who laughed at him.

* Few men knew more about foxhunting in general, or the
Craven country in particular, than my uncle, Fulwar Fowle of
Kintbury, from whom, more than from any other person, I
learned what little I ever knew on the subject. If he had heard
any one speak a word in disparagement of that country, he would
probably have turned on him with a flat contradiction ; but I
once heard him say bitterly, when put out of temper by some
short running foxes : ' There are only two things that a true-bred
Berkshire fox thinks of, from the moment he is found to the
moment he is killed, and those are, how he can get behind
you, and, where he can go to ground'

H

98 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

As I hunted for several seasons, both with Mr.
Warde and Mr. Chute, whose respective packs may
be considered as representing the largest and the
smallest kinds of foxhounds, I had ample oppor-
tunities of comparing the work of the two sorts, and
of forming some opinion as to which was preferable.
Now, supposing each to be equally well handled, I
feel no doubt that the smaller sort, with its quicker
style of work, though not without its peculiar faults,
is yet the best adapted for such countries as the
Craven or the Vine, consisting, as they chiefly do, of
large woods, flinty hills, and arable fields with small
fences. I admit that, on the rare occasions when
Warde's hounds were close to their fox, they could go
rather faster than the smaller sort, either amongst
fences, or over an open down, especially in the after-
noon, for they were usually brought out too full to go
their fastest in the morning; but those are just the
times when all foxhounds can go fast enough ; and
Warde's hounds were less frequently near their fox
than Mr. Chute's were. Their slowness in cover, and
their reluctance to play forward with a catching scent
in the open, frequently threw them behind their game.
They aflbrded admirable specimens of cold hunting ;
not a fault was committed ; not a hound out of place :
you had the satisfaction of knowing exactly where
they had lost the fox : but he was too often lost, or, if
killed, too frequently slowly and scientifically walked
to death. Mr. Warde's hounds would, undoubtedly,
work through difficulties, especially amongst riot, in
which Mr. Chute's hounds would have been foiled ;
but they more often got into difiiculties, whereas the
smaller hounds usually kept much nearer to their fox,

Mr. Wardes Hounds. 99

and would be running hard on days when the larger
pack would be hunting slowly far behind him. Mr.
Warde's field, however, was the place in which a
young sportsman could best learn the rules and prin-
ciples of hunting. I acquired more knowledge of the
science in two or three seasons with him, than I should
have gained by hunting all my life with Mr. Chute.

I have observed that foxes in the Craven country
were apt to be short runners. This is to be ac-
counted for, partly by the number and size of the
woods, partly by the favourable circumstance that
many proprietors, who were great game preservers,
were also preservers of foxes, and suffered many
litters to be bred in places where they could find
plenty of food close at hand ; but, perhaps, the chief
cause of the evil was the abundance of earths. I am
writing of forty years ago, and things may be dif-
ferent now. Indeed, I know that when Mr. Thomas
Smith had the country, he dug out and destroyed as
many earths as he could on purpose to correct this
evil. But even in my days, some of the longest and
straightest runs that I ever saw were in the Craven
country. I am tempted to give an account of one
which, for variety of country and abundance of inci-
dent, was the most remarkable that I was ever in.

The fox was found at a small cover called Water-
man's, between Hampstead Park and Woodhay.
Soon after he had been found, he was viewed by
several persons, and was observed to have only half a
brush. As it was the first hunting day after a fall of
snow, the vale was particularly wet and deep ; and we
had about forty minutes of it, at a good pace, before
we reached the bottom of the Coombe Hills. These

H 2

TOO Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

hills were covered with snow, which had drifted into
the hollow road, which goes slanting up them, so as
to render it scarcely passable. The scent, however,
seemed to become better than ever ; and, of course,
the hounds were far ahead before the first few horse-
men had struggled up to the summit. To add to the
difficulty, a thick fog covered the tops of the hills,
though it was quite clear on the lower grounds. For
some time, we had nothing to guide us but the tracks
of the pack in the sloppy snow ; and when, presently,
we heard the cry seemingly close to us, we had the
disappointment of discovering that the hounds were
on another hill, from which we were still separated by
a valley. Thus we struggled on through the fog,
leaving Coombe Wood and village to the right, and
over the open country towards Faccombe, which lay
on our left, when suddenly we emerged from the fog,
and found ourselves with the hounds, who had never
checked, and were still running hard, within a mile of
the great Faccombe Woods. I think there were only
four of us, of whom the huntsman was one, who
formed this advanced squadron, and that about a
dozen more came up to us in the wood. The fox
went straight through the Faccombe Woods, running
from north to south, across the western end of them,
which Hes nearest to Netherton, over the deep hollow
called Netherton Bottom, and up the opposite steep
hill, still pointing southward. On the top of this hill,
hounds, after a check, turned and hunted a very
cold scent back down the hill again, into Netherton
Bottom, to the very edge of the great body of woods
that we had come through. Here Neverd showed
great decision : he said, * I know how it is ; the hounds

M7^. Wardes Hotmds. loi

have come back with some old disturbed scent down
this hill. Our fox is certainly gone forward ; and I
have no doubt I could get on him again. Is it worth
while.? What shall I do.?' Mr. Wroughton, of
Wolley Park, who, in Mr. Warde's absence, took the
lead, looked at his watch, and said, * Well, if you
think you can recover him, do so.' The huntsman
then again ascended the hill, and within a field of the
spot where he supposed the hounds to have changed,
got upon the line of his hunted fox, with a fair scent,
which kept continually improving. He still went on
southwards, over the Ibthorp water meadows, never
afterwards touching a cover, or seeming to know
where he was. He bore a little to the left, till he got
close under Pill Heath, but declined that, and all the
great Doles Woods, and bearing more round to the
right, was run from scent to view, and pulled down in
the open near Tangley Clumps ; and lo ! when he was
taken in hand, he had* the same half brush which had
been observed at Waterman's two hours and a half
before, proving that he was the same fox, fairly re-
covered by science and perseverance, and not, as
might otherwise have been suspected, a fresh fox,
which had got up somewhere in the long line of
country which we had gone through.

LETTER IX.

TRUMAN VILLEBOIS, ESQ., AND THE H. H.

DOUBT whether four better men in their
several capacities were ever engaged together
in the management of a pack of foxhounds
than were to be seen with the H. H. when
Mr. Villebois was master, Forster, huntsman, and
Sawyer and John Jennings,* the two whippers-in.
The three first-mentioned were of rare excellence in
their several departments ; and Jennings, who after-
wards hunted the Old Berkeley under Mr. Harvey
Combe, was very good in the field; and moreover
rode with so fine a hand and such good judgment, that

* Nimrod, in one of his letters, quotes Forster saying of Jen-
nings, ' He is the first of the family that was ever in our line.'
This is true. I was well acquainted with the family. His sister
was my nurse: his first situation was that of servant of all work at
Steventon Manor Farm, and his first office as a sportsman was
shooting partridges, with a gamekeeper's certificate, for his own
master and for my father. He considered it a rise in life when he
became groom in Mr. Villebois' stables ; but he was a good-
looking, intelligent, well-mannered, as well as steady youth ;
and these qualifications, together with his very good horseman-
ship, gradually raised him, till he married Forster's daughter,
and at last attained to a rank similar to that of his father-in-law,
as huntsman to a pack of foxhounds.

Trttmmi Villebois, Esq., and the H.H. 103

he was frequently put on some young horse intended
for Mr. Villebois' use the following season.

Mr. Villebois had this valuable qualification for a
master of hounds, that his character and manners were
such as to secure prompt obedience from his servants,
and respect and deference from all who hunted with
his hounds. He was always calm and courteous, but
firm and decided ; claiming for himself, and yielding
to others, what was due to each. Old Will Biggs,
whom I mentioned in a former letter as living on a
pension from him, spoke of him to me with respect, as
well as with gratitude. ' Ah ! ' said he, * Mr. Villebois
was a right good master : when he said a thing was to
be done, we knew that it must be done, and no mistake :
and it is a very good thing for a servant to knozv that
of his master! A little while before Forster came,
Mr. Villebois had turned off a very clever huntsman,
because his character was not such as he chose to retain
amongst his servants. Every thing in his establish-
ment was conducted with the most systematic pro-
priety ; no oath, or voice of anger or of altercation was
to be heard from the men.* The whipper-in accosted
Forster as *Sir;' while Forster was obedient to the
least signal from his master, though it was by no
means Mr. Villebois' habit to interfere with his hunts-
man ostensibly in the field. A sense of right and duty

* I once went with a friend to the meet of a neighbouring
pack, then managed by a gentleman from a distant country.
On my return from seeing them find, I observed to my friend,
an H.H. man, that I had heard more swearing and altercation
in that one hour, than I had ever heard in all the years that
I had hunted with Chute or Villebois. My friend smiled, and

observed he supposed ' it must be the shire dialect which

lue were not used to.^

I04 Recollections of the Vme Hunt.

seemed to be the leading principle in Mr. Villebois
mind. I believe that he carried out this principle in
graver matters : I have only to note how it came out
in the management of his sports. For instance, though
he would not willingly engage himself to dine out on a
hunting day, yet if he had made such an engagement,
he would leave the hounds running rather than fail to
keep it. Again, it once happened, when I was out with
him on a by-day, and we were pressing our fox well
over the open, with a fair prospect of killing him, that
we drew near to Chilton Wood, which was advertised
as one of the meets of that week. Immediately Ville-
bois' horn was heard a little wide of us, and the hounds
were stopped : he would rather curtail his own day's
sport than run the risk of breaking faith with the pub-
lic by disturbing a cover appropriated to another day.
I remember that Sir Henry Warde was riding close to
me : he was a younger brother of John Warde, though
not by any means a young man, and was full of the
family enthusiasm for hunting. When he heard the in-
evitable horn, he turned to me with a look of vexation,
exclaiming, ' Well, I dare say this is all very right ;
but / could not have given that order to save my life.'
Again, it chanced that I was one of a small party who
had gone to a meet, not far from the kennel, on a day
so wet that the hounds did not come. At the instiga-
tion of some of the party, we rode on to Harmsworth
to complain of their not keeping their appointment.
Villebois had considered the day too bad for hunting,
and, I think, was not particularly well pleased with the
application ; but he said at once, 'Certainly, gentlemen,
if you have chosen to come to the place of meeting in
such weather, you have a right to the hounds : only

Truman Villebois, Esq., and the H,H. 105

you must excuse my going out with you.' Accordingly
the men and hounds were sent out, and we had a long
bad day in drenching rain. Such a man could not fail
to have complete control over his field : a quiet word
of admonition from him had more effect than violent
language from some other men. If the horsemen were
pressing too close upon Forster, when he was casting
his hounds in the open (a frequent cause of mischief
in Hampshire), it was sufficient for Villebois to rein
in his horse, and exclaim with his sonorous and some-
what stern voice, * Gentlemen, I fancy the hounds are
checked ! ' in order to make every man remember that
he was wrong. I once witnessed a very remarkable
instance of this calm assertion of authority. We had
found in Preston Oakhills, and the fox had gone away
at the upper end, along the broad green lanes leading
to where Barkham House then stood. A white frost
was going off, and the scent was weak. The fox
threaded the right hand hedgerow, running a little way
on the field side, and a little way on the lane side of
the fence alternately, in a manner which must have
made it difficult for the best sportsmen to avoid getting
before hounds. Villebois saw the danger, and turning
to the mass of horsemen, not yet dispersed, but
crowded together in the broad lane, he put Forster and
Sawyer forward, saying, * Now, gentlemen, if you
please, let no one else go before me while we are in this
lane.' He was implicitly obeyed. After the fox had
threaded the hedgerow in this manner for some time,
carefully hunted by the hounds, he turned to the right
across a field, pointing towards Bradley Wood, when
hounds laid down their sterns and began to run, and
Villebois, turning round, took off his hat, and said.

io6 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

'Thank you, gentlemen; now pray ride just as you
please.'

Mr. Villebois was an excellent judge of everything
connected with hunting. It happened, more than
once, that Sawyer hunted the hounds for some weeks,
when Forster had been disabled by an accident.*
On these occasions the average of sport and of blood
was quite as good as usual ; so that many began to
think that Sawyer was just as clever a huntsman as
Forster, and that the office of whipper-in was below
his deserts. But his good master shook his head, and
said, * No ; he has been in luck, and has had better
scenting weather than usual ; but he is no huntsman :
and if ever he should be put into that situation, it will
be found so : his chief merit is that his success has not
made him conceited ; and that he has the good sense
to remain satisfied with the work which he can really
do well. After Mr. Villebois' death. Sawyer became
huntsman to another pack of foxhounds in Hamp-
shire, and I believe it was generally thought that his
old master's prophecy was fulfilled.

Mr. Villebois' kennel and residence were at Harms-
worth, about three miles from Alresford, so centrally
placed that most of his meets were within eight miles
of him. He hunted four times a week : on Mondays,
in the northern part of his country, which had formerly
been hunted by Lord Stawell and by Mr. Russell ;

* One of these accidents was a bad fall into a deep stony
lane, near Theddon Grange, then called Phoenix Lodge. The
hounds were checked at the time, and I was informed that as
Forster lay for a short time stunned, they stood in a circle round
him whining, and showing great distress, as if supposing him to
be dead.

Truman Villebois, Esq., and the H.H. 107

on Tuesdays, beyond the Alresford road, towards the
borders of the Hambledon ; on Thursdays and Satur-
days, in any other parts that might be convenient.
He held also the Hursley country, and went to it, I
think, three times in each season ; at the beginning
of cub-hunting, about Christmas, and in April, when
the H. H. country was too dry. The hounds were
always advertised as the H. H., but they were Mr.
Villebois' property, and maintained at his expense.
The dogs went out on Mondays and Thursdays ; the
bitches on Tuesdays and Saturdays. They were a size
larger than Mr. Chute's, and, owing to the division of
the sexes, were more sizeable. In their style of work
they had perhaps rather less of dash and liveliness,
and rather more of steadiness and patience; but the
difference between these two packs was only one of
degree, and nothing like the wide difference of style
which distinguished them both from Mr. Warde's :
they were both well adapted for Hampshire ; and
Warde would have considered both equally below
the proper standard of the foxhound in size. Once,
indeed, he expressed as much when he visited at
Harmsworth, and looked through the kennel. There
was there at that time a hound called Telamon,
much larger and heavier than any of the rest. I do not
know how he ever came to be entered in a pack other-
wise so even ; but being once entered, he proved far
too good to be parted with. Warde singled him out,
and with a kind of courteous sarcasm said, ' Now you
have certainly shown me a pack which any man might
be proud of having bred ; for they are very neat, and
as like to one another as if they were all from the same

io8 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

father and mother ; all, except one hound ; and let me
tell you that / would rather have tJiat one hound than
all the other fifty conple put together'

It so happened that at about this time Mr. Villebois
actually did possess an unusual number of hounds
bred from the same father and mother, for in the
hunting pack of the season 1822-3 there were thirty-
one hounds bred from his favourite dog, ' Pontiff,' of
which seventeen had the same dam, ' Vengeance ; '
and once, when he made a by-day for some masters
of hounds and amateurs of the sport, he took out a
family party, consisting of the sire, the dams, and their
produce ; and mustered, I think, the very sufficient
number of about seventeen couples.

At Mr. Villebois' death, in 1837, these hounds
became the property of his brother Frederick. Mr.
F. Villebois had been for three or four years the
master of the Craven hounds, and had, in that short
time, got together a very clever and powerful pack,
from some of the best blood in England. The gen-
tlemen of the H.H. being left without hounds, pro-
cured these, so that the two packs were transferred
each into the other's country. There was, however,
a remarkable difference in their immediate success.
The younger pack had extraordinary sport in Hamp-
shire throughout their first season, under Forster,
who, though about to retire on a pension from his
former master, hunted them through that season. I
chanced to be hunting with them one day, and heard
this question put to two farmers of different ages,
' How do you like the new pack 1 ' * Well,' replied
the older and heavier man, * we rather wish we had
the old ones back again.' * Aye,' rejoined the lighter

Truman Villebois, Esq., and the H.H. 109

weight, ' I believe you ; and so do the foxes' But the
old H.H. hounds, though going into very good hands,
were not equally successful in the Craven country.
It can hardly be supposed that this arose from any
inferiority in the quality of hounds which had so long
maintained a high character. I believe the reason to
be, that the Craven changed to a more favourable,
and the H.H. to a more difficult country ; and if
ever two packs should again exchange places between
Hampshire and that part of Berkshire, I should expect
similar results. I am not going to call Hampshire a
good scenting country : it is inferior to Sussex on one
side, and to Dorsetshire on the other ; but my expe-
rience would certainly lead me to rank it higher than
the southern parts of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and
Buckinghamshire. It is true that the scent dies away
soon, so that it is exceedingly difficult to recover a
fox who has got far ahead on the Hampshire hills : it
is true also that it is a country which dries very
quickly, so that little can be done in it after the
March winds have set in ; but so long as the ground is
sufficiently wet, the scent is often very good while it
lasts, and enables hounds, if they have got a good start,
to push their fox along at a very distressing pace.
In my time, hounds certainly ran hard for an hour
together without a serious check, more frequently
in the Vine or H.H. than in the Craven country.
Another disadvantage of the latter country is, that the
scent varies more. The H.H. is almost entirely a hill
country ; and though in so large an extent there must
be some variations of soil and cultivation affecting
the scent, yet this is far more the case in the Craven,
where their vale, hill, down, and forest present a

no Recollections of the Vine Hunt,

continual change, which is very puzzling to hounds.
Moreover, the Craven was, in those days, much
more full of riot, especially of deer, in Savernake
Forest, — not herded together, as in a park, but getting
up singly, like wild animals, which would be sure to
bring into trouble any pack that was unaccustomed
to them. Nimrod speaks quite as strongly as I am
doing of the difficulties which hounds encounter in
this country : he terms it ' cheerless for hounds,
and distressing for horses.' Mr. Warde's huntsman
Neverd maintained that even the cold flinty hills
about Coombe and Netherton held a better scent
than most of his country north of the Kennet, and de-
clared that he could generally kill his fox if he could
get on good terms with him to the top of those hills.
An old member of the H.H., who was well qualified
to form an opinion, once told me that he should
class the four contiguous countries as more or less
favourable to hounds in the following order: ist, the
Hambledon ; 2nd, the Vine; 3rd, the H.H. ; 4th, the
Craven. The Craven, however, has many redeem-
ing advantages, especially social ones ; and as I my-
self have an old affection for it, and for many with
whom I hunted in it, I must observe that, the less
easy for hounds a country may be, the greater is the
praise due to those who have contrived, after all, to
show a great deal of sport in it. As it can very
seldom happen that two countries are thus tested by
an interchange of their respective packs, I thought it
might be interesting to sportsmen that I should record
the result of this experiment in 1837. Of my facts I
am certain, however I may be thought mistaken in
the causes which I assign for them. After one season.

Truinan Villebois, Esq., and the H.H. 1 1 1

however, when Mr. Villebois' old pack had become
accustomed to the peculiarities of their new country,
the excellent quality of the hounds came out, as might
be expected, and they became as good in Berkshire
as they had long been in Hampshire.

LETTER X.

SIR JOHN COPE'S HOUNDS.— MR. AS SHE TON
SMITH— MR. THOMAS SMITH.

HE little that I have to say of Sir John
Cope's hounds would furnish materials for
only a short letter. I never hunted with
them regularly, though I saw something of
them almost every season from 1 821 to 1832. I was
very slightly acquainted with Sir John himself, and
have no personal recollections of him to record. He
took to Mr. St. John's hounds and country in 1817,
and retained them, I think, till 1850. The hounds
were kept all this time at his own place, Bramshill,
but they had a kennel at the World's End, near Read-
ing, for the convenience of hunting that part of their
country. They hunted over a great extent of country
in Berks, Hants, and Oxfordshire, with a little of
Surrey, comprehending nearly all that Mr. Garth and
the South Berks now occupy between them. Sir
John was, I believe, deservedly popular with the
members of his hunt. It used to strike me that his
men rode higher bred horses than those of the neigh-
bouring hunts. I have only two objects in my
observations on this pack. First, to describe the very

Sir yohn Cope s Ho^inds. 1 1 3

peculiar kind of hound with which Sir John began to
hunt, which few sportsmen now living can remember ;
and next, to relate the extraordinary performance of
his dog Sampson, which deserves to be recorded.

Those who knew Sir John Cope's hounds only since
the year 1830, can have little idea how very different
they had been in character some ten years before
that period. They were a light, airy-looking ani-
mal, higher on the legs and longer in the neck, but
scarcely of more substance than the H. H., or than
the largest of Mr. Chute's. They were, however, a
remarkably wiry, muscular race, and I am inclined to
think that, either from natural constitution, or from
being accustomed to harder work, they were the most
difficult to tire of all the three packs. It is certain
that they actually did more work ; for they travelled
longer distances, and drew later in the day. They
were very clever and effective in their way ; but it
was a way peculiar to themselves ; for they were so
fond of independent action that many people did not
scruple to call them a pack of skirters ; and it is
certain that if any neighbouring master of hounds
bred from them, he found in the produce a tendency
to get wide. This peculiarity, however, gave them an
advantage in cover ; it was difficult for a fox to live
long before them in a wood ; for while a certain
number were working on his scent, the others, instead
of going direct to the cry, would be scoring away on
either side, hoping for a turn in their own favour ; so
that, whichever way the fox might turn, he was sure
to be crossed by some of these outsiders, who would
thus become the leading hounds. Once, when Mr.
Warde had given these hounds a draw in the Craven

I

114 Recollections of the Vme Hunt.

country, they killed in this manner, in one day, three
of his foxes, who had not been accustomed to this
guerilla kind of warfare. Indeed, if the only object
were to make the fox break or die, this mode of pro-
ceeding w^ould be perfect ; but, unfortunately, the
same system was apt to make the run across a country
too much of a scramble: the hounds seldom came
away together from a large wood. Tocock, the
huntsman, was quite satisfied if he could get off with
five or six couples of hounds racing pretty close to
their fox ; he would gallop along, horn in hand,
blowing it whenever he could, as a rallying point to
the rest of the pack, who would come streaming in
from right and left ; some before, some behind, and
some in the midst of the horsemen ; so that it became
a common observation amongst sportsmen, that Cope's
hounds in a run were all over the country. I suspect,
however, that these hounds, with all their irregularities,
kept closer to their fox, and more frequently gave a
good account of him at the end, than has since been
done under a more regular system. I desire to say
distinctly that this description has no reference to any
period later than 1828, and that the character of the
pack had begun to change for some years earlier. It
was probably a dissatisfaction with the state of things
which I have described that led Sir John Cope, about
the year 1822, to begin breeding largely from Mr.
Warde's kennel, and thus to lay the foundation of the
powerful kind of hound now so well maintained by
Mr. Garth. There is no painter whose earlier style is
more distinguishable from his later, than were the
appearance and the work of Sir John's earlier and later
packs ; but it may, perhaps, be doubted whether, in

Sir John Copes Hotmds. 1 1 5

getting rid of the faults, he did not also lose some of
the peculiar merits of the original breed, which had
been bequeathed to the country from Mr. St. John,
the original founder of the pack.

And now I must give an account of Sampson's
performance, which might be suspected of exagger-
ation if it did not come from a disinterested, or, I
might almost say, a reluctant witness.

The H.H. and Sir John Cope had met one day at
the extremities of their respective countries, and each
chanced to run, at the same time, into the opposite
end of a large cover near Sutton Common, called
Sheephouse; but they did not join. Probably each
fox was headed by the cry of the other pack : at any
rate, each party went back to their own country. The
H.H. chanced to have a very long and hard day.
Soon after leaving Sheephouse, a strange hound was
observed with them. This hound did a great deal of
work, and showed remarkable powers of speed and
nose ; and, as he was wider in his work than the pack,
and frequently hit off the scent, he was continually
getting ahead of them, till at last he ran completely
away from them, and both the fox and the mysterious
stranger were lost, near Bentworth, many miles
distant from Sheephouse. As Forster was making a
last despairing cast, a labourer told him that he had
just seen the fox, followed by a single hound ; and,
by following the man's directions, the fox was found
lying dead in a lane, and the hound, very much bitten
about the head, standing over him. After being
hospitably received, and his wounds dressed at
Harmsworth, he was sent to Bramshill, and there
owned as their dog Sampson. I was told this, very

1 1 6 Recolledioiis of the Vine Hunt.

soon after it occurred, by Mr. Fred. Villebois, who
was that day out with his brother's hounds. He said,
' Of course, we were not best pleased at being so
beaten, and could only account for it by supposing
that this hound had been skirting about (as the fact
of his joining us rather implies), and so had taken less
out of himself early in the day than our hounds had
done. However,' he candidly added, * that might or
might not have been the case ; the fact is, that he
fairly ran away from us, and killed the fox by himself.'

I have seen Sampson : he was a yellow pied hound,
compact, strong, and handsome, but not large. I do
not recollect the year in which this occurred, but it
was some time previous to 1828.

I have now noticed all the packs of foxhounds,
bordering on the Vine country, with which I hunted
in my youth ; but there were two masters of hounds
soon afterwards connected with those countries of
such eminence, that I cannot omit some mention of
them : — Mr. Thomas Assheton Smith, of Tedworth ;
and Mr. Thomas Smith, of Hambledon.

With the former I was scarcely acquainted, nor did
I see enough of him with his hounds to enable me to
express any opinion of his mode of hunting them ;
while his fame, both as a rider and a sportsman,
stands on too high a pedestal to be either raised or
lowered by any observations of mine ; but I can add
my humble testimony to his wonderful quickness in
riding to hounds, even at an advanced age. Almost
the only time I ever hunted with him, we had a very
fine ring of about twelve miles from Southgrove, over
the Downs, into the Pewsey Vale and back, so fast
throughout that I heard Mr. Smith observe, towards

Mr. As she ton Smith. 1 1 7

the end of it, that if the fox had been like those he
had been used to hunt in other countries, he ought to
have been killed twice over by that time. I chanced
that day to be exceedingly well mounted by a friend ;
and, as I could then ride a little, I was close to
hounds through the whole run. Amongst the fences
in the Pewsey Vale, I could keep alongside of Mr.
Smith well enough ; but I was surprised to find how
he beat me in quickness over the open downs, just
where my comparative youth and lightness ought to
have given me an advantage ; but though I was not
thirty, and he upwards of sixty years old, I could not
get down the steep dips, nor swing up to the top of
the opposite hills so straight and quick as he could.
Perhaps, however, it is fair to add, that I did not
distress my horse ; whereas Mr. Smith brought two
horses to stand-still, and one of tJiem twice, in the
course of the day, which was a very long one, and
comprised more work than the fine run with which it
commenced.

The other Mr. Smith is an old friend of mine. I
have recorded, in my second letter, the occasion when
I first observed him with hounds ; but that was not the
beginning of my acquaintance with him and his family.
I hunted with him occasionally while he occupied the
Craven country. I have no hesitation in saying that,
of all the huntsmen I ever saw, Mr. Smith had the
greatest natural capacity for the work.* Nor do I
think that many of those who knew him in the field

* I speak of nothing later than the year 1834 ; and, therefore,
do not include any comparison with the successful gentlemen
huntsmen who may have appeared in the field since that time, .
such as Mr. G. Montagu, of Caversham, or Lord Macclesfield.

1 18 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

would differ from me on that point, though I am
aware that some would scruple to call him actually
the best huntsman, from thinking him too much in-
clined to hunt the fox himself, instead of letting his
hounds do it. I am not disposed to join in this charge.
There will always be differences of opinion as to the
amount of assistance which hounds require, and the
exact moment when they should be interfered with ;
and no doubt Mr. Smith, with his remarkable talent
for hunting, the rapidity of his decision, and the kind
of natural instinct by which he seemed to divine where
the fox was gone, must have been sometimes tempted
to take matters into his own hands earlier than others
would have done ; but I must say that, so long as
hounds were able to work, he would generally wait
very patiently upon them. I am inclined to think that
the accusation rested chiefly on the undeniable fact
that Mr. Smith coidd, and often did, kill his fox, and
show a certain kind of sport to his field on days when
hounds could do nothing of themselves, and when,
with any ordinary huntsman, nothing would have been
done. I once saw a remarkable instance of this from
Ashridge, near East Ilsley, when Mr. Smith kept on
the line of his fox for ten miles, and at last killed
him in the open, on a bleak windy day in March, with-
out scent enough to carry hounds across a single field.
The fox went nearly straight, through the Hampstead
Norris and Bradfield country, where the enclosures
were generally small, and bordered by hedgerows.
Mr. Smith, seeing how matters stood, lost no time in
suffering the hounds to attempt to hunt in the open,
but lifted them at once across every field, marking his
fox only at the fences, and hunting him through the

Mr. Thomas Smith. 1 1 9

woods. By these means he kept so near him, that at
last he was able, by help of a halloo, to get close to
him in the swampy bottom behind Englefield Park,
whence the hounds took the matter into their own
hands, racing through the old deer park and village,
and pulling down the fox under the elm trees, in the
large open field (now taken into park) between Engle-
field House and Theale. But I well remember that
Mr. Smith thought it right to apologise for the feat
which he had performed, saying, ' I do not pretend,
gentlemen, that this is the best style of killing a fox ;
I can only say that if it had not been done in this
way, it could not have been done at all, on such a
day as this.'

On one occasion, when Mr. Smith chanced to be out
with a celebrated pack in a distant country, the hounds,
when running hard with a sinking fox, suddenly threw
up in the middle of a field, in a manner which, I sup-
pose, indicated that the fox had been headed. The
master, who was hunting the hounds that day, in the
accidental absence of the huntsman, having made his
cast in vain, applied to Mr. Smith, as a great authority,
to say what should be done. Mr. Smith was at first
reluctant to interfere, but on the master repeating,
* You will do me a favour if you will only say what
you would do, if you were hunting the hounds at this
moment,' he said, ' Well, if you really wish me to say,
I should hold them along that hedge,' pointing out the
place. The master did so, and recovered and killed
his fox. This was told me by an eye-witness.

It always struck me that Mr. Smith's readiness to
take large fences was one main cause of his success.
I do not mean when hounds were running ; for most

120 Recollections of the Vine Htmt.

men who undertake to hunt a pack of foxhounds will
ride hard then ; and, good as Mr. Smith was across a
country, I have seen others as good as he ; but I mean
when he was casting his hounds. This is a quality
required only in a huntsman, but very conducive to
his success. Many huntsmen, if they meet with an
awkward place when hounds are checked, either
change their intended line of cast, or try to coax their
hounds to go over the fence without them : thus they
fail to make good their point, or, at least, lose much
time ; though they would have ridden over the same
place as a matter of course if hounds had been
running hard.* Now, Mr. Smith was just as ready to
take any practicable place when hounds were checked
as when they were running, though he might have to
come back over the same line of fence immediately
afterwards : thus he always made good his grotindy and
never had to do the same thing twice. Of course it
would often happen that the cast thus made at the
expense of two or three large leaps was unsuccessful ;
but it was not therefore useless : every huntsman
must know the importance of having ascertained, with
as little delay as possible, which way the fox has not
gone.

* I once heard of a pack of foxhounds, whose huntsman
generally avoided all such difficulties by the simple expedient of
making his casts along lanes and roads j where the hounds
must have had all the steam and pressure of a crowd of horses
to assist them. A very good plan, if it satisfied the master and
the field ! for the fox would be sure to approve it ; and so all
parties would be pleased except, perhaps, the hounds.

LETTER XL

MR. MULLENS AND HIS HARRIERS.
A GRICUL TURAL IMPRO VEMENTS.— CONCL USION

have finished all that I had to say about
foxhounds ; but the records of my sporting
recollections would be very imperfect, if
they contained no mention of my old friend,
Mr. Mullens. He first entered me to hare-hunting : he
showed me what it ought to be ; and I have since had
frequent opportunities of observing what it ought not
to be. Hare-hunting is certainly less adapted for well-
mounted young men who love hard riding, than it is
for middle-aged gentlemen, or boys taking their first
lessons in hunting on their ponies ; but it is a very
interesting sport if you are satisfied with its peculiar
character, and do not spoil it by attempting to make
it what it never can be. For though foxhunting is
undoubtedly a finer thing, yet you will not improve
the former by trying to assimilate it to the latter ; on
the contrary, you will, I think, lose the essence of
both, and produce a mixture which the taste of the
true sportsman rejects.

The principles on which the two pursuits should
be conducted are altogether different. In foxhunting

122 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

the great objects are to keep as close to your
game, and to get into as few difficulties as possible ;
because, on ordinary scenting days at least, a good
pack of foxhounds are not more than a match
for a good fox, and also because a good fox seldom
stops till he is beaten ; so that, if you once get far
behind him, you have little chance of improving your
position. But the harrier is generally more than a
match in power for the strongest hare ; and the hare
is sure to stop if she has time to do so ; and, more-
over, the very charm of hare-hunting consists in
working through difficulties, and enjoying an alterna-
tion of quick running and slow hunting. Therefore,
it is not desirable to be always near your game. In-
deed, unless she has time enough, in the course of the
run, to make her doubles, and exercise her curious
devices for baffling the hounds, though you may be
pursuing a hare, you will see very little of hare-
hunting : a pack of dwarf foxhounds racing into a
hare in twenty minutes, and never three minutes
behind her, is, in my opinion, no more like hare-
hunting than it is like foxhunting.

And consequently the qualifications for hunting the
two sorts of hounds are very different. The hunts-
man of harriers requires only the more ordinary
qualities of judgment and patience : the huntsman of
foxhounds must have, in addition to these, not only
fine and bold horsemanship, but also great quickness
of decision, and that rare and indescribable thing
called ' talent' The latter must be continually assist-
ing his hounds, taking into consideration various
contingencies and distant points ; and he has never a
minute to spare in doing all this. The former has

Mr. Mtdlens and his Hariri

lers.

comparatively little to do in the field, and he may do
that little deliberately. If he has exercised good
judgment in breeding and drafting his hounds, and
has brought them out in good condition, handy and
steady, the most difficult part of his work is done.
The more he leaves them to themselves on a scent,
and, perhaps, the farther he can be satisfied to keep
behind them, provided he can persuade the rest of
the field to do the same, the better will it be. I think
that the points on which he can chiefly show superior
skill are these two : knowing how to look for a hare,
which is a great art ; and knowing when a hare has
squatted, and then patiently walking her up instead
of leaving her behind him. And in both these arts
Mr. Mullens was an adept. The result is, that most
men of good sense, who choose to give their attention
to the work, can make competent huntsmen of har-
riers ; but a large majority of good sportsmen, who
are excellent judges of fox-hunting, and know per-
fectly whether the thing is done well or ill, would fail
miserably in doing it.

Mr. Mullens was a retired brewer, and kept his
hounds at a house called Skippet's Inn, about a mile
from Basingstoke, not far from the lodge into Hack-
wood Park. During the years that I knew him, I
grew from boyhood to manhood, and he from a
middle-aged to an old man. He was an excellent
specimen of his class, being a shrewd, sensible, well-
mannered man ; and was well qualified to be a hare-
hunter by temper, patience, and a thorough know-
ledge of the nature and habits both of the hare and
the hound. When I first knew him he was always
accompanied in the field by a nephew who lived with

1 24 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

him, and who bore the historical names of OHver
Cromwell Fleetwood, and believed himself to be de-
scended from the family of the great Protector's son-
in-law ; but this representative of ancient republi-
canism died young ; and, from that time to the end of
his life, Mr. Mullens was attended by his servant Jem,
who afterwards became kennel servant and whipper-
in to Mr. John Portal's last pack of harriers, and who
could scarcely have failed to be a good one, consider-
ing the school in which he had been brought up.

When I first knew this pack, it was in no respect
remarkable. It consisted of ordinary harriers, some
neat and some coarse, with three or four heavy deep-
mouthed Sussex southerns, which Mr. Mullens ob-
tained from some sporting friend near Petersfield, and
one dog, named Tyrant, from Sir John Dashwood,
looking like a dwarf foxhound, who could run away
from the rest when the scent was good, but was of
little use when it was bad ; but out of these hetero-
geneous materials, with the help of an occasional cross
from the smallest of Mr. Chute's foxhounds, Mr.
Mullens, by patient and skilful breeding, was enabled
to show, during the last years of his life, a pack of
harriers as near perfection as can be imagined : small,
but powerful, level in height, beautiful in shape, and
faultless in work. Mr. Apperly, in one of his articles,
selects Mr. Mullens's * Gulliver ' as a model harrier :
he was so ; but the same might have been said of his
* Woodlark,' and many others in the pack.

When the pack attained to this excellence, I was no
longer resident in the neighbourhood ; but I used to
visit it for some weeks every winter, and it was a
great pleasure to the old man to meet me with a pack

Mr. Mtillens and his Harriers. 1 2 5

which he knew could so well stand criticism, and call
my attention to each individual hound. Their dis-
cipline was as perfect as their energy. They would
stand immovable within fifty yards of Shothanger, or
Small's Coppice, or whatever wood they were going to
draw, eagerly eyeing the cover, and lashing their sterns
about with impatience, while their master, confident
in their steadiness, would say, * Look them well over,
sir ; you haven't seen them for a long while ; there Is
no hurry ; they can iv ait your time! till, at the waving
of his arm, they would rush forward, in silent excite-
ment, and disappear in a moment, not creeping in a
string through the same gap, but each taking the bank,
side by side at once.

Mr. Mullens had a great respect for foxhunting, and
always considered that his humble pursuit was to be
kept in subjection to that nobler sport. Therefore he
did not like to fix his place of meeting till he knew
where Mr. Chute was going to hunt, lest he should
interfere with him ; and as Mr. Chute only fixed from
day to day, this scruple sometimes occasioned incon-
venience. He was quite free from the conceit that his
hounds could go as fast, or faster, than the neighbour-
ing foxhounds : a delusion to which I have known
many masters of harriers subject, and which, if true,
would be one of the worst faults that they could have.
He had, however, a strong opinion, that the foxhound
has by nature as tender a nose as the beagle, or the
Southern hound. For some seasons, before he had
brought his pack to the perfection and uniformity of
which I have spoken, he kept running with them a
bitch of Mr. Chute's called Haughty, who had been
drafted from deficiency of speed. Mr. Mullens main-

126 Recollections of the Vine Htmt.

tained that she could speak to a lower scent than any
hound in his pack, and declared that he had seen
frequent instances of it.

These were the only harriers I ever saw who could
be entirely depended on as steady both from rabbit
and from fox. Their steadiness from the latter was
once put to an extreme and most unfair test. Mr.
Mullens had taken out his hounds at the request of
some foxhunting gentlemen, who wanted a day's sport.
I know not how many were concerned in the trick
which I have to relate. I believe that the ringleader
was a person who was quite old enough to have known
better. A bag-fox was turned down, and hallooed
away as if it were a hare : the hounds were laid on
the scent, but would have nothing to say to it. Mr.
Mullens was for a short time puzzled, exclaiming,
' Well, this must be the worst of all the bad scenting
days I ever saw : the hounds cannot even own it.' But
he was much too acute a man to be long deceived ;
and having discovered the trick, he gave these gentle-
men a rebuke at which I think their ears must have
tingled. 'You have played me a very unhandsome
and very silly trick. You are gentlemen who like fox-
hunting. I am a humble old man, whose pleasure it
is to amuse myself and my friends with hare-hunting,
and I have brought out my hounds at your request.
Now it has been my pride to have kept these hounds
for twenty years, between two packs of foxhounds,
without ever running one of their foxes a yard, or in
any way injuring their sport ; but if you had succeeded
in making my hounds run this fox, you would not only
have undone the labour of my life, but you would
have had me disturbing your foxes, and interfering

%.

Agriculhtral Improvemcrits. 1 27

with your sport, in every cover that I might run
into.*

Mr. Mullens was firmly persuaded that the hares
in his country had become stouter, and could stand
longer before hounds, than when he had first begun to
hunt. On my expressing surprise at an opinion which
seemed to me so strange, and asking how he could
account for such a change, he said, ' Well, sir, I think
it can be sufficiently accounted for. You must remem-
ber that during those years the Swede turnip has
been introduced. Now the Swede is the heartiest food
that a hare can get ; and moreover she is so fond of
it that she will go a great distance for it. Well, there
you have at once the two things which improve con-
dition, better food and more exercise. At any rate,
whether this is the reason or not, I am sure of the fact :
my hounds are faster and more powerful, yet the hares
stand at least as long before them as they did when I
began to hunt'

The dates of Agricultural Improvements are gene-
rally soon forgotten, or known only to a few scientific
men. It may be well, therefore, to take this opportu-
nity of recording what little I know on such subjects.
I can say a little from my own recollections, but I
have obtained my most accurate information from Mr.
Terry, the same gentleman whose extraordinary run
with a few harriers I mentioned in my second letter.
His experience in Hampshire farming goes back to
the end of the last century, when his father, though
possessing property of his own in Berkshire, lived at
Tunworth, and at one time farmed the whole of that
parish. Being a person of more capital, as well as
more intelligence, than most of his neighbours, he
seems to have taken the lead in making experiments.

128 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

Mr. Terry assures me that Mr. Mullens was quite
correct in saying that the Swede was scarcely known
in that part of Hampshire at the beginning of this
century. The first root that he ever saw bearing that
name was from seed given to his father in 1802.
But this was not the same with the Swede which has
been since cultivated. It was a white turnip, with
very strong roots, striking so deep into the earth that
it was difficult to peck it up ; and it was supposed on
that account to exhaust the land too much. It was
two or three years later that he first saw the ordinary
yellow Swede which grows more on the surface of the
ground. I remember that about the year 18 12, an
old man, who had been a farm servant from his youth,
saw and tasted a Swede for the first time, and amused
us by ejecting it disdainfully from his mouth with the
observation, that ' it didn't seem deadly good.'

Nearly the same date must be assigned to the first
appearance of the Southdown sheep in that part of
Hampshire. The migration of these sheep from their
native hills began less than a century ago ; and it
must be remembered that their native hills did not
comprise the whole range of the Southdowns, but
only the eastern portion of them. We know from
the excellent authority of Gilbert White, that in the
year 1773, these sheep were to be found only to the
eastward of the river Adur, near Lancing. He says
in a letter, dated December 9th, 1773, ^ One thing is
very remarkable as to sheep ; from the westward till
you get to the river Adur, all the flocks have horns,
and smooth white faces, and white legs ; and a horn-
less sheep is rarely to be seen ; but as soon as you
pass that river eastward, and mount Beeding Hill, all

Agricultural Improvements. 129

the flocks at once become hornless, or, as they call them,
poll-sheep ; and have moreover black faces with a
white tuft of wool on their foreheads, and speckled
and spotted legs. And this diversity holds good re-
spectively on each side, from the valley of Bramber
and Beeding to the eastward and westward all the
whole length of the Downs, If you talk with the
shepherds on this subject, they tell you that the case
has been so from time immemorial; d^n^ smile at your
simplicity if you ask them whether the situation of
these two different breeds might not be reversed. How-
ever, an intelligent friend of mine near Chichester is de-
termined to try the experiment ; and has this autumn,
at the hazard of being laughed aty introduced a parcel
of black-faced hornless rams amongst his horned
western ewes. The black-faced poll-sheep have the
shortest legs and the finest wool.'

This extract supplies the date of the first faint at-
tempt that was made to bring the Southdown sheep
westwards. The remaining quarter of that century
probably sufficed to establish them throughout the
Sussex hills ; and it is reasonable to suppose that they
had spread into the parts of Hampshire bordering
upon Sussex, before they were known in the vicinity
of Basingstoke. Their first introduction into the
latter country may be fixed with tolerable certainty
to the year 1801.

In that year Mr. Terry's father bought, at Lewes,
300 Southdown ewes, the finest that he could obtain ;
for, as he truly observed, it was not worth while to go
so far to buy rubbish. He bought also more than
a proportionate number of rams, because he desired
to try a cross with the old Hampshire sort, as well as

K

130 Recollections of the Vine Hunt.

to perpetuate the pure breed : but, after two years*
trial, he abandoned the former, and stuck to the
latter idea. That these were the first, or at least
amongst the first, Southdown sheep introduced into
this district seems to be proved by the fact, that an
excessive prejudice was still entertained against them.
Mr. Terry met with as much ridicule on the subject
at Basingstoke, as Gilbert White's friend could have
encountered at Chichester, twenty-eight years earlier.
Amongst other absurdities he was gravely assured
that the manure of these nezv f angled animals zvould
prove worthless ; and that folding them over a field
woidd do no good. But within seven years a complete
reaction had taken place in the agricultural mind, and
the Southdowns became so much the fashion that
even a wether of that breed would command a higher
price than one equally large and fat of the old sort.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the Southdowns
have never ceased to occupy the countries which they
so rapidly acquired ; that they are now to be found in
most parts of the British Islands, and that Hampshire
and Wiltshire in particular have each their own sort,
bred and named from them.

The entire success of the Southdowns may be con-
trasted with the comparative failure of a rival tribe.
About the year 18 10 the campaigns of Wellington in
Spain brought into notice the Merino sheep. Great
resufts were expected from them, and it was pre-
dicted that they would beat every other kind out of
the field. I can remember when their merits were
the common topic of conversation amongst gentlemen
after dinner ; and I remember also to have seen some
unhappy specimens shivering in flannel jackets on

Conclusion. 1 3 1

a cold winter's day. This last circumstance may
sufficiently account for their failure. They were fairly
tried by many who had been prepossessed in their
favour ; but they could not be generally established
as denizens of England. As philologists tell us, that a
language readily adopts certain new words which are
accordant to its genius, while it rejects others which
are at variance with it, so our climate sternly refused
to admit a breed of sheep, which are spreading them-
selves widely, much to the benefit of mankind, over
the plains of Australia and South America.

Sainfoin came into Hampshire about one gener-
ation earlier. My father recollected its introduction. I
have been assured both by him and by others that
the ground, never having before borne it, was able to
maintain the plant much longer than it can now do.
It was not uncommon to let a field of sainfoin re-
main for twenty years, and I have heard of one well
authenticated instance when a very good crop was
mown at the end of twenty-one years.

And now, my good friend, you have all that you
asked for, and rather more. I have given you my
recollections of the early days of the Vine hounds,
and a great many miscellaneous recollections besides.
Perhaps you will say that, when you made the request,
you had no idea that I should pour forth so much, or
that there would be so little in it. I am ready to plead
guilty to both charges. I confess that much of what I
have written is both lengthy and trivial, and better
suited to form the gossip of two old friends over their
wine, than to be invested with the dignity of print.
But what better could you expect } When you set a
stone rolling from the top of a hill, you cannot tell

K 2

132 Recollections of the Vme Htcnt.

where it will stop, or what amount of dust you may
raise ; and just so, when you set my memory trundling
down into a deep vale of years ; it must pursue its
course, and cannot fail to stir up a great deal of rubbish
which would otherwise have slept in obscurity.

And yet, perhaps, I may be allowed to plead in
justification of what I have written, that time gives
a certain dignity even to trifles. I remember, indeed,
that Dr. Johnson somewhere speaks contemptuously
of those antiquaries who collect trumpery, and set an
imaginary value on things which * are now rare, only
because they were always worthless! But surely our
natural feelings scarcely coincide with this sarcasm. I
think there is something humanising, if not elevating,
in a curiosity which takes us a little out of the present,
and connects us with the past, and which seeks to
know what was said and done by our forefathers, even
though it may be nothing better or wiser than what
we are daily saying and doing ourselves. It is certain
that the most ordinary articles of domestic life acquire
a value if they belong to a distant age, and are dug
up after having been long buried ; and for some of my
stories I may claim a very respectable antiquity. But
after all, my best excuse must be, that I do not pre-
sume to publish this to the world, but write it only
for those who, like myself, are or have been members
of the Vine Hunt. It is presented to them, not with-
out a hope that my record of the manner in which
their country was acquired may be accepted as evi-
dence, if they should ever be called on to show the
title-deeds by which they hold it ; and with a confi-
dence that they will feel some interest in everything
which took place in their own woods and fields. The

Conclusion. 133

minstrel of an Highland chieftain was in no danger of

wearying his audience by a recital of the rights or

the deeds of his clan, however tedious his lay might

appear to others. We too are a clan ; and I reckon

largely on the indulgence of my fellow clansmen in

this attempt to set forth the origin of the hunt, and

to reveal the

Gentis cimabula nostrae.

If, indeed, these letters were ever to have a wider
circulation, I must be content to have my trifling
anecdotes of masters and servants, hounds and horses,
criticised somewhat in the words of Cowper : —

Oh fond attempt, to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot.

If you should ask how I could retain in my
memory, for so many years, all these minute par-
ticulars about men and animals, I must reply: ist,
that during some years of my life, at the period when
the memory is most tenacious, I gave a great deal of
attention to such matters, and lived in very intimate
intercourse with several masters of hounds, so that I
drew my information from the best authorities ; and
2ndly, that, about thirty years ago, I left off hunting,
so that I have no later sporting experiences to disturb
my earlier impressions ; and this has probably enabled
me to retain those impressions more distinctly, as
coins which have been long hoarded would preserve
the marks of the mint more sharply than if they had
been kept in continual circulation. I can guarantee
the truth of all that I have related from my own
personal recollections; and I feel confident of the
general accuracy of >the facts and dates which I have

1 34 Recollectio7is of the Vine Hunt

collected from the testimony of others ; while I leave
everyone to form his own judgment as to the sound-
ness of the opinions which I have ventured to express
on the subject of hunting generally. If they should
now be considered old-fashioned, yet I think that
they fairly represent the opinions held by the best
sportsmen at the time when the sexagenarian was a
young man.

September, 1864.

LONDON

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