3 9090 014 537 803 1='^ r \^ 5- Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University 200 Westboro Road North Grafton, MA 01536 THE BEST OF THE FUN I THE BEST OF THE FUN 189I-1897 BY CAPTAIN E. PENNELL-ELMHIRST AUTHOR OK "THE CREAM OF LEICESTERSHIRE," "THE HUNTING COUNTRIES OF GREAT BRITAIN," ETC WITH EIGHT COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. D. GILES AND FORTY-EIGHT OTHERS BY J. STURGESS AND G. D. GILES " Pve lived my life, I've nearly done, Vve played the game all round ; But Vm free to confess that the best of my fun I owe it to horse and hound." Whyte Melville LONDON CHATTO Gf WINDUS 1903 OK o Printed by Ballantynk, Hanson &> Co. At the Rallantvne Press TO HUNT-SERVANTS A BODY OF .MEN WHO DESERVE OUR ESTEEM AND ADMIRATION, AND OF WHOM THE LATE WILLIAM GOODALL OF THE PYTCHLEY WAS A WORTHY EXAMPLE CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. A novice's experiences of MEATH. ... I II. A novice's experiences of MEATH — {co?iti/iited) . 8 ill. THE CARLOW AND ISLAND 1 6 IV. GUV FAWKES' DAV 2 1 V. THE PVTCHLEY FROM HEMPLOW . . . . 30 VI. THE SHIRES UNDER WATER 34 VII. A ROUGH HOUR WITH THE PVTCHLEY ... 40 VIII. CHRISTMASSING. ....... 53 IX. NORTHAMPTONSHIRE . . . . . . . 60 X. THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE 63 XI. A LATE RELEASE . . . . . -71 XII. A DART FROM WINWICK WARREN .... 76 XIII. A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD ..... 80 XIV. DOUBTFUL MOUNTS 93 XV. AMATEURS AND HUNTSMEN . . . . 95 XVI. NORTHERN COUNTRIES . . . . . lOO XVII. ROCKIKS IN SEPTEMBER . . . . . . I20 XVIII. ROCKIES IN SEPTEMBER — {coiltiliued) . . -125 XIX. ROCKIES IN SEPTEMBER — {contiuucd) . . -133 XX. LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK. ..... I40 XXI. THE 13TH HUSSARS' HOUNDS, CORK. . . 153 XXII. TIPPKRARY 157 XXIII. THE EARLIEST CUT 166 XXIV. FIRST SCORES . 17- XXV. SHOEMAKERS AND CO.-\TMENDERS . • • -17 9 XXVr. THE RIVER CHARWELL WI'iH THE BICESTER . .185 XXVII. A NORTH WARWICKSHIRE SPIN 1^9 CONTENTS CHAP. XXVIII. MIGRATION IN THE FROST XXIX. A HOME SEQUEL XXX. STORM AND TEMPEST XXXI. THE huntsman's MONTH XXXII. A GREAT WEEK XXXIII. AND A GREAT GALLOP . XXXIV. sadness IN SUNSHINE . XXXV. THE ATHERSTONE . XXXVI. A HOT AND THIRSTY MARCH XXXVII. LOITERERS XXXVIII. IN COUNTY TIPPERARY . XXXIX. THE NEW FOREST DEERHOUNDS XL. THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS IN SEPTEMBER XLI. THE QUORN SEASON (1892-93) XLtl. TYPICAL CUB-HUNTING . XLIII. COUNTY TIPPERARY XLiv. COUNTY TIPPERARY — {continued) XLV. THE QUORN UNDER LORD LONSDALE (1893) XLVI. SPORT AT LAST XLVII. A CHAPTER OF EXCUSES . XLVIII. ROUGH AND TUMBLE XLIX. A WET SCURRY FROM BRAUNSTON GORSE L. TRIFLES .... LI. THAT WICKED BRAUNSTON BROOK AGAIN LII. A MEMORABLE MARCH LIII. A WATERY SCRAP .... LIV. A SKETCH OF THE BLACKMORE VALE LV. TIPPERARY IN SPRING LVI. THE BIG BULL ELK OF COLORADO . LVII. THE BIG BULL ELK OF COLORADO —{contintied) LVIII. ANOTHER RIDE WITH THE MEADOWBROOK HOUNDS LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK . . . 368 CONTENTS mx. thk muskerrv hunt, county cork — the tenth hussars' pack . LX. TIPPERARY in OCTOBER . Lxi. pytchley borderland . Lxn. a scent in practice and theory Lxiii. bootland and woodland LXIV. JANUARY JAUNTS . LXV. TAKINC. THE FLOOR LXVI. AN IRISH FAIR LXVII. AN INCIDENT OF ROUGH WEATHER ON THE ROCKIES LXVIII. WELSH FOXHOUNDS LXIX. A GREAT WEEK AFTER FROST . LXX. MELTON AT HOME AND ON VISIl LXXI. WILL GOODALL's LAST GALLOP LXXII. SPRING WOODLANDS LXXIII. A WET, WILD GALLOP WITH THE FALLOW BUCK LXXIV. THE LATE WILLIAINI GOODALL .... 377 386 397 402 411 416 420 425 428 438 444 449 456 464 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COLOURED PLATES HORSE AND HOUND Frontispiece WELSH PONIES AND RAGGED CART-COLTS SPLASHED THEIR WAY AHEAD OF THE PACK . . . To face p. 37 "I'll not BE BEAT BV THEM BOYS " .... ,, 99 HORSES TAKING THEIR GRUEL, AND MEN THEIR WHISKY AND SODA, IN THE STREET ... „ 2IO THE SHEEP PROCEEDED TO GYRATE ROUND HIS HORSE IN A SOLID CIRCLE .... „ 244 EACH AN EXACT COUNTERPART OF THE OTHER . „ 302 THAT RIDICULOUS BRAUNSTON BROOK ... » 335 THE BIG BULL ELK OF COLORADO .... „ 363 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT PAGE "TAKE IT AT A WALK" 3 A GREAT GREEN WALL ON THE TOP OF A RAMPART . . 5 SHE DROPPED HALF-A-DOZEN RESOUNDING STRIPES ON HIS OFF SHOULDER 22 HEREDITARY TASTE. OVER FENCES AND DITCHES ... 28 HEELS POISED HIGH IN THE AIR 44 THE FIRST-HORSES WERE FULLY COOKED . . . . . 50 COVERTSIDE GREETINGS 56 FLYING STEEDS WITH EMPTY SADDLES AND DANGLING REINS 9I MAKING THE DUST FLY HANDSOMELY 142 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi PAGE BOUNDED OVER WITH A ROLLICKING SPRING . . . . 148 WE WERE ROCKING ON THE BANK "163 SETTLED IN THEIR SWING 173 CONTINUOUS ACRES OF PLOUGH 180 AN IDLE STUD 195 THE OCCUPANTS OF THE CARRIAGES ENJOYED THE FUNNY SPECTACLE 2l3 THE OPEN DITCH 230 A SHEPHERD WAVING HIS HAT 237 A MINIATURE STEEPLECHASE COURSE 255 CASUALTIES TO SOME EXTENT ALARMING 268 A SPLENDID BUCK DASHED PAST MY PONY'S NOSE . . . 278 GLORY OR ENGULFMENT 283 HIS GRACELESS PLAYMATE GALLOPED PAST .... 289 SQUADS OF YOUNG HORSES GALLOPING IN THE PASTURES . 30I A HOG-MANED STEEPLECHASER 305 THE HUNTSMAN LED OVER THE BROKEN CAUSEWAY . . 316 A HOT HAT FLYING IN THE BREEZE 329 THE EFFECT WAS COMICAL 332 "I KEEPS NO WIRE l' WINTER-TIME" 34^ BRAUNSTON GORSE 343 LEADING ME OVER A BANK INTO A ROAD 351 A FINE FOX BROKE FROM THE GORSE 355 THE SUMMONS OF A SOLDIER-SERVANT 379 THE BOREEN 3^4 MR. C. BEATTY ALONE FOLLOWED JOHN'S EXAMPLE . . . 388 HE FINISHED THE DAY ON THE GOVERNOR'S HORSE . . 39' THE MOB ASSISTED TO HUNT THE FOX 39^ SIGNS OF WEAR-AND-TEAR 403 THE BLACKEST OF BULLFINCHES 409 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGK THE OLD WHO SUP CONSCIENTIOUSLY 412 "we are getting ON CAPITALLY" 414 THREE ASHPLANTS DESCENDED 419 THE GAUNT VISAGE OF A MAN 422 SHE WOULD COCK HER EARS AND LISTEN .... 427 THE DREAD PRESENCE OF WIRE 43I "TWO TO ONE HE DOESN'T GET UP AGAIN" .... 443 IT WAS A DREADFUL MORNING 445 BAFFLED BY A COLLIE DOG 455 THE DANGERS OF BOG AND BOUGH 457 THE BEST OF THE FUN CHAPTER I A novice's experiences of meath FIRST impressions are ever more vivid, occasionally more truthful, and generally more characteristic of subject than fully matured conclusions. Thus I shall proceed to treat you, my reader, much as the newly transported youngster in India or China does his fond parent, pouring out his soul and describing what he sees as if no white man had ever penetrated the country before. With surroundings and generalities as regards Meath you may or may not be familiar. I will not deal with these, but confine myself to setting down experi- ences and sensations such as might befall any new comer embarking (not altogether haphazard, but under reliable pilotage) on the mare iguotiiw, the green ocean of Meath. Not without a tremor, I confess, did I push off — nor am I ashamed to add that during the previous week I snatched gladly and gratefully at passing opportunity of a word of counsel from two old comrades of the chase. " Pull up at every fence. Take them at a walk if you can," urged Captain Trotter. " Slow up at them all," said Captain Smith, " and leave it to your horse." " Yes, but isn't he apt to scotch at these great graves they tell me of?" "Not he. He can see a great deal more than you can. Don't you know of the Irish dealer who de- clined a one-e^^ed horse of great character, with the remark that in his opinion a horse to cross Meath properly should have at least two eyes in his head, and, if possible, one in his tail ? " The illustration was new to me, if it A 2 THE BEST OF THE FUN isn't to you, and I pondered much over it, even during the hours of an uneasy ride across Channel. The maxims of two such mentors have never since been absent from my mind, even in moments of direst terror and fancied peril. "Go slow, go slow!" I say to myself, till, like the poor ignorant's wail of " O pilot ! 'tis an awful night," it has become a kind of prayer to me when the banks loom high and the deep chasms yawn. For, by all that is holy, the ditches of Meath are very chasms. It is difficult to conceive any period of Ireland's history when labour was so cheap, and landowners so lavish of the soil, that the populace were employed to dig the ground everywhere into rampart and dyke, as if every field was not only to be fenced but to be fortified — built and separated each into a rich green Campus Martins. Without further preface let me bring you to the covert- side of Philpotstown {town being, I take it, the adjunct denominating in each case the habitat of some aboriginal settler. If I am not right, may I not offend.). Well, here were some twenty, or thirty riders all told, and at but a little after three in the afternoon — a contrast, indeed, to the merry Shires and their eager, too eager multitudes. For, remember, Monday, October 19, 1891, was in the season proper — as they calendar it in Meath, and as betokened by the pink coats around (among them, by the way, one bearing the Q.H. button, and inviting memory back to Cream Gorse and the Coplow ; Mr. Beaumont the wearer). A find — a scream — watches out — and away !: Now to see what we shall see. Shiver and shake as much as you please by the covertside. But who shall tremble, who shall linger, when, like a rocket loosened, the pack is seen shooting forth in the dark background,, and a good horse is instantly quickening into life between your knees ? When such a moment fails to stimulate and to stir, may I, at least, be beneath the green turf rather than above it ! Round and beyond the little wood-covert was the inevitable shepherd, driving reynard across the river that flows beneath it, (Saving the near neighbourhood of the Boyne, it takes far less to make a " river " in Ireland than A NOVICE'S EXPERIENCES OF MEATH 3 we keep within the term " brook " across the water. But this by the way.) Now, if there is one man whose bounden duty it is to probe the depth of ruftning water, or to decipher difficulties generally, it is the huntsman. So we are wont to consider, and to him we invariably ^'■'"^ Take it at a walk " and unconsciously turn in our moments of doubt and fear. In this case it was to a very ready and capable guide. Mr. John Watson had replied to the mute appeal almost before it was framed, and was already saddle-deep in the swollen stream, the big brown stallion lifting him up the further bank with a mighty heave. Alas for the smaller horse and the Q.H. button ; the deep current swept them both down, with a venom that the waters of Whissendine 4 THE BEST OF THE FUN or Twyford had never evinced. Now across the rich wet grass the dog pack were driving heartily, and as the Httle band emerged as best it could from the grasping flood, hounds were some three hundred yards away Aha ! no Irish double is this, but a simple obstacle of thorn and — may I believe it? — with rail on top. They told me that timber existed not in Meath, You may take this fence at all events Leicestershire fashion, and indeed be thankful you have the pace on, for the ditch beyond is wider and deeper than they often dig in the grass countries of Old England. And the next too is a wide, fair fly-water from brink to brink, and either brink shrouded in rushy vagueness. Let us suppose you have taken the offlce from Mr. Watson and his man Holmes, or from Mr. Watkins and Mr. Garden ; that your well-taught mount marked exactly where sound turf ends and water begins, and that you are safely careering over the wide acreage of pasture beyond. The hamlet (that isn't Irish ; no matter) of Dunberry is, you learn afterwards, the landmark on your right. Put you are more intent on creeping into the lane under a tree, and cramming out again over a wall- like bank, than in gazing about for landmarks. Already you may be with the pack — flinging hard into their work with a full-toned delight that well becomes the blood of Cheshire, Brocklesby, and Milton — as they pour out of the lane, and seem settled to run their fox to his death. Steady, fool, steady ! Did I not tell you. Go slow, go slow ? Your first Irish bank — and it nearly caught you. Shoulders and talent that was all your horse's alone made recovery good. Did you not mark those better men in front, how they steadied into the slowest trot ? A flock of sheep scurries across the front, a herd of sleek, fat bullocks comes lumbering round, and hounds are brought to a momentary, very vital stop (some seventeen minutes from the find). Though on again directly, it has eased the first pressure from the fox, whereas another ten minutes at this pace would have burst him and kept him to hand. Hounds right themselves again rapidly, and go forward full merrily. Strong thorn growers of wondrous height and strength mark the banks hereabout. A NOVICE'S EXPERIENCES OF MEATH 5 at once undeceiving one as to the uniformity of Meath fences, a point so often put forward at a distance from the scene. The second of these pasture-dividers is as a great green wall on the top of a rampart. The Master and his big horse have bored a hole, and you see next- comer and next-comer wriggle through and disappear A great green wall on the top of a ran?.part with an audible splash into some abyss beyond. Oh, it's horrible ! But you and I can't stay here among the fat bullocks. No necessity to repeat the formula. Go slow, go slow ! Are we not already at a dead and fearful stop ? So we too will crawl up, push the thorns and leaves aside as far as we can, to find ourselves poised over a wet, running ditch, too broad, surely, for any horse to jump, at a stand, and too deep, one would imagine, to allow of 6 THE BEST OF THE FUN ever emerging on horseback. But nobody is down there now, so the others must have got out somehow. By my Saxon soul, if I ever come out of this aHve I'll be off by the morning train back to peaceful North- amptonshire. Hold up, old man. You have a helpless, ignorant being on your back ; and his fate is wholly in your hands. Down we go into the muddy tank awaiting us — the slush flying upward to fill eyes, nose, and mouth — a second spring (long before we are ready) not only lifting us half-way up the perpendicular bank, but bringing our face in full contact with the good steed's unrelenting skull. The shock drives our head back till every well- worn feature is fresh-scored by the overhanging thorns ; a third spring drags us painfully to daylight ; and by the help of a stout snaffle bridle we emerge battered, bleeding, and thoroughly frightened, to pursue the flying men of Meath. Just in time now to join them, as one by one they walk up another thorny bank, then call upon their horses to leap, at a stand, a yawning chasm that we, in our simple ignorance, should have deemed far beyond the power of horseflesh, however strong of hock or stout of loin. Fearlessly the bold nags fling themselves, and safely they land one and all. In meek amazement we suggest to our well-taught conveyance that he should do likewise. Aptly he follows suit, and thankfully we mur- mur a blessing on the liberal owner to whose friendly kindness we are indebted. Again the great four-pound-an- acre bullocks came ramping round ; and again are hounds hindered when they should be choking their fox. Now they reach the demesne — if I am right in so terming the surroundings of the house at Tullyard. A huge mearing (Anglice, boundary) fence, or embankment, with perpendicular face and watery ditches, here stands athwart the path. Half the party turn leftward, to tackle it where said to be just feasible. Three out of four first essayists are down in the effort ; while hounds swing suddenly to the right, recross the great double, and go on attended by master and man. Over pasture and bank they hunt cheerily on — hindered occasionally by cattle, but often close at their fox, ere reaching Meadstown. A A NOVICE'S EXPERIENCES OF MEATH 7 broad brook — possibly the same we had seen forded at Philpotstown — was crossed on the way, the Master alone flying it in his stride, the others contentedly availing themselves (^f a cattle-ford. Near the covert of Meads- town a fat female of humble degree had viewed the fox. Loudly she shrieked and wildly she waved her apron till she brought huntsman and hounds to her side, that she might point to exactly the opposite corner of the wide field as reynard's route. Beyond Afeadstown he had just touched the bog, but refrained from putting its path- less surface between him and his pursuers. Forty minutes to here — and he apparently a beaten fox. But the attentions of a collie dog appeared to infuse new life into him. He relinquished the twisting tactics that had kept Cheshire Royal and his comrades so busy with their noses by the bogside ; and he turned back through the plantations of Meadstown. The field now consisted of Messrs. Sullivan, C. Murphy, T. Maher, and H. Cullen — if I have caught my information correctly — and even these were fain to ride cautiously on the return journey to Philpotstown ; Mr. Watson alone, on his second horse, being able to keep hounds close company. To shorten my already too lengthy story, hounds worked their way back by Kilbride Chapel, to regain their starting-point in one hour and twenty-five minutes after having left it, and without having touched a covert (or, it goes without saying, a ploughed field). Still their fox was moving on ; but after hunting him another quarter hour, and almost to Carrolstown, it became necessary to stop hounds in the failing light. Such was my initial experience of Meath and its very sporting, keen-working pack. Almost needless to add, I came home delighted with both — in spite of the sundry and more or less severe trials to which, as above noted, my nervous system had been subjected. To the business- like completeness* of Mr. John Watson's hunt establish- ment and to his own marked capacity as a huntsman, it would, under the circumstances of my pleasant visit to Meath, be but bad taste to make other than passing allusion. 8 THE BEST OF THE FUN And space admits not of my dealing at any length with the cheery items of the following day, when a much larger field (and, may I add, a very smart body of riders) assembled at Trim, for a gallop round the neighbourhood of the town. Nor need I describe in detail the mingled feelings that animate the ordinary stranger's breast as he finds himself poised goatlike on each lofty bank, and as he awaits his horse's pleasure to take him into the apparently fathomless depths below. Happy for him, probably, that at such times he has little or no voice in the direction of his own destiny. He has taken his ticket ; and if, like myself, he is lucky enough to have been consigned to a first-class carriage, he may well rely upon being carried safely to his destination. This much at least have I already learned in Meath — that a horse possesses talent and discrimination such as we of Middle England seldom give him credit for, and that, at all events in Ireland, it is necessary to let him exercise his powers altogether without interference. CHAPTER II A novice's experiences of meath {continued) On the Thursday following, October 22, 1891, 1 was taken to quite another section of the Meath country — to the Master's thinking, and that of many of his most capable supporters, the most sporting of all their territory. This is to the north, and about a dozen miles from Navan, a wide hilly country, not wholly unlike the Cottesmore. How would you fancy it, though, men of Oakham, if you woke one morning to find all your white gates done away with or locked, and your hedges perched (but not cut- and-laid, certainly) on broad stone-faced banks some six feet in height, with a deep, deep ditch added on one side or both ? This, I take it, is in the main the character of the Mountainstown and Headstown district. Had I been set down in it on foot or horseback a month ago, I should have declared by all I fancied I knew about hunting that this was a breakneck, impracticable country. Hear- A NOVICE'S EXPERIENCES OF MEATH 9 ing that hounds did hunt over it, I should have looked round at once for the lanes of Devon and Somerset — and found them not. Now I have seen it practically demon- strated that the horses of the country can get over it, I wonder the more — as I have never ceased to wonder since I came to Ireland — how I and others of a like sphere can have gone on riding to hounds for so many years and yet have learned so little of what a horse can really do. One conclusion I have come to regarding Meath : which is that, however popular and largely resorted-to the country may again become (and I venture to predict a great future under the present regime), it can never be grossly over- crowded, like some portions of our charming Shires. For in IMeath it is absolutely impossible that you can turn up at the end of a good and fairly straight gallop, mop your forehead, and, ivithout having jumped a single fence in the line, swear it was one of the best things you ever "saw." Do we not see this happen in the Shires time after time, and do more than half of a large field ever ride a run at all ? But in Meath you cannot hunt or go beyond a first covert- side without riding the country, a country that to my unaccustomed and perhaps cowardly eye is very strong indeed. Thus all the regular men of IMeath are sportsmen and horsemen, and withal, may I presume to add, exceed- ingly courteous and pleasant sportsmen too. Moreover, they know their country by heart, and they know the exact capabilities of nearly every man, certainly of every horse, in it. While England was being drowned out by daily deluges of rain, and while lament was wafted over by every post that the ground was already deeper than had been known for years, in Ireland we were hunting daily in glorious, perhaps too gaudy, sunshine. Some days hounds could run hard ; on others — glass and forecast identically similar — hounds would be choked off the moment they found themselves among sheep and cattle ; two sources of hindrance that in less overwhelming degree are, I believe, to be found in mild and grassy Meath the winter through. On Thursday there was no great scent from Moun- 10 THE BEST OF THE FUN tainstown, though they found plenty of foxes everywhere. Of the two in Bog Wood they had some pretty hound work, especially road-hunting, with one who eventually beat them in the direction of Newtown. There was a leash in Headstown little wood and gorse, the first one going away across the front, too frightened to think of anything but a straight course and a distant point. We had only fifteen minutes with him ; but that fifteen minutes, under the leadership of Mr. John Watson, was quite sufficient to expound fully the fashion of the country and its original method of fence-making. A narrow-back of loose boulders gave him his initial subject of exposition ; a great loose-stoned bank (beyond a first deep ditch) gave him foothold before he disappeared altogether from view, till his cap was seen bobbing happily across the pasture beyond. No need to continue the series. The railway at length put a temporary stop to it, and before the thread was taken fully in hand again, hounds had run their fox to ground, short of Mountainstown. Then we had an hour's ring under difficulties from Bengerstown, one of the gorses ■ built by the great Sam Reynell, the Alexander of Meath. The field of Thursday was not so large (though very representative of that side of the country) but that I was enabled to learn a great number of the names. Lord Headfort (and others of his party driving), Mr. and Mrs. Pollock of Mountainstown, Major and Mrs. Kearney, Mr. and Miss Gargen, Miss Flatten, Major Everard (Mrs. Everard on wheels), Mr. and Mrs. Donovan, Mrs. Single- ton (driving), Lord C. Bentinck, Captain Hone, Messrs. Caldwell, Carden, Coppinger, Hopkins (2), Law, Lembarde, Newland, Tierman, W. Waller (ex-M.F.H.), Walker, &c. On Friday the same hounds were again in a totally different variety of country — the demesnes of Killeen and Dunsany (the places of residence of Lord Fingall and Lord Dunsany respectively). In brilliant sunshine but a cooler air they were able to run with more venom and determination than on any day of the week. To the lady pack was given the task of rattling this chain of coverts and parkland ; which they did very effectually, though i A NOVICE'S EXPERIENCES OF MEATH ii rewarded only by running a very beaten fox to ground. After two days with either pack, I may take upon myself to assert that the condition and drive of the Meath hounds leave nothing to be desired. They are tit as hounds can be ; they run hard, and they keep their noses down. Foxes are plentiful, and sport is almost assured. The demesnes in question are a natural arena for cub-hunting (though to-day, be it remembered, was nearly a week on into the regular season) : and the day admits of no story at my hands, albeit its later hour was eked out by means of a short run across the open, leaving all hands at Drumree, the starting-point for the return special to Dublin. The greatest novelty of all, to my narrow English experience, was the opening day of the Ward Union Staghounds. Never had I seen in any degree the like of it. Never, possibly, may I see the like of it again. Some profane person in my hearing had compared the occasion to old-time Easter Mondays in Epping Forest. I say that the simile in no way holds good. 'Arry of London would as soon venture to dangle his legs over the gallery balus- trade, or over the knifeboard guardrail of an omnibus, as put his limbs in the position of buffer, to fend off one galloping car from another, amid a crowd of reckless hundreds. Still less would he throw in his lot — regardless of all other essential requisites for riding to deer and hounds beyond four doubtful legs under him and half-a- crown cap money in his pocket — prepared to face any country, any obstacle (and as many of them as good luck will allow him) in company with the pick of the land, both of manhood and horseflesh. This Ward experience enables me to say 1 have now seen the stag hunted by nearly every pack in this yet-united kingdom ; but the manner of meet and of throwing-off is nowhere the same as here. It would be impertinent of me to cavil at the mere dulness of colouring and costume observable at the Meet ; but it is surely incongruous that at such a gathering of mirth-loving people, with a view to a ride with the Ward, only a businesslike solemnity should pervade the function. I fancy that a First Meet is never a very 12 THE BEST OF THE FUN popular occasion among the better men of the Ward. They see in it a loose-ott" of DubHn effervescence that militates against real sport and reasonable safety. But that effervescence is by no means festive, even if it borders on the fearful. A few over-fresh horses constitute its chief symptoms and one of its chief dangers. For the rest, the effervescence is tightly bottled till the signal shall be given. Meantime the repression would seem to be positively painful, and the effect solemnifying. In other words there was no excitement apparent about this throw- off of the Ward but the funk — I speak from my own point of view and sensation, it is true, but I speak also as to how it seemed with others. No ; by no means an Epping Hunt was this, with its luncheon hampers, and its after- scamper beneath the trees. A solid ride and many dangers, known and unknown, were in front. The crowd well realised the fact ; yet they had no means of qualifying the dread prospect. Now can I understand the sense of expediency that prompts more than one jolly Master of English Staghounds that I could name to combine his midday meal with a mild midday revel — cram his field full of champagne, in fact, and send them off with their hackles up. To continue the simile, these looked "cold and rough in their coats" by the time they had travelled some half-dozen miles of crowded lanes from " Ward " to reach the place of turn-out, near the hills of Kilbride. Along narrow lanes, with little or no grass sidings to the road, they pressed in close company — a strong sprinkling of kickers interspersed among the cavalcade, and the rider of each kicker being, if expression was any clue to his feelings, usually the aggrieved party, whenever a thwack and disturbance was heard. They could scarcely have all got there before hounds opened ; for by some arrangement, doubtless unavoidable, the deer had been uncarted close to the gate leading into the field, and hounds threw their tongues the moment they were out of the lane. Yes, here was the " arrangement " — a muddy brook to start with, of no great width ; but, what- ever may be the case in County Dublin, many horses in County Northampton or County Leicester are foolish A NOVICE'S EXPERIENCES OF MEATH 13 enougli to turn up their noses at water at first offer. Even here, methinks, horses are not immaculate. A loud iiop proclaimed that Irish horses are not all alike trust- worthy ; and right and left there sounded splash, splash, as if of a school of seals taking the water. Personally, I confess to the keenest possible sense of gratitude and relief on finding myself on the bcyaut — having neither ridden over any one in front of me, nor been overtaken in mid-air by any one behind. What must have been the fate of some of the earliest plungers I still shudder to think. It made the danger no more sublime, nor the situation less threatening, though the scene gained undoubtedly in picturesqueness and pos- sibly romance, that at each of the first half-dozen banks and brooks (for it was a very watery region) there was clustered a bevy of fair wreckers intent upon securing all the sport and excitement that might be got. These had driven down after the deer-cart, and, with a know- ledge of the game that I have yet to acquire, had followed the course of the stag till they had fixed upon such points of vantage as could best show them (from a new reading) all the fun of the fair. There they stood, almost flagging out the course, till hounds ran fence after fence to their midst, and the phalanx of horsemen rode devotedly to its doom. Surely the dainty dames of Caesar's amphi- theatre never watched the contest more excitedly, nor turned their thumbs downwards more unrelentingly, than these who now clapped their hands and waved their handkerchiefs as each competitor came to earth, or water. By twos and threes and fours the latter fell. The banks and ditches were grassy and ill-defined ; and never, in a somewhat varied experience of big fields and free catas- trophe, have I seen half so many croppers in the same space of time. In a strong timber and stake-and-bound country it might have meant half-a-dozen collar-bones. Here it involved many muddy coats and several loose horses. The country folk eagerly caught and returned most of these last ; but I can still see a well-built dun hunter taking every fence among the tail hounds for at least a mile. The country was wet enough almost for 14 THE BEST OF THE FUN snipe-shooting ; and horses fairly splashed over it, without, however, sinking deep through the marshy grass. Matters were just properly settling themselves, and even the width of the ditches had begun to seem less awe-inspiring, when, at the end of twelve minutes, we jumped into the Ash- bourne Road (close to the seventh milestone from Dublin), and the stag was found to have been headed back. Under ordinary circumstances, and on other ground, a breather after some three miles' deep galloping would have been a welcome gain. One could have trotted quietly through gateways in the direction required, and have started off again with recruited energy. Here, after being hemmed in to the road for a hundred yards' saunter opposite a forbidding narrow-back (a fence something like a Madras mud-wall with a burying-hole beyond it), it became neces- sary to ride through a farmyard having two deep water ditches within the next fifty yards. (How these Irish farmers get about their land with only a single, invariably padlocked, gate on the whole farm is beyond my powers of explanation). Somehow or other we at length re- gained Brindley, who, while leading his field, had been the first to realise the deer's double-back ; and, scarcely had we done so, than the stag went to ground in a lofty culvert beneath a lane. From the view began a second scurry, in which we passed Ballymacarney fox-covert — deer and hounds this time having all the best of it, for the deep watercourses made progress slow and compli- cated, and the long grassed turf was everywhere spongy if not holding. One rivercourse (I believe it was the Ward itself — or was it the " Lough of the Bay " ?) would have driven us all back sorrowing in an English country. You had to climb up a little wall-like bank, creep down the almost perpendicular cutting for a horse's length, then spring across eight or ten feet of water, and scramble an equally perpendicular side beyond. These Irish hunters in truth pass any ordinary Englishman's understanding. A white horse showed us it was possible ; the huntsman and his whip followed suit ; and accordingly we all (several others being as untaught as myself) resigned ourselves to our fate, arriving on the other side with eyes shut and A NOVICE'S EXPERIENCES OF MEATH 15 waistcoats palpitating. Even after this there was more falling about. Men don't often hurt themselves, I am told. The ground does not fly at your head as it does in the turnover Shires. And so we jumped into a lane, and found ourselves — at the J\leet again ! Thirty minutes — and safe ! " Horse not quite in condition." Have I not some of my own waiting to be killed in their native land ? Shall I risk casualty at the end of a week's hearty enjoyment— of which the recent rough gallop has been not the worst item? Not for a moment. "Go home when you have enjoyed yourself " is a worthy maxim. Now for a five minutes' trot — deer, hounds, and horses — along a road. Then, having counted a dozen in all (including the hard, clever staff), as comprising the party now with hounds, and among them at least three soldiers new to the country, I gave myself the order " Home." Of whom was the field composed — the field proper, not its casual following — how can I possibly tell ? For in most instances faces were as unfamiliar as the vari- coloured backs that I saw skimming the plain before me. But from one of Dublin's numerous morning papers I gather that, besides the Master, Mr. J. Fox Goodman, such notable men as Messrs. Percy-Maynard, Maher, and Allen were among the riders, while, of faces not alto- gether unfamiliar, I recognised Lord Southampton, Lord William and Lord Charles Bentinck, Colonel Stockwell, Major Lamont, Major Fisher, Captains Pilkington and Onslow, Captain and Mrs. Steeds. A dozen couple of great slashing hounds composed the pack — just such a pack, I imagine, as can best hunt the red deer. But I had not yet done with the Ward country and its little idiosyncrasies. Having loosened my girths and lit the cigar of content, I watched the chase disappear into the flat distance (they travelled, I believe, but sufticiently far to make a fairly good run complete), then 1 turned my head to regain the road. " More power to yer honour, remember the gateman ! " spake a native with a muckcart. Well pleased with all I had seen, I was gladly producing a shilling thank-offering for my i6 THE BEST OF THE FUN thirsty applicant, when two others burst upon the scene. " Begorra, and it wasn't him that held the gate at all. Haven't we been running all the day?" Of course the first comer stuck up vociferously for his rights, where- upon No. 2 in his excitement declared, "Thin the gentle- man shan't go out by the gate at all at all," and even laid hand upon my reins ! This was more than I could stand ; so, in the confidence begotten of a good horse, of the knowledge that a gate is as a rule the least desir- able point of exit from any ordinary field in Ireland, and of the possession of perhaps the only hunting-crop of that day's assembly, I ordered my new friend hotly to drop his hands at once. With this order he readily complied ; but only to plunge them both, with best intent, into the face of his rival, the muckcart-man. At it they went, like the electors of Cork, very clumsily but very fiercely, hammering each other while I yelled with laughter. Two good rounds they treated me to, till, fully satisfied with the sport provided, I thought it time to play peacemaker. Sixpence apiece made their hearts glad ; and off they went in high good humour, the three of them, to do justice to the toast of " Stag- hunting," as far as the pittance would allow. CHAPTER III THE CARLOW AND ISLAND It had long been my ambition to see Mr. Robert Watson hunt a fox ; good fortune and good friendship put this also in my power during my visit to Ireland, a chance upon which I shall ever congratulate myself. An immense tract of very varied country (at least four counties in whole or in part ; to wit, Carlow, Wexford, Wicklow, and Kildare) is hunted over by him, as it was by his father and grandfather before, Mr. Watson at the present moment being seventy-nine years of age, ye( young as a boy. Of course from one day's experience I cannot pretend to be in a position to describe the THE CARLOW AND ISLAND 17 country ; but my general impression, from what I saw and from what I heard, is that the Carlow and Island is rougher, less universally grassy, and, to ride over, little less complicated than Meath. Many of its banks are stone-faced ; walls are not infrequent, and bogs are by no means unknown. But a good man on a good horse (the two essentials for almost every country) can live near enough to hounds over most of it. Taking the field every three days a week, hounds have on one of those days (Thursday, if I remember right) never less than fourteen Irish miles to travel to covert, and, indeed, are usually sent on overnight. Of the hounds themselves, it is safe to say that no pack in Ireland is at the present time at all equal to them. They have been in the same family, and the same kennels, for some two hundred years, and from father to son has descended not only the love of hunting, but the faculty of breeding a foxhound. The Fitzwilliam (Milton), as we know, have at various times been largely indebted to the Ballydarton kennel (for instance, in the case of the Carlow and Island Singer) ; for the drive and determination of the Fitz- william are quite in keeping with the qualities most in- sisted upon by Mr. Watson ; hunting-power and the best of blood being the foundation of his creed. The lady pack were taken to " The Fighting Cocks " the day on which it was my privilege to see them (October 28, 1 891). A bright, level, and very sharp-looking pack, as was afterwards evidenced in their work, wherein^ — though this was by no means an absolutely good scenting day — they showed themselves busy, eager, and bustling as hounds could be. As I said in my last, Ireland was enjoying itself in sunshine during the greater part of the time that England was storm-beaten — there being at least no disturbance nearer than Cork. By the way, I have come to realise with thorough conviction what has been hinted to me frequently for many a day, viz. that Ireland's true voca- tion and use is hunting. The Green Island is properly the field — the grandest of fields — of hunting, not of politics. Given up wholly to the former, she would be B i8 THE BEST OF THE FUN fulfilling her fittest destiny. Riches would flow into her ; and the men of Ireland, high and lovv alike, would be working their common bent for their common good, and for the good of their country. All politics apart, the wealth of Ireland would be found in its country sports and country life. These now only flicker — in many parts have died out altogether — as candles without wax, for want of sustenance, for want of food for a flame that would naturally burn brightly. Several good countries — wild (by which I mean open and unbroken), fox-hunting, grass-growing countries in Ireland are already without hounds, because they are without country gentlemen and without funds. Ask these few remainder (by whom hunting is still kept up) how the sport would fare were they, too, to be forced to surrender their sadly attenuated properties. It is not everywhere in Ireland that the red coat is donned before November ; thus the Carlow-and-Island men were still in their mufti on the day in question. Cub-hunting, indeed, it happened to be ; though I doubt not a good old fox would have been readily meted out his deserts had he offered himself. But of the several foxes at Kellistown, the two elder for a long time only hovered round their brood, like the parent birds of a young covey. At last we had a quarter of an hour's scurry which touched Mr. John Bunbury's place at Moyle, and brought us back to Loch and the covert of Kellistown. Surely in the history of last season (1890-91), broken and disappointng as it was, no item of personal ill-fortune was so sad as the accident that deprived Mrs. John Bunbury of her hunting. I say it advisedly and without exaggeration, no lady we have seen ride to hounds, where so many ride fearlessly, skilfully, and well, had the knowledge and faculty of cross- ing a country possessed by Mrs. Bunbury, who not only rode to hounds in the most complete sense, but might even have handled them herself. This pleasant trifle of a gallop began by hounds working out a twisting difhcult line before throwing them- selves into scent for fifteen fast minutes. Then they and the sun kept us awhile at boiling-point. One may learn something every day. One ought to — however inapt THE CARLOW AND ISLAND 19 a scholar. The point that I picked up on this occasion, all unwillingly I confess, was cheaply acquired, for it only involved the price of a felt hat and a stiff neck, viz. that the part of a bank you ought not to choose for your leap is where by force of cattle tread or rainwash it has become razor-topped and thin. In this condition it is likely enough to crumble to your horse's beat and — well, in my case I found myself heading downwards into the further ditch, till brought up short by my crumpled billycock and the rein still grasped in my hand. I looked upward in mortal terror for what might be coming after. But no horse was to be seen, till I heard two good Irish oaths and two good Irish shillelagh strokes, when above the bank he appeared, and jumped hastily over instead of upon me. How it all happened I could neither make out at the time, nor have I been able to decipher since. But it left an impress on my mind that nothing is to be gained from the cowardly instinct of going for the lowest level, any more than safety is always to be attained in Mid-England by skirting for the meanest gaps. And how that Irishman came to be there in the nick of time, blackthorn in hand, is comprehensible only through the fact that, wherever and whenever hounds are running in Ireland, there are men on foot — labourers and " herds "—running too. But to continue with my own experiences, as one who serves to illustrate conclusions probably arrived at by every new comer in Ireland. This little episode lost me the pilot I had intended as mine own, and whom, altogether without his leave, I had selected as most likely to keep me near hounds and out of danger. Accordingly, in jumping the next fence, I jumped it anywhere but at the right spot, and, having descended its second stone-built face (for, Janus-like, these Carlow banks frown at you w-ith a face back and front),^ found myself penned in a corral that to my notion would have held a Texan steer. But the old schoolmaster I was bestriding never hesitated a moment. At once he took the shortest route after the ' Lord Iluntly will remember the fact, during his Mastership of the Fitzwilliam, of an inquiring visitor asking him overnight, " Would he be likely to find the ditches in that country towards him, or from him, at his fences next day?" 20 THE BEST OF THE FUN tinkling music, as if to impress upon me that he had had quite enough of my guidance, and that in future he meant to be coachman. Anyhow, he ht on the top of the bank Hke Leotard perching on his trapeze — giving me much the sensation of being tied on to some aerial exhibitor — and on he went into the next field with the same leisurely and shockless gait. When in course of time he let himself down into a road, so easily and gently that he would scarcely have broken an egg had he lit on it, though exacting a sore strain upon my power of remaining any- thing like in the perpendicular, I breathed freely — the breath of thankfulness and amazement. Now I found myself in the good company from which I had never wished to separate, and from whose guiding presence I vowed nothing should again take me till the day was over. They had come the last mile without jumping a fence (a very uncommon feat in Ireland, I take it), while I had been perspiring in wholly unnecessary, and possibly merely fancied, peril ! After this we were again for a long time at Kellistown, the pack running two or three foxes almost to a standstill. Afterwards hounds took the open — this time by the Old Covert, and by the steeple of Kellistown, to the banks of the Burrin. These few minutes (to ground) lay over a wide grass country, and were decked by a variety of scene that would have made Mr. Sturgess happy. But as I can neither draw horses tumbling upward into a road — in attempting to spring high enough out of a bog to reach the top of its stone-faced embankment — nor depict them rolling downwards when landing into similar soft ground beyond, my story must go bare of illustration. What in my view is much more a matter of regret is that a good gallop set properly going should have ended abruptly and unexpectedly at an open rabbit-burrow, and that my day's experience of a charming pack and (if repute goes for anything) a phenomenal huntsman, one who with all the knowledge of the craft that half a century of practice has accumulated, combines the vigour and nerve of a young man, should thus have been limited to the opportunity of two brief scurries and a term of work in _, GUY FAWKES' DAY 21 covert. Of the field assembled at Kellistown Gorse, a field that is as remarkable for its unanimity and close fellowship as it is for devotion to its chief, there were, among others, Miss Watson, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Stewart- Duckett, Mr. and Mrs. Pike, Mr. and Mrs. Roche, Miss Bolton, Dr. and Mrs. Kidd, Major Alexander, Messrs. Bagenal, Beresford, Dawson, Eustace (3), Forbes, Grogan, Hall-Dare, Hore, M'Clintock. I can quite conceive that Carlow is, even to the skilled Irish practitioner, anything but an easy country in which to live with hounds when they are running hard. To begin with, the hounds are a very fast pack, chiefly of Fitzwilliam and Brocklesby blood — Milton Remus and Brocklesby Weathergage, for instance, ac- counting for nearly half the present pack ; then there is nothing to stop or, rather, to string them out, for they can carry a head twenty couple wide on to the banks and through their unkempt hedge-growth, while these lofty fences cloud the view, and, moreover, are by no means to be jumped invariably as they come. Many of them are not to be jumped at all. A text-book example of the conservative good-fellow- ship of the hunt I happened to see next day at Chancellor's in Dublin, in the shape of a portrait album of the Carlow and Island Hunt members, compiled for presentation to Mr. Robt. Watson. CHAPTER IV GUY FAWKES' DAY As a barque that has been tossed upon distant waters (there are always terrors in the unknown), I return to the plain-sailing Midlands of England, to find them fully a fortnight backward as compared to Ireland. Hounds have been somewhat busy for the past week or so, the ground excellent, scent of course good, with the glass up in the heavens, and the leaf coming down as rapidly as the wire. We can never ride here with our eyes shut, what- ever folk may say at a distance. But we fight very shy 22 THE BEST OF THE FUN indeed of leafy hedges that we cannot see through, and before the bullocks are out of the pastures. I can tell you nothing further back than October 29, except upon hear- say, a weapon I take in hand only when crippled. On that day the Pytchley ran all a sunny morning and flew for a short while in the afternoon. If ever sunshine should have had power to spoil sport (a power I think it never has, cceteris similibus, though it can dazzle you, con- fuse your horse, and certainly cloud a wire-strand) it should She dropped half-a-dozen resounding stripes on his off shoulder have been that Friday. Yet hounds ran hard under it for quite an hour, reduced both their fox and their field to a trot, and made a fine run without help. They were laid on their game as he stole away from Badby Wood. They ran him round the Fawsley estate, then pushed him quite an uncommon line by Catesby to Shuckburgh Hill, fox winning by about a dozen lengths all out. There are not so many gates in the county of Meath, as the right division of pursuers opened alongside hounds this forenoon. In the afternoon again was an unusual line taken — for a pretty inauguration of a promising season (there are no prophetic berries on the hedges ; the turf is full of wet GUY FAWKES' DAY 23 and the coverts of foxes ! What more would you have ?). From Dodford Holt to Everdon Stubbs is a very bright seventeen minutes — may be done in fifteen if scent serves and you haven't given the Everdon brook credit for a sound bottom. Ah, there's something familiar in the fierce flurry which it is our wont to adopt in this subor- dinate island when we perceive six feet of water crossing our path. But this is not a fitting introduction to a little incident that I consider not only illustrative of our clime and rate of riding at a brook but of the manner of woman- kind holding its own over here. " Only a hack," she had already explained. " Is yours good at water ? " as she made running down the field approaching the brook. '' The worst in England," responded he promptly, rather than accept the proffered honour of place. Without further word or ado, she took the " hack " tight by the head, dropped half-a-dozen resounding stripes upon his off-shoulder, and before he knew where he was, the " hack " found himself a yard or two over the brook, the last speaker coming meekly but not ungratefully after. A weak scent upon the falling leaves allowed a beaten fox to crawl about altogether in safety in Everdon Stubbs. A good day's sport. The Warwickshire Gallop from Shuckburgh Bear with me while I cram upon paper as fast as I can the great gallop of the Warwickshire from Shuckburgh. Shuckburgh has often been my theme, and I have even been accused of ranking Shuckburgh too high. I put it higher than ever this afternoon. I was very sanguine as I rode to covert — a still, cold, and dull morning — the glass steady and the whole wide landscape clear and blue. And there they all were at the meet in the newest and brightest of pinks — and I alone, from shameful ignorance, in cub-hunting kit. The most perfect hunting weather avails nothing without a good fox. Him we found, as I shall tell. The Pytchley, you remember, had run to Shuckburgh Hill only on Friday last. No matter, he was there — and fully 24 THE BEST OF THE FUN alive to the sound of the horn. He had travelled nearly the length of the wood, and was coming back, with the grand dog pack hard at his heels, before we had properly surmounted the ridge above the covert. John Boore's signal-horn and George's clear scream brought the Master back to cheer hounds as they threaded the laurels and passed the house. Then, as they worked through the roadside wood, we stood on the hilltop gazing our fill upon the wide blue vista, upon the verge of which we could see Rugby's water tower and steeple. Little did we expect so soon to be near them. Peering round the woodside we could just command, past the red-oak foliage, the first green pasture in the Flecknoe direction. Many a fox has stolen away here. Yonder they go — three couple of them — and the rest close after. To scramble down the hillside, round by the lodge, and down the turnpike road was no dilatory or difficult job. Then some evil spirit seemed to have come out to fiy in the faces of those earliest in the road. With few exceptions, they turned back — for a gate. Had they gone with Mr. John Arkwright, Capt-. Riddell, and Lord Willoughby, they might yet have had a gate, and a start, too. The first — high-bushed — fence might possibly have stopped them, had not Mr. Arkwright (in answer to the artful query, "Will your horse face it?") responded by knocking the strong dead thorns to smithereens. Down the valley hounds went, 'twixt the canal and Flecknoe, on whose hill there was shouting already. The fox had not come near the keen villagers ; but that mattered not to them. They had seen him ; felt that they had fully earned a right to " View holloa " ; and by so doing very possibly they kept his head forward for Rugby. Lord Willoughby had to lift his pack forward through sheep and oxen and across the canal. Then they were on a fair, delectable plain. Gaily they made use of it, both hounds and their ready, eager field. Soon we found ourselves popping over the same fences that last winter barred us one day from Calcot or Sawbridge (I forget at the moment which) with disastrous wire. Now they were open and inviting, and the pace sufficient. But ah ! we remembered that horrid, muddy GUY FAWKES' DAY 25 and wire-girt brook that runs from Wolfhamcote or Braunston to Grandborough, and that threw us all out of the gallop that day. We were to have had a ford, were we not ? No sign of it now. And the field slanted off to the right, to take the canal-side towards Braunston. All but Mr. Vaughan-Williams, who found a feasible spot to get in, and (what was far more to the point) to get out. Next beyond the brook was quite an Irish fence — two ditches, two hedges, and a bank. But his horse was from the Blackmoor Vale, where they teach them something Irish, and he was able to go on in peace. Hounds bore at once to their left, away from Braunston village, away too from their field, and ran parallel to the Dunchurch road. Now they had their heads straight for Bunker's Hill. Here was the arena of the giants of old, who hunted from Dunchurch and steeplechased from Shuck- burgh to Bunker's Hill. Who shall not envy them, except for that their day is over, and ours is not yet wholly spent ? And the country is as good as ever, not a strand of wire (we thank you heartily, good fellows, who farm this glorious district), and not a fence unjumpable. I am not sure of this last, though : for at Willoughby, where fox and hounds ran through a farmyard, and the lucky spec- tator, who happened to be cutting hay on a lofty stack, declared (I am told) that the only possible way of follow- ing them was through the village. However, Mr. Vaughan- Williams was riding to them immediately after ; riding by sight, if not in the same field with hounds. And half-way over the flat, Mr. J. Charters, Lord Willoughby de Broke, Mr. Colquhoun (if I caught the name rightly), Captain Riddell (of whom I may be allowed, for old acquaintance' sake, to repeat what I see and hear, that he has never ridden more brilliantly than in the present autumn), with Captain Follett, Mr. Whitworth, Colonel Fell, Captain Ask- with, and a few others, now got up to, or all but up to, hounds once more. At any rate, they were with them as the pack drove on at once through Bunker's Hill Covert (fifty minutes from the find), and went away for Dun- church. Why — is not this the very anniversary of the " Bloody Hunt of Dunchurch " ? After such a happy 26 THE BEST OF THE FUN coincidence, I at least will never omit a loyal toast and a hearty one on the 5th of November. Henceforth indeed will " I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot." Twenty minutes more — not quite so fast, for it had all been hard, uninterrupted galloping to Bunker's Hill — brought them along the hillside to the lodge gate of Bilton Grange. Another ten minutes' twist took us to Cook's Gorse, and here or hereabouts hounds undoubtedly changed, though at the end of two hours' hunting they ran a fox to ground almost beneath the Rugby Water Tower. Up to Bilton Grange I think it impossible they could have changed (though such a matter must always be mere opinion). And I further allow myself to think that the fox that gave them this grand gallop was probably the same which beat them last year across this very ground to Cook's Gorse. Under the faulty conditions of haste and a feeble memory I append such few other names as those of Mr. and Mrs. Cassell, Mr. and Mrs. Graham, Major Allfrey, Captain Allfrey, Captain Faber, Messrs. Verney, Bather, Edwards, Goodman, Martin, and Wedge, From the far end of Shuckburgh Wood to Bunker's Hill is rather more than a five-mile point (hounds ran an arc), to Bilton Grange is nearly seven, to the Water Tower between eight and nine. I hope I may have succeeded in making clear the points and outline of a run that, for merit of fox and hounds and country, we are not likely to see frequently equalled during the season of 1891-92. I think I may venture a reflection that applies to us all — i.e. to Northamptonshire and its flying fields. You know we are *' terrible fellows " for gates. When we get there these are often very clumsily and inconsiderately fastened. The most active — sometimes the most mis- guided— man jumps off to let the huntsman through. It was by no means his intention to do gate-opener, hat in hand, for the million ; I mean for the next twenty comers. But too often he gets many kicks, never any halfpence. Everybody is profusely grateful, or, at least, one or two spokesmen are. And these, perhaps, go so GUY FAWKES' DAY 27 far as to inquire if he is " all right." Then the twenty surge on, leaving the luckless man to scramble up as best he can, and to take a twenty-fold worse place at the next gap — the crucial point in each fence — than he would otherwise have done. This not only leaves him shorn of his pride of place, but, as we all know too well, may very likely prevent him from taking active part in the run at all, except as a follower after men as distinct from a rider to hounds. Now this is not fair. Whether you elect or not to take advantage of his dismounting, and to go through the gate he has thus opened — at the cost, pos- sibly, of wet feet, a strained back, and general dis- hevelment — is of course entirely optional on your part. You were equally at liberty, instead, to bore a hole through the fence itself if you disliked the delay. But having availed yourself of his self-sacrifice, the least you can do is to allow the poor man to remount, and to go on, as before, in front of you. He may be clumsy at getting back into the pigskin. He is likely to be ten times delayed if a mob of horses are dashing past him. And I admit it is horribly aggravating for you and me to hear the pack getting farther and farther away, while we are merely detained till the stupid fellow has caught his stirrup and regained his seat. Yet I maintain you have no more right to leave him in the lurch, or even to sniggle into one of those twenty places he loses, than you have to cut him out of his turn at a fence. He has severed the Gordian knot of a closed gateway (how much that means you have only to ride in the Midlands of England to see), and he ought to have the benefit of it. A cruel thing it is to make, figuratively, a stepping-stone of his carcase. But we all do — too frequently. Hounds would seldom suffer anything by a few fair moments of delay on our part. The victim is the ready man w^hose service we accept and ignore. A pretty instance of hereditary taste was furnished in mid-chase this week by a neat colt-foal, lately weaned from its Mogador mother. The colt took two fences on his own account to get to the horn, and, once there, stuck to Lord Chesham over fence and ditch for a mile or THE BEST OF THE B^UN more. The owner, a Boddington farmer (and it may not be generally known that many great steeplechasers of old time — ask the veteran, Mr. Cowper — were reared at Boddington), happened to be within touch, and, though it matters not to the outside world, sold his weanling hunter to " Brooksby " as he went. I have not yet decided at what date the youngster may be equal to saddle and tops, but most certainly I shall expect him to carry me straight, if Hereditary taste. Over fences and ditches my sense of duty to hounds shall last me three years more. Monday was all Fawsley. 1 shall weary you if I attempt renewed description of this peculiar district. Lock all the gates, and you would then have in Fawsley (I was going to say a Vale of Aylesbury, but, I remember, that too is profusely gated) an easy Meath. Of course, there would be a Lough o' the Bay, and a Bush Farm-fence here and there, but the bulk of it would be feasible and fascinating enough. As it is we gain ground, but often lose hounds, by galloping gateward, and the man who would play skyrocket and go off at continual tangents would merely be laughed to well-deserved scorn. Hounds GUY FAWKES' DAY 29 always run hard over Fawsley, and a galloping hack is the best conveyance, aided always by a ready crop-handle and a vigorous arm. Now and then it happens that the gate is all too small, the whip and arm all too unskilled or unmasculine, the gate slams, a cheery boy on an unmouthed pony charges headlong into our midst, and we don't like Fawsley as well as hounds do. It was a lovely day to ride to covert — even on your own hunter, to my mind the least pleasurable of all con- veyances. I generally have quite enough of my beast before he makes his last stumble into the stable yard. When I am doing covert-lad for myself, I am merely enacting the part of dry-nurse to my animal — soothing his tantrums and yielding to his vagaries. I can't even afford to get his back down by means of a good gallop. He has it all his own way, and takes delight in proving it by making me as uncomfortable as possible. A brougham home I shall never attain to — but a galloping hack to covert, if only the hunter of the day after to-morrow, is almost an essential luxury. It is an economy of fatigue, a fillip to the spirits, and adds ten per cent, to the pleasure of the day. I never seem to myself to have grasped what has gone on during the day (I mean among my fellow men and women — for I seldom dare, till the day's ended, take my eye off " those confounded hounds " — if ever I do they invariably pay me out for it) — no, not until I am wreathing my nose in smoke and my soul in after-dinner reflection. Now the man whom of all others I revere (in my particular and perhaps mischosen sphere) is the fox-hunter who rides not for glory, but because he means to be with hounds, whether all the world be there before him or whether he has that world savaging at his coat-tails. Such an one 1 saw to-day. I won't tell you whether he wore pink or black after the essay — nor before, if he will in all friend- ship leave it to me. But I ask you plainly, would you have the physical pluck to take a very wet and very dis- coloured certainty, rather than go only eixty yards back, with your chin and your moral courage both high in the air, to join hounds and a hundred folk, who are already 30 THE BEST OF THE FUN one deep-ploughed field ahead ? I wouldn't, unless to begin life all over again. But I envy the man who did. His principle was as undeniable as his courage. CHAPTER V THE PYTCHLEY FROM HEMPLOW Wednesday found us enjoying ourselves heartily with the Pytchley, splashing over the wet grass (for as yet we do not sink deep nor are held as we sink) and bedaubing each other lustily. You never saw so many mud-covered and dissolute-looking mortals as constituted the usually smart field of the Pytchley on Wednesday last. By 4 p.m. the features of them were unrecognisable under their plasters of mire — varied, too, in numerous instances by blood-streaks that they had picked up in the bullfinches — while at least a moiety, apparently not satisfied with the share of dirt thus awarded them, were carrying still more upon their shoulders. 'Tis said that so many falls have not been seen in Northamptonshire for a year past. Why, I can't tell you. It was not the size of the fences, for there was no occasion to jump anything big the day through. Perhaps it was the wet, and the occasional pace, and the blackberry leaves. " Capital day's sport — killed a couple of foxes," is an old summary that has never conveyed anything tangible to my mind. Nor would it convey at all why Wednesday's was a good day's sport. Hounds killed a brace of foxes, it is true — and without chopping them. But it was not the brace of kills that made the sport and the fun — nor that sent us home brimful of the old, happy, comforting conclusion, '^Nothing like fox-hunting, after all !" No, it was the spell of a good pack driving across the grass — the charm of good companionship, of flying fences, and the ever-varying incident of chase — the linking of a good horse's wondrous physical power with man's eager spirit — the glow of exercise — the rush of event — the knowledge that only a small and uncertain share of Life's yo/Z/^s/ side THE PYTCHLEY FROM HEMPLOW 31 is likely to fall to our lot, and that to-day has held another little portion of your share. I speak only for the luckier dogs of the day — about half the field, perhaps — who hap- pened to be below the Hemplow Hills when the run of the afternoon began. The others will have their turn to-morrow, or next day, or next week. Then, as they have often done before, will they sit down that evening — glad of their lot, and for the moment " envying no man anything." I am far from intending to exaggerate the virtues of Wednesday's run. I have seen, possibly, many a better. But fox-hunting would rank even higher than it does if one never saw a worse. It began with some twenty- five very excellent minutes over a charming country, and our fox eventually beat hounds at the end of an hour. (A muggy hot day, a Scotch mist, and at last a fair scent.) They had just killed their first fox of all, having hunted him from Yelvertoft Fieldside and tired him out round the wooded sides of the Hemplow — he an enter- priseless one. Another jumped up from the bushes to watch his comrade's obsequies; the rites were abruptly closed, and attention was instantly turned to the new comer. The second whip signalled his going, from about the bottom rung of what we know as Jacob's Ladder, that greasy staircase leading down the Hemplow side at about the steepest point. Thither Goodall took hounds at once, then stopped and turned to blow " Forward — Away " again and again. Unfortunately a mass of good sportsmen on the hilltop had no means of grasping the situation ; they knew a fox had been killed, and they merely associated the tantara with the ceremonial of the worry. The Master, indeed, having just previously been thoroughly soaked in a wet ditch, had retired into Hemplow House for a hurried (and not unpicturesque) change of garment. (Two others of our number, by the way, have been nearly drowned during the week past.) I could make quite a catalogue of good names to show how widely and undeservedly ill luck extended, but this is not my province. I may go on to say that hounds started not so rapidly but that all 32 THE BEST OF THE FUN below the hill had ample time to join in, as they crossed the canal, and again almost touched it on the northern border of Hemplow's precincts. "A good run started much like this, and from here, only two years ago," I found myself muttering. (You remember the gallop in the snow to Kilworth and Bosworth, do you not ?) Was there something prophetic in the memory of that moment ? Hounds now spun downhill over the Stanford pastures, ant-hilly and rough some of them, but capital scenting- ground the whole. Two or three easy fences took us to the railway, and then through the length of one field hounds, bullocks, and horsemen seemed all to jostle one another in full cry. From Yelvertoft (or Stanford Hall) station their fox suddenly bore away again ; and the little ladies streamed leftward up the same sort of grazing-grounds till they reached the Coton corner of the estate, where stands a stone monument setting out its purpose of exist- ence and the number of miles that it is from other points of the universe. So at least we knew where we were ; till on crossing the river we suddenly found that an ox- fence with a bank (a very unusual complication in this simple country) cut us off from hounds, and we began to wonder what would become of us. But it so happens that in the first whip of the Pytchley not only has Goodall a very adequate assistant, but we have also. If he cannot expound a difficulty, we generally give it up. So he showed us how to " go-on-and-off-clever," and we fol- lowed him meekly, one and all, at the very spot he had pointed out. We were not going to risk it elsewhere. And again he found the only timbered corner of an other- wise entirely wired field. And that led to a bridge across the Coton brook — the very field, I remember, where I took my very first ducking in my very first pair of cord breeches. (I was the frog endeavouring to reach the measurement of such bulls as Jem Mason, Mr. Villiers, &c. So it wasn't yesterday.) Now we felt tolerably secure, could trust to our own legs, and made great use of them as we pounded uphill, across two firm pastures, and through two open gates. Then, as the little crowd mustered a moment at a double gateway, one was near THE PYTCHLEY FROM HEM PLOW 33 enough to mark at least some of the leaders, and even to watch how they spread themselves over the green fields beyond, hounds pointing straight for Crick Covert, as yet two or three miles ahead. Mr. Gordon Cunard had got his whip short by the head, a sure sign that things looked like business ; Mr. Hugh Owen was raking alongside of him with, I imagine, a couple of stone to the good nowadays ; Captain Middleton had come up with a rush, and was ready to force the pace if hounds would let him ; Mr. Murland was again gleaning comparison 'twixt Meath and Northampton ; and Mr. G. Milner was doing deter- mined justice to a comparatively strange country, and possibly to a brother's stud. Half-a-dozen other men and more — e.g. Mr. Pender, till he had the misfortune to break down his smaller chestnut horse ; Mr. T. Jameson, till the four-year-old grey tipped on to his head ; Captain Soames ; Messrs. Hegan, Marston, Adamthwaite, Vaughan- Williams, Cox, and of course the huntsman — were all, to borrow a phrase from another sport, having a good look in. But forward among them all, dependmg upon none of them, but riding each her own line easily, quietly, and successfully, w^ere three ladies — Miss Violet Morgan, Miss Hanbury, and Mrs. Byass. To the people actually with hounds, I fancy the pace was just right — sufficient to keep them galloping well, yet never so great but that they could " hold hounds." To those at all behind it was, as usual, terrific ; and hence, perhaps, so many minor casualties (though the term minor may or may not be a sufttcient qualification to a bleeding nose or a bruised shoulder. This depends much on the subject). As to the fences — nobody could possibly quarrel with them. It has always been our creed that the Crick-and-Yelvertoft district was originally laid out on hunting lines solely, so beautifully do its delightful fences accommodate themselves to a horse's stride and a moderate man's standard. Now we came fairly racing down the left-hand side of Crick Covert almost before we knew where we were. Only half a mile previously our fox was to be seen in the field with hounds ; but the " silly flock " swept in between them and their game, or they might have coursed him down there and C 34 THE BEST OF THE FUN then. Twenty-seven minutes as they reach a first fresh- sown wheatfield above Crick village. Five minutes' check, then they hunted on under Cracks Hill, and so forward to what is known as Hensman's House, near West Haddon. But he beat them, owing, I believe, in a great measure to that cold, wet wheatfield and its hindrance at a critical moment, for there was no great holding scent. The run lasted, as I have said, an hour. If I write any more, it will take you nearly that time to read it. But I must just add how they afterwards found a brace of foxes at Winwick Warren, and ran one down the Thornby Bottom for about sixteen or seventeen minutes — when they holed him. He bolted of his own accord, and was killed. I shall wound no susceptibilities, I trust, if I venture to say of this pleasant little spin that the prettiest feat of riding it contained was Mr. Muntz's in-and-out of a woolly-fenced lane, and this on a mare by no means easy to steady. CHAPTER VI THE SHIRES UNDER WATER Wednesday, December 2, will do for a fair sample day of our present state, 1891. We are all on the spot, you must understand, and hungering after sport. No other attraction now serves to thin our fields — nor will there be, until a frost shall come with its customary mischief- making. Racing, shooting and fishing are all relegated to a back seat : and apparently there is but one Diana — she who hunts the fox. Never, surely, has she been called upon to play her part upon a wetter, muddier arena than at this moment provided for her even in these fair Grass Countries ! In fact, the state of the ground puts an entirely different aspect upon fox-hunting in the Midlands, as compared with what it wore last year, and the year before, and the year before that. "The more wet, the more sport " has been an accepted doctrine long before you and I — or our fathers — went a-hunting (let me see, I don't think the mothers of many of us were accustomed THE SHIRES UNDER WATER 35 to ride to hounds, were they ?). But, at the risk of being set down as presumptuous, I beg to withhold my accept- ance of the theory, taken as an absolute, hard-and-fast rule. Wet you want, I grant ; but, for all practical pur- poses of scent and sport, it is just as good below the turf as above it. I maintain (and am possibly repeating my- self in so asserting) that a wet summer is just as effectual towards providing scent as a wet winter — and is, in plain Saxon, a deal pleasanter. We have seen quite as fine, quite as many, and quite as enjoyable runs on the top of the ground as we have when the soundest of turf is fetlock deep. (They never have it deep in Meath, I am told ; and yet there is no better scenting country, nor one more prolific of straight, hard gallops — such as all fox-hunters love, till their nerve fails.) In a wet, deep season you are apt to overrate the sport day by day. If there is anything like a scent, hounds can then travel far better than horses ; and even at three-quarter pace you can barely live with them, still less override them. Thus you are obliged to give them room ; and you naturally give them credit for running inordinately fast. Only a good horse in good condition can get through the run at all, and this you are prone to put down to the excellence of the sport rather than to the " villainy of the soil." For the last two or three seasons a comparatively small, light-weight horse could carry you delightfully over the Shires. Now you ask too much of him. He can only do it with difficulty and occasionally, and is an expensive tenant of a stall. Another main point that gives grace to a wet winter is the fact that a fox cannot travel nearly so fast, or so far, before hounds when he is bedraggled and dirty, as when he has only to glance over clean, firm turf, with his brush in the air, his glossy fur unsoiled, and the pores of his skin open to the breeze. But whether this may be taken as another argument for or against a wet hunting- season I leave it to you to determine, while I go on to the simple facts of Wednesday. The Pytchley met at Lilbourne, the scene of more 36 THE BEST OF THE FUN . great meets, the source of more great runs than, perhaps, any spot in the time-honoured map of the White-Collar Hunt. Yet from Lilbourne Gorse it is more difftcult for a fox to make his point, and for the atoms of an overwhelm- ing field to do themselves justice, than from anywhere else at which I have assisted to make a crowd. I won't descant at length upon the why and wherefore. But, the field make their approach by one side, up a little mud lane. Arrived at the Gorse, they are blocked ; and so is that side of the covert, while on the opposite is a river, a railway, and a road containing all the residents of three neighbouring parishes, and all the very many "hunters" whose forefather was Macadam. How a fox ever gets out of the squeeze has remained a puzzle to me since first I rode a Shetland pony. How we ever get after him and hounds, is a question that has a very disturbing effect on some hundreds of breasts each time that the Pytchley draw Lilbourne Gorse. To-day we solved it, as we did at Dunsmore, at Hilmorton Gorse, as we did at Crick Gorse, and as we did at Yelvertoft Fieldside (I enumerate all these, as I have not the slightest intention of dragging you to them in detail on this scent- less day) by playing at stag-hunting. We hunted the fox ourselves — "heads up and sterns down," if only some one sinner loosed off at a canter. If not, we put our noses down demurely, and worked it out at a walk. Of course we all knew we were wrong. But if you suppose for a moment, sir, that the most orthodox sports- man who ever talked scientific fox-hunting would be such an ass as to stand still alone, while two hundred of his immediate contemporaries (of his own kidney, jealous, openly as women, jealous in their hearts as very men) get between him and the next gate, or the next gap, why, bring him to me, and let him allow me to crown him with a laurel wreath, and show him in the market-place of Warwick and Northampton for this one Christmastide only, that all who ride in scarlet and in black may learn there is more virtue in self-control than in prostration before the Juggernaut of authority. But, all foolery apart, to-day we wanted our Master, or (in his unavoid- i^i c i THE SHIRES UNDER WATER 37 able absence) even, if I may presume to say so, an acting-Master, a field-Master — somebody to say some- thing. We could but reiterate, " Oh for a Master ! Oh for a Man ! " — an old-time quotation, but never more piteously appropriate than to-day. Foxes all the time — scent never — the field having a delightful mudlark always, and at least two fences before hounds. Who shall blame them ? I don't think they even deserved swearing at. But to a word of caution they would have hstened, and corrected themselves at any moment. For instance, it was a sight of itself to see the crowd splash its way across the flat meadows between Clifton-on-Dunsmore and Hilmorton Gorse. Hounds came on by degrees ; but they were scarcely part of the play. " You have a horse to sell, oh ! I have a horse to sell, oh !" You can show them how it ought to be done. I can fling a leap, too. And me, am I not habited and side-saddled ? and is not a lead all that I want ? Yoi-over — fifty of them ! I take not my types from personality. But, by all that is re- liable in printer's ink, this is the way that hounds were deftly conducted to Hilmorton Gorse, this waterlogged Wednesday. A herd of Welsh ponies and ragged cart-colts broke from their flooded pasture, and joining the melee, splashed their way also ahead of the pack, burst through the gates, and trod through the gaps. At one time it seemed as though we were all about to ride out to sea, so over- flown was this beautiful valley of the Old Grand Military. Goodall kept his head, his patience, and his temper, the day through. An admirable achievement, under the circumstances, you will allow. With which of the foxes of the day we trod, or rather waded, the Hilmorton flat is of no very great con- sequence. As a matter of insignificant fact, it was with the second of the twain from Lilbourne Gorse. We were finding and hunting all day^ — with never scent enough to kill a fox (unless they succeeded in doing it in the evening — when from the Fieidside they ran up to the Cold Ashby Hills). The best hunt was doubtless from Crick's famous gorse (this covert also being doubly 38 THE BEST OF THE FUN tenanted), and was enacted, not without some difficulties on the way, past the right of Yelvertoft village to the Fieldside, and to ground just beyond. Half-an-hour thus spent has its charms. I cannot, as the everyday, prosaic historian, consent to allot it such encomium as it drew from a right welcome soldier friend, to-day, taking the first of his sixty days' portion of leave. Neither can I afford to be captious. On the contrary, my little mind often finds amusement even in the littler things of fox- hunting, though I protest I aim ever at refraining from exaggeration in earnest. Constituted and educated as my understanding is, and as is that of many a better man — fox-hunting is at all times a beautiful thing. (I ought to qualify the expression, perhaps, by adding the words " in the abstract," for I don't mean when you are under your horse in a ditch.) But not only is it always pleasant merely to be " out hunting," and enjoyable to be riding to the music of hounds : but if you want to find your fellow-creatures at their very best (socially and congenially), take them as they are to be seen in one of the big hunting-fields of the Midlands on a warm, quiet day like Wednesday last. What mattered it to them that they flung shovelfuls of mud and water over each other ? Is it not universally allowed that, the Meet once over, personal appearance in its minor details is no longer a factor in the enjoyment of the day ? Had there been more vigorous sport, they would have seen less of each other, and the happy conditions of " coffee-housing " would have been unknown for the day. (How do they do, I wonder, in sporting Ireland, on a bad scenting, or a foxless day, where there are no gates and few roads ? It must be terror-striking work, jumping about for hour after hour when hounds are not running !) Had there been less wet on Wednesday, there would very probably have been fewer foxes, whereas there were plenty to be found wherever and whenever wanted. There is hardly a fox below ground this December, save in some occasional gravelly upland. And thus it is that we find foxes in ample numbers in many of the Midland coverts where scarcity was feared during cub-hunting. THE SHIRES UNDER WATER 39 It is worth pointing out (not to you, whom I follow, but to those who ride with me) that, with the country in its present state, it pays to take your fences, as much as practicable, each of you at your own place. This sounds absurd, for there are obviously not 300 places in a fence, but, on the other hand, many a fence has a front broad and facile enough for all of the 300 who are likely to want to jump it. The first, and perhaps the second, horse finds tolerably good foothold. Immediately after- wards, in its present sodden state, the turf becomes poached, the ground is rapidly trodden into a bog, and the fence is battered down to the level of a few strong growers or stumps, to the damage of the farmer and danger to your horse. Believe me, you will ride safer, and do far less damage if, whenever possible, you select your own place and ride for it. (Besides, by so doing you will demonstrate to the ruck of us what we want chiefly to know, viz. where a chance piece of wire has been left by the shepherd, and, further, you will then be in a position to ride out the next Sunday and obtain leave for its removal.) Even out of deep ground the power of a horse's spring is something very marvellous, if only he knows and feels where he is putting his hind legs. But he cannot jump with any certainty out of false ground. I saw fences jumped clean and clear on Wednesday that you would have thought needed a spring- board to enable a horse to cover them. There used to be a creed that one horse could very well do the day's work up to Christmas, because the days are short. And we used often to add a corollary, and get the most out of our studs, by affirming that after Christmas the same horse could do a whole day's work because he was in condition. What it is to be after Christmas I dare not venture an opinion. But, with country in its present state, no horse could live the day through, if only hounds could run. They can't. So the reflection may stand aside — till our month of sport comes, as most assuredly it will come very soon. My experience (and I speak solely on the ground of economy and precaution) points to the fact that, for 40 THE BEST OF THE FUN the sake of your stud and yourself, and always when possible, you should take out two. If you have a bad day, No. i is ready and better for another occasion three days hence. If you have a good day, you certainly want them both, as the ground is now. Besides, to take two out (I won't say your only two, but two out of four^ for instance) is tantamount to investing in an accident insurance policy. It pays if required, and it seems to ward off mishap while you possess it. There is nothing more distressing nor more frequent than to have to go home early because your single horse is discovered to be lame, coughing, or amiss. A new definition, from a quarter not altogether celebrated for originality — to wit, the stable-yard. The mainstay of a certain stud is Victor, bay gelding with Hibernian pedigree and understandings that were doubt- ful some years ago, and are beyond all doubt this pull- about winter. " How's Victor this morning ? " inquired his hopeful owner, with a view to a third day in the current week out of the long-suffering hero. " Capital, sir, capital ! " answered the head of the remount depart- ment. " He eats well and rests well, but the size of his legs makes him go a bit clumsy-like." CHAPTER VII A ROUGH HOUR WITH THE PYTCHLEY How shall we grumble at rain, how shall we murmur at deep ground, after so narrow an escape as Saturday^ December 12, 1892, from frost and snow and ice-bound imprisonment ? We were nearly as possible hemmed in, and, hey, presto ! on Monday we are at it again amid mud and flood and dirt unutterable, rapidly accustoming ourselves to riding through a country rather than over it, and quite content to regard the torrents of rain as merely part of the play. On Saturday morning at shaving-time the turf was white almost as the suds on one's brush : the sun shone A ROUGH HOUR WITH THE PYTCHLEY 41 cold and bright, and all nature seemed turning to winter of the baser sort. There are no minutes so contemplative as those during which the razor is wandering over the hill and dale of an unbearded face, gliding in and out of the ridge and furrow of maturity's wrinkles, or sweeping smoothly over the lawnlike expanse of youth's sleek, un- troubled cheek, rounding the angles and scraping the very curbstones of leaner physiognomy, or changing its legs deftly to clear the ruts cut by thorn or briar during the week past. The mind then naturally betakes itself to day-dreams, and the dream of this morning was of imminent idleness, of a useless and expensive stud, and of what on earth we were to do with ourselves if frost set in. Black clouds floated over the Meet, the air was warmer (or was it the Newnham cherry-brandy that accounted for temperature improved ?) and snow was now our forecast. The Pytchley moved off very punctually — leaving behind them, alas, more than one tardy comer to bewail another run missed. For hounds found their fox readily in the same round spinney beneath Staverton Wood that gave them their great run of three years ago. Now they brought ofif a very sterling hunt with a wide-ranging fox. On a lustier scent to-day's also should have been a great run. As it was, we were kept cantering and galloping for the best part of an hour and ten minutes — a measure of enjoyment far above our recent portion, believe me. Staverton Wood has a contour not unlike one of the lions of Trafalgar Square. Fox and hounds, as generally happens here, ran among the fir-trees along its backbone, then mounted and traversed its head before plunging downward on to the level beneath. (A single hound, meanwhile, by herself was engaged in coursing and killing a second fox in the spinney above mentioned !) The pack had reached the valley before we could ride over the head, to scramble our way out through the entangling crest of spruce and thorn ; and they were already to be seen run- ning hard to Staverton village. The most opportune road put us all right in five minutes — and then they stopped running ! Once more (as is an everyday occur- 42 THE BEST OF THE FUN rence this cold-scenting season) they were unable to turn with their fox, though almost close at his brush. He had twisted to the left, away from Shuckburgh's enticing front ; and huntsman's help was needed to set them again on the line. Now they went on fairly over that wild broken slope of grass, whereon watercourses and gullies bound every second field, on the way to Catesby. These chasms, or bottoms, were easy enough on the left, upper ground, near their source. They were confusing and difficult, boggy and trappy lower down. The right-hand division had a rough and embarrassing experience among them, and in consequence cared little for this part of the run. (Is not our estimate invariably framed on our own accidental experiences of the occasion ? Were any of us ever known to crack up, or enthuse over, a run in which we had, for instance, failed to get a start or failed to keep one — or, say, lamed our best horse, or been left in a brook ?) But — whether we galloped smoothly, or whether by dint of scrambling, wading, rambling hither and thither in search of outlet,, and of spurting furiously in between times — we all at length came into Catesby's old park, and pulled up on the brink of Dane's Hole. Our fox had already been viewed forward and beyond ; and a few minutes later we were working on by Hellidon and Grif- fin's Gorse — the pace quite fair, and nothing to complain of but Dr. Johnson's wired farm. Onward they ran well till past and above Charwelton village (a six-mile point), when suddenly our fox, tired of straight-going amid the clinging mud, turned short back behind the village. Horses had already lost much of their fresher vigour ; but the very ugly Charwelton Bottom was successfully tackled by Messrs. Walton, Laycock, and Hatfield ; while, partly under a sense of self-security, partly under an im- pression that the delay of the moment on the part of hounds was likely to last indefinitely, the others rounded the double by means of the adjacent road. The pack thereupon set to work to run harder than they had yet been able to (and this down-wind in a snowstorm !), gave even the bolder trio a stern chase, and only let the others A ROUGH HOUR WITH THE PYTCHLEY 43 up after some fifteen minutes more, on Studboro' Hill (I give the name of this fir-topped landmark more parti- cularly, as it will be found a prominent centre-point also in Monday's run, below). Briefly now, hounds hunted towards Staverton's wooded hill once more. But a three- field strip of cold plough baffled them, and, though Goodall afterwards touched a line over the main earths, scent was not sufficiently holding to allow of carrying on. Time to the final check, one hour ten minutes — an ex- cellent rough hunt. I hold out the word roKgh to secure a compromise from those — and they were not a few — who for one reason or another expressed themselves as not entirely satisfied with everything that came in their way. And I admit that the chilly, wet snowstorm was by no means calculated to soothe a bosom ruffled by contretemps or irritated by disappointment. Apropos it was positively refreshing and admirable to remark an instance in which a very complete and con- firmed casualty only elicited a merry laugh, and a query " Did you see that ? " from the sufferer. I have already told you that among our first flight of recent seasons are numbered some three or four excellent cross-country riders whose training has been mostly on the flat. Now if there is one essential to the making of a high-class jockey it is that his head should be screwed on the right way. But just towards the end of the run in question it as near as possible befell one of these,^ pos- sessing in the highest degree that qualification, that his head should become unscrewed altogether. The mare pecked, half recovered herself, pecked again, and deposited the professional slowly on to his neck with his heels poised high in the air. His head was tucked, like St. Patrick's, under his arm ; and upon this axis he proceeded to revolve — while his spurs glistened aloft apparently quite satisfied with their position and balance, for many seconds, and showed no sign of a wish to gravitate earthward. Their owner belongs to the category of heavy-weight jockeys — which means that he weighs about as much as half a huntsman, or perhaps two-thirds of a whipper-in. But ' F. Webb. 44 THE BEST OF THE FUN had he been a couple of stone heavier, he would assuredly never have escaped from that dilemma except in the condi- tion of a chicken just caught and prepared for curry — still less would he have regarded it as a mere pleasing reminiscence to take back to Newmarket. He is now prepared to back himself against any of the acrobatic gamin at headquarters, for correctness of attitude and power of endurance. In the field of Saturday were several Cambridge undergraduates, enjoying themselves thoroughly in accord- Heels poised high in the air ance with their tenets. Among these were Lords Bland- ford and Milton, with Mr. Cavendish ; and one or two of them had also been fortunate enough to be with the same hounds on the previous day, when the old Cottesbrook fox took them again off to Short Wood, some fifty minutes with scarcely a check. The downpour of the first day of the week, whether in town or country, was probably in excess of that of any ordinary month's rainfall. There is something almost pathetic about a wet Sunday in London. So many people want to leaven their week's labour, and can't. For in- stance, is there, I ask you, any more touching sight than A ROUGH HOUR WITH THE PYTCHLEY 45 that of the inumerable womenfolk — from domestic shiveys up to Worth's young ladies, or even the ill-paid governess class — disappointed in their Sunday out, hurrying never- theless through the pouring rain, embottled in cloak or mackintosh down to their knees, but (as is the manner of women) with feet and ankles merely thin-stockinged and thinner shod, and exposed freely to the driving storm ? But to return to Mid-Northamptonshire, which we do on a Sunday night by the only good train of the week. It gives us time to dine before the journey — which, accord- ingly, finds us sometimes talkative, at others sleepy, ac- cording to the man and his method, or accident, of dining. On the evening in question rain beat heavily against the carriage-window, but through the dim glass a vague moon shone faintly on a water-strewn outlook. One had curled himself into a corner, declined a cigar, and, snoring happily amid the tobacco-cloud through which he was just visible, took neither part in nor, apparently, any notice of the chatter around him. Needless to say, rain and floods were, with sport and want of sport, the main topics of our talk. But the moment the train slackened pace for the Weedon stop, the practised warrior proved that even in sleep he was not unobservant. Up he jumped, rubbing his eyes heartily, and the window-pane methodi- cally. " By Jove! you fellows are right. Look! The whole country's under water. I shan't bother to go out to- morrow at all." " It's the canal, old gentleman, the canal!" roared his irreverent comrades. " Here, Jones, take out the Major's luggage, put him to bed, and treat him for water on the brain ! " All out. Right aboard. And the Major went hunting next morning. A Heavy Run with the Grafton Preston Capes was their meet. " Any horse that can gallop will do for Fawsley," many argued, and ordered accordingly. " Grass and gates the usual routine, why take out a jumper." And, as it turned out, they had more to jump, and a stiffer trial in store for their horses, than on any day of the season now so nearly approaching its 46 THE BEST OF THE FUN meridian. Tim hours and fifty minutes, most of it hard running. And you know the state of the ground — even if termed grass ! I never saw a run — that was to be a run — begin more curiously. Hounds — the lady pack of the Grafton, too ; to my mind still the most fox-killing lot that ever drove on a line — could scarcely move across the first three fields after the find. " Wish I hadn't brought out a hunter," he murmured. Good sir, you would have been glad of iivo before they brushed that lusty vixen. She was found near the Fawsley Woodyard, and turned through the little covert of Hogstaff. Directly she bore up the wind (a morning gale still blowing) they took up the cudgels in earnest. Through the Laurels and into Badby Wood, as fast as our horses (hacks or hunters, or casualty gees — by which I mean the odd roarer, or occasional trapper, of the stud) — as fast as they could gallop by our accustomed corners and cuts. Then we rode on to a holloa by Badby village to the earths upon Studboro' Hill — at which hounds sniffed inquiringly. Reynard had done the same. But the right man had done his duty, and Reynard had to go further afield — for Catesby, to holloa and to pace improved. Hounds tackled to work forthwith. And I want to note, as I noticed, the effect of continued rain upon ground that has already been deeply trodden. The Pytchley on Saturday had marked a wet grass field in a hundred places. On Mon- day, after more rainfall, not a hoof-print was left. The turf had welled up from below and erased them. Now I pull up — am pulled up. And I'll te'l you how a man feels when spun over wire. (For a second time, good fellow, I beg you not holloa " Wire ! " to a brother mortal already in air. For all the world 'tis like bidding one hold up one's nose in cold blood to be punched when the striker shall be ready. It makes the wire glisten — almost grin in your face. One can't help oneself, but Providence and a horse's weight may break the brutal strand.) Well, he feels he is " caught at last " ; he knows they are all in a jumble ; and the next thing he sees is a pair of heels flashing over and past him. This is the awakening. A ROUGH HOUR WITH THE PYTCHLEY 47 Then there comes over him, useless though it be, the murderous frenzy of a wild cat caught in a snare. He yearns, perhaps raves, to be hand and throat with the " tiend, or fool," who has thus wantonly trapped him, and likely enough has rent and torn the good hunter now galloping madly in the distance. And this is the sentiment that, in spite of himself, will recur again and again for a dozen hours afterwards. The next instinct is to shake and stretch himself, and to tell off his bones whether any have gone. Finally he will stagger away after his horse, thank from his heart the man who brings the latter to him ; and the while it gradually comes to him that the farmer will probably be as sorry for the mishap as himself, will pull himself together as best he can, in struggling to regain the now distant pack. It was not difficult to make up a certain amount of lost ground, in the descent of the hill between Catesby House and its covert of Dane Hole, which latter hounds just passed on a freshening scent. They were over the next brow towards Shuckburgh so quickly that half their field overshot the mark and galloped on towards Hellidon village. One, two, three grass fields, and as many quickly flown fences — then a corner, through which the few couple of white forms were darting and disappearing. A very useful property is a hunting memory. Last year, in a curiously similar run of the Grafton, we were cornered in this very field — a wide oxer hemming us in on the right, a forbidding, fence-girt bottom stopping us in front. It was only in the very angle that we were enabled to pierce the fence and scramble the brook. Mr. Orr Ewing now dashed for it at once, the brown mare landing well beyond rail and water, and turned rightward instanter for the second complication — a trifle of yellow water and a barrier of thorn. But it needed Mr. Murland and his Meath horse to effect the double neatly and properly. On he went then to the next (also a very Irish fence, the Catesby Bottom) with a hundred yards' vantage of his fellows, including at this period the Master, Mr. E. Douglas Pennant — than whom no one saw the whole of this trying run better, if so well — Messrs. Grazebrook, 48 THE BEST OF THE FUN Vaughan - Williams, Hatfield, Parsons, Adamthwaite, General Clery, Captain Riddell, Mrs. Byass and Mrs. Clerk, with another lady and gentleman unknown to me, and some few more, besides the Hunt servants. And these I think comprised most of the party that rose Shuck- burgh Hill with the hounds. Whether the main earths were stopped I cannot say ; but, instead of going to ground as expected, their fox broke forth almost at once beneath the Wood, and feinted over the great grass fields towards Napton — a section of ground of which I for one am by no means fond on a half-blown horse. But she (I mean the old vixen fox) had not heart, or wind, left for a wider range of country. She swung soon to the village of Lower Shuckburgh to climb the eastern wood and dash past the House, with her head again homeward — while most of the party who had got so far with hounds pulled up peaceably to talk it over. Fifty minutes or so to here, if memory does not fail me. A single hound drove forth from the laurels — to meet three-fourths of the field, now reappearing. Yet somehow the fox seems to have passed them all, unseen. This lead- ing hound was stopped for the body ; and then, by a route parallel on the present left, hounds returned quickly to Catesby — the turf more deep than I can attempt to convey, and every ditch a rusty, turbulent stream. A broken and hazardous country at all times is that of Shuckburgh. (I wish my thoughts would not keep turn- ing to the morrow — not its hazards, but its prospective delights and its rich possibilities — while I write on the eve of its tri-weekly Warwickshire Meet.) I was about to describe how one of my most gallant friends, after jumping the ordinary hedge of bended thorn, disappeared as if into a well. A certain amount of scuffle attended the proceeding ; so various anxious friends were prompted to gallop to the scene, by means of a neighbouring gate. Peering down — into an abnormally deep ditch, not a well after all — they descried him just rising to his own feet and from under his horse's hoofs. " Hulloa there, old chap ! Are you all right ? " this being the invariable form of inquiry, very kindly, but conveying under the A ROUGH HOUR WITH THE PYTCHLEY 49 polish of classical English the cruder query, " Are you knocked out of time ? If not, say so at once, and let us get forrard ! " In this case he was eager to relieve their minds as quickly as possible : stood to attention forthwith, and was about to reply. But the military instinct thwarted him disastrously. At the first sound of voices he had seized his hat. As their near presence dawned on him he clapped it on his head. But, alas ! the hat was a bucket of mud-and-water, that poured over his face, caulked the seam 'twixt collar and neck, and completely choked utterance and reply. A few seconds later he was hauled on to the bank. Seventy minutes afterwards his ship was out of dock — his horse upon dry land. I take it for granted (why, I scarcely know ; for all who glance over the Field are not of Warwickshire nor of Northamptonshire) you are familiar with the fact that from Shuckburgh to Catesby is, as hounds usually run, about a three-mile course of ravishing — now distressing — grass. Afterwards come the highlands again. Over these hounds nearly ran the road, to Badby Wood, the harder galloping very acceptable indeed. Then, as has been instanced a thousand times before, a beaten fox could not stay in the strong covert. They rushed her through, and had her fairly beaten in the open fields about Newnham. Once they coursed her in view ; but it took another half- hour to run her down from hedgerow to hedgerow. All first-horses were fully cooked. Second- horses had long been requisitioned where possible. At last in her extremity the old vixen crept into Badby village ; and for refuge betook herself under a wooden hen-house on wheels. There she squatted at bay — snapping victoriously for a while at the baying pack, till the Master and a few stalwart assistants raised the caravan, and hounds went in at their prey. Two hours ami fifty minutes from find to finish — and my story pro- portionately long. The kill took place within fifty yards of where the Grafton last year caught their fox from a roof-top ; and thus they now reproduced two good runs of last season rolled into one. All thanks and good D 50 THE BEST OF THE FUN wishes to Sir Rainald, who gave us this treat ! May many another Christmas see him hale and hearty among us ! The first-horses were fully cooked In Sunshine and Fog with the Warwickshire Thursday saw us on much of the same ground as did the Monday and Saturday previous — the Shuckburgh domain, to wit. Lord Willoughby de Broke arrived out of the fog of the lower ground to find the highlands of the Daventry district sparkling in gayest sunshine. A sharp hoar-frost had pervaded everywhere ; but only in the Warwickshire Vale was it thus held down, by a cold mist that brought the lowlanders to covert like so many Fathers Christmas, the degree of similarity varying with their garb and the amount of icicled hair upon their faces. In spite of the flying visit of the Grafton on Monday, hounds soon owned to a fox in Shuckburgh Wood and drove him forth immediately into the valley towards Catesby. With the ground still chilly from frost, scent was anything but brilliant during the next hour. Thus it would be but iteration (you know the epithet, but we don't say it in print) to take you field for field over thisj delightful area. Hounds were busy for some time about A ROUGH HOL'R WITH THE PYTCHLEY 51 Catesby and Hellidon ; and it speaks volumes for Mr. Martin's good care that, even to-day, there were at least three other foxes in Dane Hole. At length they hunted back to Shuckburgh Hill — their fox waiting for them in a small spinney beneath it, till they almost caught a view as he mounted the hill. Indeed for the next half-hour he ran in what I may be allowed, without aspersion upon him, to term very jackal-fashion. (A jackal, you may know — if not, please take my word for it — never troubles himself to get far ahead of hounds, but lobs along at his ease, not caring much how often they may view him.) Past the left of Shuckburgh House and village they drove him hard towards Napton, till the presence of a shepherd shifted him for a few fields back towards the hill. Then, I daresay, he met a strong section of the field, making their way from the wood, while most of us had of necessity (for the canal cut us off from hounds) been hammering the roads lustily. At any rate he was in the same pasture with hounds near Napton, at a period when we were very much engaged in finding our way about, amid the strong fences to which I have alluded in connection with Monday. Now we set off downhill northward, and plunge into very darkness. " Where is the canal ? " was the question in the Southam road. The Master alone did not wait to ask, but was away in the gloom before any of us had even taken stock of the woolly fence bounding the road. In fact, I may fairly be allowed to say that, but for his determined riding during the next twenty minutes, hounds would have taken themselves off in the darkness, and possibly remained out for the day. As it was, we had a charming ride under his leadership, the tinkling of hounds being the accompaniment (if tinkling be a fit term to convey the full-mouthed music of a dog pack). By the way, I venture to submit the remark that the W^arwick- shire of the present have the only pack of dogs that I have ever seen really come through a crowd, at all times and on all occasions, as boldly and as readily as the ladies. It has long been my confirmed impression 52 THE BEST OF THE FUN that in the Shires the bitches do their work sharper and better than their big brothers ; they are less easily put out, and a great field of horsemen troubles them much less. But of this foggy gallop. It took us along the canal- side westward, and then we went — somewhere. It mattered little where, so long as the country remained rideable. As it was, I think most of us would at the time have much preferred a far lower and weaker scale of top binder and rail, though there was but little hesitation, after the ex ample of Master and man, on the part of Messrs. Verney, Graham, Milne, J. Mills, Newbold, a stranger in pink swallow-tail, with Mr. Ford's novice, and a few of whose names I must plead ignorance or forgetfulness. Short a distance as one could see — at times not a dozen lengths ! — it was said that a view was again caught of the fox by one of the little field, as he swished through a corner " scarcely ten yards before hounds." Let this be as it may, the darkness grew more and more im- penetrable, and Lord Willoughby stopped hounds by Stockton village. Total time from the find, one hour and forty minutes. I have finished (though I can scarcely expect to have brought you along thus far, to read your release — even if the frost of to-day should keep you a week in your chimney-corner). No, I haven't. I am always ready to volunteer advice, in the same way that many good people occupy most of their time, and all of their conversation, with gratuitous comment upon the concerns of their fellow men and women, (i) Don't give the wife of your bosom the housekeeping money just before starting for hunting ! or, if you do, insist that she leaves it behind at home An instance to the contrary occurred during the run of to-day. These habit pockets are very indifferent money bags. The purse flew out, the road was converted int a very Tom Tidler's ground, and she was far too good a sportswoman to stop ! (2) Get your supply of hats in before the season commences, or at any rate before the country again attains the present grievous con- dition ! It looks funny, to say the least of it— nay, it tells CHRISTiMASSIXG 53 a tale that makes the very porters chuckle and grin — to have them arriving, by twos, at the station that your neighbours and friends most affect. I assure you that every parcel office in the Midlands is now choked with them ! In the first instance I saw, of twin head-pieces thus awaiting delivery, they were at once labelled, not inappropriately, by a comrade of the future wearer's, "With care. This side up." CHAPTER VIII CHRISTiMASSIXG Our " Christmassing " of 1891 was over with Sunday. On Monday there lingered only its memory, the conse- quences, and a very pronounced bone in the ground. The Grafton hunted and found foxes. For my part — inasmuch as my worthy editor by no means considers himself bound, as in the case of an M.F.H., at once to replace all horses broken down in his service — I have long outgrown the extravagant rashness of attempting to ride to hounds when the ground is only half thawed. To look at hounds going away in the distance doesn't amuse me, and it is, besides, about as practicable as going on, after your justifiable hour, to see a last covert drawn " on the chance of their running your way." Of course on such occasions they never do run your way, and equally of course you invariably go off with them, to the demolition of every premeditated arrangement on your part. Even this result has its wholesome moral, . which is, I suppose, that as long as it be given to you j to hunt at all, it is your bounden duty to make no other engagement or plan in life which will in any degree interfere with your getting all you possibly can out of every horse in your stable. Verbitm sap. Thus on Monday I contented myself with long road- l exercise, keeping studiously aloof from the vicinity of \ hounds. And on Tuesday they kept altogether aloof from me and my neighbourhood, while warm showers 54 THE BEST OF THE FUN and sunshine played diligently upon the reluctant earth, preparing it fitly for the morrow at Crick. On Saturday, by the way, I had been taken (as an offset, possibly, to one of those heavy extra meals with which good Christians celebrate the season and prepare for themselves a gouty future) to see a pack of harriers, or rather, as light happened to be failing and did not admit of much time upon the flags, to view the champion dogs of two successive years at Peterboro'. I confess with shame and humiliation that I am as ignorant of the lines upon which harriers should be shaped, as a certain great sheep-and-scenery painter evinced himself with regard to those of the horse in last year's Academy — or, take another instance, viz. that of the original sculptor of the Iron Duke a cheval. (1 had almost for- gotten, though the fact by no means palliates my present criminal unenlightenment, that I myself once aspired to hunting a pack of harriers. This was in Japan, where hares were not plentiful, and where even a red-herring had to find a substitute in a red mullet. The pack died off hound by hound — like sheep — from the very un- sporting cornplaint of flukes-in-the-liver, till at last old Rubicon threw his solitary tongue on the trail of the red mullet, when he, too, turned up his toes. The note of the hound was perforce hushed in Japan, for there was no draft available within some 6000 miles, and already we were under orders for home and fox-hunting. Our best fun, I should add, was — particularly during the declining existence of the pack — obtained by starting the red mullet across country by moonlight. But then the country was all plough ; there was never a bone in it — and the bulk of the field was made up of very youthful subalterns, much more easily replaceable than harriers.) But to return to the Aldenham champions, it seemed to my unskilled eye that if they had been rather bigger they would have passed for very decent foxhounds. (If there be anything depreciatory in the remark, let me recall it instanter, with the request that it be considered unuttered.) The kennels overlook some of the pick of the Harrow Vale — in which, nowadays, the harriers have CHRISTMASSING 55 perhaps best opportunity of disporting themselves. If so, the hare, I take it, must in Hertfordshire be almost as worthy an animal as the wily fox, or the fatted — I beg pardon ; put it down, please, to Christmas fare — I meant the noble stag. Speaking of Christmas fare, I could not but be struck, during my trot to kennel and back, by the thoroughness with which all rustic Hertfordshire does its duty by Boxing Day. They evinced their allegiance in very various fashion, though each and every form of ad- herence was plainly attributable to the only medium through which the honest working-man even indirectly assists his employers in making up the required revenue of the country. But the method w^hich seemed to me to be most original of all — and containing one of those practical lessons for which I am ever on the look-out — was in the case of a gay roysterer whom at first sight 1 took to be engaged in beating a turnip-field for rabbits. The Hertfordshire lanes, as you may know — and as all riding men of Hertfordshire complain — are very narrow, and occasionally have a ditch under either bank, which is very dangerous, on Boxing Day. Even in his cups our festive one was fully aware of this. His expansive soul was not to be " cribbed, cabined, and confined " within such earthborn limits ; still less did he mean to chant his tuneful "Won't go home till morning" upon the broad of his back in one of these contemptible ditches. So he swarmed up the slippery bank ; found footing — vague and complicated it is true, but still footing — amid the turnips ; and he zigzagged his route unhindered, taking a course that quite answered his purpose as being more or less parallel with the directing but despised lane. Had he been a Londoner, the same instinct would no doubt have bidden him enjoy his Boxing Day stroll in Sackville Street, the only thoroughfare in the metropolis, I am instructed, that is altogether devoid of lamp-posts. He became obviously very much annoyed with me — either on account of my undisguised amusement, or because in the innocence of my heart I asked him, " Must he really go home, or wouldn't he take a little more?" — for he 56 THE BEST OF THE FUN made a dive in hot haste for a stone. It turned out to be a turnip ; but it sped Hke a parachute across the lane, and nothing but the high bank saved me. But he had demonstrated beyond contradiction how, under certain seasonable conditions, a straight narrow road could be converted into a broad one — in his instance leading to the village council at the Blue Boar. Now to fox-hunting, for which we assembled on Wednesday — not a great crowd, for Crick. Welcome Covertside greetings indeed was the warm drizzle (save and except for such few of our number as ride handicapped with glass in hat or eye) ; welcome even was the soft, wet ground ; and thrice welcome were covertside greetings and meetings after nearly a fortnight's interruption. If men wore a well-fed, hearty bearing, horses added in several instances a silly exuberance that served to set a mark upon at least four coats, before hounds found their fox. As these coats, however, as far as I saw, belonged wholly to second- horsemen — entrusted, no doubt, with the part of " getting young Termagant's back down " with a view to master's CHRISTMASSING 57 safety and comfort later on — these casualties were pro- vocative of less mortification, and of less merciless chaff than if they had been accorded to the masters themselves. Indeed, the worst that happened was the breakage of one of those half-pint flasks that go nowadays to complete the caparison of a second-horseman, and the spilling of so much full-coloured port down the young man's leathers, giving him a ghastly, mutilated appearance for the rest of the day. And, gentlemen, if you would spare your friends alarm and anxiety, do not, I implore you, wear red hatstrings on a rainy day. The effect, as you may have noticed for yourselves, is nothing less than horrible ! They look very smart and pretty in the sunshine, these miniature cables of vermilion and gold ; but, when rain-soaked, the vermilion has a way of separating itself from the gold, with the result that the wearer's neck and collar appear to be streaming with blood ! It was not till I had hurried up to one of my intimates, and he turned a bright, untroubled face to my question, " What have you done to your neck?" that I made sure that he was not half decapitated. Whether or no the pleasures of a fair day's hunting are much discounted by a twenty-mile ride afterward is a matter that depends to a certain extent upon the man, but a good deal more upon the horse that has to carry him home. To some men the long, perhaps solitary journey involves no fatigue nor even boredom. I remember a Tailbyite friend once remarking quite un- concernedly, as he bade me good night and turned for Market Harboro', " The third time this week that I have had to ride over twenty miles home, finishing with that Welham Lane ! " But he was, as his nom de guerre implied, a man whose frame was tough as seasoned oak, far tougher than the good ash rails that gave him his pseudonym. And the Harboro' men were noted in those days for pounding homeward as hard and relent- lessly as through the day they had ridden the country in competition with the Meltonians. A starry night, even if it lightens and varies the way, 58 THE BEST OF THE FUN may be a not wholly welcome condition. As for instance on Friday, when a biting atmosphere, a rising glass, and (most fatal sign of all !) the suddenly improved scent of the day combined to forecast a coming frost. Then do the stars lose half their bright fascination, and even the Great Bear, who has been good enough to pilot me home- ward more nights of my hunting life than I care to count up, ceases to be welcomed as a chum of old time. As a matter of fact, it is usually only the last few miles of the journey that pall upon the ordinary votary, and tempt him to the momentary disloyalty of undervaluing the candle he has elected to burn. By that time he has probably thought out every thought he cares to allow dwelling-place in his mind, has called up every vision of past or future that is pleasant or profitable to commune with, till finally he descends to the practical, and finds himself grossly wondering what he has for dinner. He feels very empty, and his tired horse insists on kicking every pebble out of his path. This last is, to my mind, the most trying and painful development of a long road-ride after hunting. It is not only irritating to your own nervous system, but it necessitates constantly a sharp appeal — cruel, doubtless, but sadly unavoidable — to the wearied animal that he may, for his own sake and yours, keep on his legs yet a little longer. Oh, Lady Florence, Lady Florence, how could you ? They tell me you have broken out with a philippic against the Cruelty of all Sport. Is it the memory of many a long ride home to Melton that has prompted you, you who could not wittingly have inflicted cruelty in any other fashion ? By the way, my readers, have you a good recipe for " chronic cough," an ailment that is far more prevalent than you would imagine in the stables of the Grass Countries ? Here is one much in vogue. It " has stood the test of years," nor is its employment limited, I believe, to Midland hunting-fields. Its efficacy ought therefore to be beyond dispute. Given a sharp bridle, a smart second- horseman fairly conscious of his smartness, and a horse afflicted with a churchyard cough, yet retaining appear- ance and utility sufficient to postpone for the present his CHRISTMASSING 59 consignment to the kennels. Then the moment the poor brute groans forth his sepulchral cough, let Smartness job him twice in the mouth and kick him lustily in the ribs, repeating the application as often as occasion may offer. This treatment, if properly persevered in, should, even if it fail to effect a complete cure, at least suffice to keep in check the more aggravating symptoms of the malady. Weather requires no historian ; and its prophets, if not altogether worthless, are by no means far-seeing. Yet was I told as plainly as possible on Friday that this cold spell was in store. I believe thoroughly in bird-omen, do not yoti — at least if you were born in the country and brought up among nature and its life ? On Friday not , only did a fieldfare cross my path as I trotted to covert, but a weird grey owl kept me company for fully half a mile on my long ride homeward ! Along a high-fenced narrow lane he moved noiselessly before me, so close that I expected every moment to throw my thong round him as I held my arm in readiness, like a whipper-in intent on punishing riot. JVhv the "bird of wisdom" hovered so near to me for so long I cannot explain, except on the hypothesis of extremes being attracted one to the other. But I am stating a fact, and I made up my mind at once that the omen was unpropitious, and that it pointed to nothing else than frost. An excellent, nay, an unavoidable opportunity is this horrid week for the study of Christmas accounts. Let us hope you may all come out of them as cheerfully as our old friend Pepys, who on one occasion wound up by stating that he was " mighty content, being creditor ;^69oo, for which," he added with heart and soul, " the Lord of Heaven be praised ! " If you are in such happy case, don't fail to notice that the Hunt secretaries are thirsting for your blood, or, rather, hungering for your shekel* ; also that there are a good many bricks not yet paid for in a kennel to which we are indebted for sport of the best and management of the most liberal de- scription. 6o THE BEST OF THE FUN CHAPTER IX NORTHAMPTONSHIRE My text is furnished for me by one John Speed, who in 1611 wrote of Northamptonshire, "The aire is good, temperate and healthful ; the soil is champion, rich and fruitful, and so plenteously peopled that from some as- cents thirty parish-churches and many more windmills at one view may be scene. Commodities arising in this shire are chiefly gotten by tillage and plough, whereby corn so plenteously aboundeth that in no other countrie is found more, or so much ; the pastures and woods are filled with cattle, and everywhere sheep loaden with their fleeces of wooll." So much for our champion shire as it appeared 280 years ago, before the Pytchley became a subscription pack, and before a gorse— or apparently even a wood — had been enclosed. The other changes are obvious enough. I take leave to doubt that thirty Northampton- shire churches ever were visible from any one hilltop. There are not now: though Stowe-Nine-Churches is credited with commanding the lesser number. Wind- mills have disappeared from the country — or remain in the case of the more solid structures, dismantled of their tophamper, mere landmarks, unsightly wrecks, but not nearly so dangerous to horse and rider as when in full swing. Nor can it still be said that corn so plentifully aboundeth — or oats might perhaps be bought at less ruinous price than now : but, on the other hand, would you not rather keep one horse to ride over grass than two to wallow in plough ? I suppose most of our green ridge- and-furrow was undrained tillage land in those days. They probably wintered their cattle in the woods. Now the country is to some ex.tent cleared after October. Breeding stock and store stock remain — also " everywhere sheep loaden with their fleeces of wooll." And these constitute some of the chief difficulties of a huntsman in these latter days. Bullocks run at a fox NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 6i as soon as they see him — often turn him right away from his course, and then tread over his trail and steam over his line. Sheep huddle up, scour away for a while, then perhaps turn to scamper wonderingly after — having cast a blight over the whole pasture. Directly hounds appear, both cattle and sheep come trooping round them ; and not only is scent completely wiped out, but the pack is often brought up for want of room. Without cattle, without sheep — and without a field, if you will have it so — no doubt a good pack of hounds would kill many more foxes, and would change foxes far less. But there they are, all three ; and a huntsman has to circumvent them as best he can. A quick, self-reliant man will use his discretion freely as to helping — or at least encouraging — hounds onward at once. A master of the art, like Frank Beers, could do it without ever getting their heads up — and so can many another. Similar action is often needed where a flock of crows or starlings have foiled the line ; and may be on occasion quite as legitimate, quite as necessary, where " a bit of cold plough " renders hounds suddenly and hopelessly helpless, as on many days it undeniably will. You have seen it so only too often during the fag end of '91 — the worst scenting period dealt out to us for years past. It is mortifying to the utmost when, after running hard upon the grass for a mile or two, hounds are sud- denly pulled up by a few acres of sticky plough — across whose surface their fox has gone, as it were, upon clogs, to shake off the encumbrance immediately he regains the turf beyond, and to speed away in the distance while they spell their way a yard at a time, if at all. No plough- team is at work, no shrill-toned urchin is tenting crows : the outlook is clear and the horizon is still : Reynard's line is pronounced indubitably into mid-field : he must have gone on, and the moments are very precious. But the mud " carries " like cobbler's wax ; and only here and there can an old hound fling the note of authority. On a sinking fox let them alone : on a lively, fresh-found fox, no — very often no. 'Tis a hundred to one he is for- ward. Give him the credit, anyhow. " Believe every 62 THE BEST OF THE FUN fox a good one ! " was framed years before you or I first looked on at fox-hunting. If he proves himself a bad one, you will have all the leisure you want. A good old fox, in condition, is in a grass country nearly, if not quite, as stout and enduring as a foxhound. If the weight of his coat and his brush don't kill him — or he has not supped too well overnight — he is just as strong as his pursuer. Of the various foxes you have seen run to death, how many of them do you know to have been killed without having been shouted at, baulked, frightened, or extraneously hurried on their way ? 1 can- not at this moment recall ever a kill without a view or a holloa associated with some part of the run, however little attention was paid it by hounds or huntsman. Poor Reynard had felt it or heard it, and it had hurried his heart-beat, and hastened his fainting footsteps. Else might he have — as so often he has — beaten hounds fair and square on a fine scenting day. A huntsman — they teach me — can never afford to let a good fox get far ahead of him. On a blazing scent his fox never will, unless the man in office is culpably slow. But give him "half a chance," he will turn a moderate scent into a weak one, and distance it out altogether before he is tired. With a short-running fox it does not matter — except that by pressing him hard you may make him a good fox in spite of himself. " Have at him ! " then, is not a bad maxim (it is a lovely cry as we used to hear it in Leicestershire). A varmint huntsman is the man to show sport. What are your whips about, you ask, if they can't keep cattle and sheep away from the hounds ? So they can, and so they do, often. But apart from the fact that they may at the particular moment be equally busy doing something else, it is not always politic, nor even possible, for a whip to rush out of the fray to get between hounds and bullocks. I am speaking of the large, excessively combatant, fields of the Grass Countries. If he dash forward, and the Master — or, where he is hunting his own hounds, the all - necessary Field-Master — be not imme- diately at hand to direct and control, why, there may be THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE 63 a whole cluster of gentlemen — some young and some old enough to know better — dash forward also, as if in con- test for first spear. Sport is then likely to be hindered rather than accelerated. Let me not be taken as insinuat- ing that we are greater fools here than in other hunting- fields of more moderate proportion. Far from it ; we rather like ourselves, taking pride in our sphere, and arguing that, while the Shires are the arena on which to see fox-hunting at its best, it is also that on which to meet men, most of whom have elsewhere learned the business of riding to hounds, and who are here turning the faculty to fullest account. But numbers it is of course that frame the frequent difficulty. A whipper-in — always supposing that he is as good a rider as he should be (and, in my experience of the Grass Countries, very seldom indeed fails to be) — has but little trouble in doing his work when a run is fairly in swing. On this point of keeping cattle and sheep off hounds, and from foiling more ground than can possibly be avoided, he can render more useful assistance to his huntsman — towards making a run and killing a fox— than in almost any other way. But he must do it very readily, very rapidly, and very quietly. Some few of them cannot keep their mouths shut ; but rate and bawl to a degree that is irritating to hear — and if to you and me, how much more to hounds, whose every nerve is intent upon holding the delicate thread of their fox's course ? CHAPTER X THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE Friday Night, January 22, 1892. — Is it thawing? Is breath coming into our nostrils, vitality into our existence ? Will blood again circulate, and pulse once more beat high to the bidding of the hound, and joy assert itself where recently thought has been mournful and the air has been black with melancholy ? Shall we shake off the incubus of sadness, the atra cura of fell surrounding, the atmosphere 64 THE BEST OF THE FUN of death and mourning, and the wail that comes of the pestilence — exchange it, push it back, our own sorrows and those of more general, more lofty consequence, for active, outdoor geniality — not for forgetfulness, but for healthy, vigorous palliation ? Life is made up of alter- native ; else, how would they upon whom life is insisted, bear its burden to all appearance cheerfully onward ? The Harakvi is not for our clime — for high or for low! Would you drown grief or disappointment — do it, not in the flowing bowl (or its quenchless after-thirst), but in the manly distraction of sport — above all, me judice, in the brisk, kindly atmosphere of the hunting-field ! If new aspiration, new hope, new life, new spirits cannot be gleaned in a run with hounds — if happy forgetfulness, to be succeeded by a pleasing content that makes the world brighter and one's fellow-men more appreciable, is not to be found in the excitement of a ride to hounds — tell me, pray tell me, where it is to be had, and pass me there forthwith, properly horsed and fitly accoutred ! I wonder if I re-echo the unspoken thought and prayer of many and many a hunting man towards the close of this death-dealing period of frost and grief — suggestive and memory-laden in its weight of woe to each one of us with all that has been mournful in our own lives. I think I do. It has been. Give us release — give us active, self-reliant life. Let us forth to revive, to ride, to breathe — where gloom shall be dispelled by hearty exercise, and painful topic give place to healthful, mirth-bringing excitement ! And on Saturday we hunted. Once more it was given us to ride to hounds upon a scent — to ride, it is true, somewhat sedately or craftily in the forenoon, but to make the most of what was vouchsafed in the afternoon, when the thaw had reached below the surface and the turf under the northern hedgerows had in some degree yielded. Hounds at any rate could work their foxes and play with us to their own advantage, whether by sending us round to gate or gap, or by leaving us standing still, as the phrase goes, in a wheatfield. The atmosphere of the day may have had something to do with it : over-dieting a good deal. But if the im- THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE 65 pression forced upon me were in any degree correct, horses and riders alike were deplorably out of condition. At the covertside they evinced it only by a nearly general sleekness of appearance, as illustrated by a leaning towards rotundity or ruddiness as the case might be. When strong exercise began, both panted lustily, and grew heated and moist on wholly inadequate provocation. By Monday both will probably be all the better for it. To-morrow they will be stiff, perhaps sleepy, and in occasional instances even sore and abrased. Mem. — Saddles ought now again to be carefully looked to : for sore backs are quite a spring product, and uneven stuffing is as galling to a horse's back as a wrinkled stocking (let us say) to the human cuticle. Personally, I am as glad when the re- commencement of hunting takes place on a Saturday as I used to be thankful when the 12th of August fell upon that day. Last week we were taken rather unawares. Many were hybernating in town ; and early-morning and late-evening trains brought them hurrying down — to find the country still comparatively grim-looking, but the thermometer working hard towards mending matters. The rides of Badby Wood were as piecrust, that is to say, the few of them that are not almost macadamed for our benefit. At first they bore the Pytchley field (quite a little one to-day, please) clattering and slipping on the surface, while the lady pack drove cheerily up and down and about the covert. By degrees the crust broke, and horses then churned the frost-rotted ground into bog- holes. Perseverance at last achieved the task of driving a fox forth, and hounds then led us over an Alpine dis- trict— chiefly tilled, as if it had slipped all by mistake into the Grass Countries — past the back of Everdon to the Grafton coverts beyond. A little dip in the ground put the Everdon brook across our path — at least to such of us as would admit the necessity — and a score or so of horses reported progress by slipping in very varied fashion from one hard greasy bank to the other. The jump is scarcely a jump at any time. To-day it was hardly a fair question to put to them, with gate and shallow ford adjacent. This fox was lost at Everdon Stubbs. Next E 66 THE BEST OF THE FUN they ran sharp from Staverton Wood, over a couple of miles of stopping plough, to ground. Of the brace of foxes at Braunston Gorse one gave us a two-mile scamper in a circle ; the other, quite late in the evening, consented to go forth to Welton and Norton (which the map will tell you is not a far cry) and beat hounds at dark. So we had seen several foxes found and hunted, and the few brief minutes round Braunston were accepted gladly as a taste of new life. On February 3rd all the world apparently came forth to see what a Pytchley Wednesday might be like, and accordingly made it, as is customary, a mammoth con- course of smart men and women. As luck would have it, Reynard entered fully into the arrangements, and took them for a jaunt over some of the best and most open of the Pytchley grass. Thus there was room for all and a few more, while for half-an-hour or so they disported themselves hither and thither between the two little coverts of Lilbourne and Crick. Hounds had found at the former, not by any means an easy place from which to start on the part of a crowd of horse-people all bent upon doing their best ; but their fox had met with equal difficulties, and so the great phalanx was spread almost in line along the road behind the church before hounds in any degree settled to run. Then, as a swarm of bees after their hive- master, they swept across the valley and over its tempting, facile fences. If there was not a place for each enthusi- astic rider, there was at least room enough that one should not jump upon another, and the hounds went just fast enough to keep themselves out of the way. As the course swung wide from side to side, it took more than twenty minutes to gain Hilmorton Covert, that we have often seen reached in fifteen. From here to Crick Gorse, from Crick Gorse to here and back again, occupied another half-hour ; during which all hands enjoyed themselves, and declared they should be very glad to come again. Then, under a failing scent, Goodall worked his way valiantly to Yelvertoft village, his progress thither remind- ing one at times of nothing more closely than that of a welsher being borne to immersion by a surging crowd — THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE 67 the hounds, meantime, being wholly unconsidered items. He must have been almost glad when his fox beat him and delivered him. The day, though not so malevolently boisterous as its predecessors, was not sufficiently balmy to tempt the hundreds to see it out. The wind was liver-searching in its keenness at Yelvertoft Fieldside, as we stood on the bridge with the powers-that-be — the latter, not impro- bably, musing whether " the burden laid upon them was greater than they could bear." Heaven forfend ! To be brief, covert after covert was drawn ; no fox, till the fish- pond at Hemplow, then a brace. With one of these, but with never a scent, Goodall worked out a run of nearly an hour and a half by sheer, dogged perseverance, aided by the fact that for some reason unknown his fox waited more than once for his coming. Thus, this afternoon we rode over a rough highland line, to the right of Cold Ashby and Thornby, to ground in the valley between Cottesbrook and Purser's Hill, bringing hounds comfort- ably near kennels about five o'clock. When I said high- land, I ought to have written it Irish-highland ; for over most of the obstacles that stood in our way we had to creep and crawl, vociferating " Come up ! " or in some cases rolling about because our horses were altogether too English. Taking extremes from which to formulate a general rule (an entirely false method, no doubt), the difference between an Irish horse and an English horse as applied to fashion of jumping may be defined as that in the one case you ask the horse to think for himself, and to act altogether on his own discretion ; in the other you give him his orders and bid him obey them without stopping to think — treat him, in fact, on the same footing as the nobler animal who takes your hunter on to covert. You want no sticky horse to fly over the Shires, any more than you can do with a flying horse in Meath. But it is very pleasant when your mount will either creep or fly, according to order. How would Irish horses have behaved in this case, think you ? Two English hunters — more placid than usual, on account of being more or less blown — walked 68 THE BEST OF THE FUN unwillingly into a brook, and there were called upon to stand, while the rider of one dismounted to tear down a rail on the farther bank. During this operation one of them bethought him he would drink ; the other bethought him he might rest his weary head, which accordingly he did across the neck of the first. The dismounted rider having returned to his saddle, it was time to go on. The horse that had quenched his thirst raised his head with a view to progress, and in so doing carried the tired one's head upwards. Here they were, irremediably stuck, like stags locked in combat, or bullocks in a crowded truck. Neither could move, and hounds were running ! I have reason to believe they are not there still ; but the incident,, as I left it, was fraught with terrible possibilities. Having brought you to the end of a long, not unevent- ful day — the events, by the way, being emphasised by quite an extraordinary number of mud-stained coats and habits, for, you must know, these safety-skirt ladies run up their list of croppers as flippantly and light-heartedly as a Meltonian in his first season, or a rough-rider in his first situation — I will now tell you how to get home again, as illustrated for my special benefit this even- ing. A long ride home is often tiring, and it is very easy to leave a pony-cart out. Don't forget the big fur rug. Then, if you squeeze in three abreast on the one seat, everything is in favour of your keeping warm. All right ! Let go his head ! Up reared the pony, eager for his collar. But, before he got there, down came the lash, astonishing him to such a degree that, with one wild buck into the air, he broke both shafts, tilted the trio softly backwards in one fur-covered mass, and then straightway set ofif home on his own account, frightening the led hunters out of their wits as he clattered past them half-way. Capital business driving home after hunting. As I have asserted many a time before, fox-hunting is in truth the well-loved sport quite as much of the agri- cultural classes as it is of the mounted and scarlet-clad classes (even as defined almost to extreme to-day,in the high- born and titled roll-call of the latter). A day upon which the " hoonters " are about gives vivid pleasure to a ten THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE 69 times larger number of working people (who have seldom time or means to go beyond their parish boundary for amusement) than of richer folk who ride a-horseback that day. Old men to little children all accept the pageant with gusto, and view its operations with keen delight, being never so happy as when they can share it by screaming at a fox, however distant. That even old women will take active and enthusiastic part I had personal opportunity of assuring myself to- day. A good dame had not only seen the fox, but she could not understand how its exact course could be a matter of indifference to any one of us apart from the huntsman, who was already taking advantage of her information. To elucidate her point, and to insist upon our understanding her shrill-toned directions, she perched herself on a new post-and-rails that supplemented the only place of egress. Deaf to my entreaties, and, of course, determined not to be silenced, she held forth from her point of vantage till my time, patience, and gallantry were alike exhausted. So judging there was just room, I determined on at least sharing the doorway with her. No sooner did she realise the coming of the inevitable than, with a loud shriek, she flung herself prone to her right front ; the young mare, rising at the timber, swerved off to the left with a startled violence that nearly pitched me on to the turf between them ; and I am still in doubt as to which of us three sustained the heaviest ^hock to the nervous system. They have invented a new form of impediment to our progress across Northamptonshire. It is hardly likely to meet with wide adoption, but we encountered it on Monday, thus. The occupier's cattle had bored a hole through a dense bullfinch, after a fashion peculiar to shorthorn bullocks, who can virtually take their great carcases wherever their heads can go. The good man, willing to humour his oxen, but not wishing the outlet to be converted into a common highway, at once drew together the thorns overhead, entwining them neatly and scientifically. Following hounds there came one for whom I entertain sincerest regard. He looked for a spot 70 THE BEST OF THE FUN where his horse could go through, and, having spotted it, naturally went for it with due rapidity, lest some other should get there before him. The mare, following the fresh-made bullock-tracks, shot through, as a hare through a smeuse. He was retained, preserving connection with his hunter only by the delicacy of her mouth and the length of her crupper, which allowed him to remain seated just ahead of her tail, while with his hands he tore asunder the network of thorn that enveloped his only remaining hat and face. He tells me that for the rest of the day he fairly wept blood, that his hat has gone to spend the frost on the block, and that he holds himself to have been very inconsiderately treated, as he points to his face to witness. Hardly so badly treated, perhaps, as another of his clique. What say you ? This latter, being born a poet rather than a soldier, does not affect the style of collar that supports our chin during the fatigues of mufti parade. The classical, unmilitary collar is — like a top- boot that has been too frequently ministered by an in- different valet — apt to leave a slot in front of the wearer's throat. There has been little or no mud flying about lately, during this barren, nor'-westerly, inexplicably ill- scenting weather. But earth and gravel are frequently kicked up by the galloping hoof, and a large lump of these was thus flung right into the poet's slot. Do what he would, the intruding morsel had disappeared before he could stop it ; and as the run went on it grated its way downwards till his silken undervest became a very hermit's shirt of torturing discomfort. Worst of all, a pebble had been included in the intruding mass, and before the fox was killed he was riding on that pebble. No help for it, and home he went, riding delicately. Far be it from me to suggest how others should dress ; but, for my own part, with this sad example in mind, I shall cling steadfastly to the lofty, protective stock that belongs to military antiquity. One of my yearly blows, irrespective of such casual slaps in the face as Destiny may deal one, is contained in the parting with my hound puppies. The lambs are A LATE RELEASE 71 coming, and the puppies must go, poor little ones, to discipline and confinement, the two most irksome con- ditions possible to impose upon man, horse, or dog. Just as they have become companionable, they are carried off by the kennel-cart, and they leave a sad void behind them. All their ingenious freaks of iniquity, all the hot water into which they have so persistently plunged one, all the taxes they have levied in the shape of damage to neighbours or of wanton destruction at home — all their crimes are forgotten, and one would give much to have them and their droll mischief-making back again. Day after day they have been lumbering delightfully after the one old hare on the property, filling up the intervals with chasing or being chased by the foals, their sworn playfellows, or with throwing their tongues in cautious defiance at the great black bullocks of a neighbour's pasture. Now they have gone to make acquaintance with whipcord and repression, perhaps to die of dis- temper and home-sickness (which finishes of¥ many an ailing puppy), perhaps to be drafted to Russia or Madras, but perhaps to lead us again and again, from Shuckburgh or from Crick. CHAPTER XI A LATE KP: LEASE If hunting went on the whole year round, as it may in some planet, or in some future hunting-ground, an occasional frost might provide a charming interlude, as, for instance, when we all go a-Christmassing, or when young men and maids foregather for hunt balls. Even a twelve o'clock meet scarcely makes hunting chime in with the latter, while, as for a 9.30 innovation, it has to be surrendered at discretion, like some of Mr. Balfour's well-intended safeguards. But a frost in latter February has about as much to recommend it as a week's rain for Ascot or a tempest for Henlev. It is a keen, irretrievable misfortune, and is 72 THE BEST OF THE FUN regarded by fox-hunters, as it is by lamb-breeders, as a distinct breach of privilege. Our horses were far from requiring a rest. In spite of deep ground for the bulk of the winter, we have scarcely tired a horse this season — in the Weedon district. Right and left of us, there have been a run or two here, a run or two there, but they have not come our way, since November. Else might there be something refreshing, exhilarat- ing, and deliciously gratifying in the summons to work after the lapse of days. We look forward, of course, with a zest that no other attraction could supply to to- morrow with the North Warwickshire, to Wednesday with the Pytchley. But is there not in the outlook a tinge of sadness, that belongs to so much on earth when once we are out of our teens, or our twenties (as may pertain to the cruel accident of sex) ? Too late, too late, is a cry that has perhaps embodied more disappointment, conveyed more bitterness, and even contained more con- densed agony than any protest by human voice. But moralising or moan, chagrin or regret, what have we to do with you to-night — with two good horses awaiting the morrow, and the morrow — a travelling hack to the stable, and a clean bill of health just issued by trusty groom — the thermometer at forty degrees, and the sky serene ? We have dined ; we are sound ; and, God be thanked, we shall be dancing the green to the best of all tunes before we're a dozen hours older. Tuesday Morning. — And how is the outlook now ? A suspicion of grey frost, a determined outburst of sun- shine. Not the best possible omens of sport, you will say. Never mind, bright and refreshing, and wholesome, conditions wherein to be abroad, bound for the covert- side once more, whether astride the galloper, or snugly packed abaft the trotter. The former will put your liver of idleness to rights before you reach hounds ; the latter will set your teeth chattering till in thought you are back in the dentist's chair — a perch that, I am led to believe, has fox-hunters for occupants during a frost almost as freely as has the theatre stall, or the haircutter's mystic A LATE RELEASE 73 stool. Our roads are roughened in February with an ingenuity that can only be termed devilish. Every loose stone is raked into path and rut, to the confusion of your horse, the ruin of your trap, and with no possibility of benefit to the road, for the granite pieces are merely kicked off again without being absorbed. Mr. Ashton, meeting at Wolston, brought his hounds first to Wilcox Gorse ; and, with a fox outlying in the immediate vicinity, treated us to a twenty minutes' gallop of which we all thought much, and made the most. The ditches of Dunsmoor were deep and wide as ever ; but their condition has wholly and happily changed since November. You can now see into them ; and, though the view is not invariably enticing, it admits of guiding your horse where the sailing is plain and his course is obvious. In fact, this deep-dug, awesome plain has lost all its terrors since the snow. Added to which the line — to Ryton Coppice and Ryton Wood (there to ground) — bore evident signs of having been more or less recently ridden, possibly tumbled through. Most of the fences were gapped clean, even to the bottom of the ditches. There was a scent, a rare treat in itself. Hounds could drive, and keep us going — keep us out of mischief, if you like to put it that way. For even with the help of gaps there could be no pressing hounds, though, I make bold to assert, there was a field in their wake that, were I master, I should be loth to let for a moment out of my sight. Occupying a wholly different position, I had the opportunity from my own standpoint of reaping no small pleasure from the prowess of a single individual, with whose name I will take upon myself to make free. This was in the performance of Mr. Martin, of Catesb}-, who, walking seventeen stone, and here competing with many men seven stone lighter, was gliding over the country in the foremost van, riding fairly to hounds, steadying his horse at each jump in a fashion that half the light-weights would do well to copy, yet taking every fence at his own spot and losing no ground as he went. In truth, it did me good to mark and learn from my yeoman friend. 74 THE BEST OF THE FUN It has been laid down by some capable authority — I think it was " Scrutator " — that if you want to ingratiate yourself with the huntsman of a pack to which you happen to arrive as a stranger, you cannot do better than open the ball with some remark appreciative of his hounds. A charming instance of this policy came to ear a week or two ago, on the occasion of a lawn meet, and even of an address from the Master in office. On this occasion Stranger (there are a good many on our weekly bank holiday, so the pseudonym cannot be regarded as personal) took advantage of the momentary lull at the conclusion of the Master's words, and lost no time in putting the good old principle into practice. " Mr. Chirpy," he began, ad- dressing the huntsman by name, " I notice your hounds " (they were the little lady pack, please note) " are not nearly so massive or powerful as the Coal and Iron Hounds that I am accustomed to hunt with " (naming a pack that Will Chirpy had been wont to hold as very small beer indeed). " How do you account for that ? " he persisted, while the huntsman sat aghast till every feature of his sport-worn face began working with repression of feeling. That no retort escaped his lips, I take to be stronger evidence of Will Chirpy's command of temper and of self than even his cool presence of mind among the galloping hundreds. Turning from the questioner to his first whip, he merely inquired in leisurely syllables, that were cutting only from their very calmness — " Who's that gentleman, John ; do you know ? " Then, as if conscious he could bear the strain no longer, " Put 'em up, Alfred. No good messing here. Beg pardon, my lord, did you say I was to move off ? " Wednesday Night, February 24. — The pleasant task of noting the sport of to-day I shall leave till to-morrow. I doubt if any of the band of matured young fellows would care to undertake it, who did their duty by the Pytchley Hunt Ball of last night and have since been subjected to a thorough wet morning, a long day of constant galloping, to say nothing of subsequent steaming bath and well- earned evening of quiescence (a word that you may render according to your special habits and proclivities). Of the A LATE RELEASE 75 overnight function I say nothing, except that, however smart and complete of itself, it was by no means on the scale of a Pytchley Wednesday ; that the world of male- kind would seem to have undergone a process akin to transposition, the old men having become very young, and the young men very old. Why, a " man " is quite aged nowadays at twenty. He is often blase and worn at twenty-five ! Is he not ! As to the Ball I would merely add, as they tell me, Beauty was closely concentred, both as to matron and maid. There was an eclipse in each class. My feminine readers — if I am honoured by any — may possibly fail to follow the threadbare simile. But if any of them as- sisted at the event in question, I warrant you they will " name the winner in one " in either competition ; and perhaps add, " Of course I know^ whom he means ; but I can't say I admired her one bit, while as to a girl at her first ball, of course she looks fresh, happy, and bright, which is what men pretend to like ! " Now I find myself humming drowsily to my hearth- rug companions — well, never mind what. Snap responds by wagging his stern like a hound first feathering in covert. Puss by jumping on to my manuscript and rendering it more undecipherable than ever. Time for bed, pussy. Glad I had strength of mind enough to cry off a pleasant man-party ; for I am a dull and heavy-eyed dog to-night. The snowdrifts from below, the rainpour from above, have an exhausting effect alike upon vision and faculty. A happy weariness, though, is that begotten of a busy day's hunting. Some new vicissitude of the chase I discover almost every day I go out. Were I to set them out in detail, and dispense them in a volume, I feel sure that few men having home responsibilities would be allowed to go forth, to ride and to hunt. Yet these casualties, risks, and hairbreadth escapes are, as I have often pointed out, by no means necessarily the outcome of conscientious hard riding. Take this instance of yesterday, the morning of which, you remember, was both very wet and very warm. He was equipped with apron and with covert coat. 76 THE BEST OF THE FUN And he has Hkewise equipped himself with a pulling horse and a very inadequate bridle. Between the lot he shortly found himself in a state of heat and distress bordering upon apoplexy. There was nothing for it but to pull up at once and get rid of some of the encum- bering garments. Accordingly he brought the bay mare abruptly to a standstill by putting her head straight at a hovel wall. Off went the mackintosh-apron, to be twisted deftly round the breastplate. With the rain- drenched covert coat he was not so successful. It clung to his arms as if glued to them ; and do what he would he could get it no further than his elbows. The bay mare of course took advantage of the opportunity to set her- self going again in pursuit of hounds. And this she did at best pace while her rider sat pinioned by his elbows, in a plight little better than Mazeppa's ! How it ended I can- not tell you : for they were soon a mile away. But it is said that a rent covert coat was picked up a mile or so further on ; and I know that Mazeppa II. means to hunt again to-morrow, though very silent and reserved as to the incident in question. CHAPTER XII A DART FROM WINWICK WARREN Lord Spencer has consented to retain the Mastership of the Pytchley. Comment on the gratifying announcement would be altogether superfluous. Had he vacated the post, there was no one to fill it adequately — though of course an acceptable stop gap (I can think of no other words to express blameless inadequacy) would speedily have been forthcoming. We are grateful to Lord Spencer, not merely for continuing to hold an office that has been, as it were, the natural prerogative of his family for gener- ations, but for consenting, at whatever inconvenience and labour to himself, still to carry on the multiplied duties and responsibilities that accompany the mastership of a country so popular and so accessible as the Pytchley. A DART FROM WIXWICK WARREN 77 Tuesday, March ist, was the occasion of our first 9.30 muster. Whether the experiment was successful as to keeping down numbers must be for others to judge. As a matter of fact, the field of the morning did not exceed 250. But then it must be borne in mind that other hounds were out — this being a Shrove Tuesday meet in Heu of Wednesday. It is open to doubt if any further reduction is likely to be brought about by a less stringent measure than recurring to John Peel's hour of meeting. The modern Nimrod would hardly be brought to fold his cravat or buckle his leathern garters by candlelight. He would withdraw his subscription, and go elsewhere — or, maybe, take to golf. He turned up in fair force, though, on Tuesday at Crick — having gone to bed specially early overnight, and looking all the better for it. A long and varied day he had before him : a trying day, a cold day, but withal a very pleasur- able day, according to my estimate and according to the standard of this insufficient season. Sleet and snow blinded him as he rode or drove to covert, after his scanty, premature breakfast : and the same persecuting elements worried him the livelong day, pinching him at the covert- side, and chilling him during the periods of inaction that constitute so considerable a section of every day's hunting. On the other hand he was loosed off no less than four times upon a flying ride — the fourth occasion developing into a very merry, genial gallop, and sending him home warmed to the bone. It was bleak and cold, and nigh upon three o'clock of the afternoon, that we stood upon the hill of Winwick Warren — wondering vaguely at the persevering industry of the earth stopper, who to all appearance had laid a flat stone to the mouth of every aperture on this honeycombed height. A shivering throng we were — our complexions illustrating every shade of aesthetic uncomeliness. " Yaick- aick-aick ! " Don't you know it? It has power to set my heart going more deftly than any signal save Tom Firr's " Yurry-Yurry-Yurry " of similar occasion. " The same fox we took from Purser's Hill, my lord," cries John, as he cheers hounds to the line and we crowd up to the 78 THE BEST OF THE FUN road, that crosses our front eastward. Sheep are penned here and there in the two turnip-fields beyond it. Our fox has dashed through them without halting or turning, and gains useful ground in consequence — though it seems hardly ten seconds later that we are clear of the hurdles, the sheep-netting, the next three plough-country fences of wattle and bramble, and are dashing down the grassy slope towards Guilsboro'. Some sudden inspiration, or it may be interference, has occurred to our fox on reaching the lower ground ; for he strikes upward and leftward with a quick unexpected swing that threatens to carry the little ladies clean away from us, as they dart across the fair pastures, northward. P'irm and invigorating is the turf upon this red upland. With pace as now, 'tis ever a delight to ride it. What the fences may be is a matter of chance as they come. You and I will cling close to the grey, and follow the official — as we have many a time before. If he frighten us too sorely we can but pull up — break a stirrup, lose a shoe, lame a horse, or what not. There are wide and awkward bottoms among these ridges — such places as you like to know the other side of before you find yourself irretrievably under weigh. Will it do ? Will it do ? The answer comes only from the thud of the grey's bounding hoofs, as he lands yards beyond what was after all but insignificance. But the next is a teaser if I re- member aright ; and, as I have remarked before, I never in my cowardice fail to remember a fence once seen, though I may not even recognise the locality until I have deciphered it afterwards from amid the cobwebs of my brain. Strike it right or strike it left, you may have to crawl, clamber, or even to gallop round. Follow the grey under the ash- trees, keep on all the pace you have, but steady her head, and steady her quarters ; and a hundred to one you clear ditch, blackthorn, and rail, beside Mr. Hugh Owen, Mr. Foster, and the rest of the centre division. Passing by what I take to be Nortoft Lodge (if not, it was some other small farmhouse, between Thornby and Guilsboro'), the little ladies drive hard as ever up the greensward to the Cold Ashby road. (How little memories crop up as one gallops ! 'Twas the very same greensward, do you remem- A DART FROM WINWICK WARREN 79 her, farmer-friend, wherein with proper pride you rode to cheer Betsey-the-single-handed, her whom you had walked — and you were put round at once to the huntsman your- self ?) The jump into the road is as a leap over an avalanche — for great masses of snow lie beyond and below. There may be a wide gulf beneath — there is probably nothing. But a horse quite as cautious and prudent as yourself fiings himself into the roadway, far beyond the white, mud-freckled drifts — and, possibly, in such good company as that of Messrs. Roden, Gordon-Cunard, and H. Mills. Lord Spencer is on the spot to insist upon room, for the pack now feathering upon the soiled surface of the plough beyond. Downward then they push again, towards the Yelvertoft valley : and, bending still leftward, hunt brightly past Winwick village, till they turn upward over the spot where Goodall brought his fox to hand in the fog gallop of some four years ago. Prompted by the reminiscence, one of the most active participators, and certainly the heaviest ^ in that fog-episode, now proceeds at once to set his stamp upon the exact locality. This he does by imprinting deep in the red soil the outline of him- self and his bay mare — leaving on the hillside a landmark similar in shape, and almost identical in scale, with that giving a name to the Vale of White Horse. After this hounds work onward almost to Ravensthorpe, and into the district beyond West Haddon. But the farther they go, the more ground does their fox seem to have gained upon them. And he won the day, which thus terminated about four o'clock. The last event we may well term a pretty hunt of nearly an hour — of which the first twenty-five minutes or so were enjoyable exceedingly. To no one, I would venture to wager, did they commend themselves more heartily and acceptably than to the light- weight little lady from Northumberland, piloted to point of view by Mr. Darby — I mean, of course. Miss Fenwick, who, with her father, has been hunting some few recent days in Northamptonshire. 1 Mr. P. A. Muntz. 8o THE BEST OF THE FUN CHAPTER XIII A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD Frozen out in England, how better seek relaxation and change than in a ride across Meath or county DubHn ? A contrast — sometimes a very thrilHng one — will the Saxon find it, when emerging fresh and untaught from the crude simplicity of the stake-and-bounds of his native pastures. Why don't you try it more generally, ye greedy thrusters, with youth on your side, with an insatiable appetite for perilous leaps, and above all with a growing craving ever for a new sensation ? You will get it — this last named — I promise you, when first you find yourselves poised on a narrow back — a gulf, ten feet deep, and as many feet wide, holding out its arms to you, while your horse gathers himself on the crumbling ridge for a second, supreme spring — and for a landing only a newly-stoned road wide and far beneath you. If you don't select a frost, take the autumn ; and school your nerves then, for the coming fray in the over- crowded arena of the Shires. I believe you are all welcome in this sport-loving land, to farmers and hunting-men alike (at least this is the impression that they undeniably convey to the grateful, casual stranger). You see, you can't level an Irish fence to the ground — even if a hundred or two ride over it. You can't break down a bank in the blithe, well-pleased fashion in which you shiver a post and rails or scatter an oxer ; while as for riding over wheat or cutting up a piece of seeds, you must be wilfully and ingeniously wicked if you can either achieve these or succeed in leaving open a gate or liberating the stock. Of the many points that I find to astonish and impress me during my novitiate in Irish hunting-fields is this one — viz. that, notwithstanding the unaltered and unimproved state of each fence after the passage of the leaders, the whole main body of the field always contentedly follow on, just as they do with us, where all the terrors and most of the dangers of a fence are quickly knocked to pieces by A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD 8i preceding horsemen. Here, as there, let the place be never so ghastly in its original ugliness, no sooner is one daring leader safely over than the whole flock of followers accept his lead — and, what is more, though the leap is no whit better for them, their very confidence seems to carry them all safely over. I wonder at the men ; I wonder still more at the women ; and I wonder most of all at the horses — as I see chasm after chasm crossed unfalteringly, that would hang up a Leicestershire or Northamptonshire field for the day. One word more. If you do come over at any future time, don't bring your second horsemen, and don't bring your English-bred horses. You will have no use for either. I must leave others to enlighten you as to how to escape from the dilemma, while I go on briefly to illustrate my impressions of the Ward country, from experiences of the present week ; " Sharp frost, no hunting, horses well " being the state of the Grass Countries of England, as tele- graphed from the home-stables. On Monday, then, March 7, 1892, along roads dusty as the Epsom route in May or June, I jogged leisurely forth to Brindley Memorial — a point at no great distance from the kennels, but some nine very long Irish miles from Dublin, and where (as no doubt I might have learned long ago from my friend " Triviator," and as every one in Ireland knows) a handsome monument is erected to the memory of the father of the present huntsman — for over twenty years having held the office his son now fills so capably. Owing to a temporary alteration of meets — affecting the present week — a well-filled special had, I learned, carried a party (and with them no doubt my esteemed collaborateur) to the foxhounds of Meath. Thus the field of the Ward was small, and the contrast with recent events and surroundings elsewhere was the more marked and striking. My route lay not direct from the city of Dublin, but from Ashtown. Consequently, to reach the meet, I had to find my way through Finglas and other outlying hamlets whose names I endeavoured as best I could to assimilate into a Saxon memory. Soon, as I expected, I succeeded in losing my way ; and forth- F 82 THE BEST OF THE FUN with I stuttered forth such portion of my directions as I could remember to various peasants lounging about their cabin doors. I might as well have addressed them in Japanese or Malay. They merely looked at me wonderingly but kindly. Of a sudden, however, a stal- wart matron burst forth with emphasis, " Is it the hunt ye mane?" She knew where that was to be, of course; as did probably every villager for a dozen miles round. And she directed me delightedly and intelligibly enough on my way, to a function that in Ireland is second in attrac- tion only to a funeral. A mare of charming quality was my mount, at Mr. McDonald's kind hands, and her silken mane had been plaited with exemplary neatness by her stable attendant. Tw'o little damsels, barefooted, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, played by the roadside. " Ah, now ! Look at the harse ! Hasn't he lovely curls?" cried one laughing damsel. " Truth he has ! " chimed in the other sweet imp, showing a set of teeth that fairly sparkled across her face. '' But isn't it a lovely colonel ? " I appeal to you, reader. Wouldn't you have crossed both their little palms with silver ? I did — and rode on as jauntily as if my gazette were in my pocket, and a new truth had just been revealed and acclaimed. " What is that strong dog ? " I happened to inquire of Brindley, as he strolled his pack along the road from the meet. " He came from the Fitzwilliam," he replied, giving the hound's name. " Did he ! " I exclaimed, my curiosity aroused. " What is he by ? " Instead of the information, I was met with an astonished counter-query, " Who might you be ? " and the comment in all good humour, " I've not been asked a hound's pedigree these ever so many years " — showing that, thorough, practical, and highly-advanced as is the science of riding in the Green Island, the less exciting details of hound-culture are not a subject of very wide interest. I was forced to explain in excuse that the study in question was to a certain minor extent my trade in life, which at once met with his friendly approval. At the comfortable hour of 1.30, the deer was enlarged A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD 83 by the main road adjoining the village of Ashbourne. A very small circle he made westward, while the !)iilk of a field of fifty or sixty remained sensibly in the road till hounds swept back to them, at the spot where he had been viewed across. The chief — indeed, only — objects, apparently, for which he had made this detour were to assure us that but little frost remained in the ground, and that by sample of two atrocious-looking gulfs he had a strong country in view for our benefit. The second was into the road wherein clustered the majority of the horse- men, a whole gallery of cars and other vehicles, and a complete army of wreckers. Personally, I consider I only just escaped becoming prey to the last named by exer- cising a judicious flank movement, and jumping into a lane at right angles — for, as I galloped up the road a few seconds afterwards, there were three horses' heads gaping upwards on the bank, like crocodiles at the Zoo pushing forward to be fed ; there were three sorrow- stricken sportsmen hauling helplessly at their bridles ; and, as vultures to a feast, a cloud of loafers fluttered hurriedly up. Leaving the road in the wake of the flying crew, now fairly embarked upon the wide green sea stretching east- ward, I found the iron gate through which they had passed into the first grass field. But a spalpeen was hold- ing it ajar, demanding toll of stragglers as they came. It was no time to fumble with gloved hand for the coin of extortion : it was still less a moment at which a man, already more or less in the lurch, cared to be hindered by a blackmailer. So, fortunately catching the gate's upright with my outstretched foot, I went through almost at speed, leaving the extortioner loudly anathematising his own iron trap and me. Hounds had checked a moment, and among a network i)f ditches and deceptive narrowbacks I found many people riding up and down, and eventually swallowing necessity — none of them turning back, but most of them preferring evidently to look long before they leaped (as well they might do, according to my own terrified estimate of these great gullies and double-scrambles) — while the leaders 84 THE BEST OF THE FUN sat looking leisurely round in their saddles, hounds having flashed over the line. Onward they rode again ; and for the next twenty minutes were engaged in getting rapidly from field to field, over what they admitted afterwards to be a suc- cession of narrowbacks of the most trappy description. They seemed all that to me, as I followed on as best I could — too proud to ejaculate aloud, but muttering many a prayerful interjection as I found myself wavering on each crumbling ridge or recovering barely from a second hidden grip. Not even the bliss of ignorance, that allowed me to believe this the ordinary and everyday class of country of the Ward, sufficed to make those complicated fortifications in any degree welcome to my untutored understanding. Do you, my Saxon brethren, know what these narrow- backs of theirs are like ? Not all of you do ; so I will tell you in a few words, and without exaggeration. Picture to yourself a chasm in the ground such as you may have seen excavated down a street, when a main sewer is to be laid down in a town. There seems no bottom to it ; and its width is sufticient for a fair water-jump in mild North- amptonshire. Beyond this a grass-grown wall of earth,, that may be five feet in height, or that may be only three. Beyond this, again, a sharp-dug little ditch, placed at the exact distance to catch the fore-legs of a far-jumping horse — in fact, to turn completely on to his back any animal that cannot gather his hind legs to kick back, with the power and instantaneousness of a cat struggling for its- liberty. Or take the charming compound the other way. A common or English horse, and a common or Saxon rider,, approaching the little grip, and viewing the green and innocent wall it protects, would probably skim lightly over, to — I daren't finish the picture — say, to make work .; for the wreckers. The Irish horse, on the contrary, perches neatly on the green coping, surveys the prospect for a second, and reveals to your astonished gaze, a black awesome gulf, into which it seems altogether improbable he can help plunging you. He doesn't though ; but with A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD 85 a spring as of a bent bow, lands you lightly on the farther brink, while you — the Saxon horseman — faintly gasp forth the breath of astonishment, thankfulness, and relief. One refiection I can offer you — not as a panacea, but as a possible mitigator of your natural terrors. It was put very aptly to me the other day, to mark the difference between falling in the Shires of England and falling in Ireland — and, remember, in neither sphere can you ex- pect, nor is it even desirable, that you should continue to go without a fall now and again. In the one case you are flung from a height, and when going probably a good pace. In the other you fall when y oil are already down. I think the definition commends itself without explanation. My notes are growing lengthy. Let me add only of Monday that (all errors of geography on my part to be excepted) they ran past Garriston, and, after a sharp final spurt, took their deed near Naul, a pleasant forty minutes of fine country and instructive experience. A Gallop in a Snowstorm The funniest experience of a sport-seeking life was the run enjoyed hugely with the Ward on Wednesday last, in a blizzard snowstorm. The humour of it I put aside as impossible to convey. But I can give you the simple facts, as far as I retain them in a storm-battered head- piece. Driving snow-showers had come on with the early morn, and at the time there seemed only a happy prospect of warmth within doors, of a heavy luncheon, and a day lost ; but at 12.30 we were in the special, at one o'clock we were at Drumree, and at 1.30 we made part of a multi- clad field of fifty that shivered at Dunshaughlin — without map and without memory I must risk these names, and plead for indulgence. Lord Zetland was there, and so were Lord Molyneux and Lord Melgund (the last-named at the font of his first baptism of sport in Ireland). Need- less to add, he went through the ordeal in store with ad- mirable success, and I am sure he will understand my proud feeling of satisfaction on seeing him at the meet. 86 THE BEST OF THE FUN He was even a newer boy than myself. I had almost, by virtue of seniority, asked him his name. Besides him, I found old comrades, such as Captains Onslow and Hone, with other acquaintance of previous or passing occasion. It does not take you long to find camaraderie in an Irish hunting-field. There was a deer in the cart. There may have been two, if a deer-cart be double-barrelled — a point of venerie of which it has never yet occurred to me to obtain solu- tion. I know only that two deer generally take carriage exercise on these occasions. But, in any case, the cart had nothing to do with this, the most unartificial, and in many respects the most attractive, deer-hunt at which it has ever been my fortune to assist. Hounds found their deer for themselves, got away close at his brush (or what- ever takes the place of that honoured attribute) ; and after having bustled him heartily at starting, never ran him, or rather her, into view again. They drove their hind very hard for twenty-five minutes, throwing their tongues lust- ily ; then for another hour and a half hunted out her line like harriers, running, as is the way of staghounds, nearly mute on a cold scent, yet opening freely when they found excuse for pace. They had not caught her even then. And not until Friday shall I learn whether or no she still runs wild. I and others from a distance had all done sufficient by that hour, and scent seemed fading fast. This outlying deer had taken up her quarters in Poor- house Gorse. Report came to say that she had been seen to leave it that morning ; but after consultation as to whether a fox would be disturbed, Brindley was given licence to draw it. {Thursday, March lo). — And now, by reason of innate dilatoriness and the pressure of pleasant occupation, I find myself with about half-an-hour in which to tell you of nearly a two hours' run. Perhaps I may limit myself to the early thirty minutes. Poorhouse Gorse. No chance of a fox being in it. Every chance, Brindley urged, of his outlying deer. Hounds threw their tongues the moment they entered. Only the usual let-off of music, we deemed it. that stag- A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD 87 hounds will vent when taken to a line, and when they know the strife is imminent. Not a bit of it. 'Twas genuine acknowledgment of the game within — as we appreciated afterwards, though now we sauntered, with turned-up collars and with scarce a hope, by the deep ditched covertside, scrutinising with mixed feelings the for- midable partition 'twixt field and field, noticing mournfully the absence of civilised gates, and marked shiveringly the black snow-clouds that loomed overhead. Hooroosh — Hooroosh ! A real Irish chorus, taken up, as it seemed, from the whole countryside. The deer had broke, the mob of beaters, and what not, had opened their throats, and hounds were away to a view. The big hind at first made a bad strike for freedom ; she met the village of Dunshaughlin, she met a sheep dog, and she came back among us, till five minutes later we had galloped the street, to see her bounding from the road leftward into the country beyond, with a fair start of the pack, and with a wild, good career before her. In short, it was a typical commencement. A single exit (wherever men hunt they will follow sheep-fashion, you know) over the stone-faced narrowback, into an up- land pasture, the big beast bounding gaily forward, and hounds just emerging from the road, as we clustered quietly for a start. " All on " surely. And now to keep them in sight, over the hrm green upland, and the un- known difficulties of a strange country. Oninc ignotum pro iiiagiiifico, wouldn't you put it, my classical and revered collaborateur ? A corner, a pond, and a wall surrounding ditto. Only way into next field seems the top of the wall. So a cer- tain few clamber for a stride or so gravely along the wall, to drop into the drinking-place and so on. Ridge and furrow I thought to be solely a product of Britain. Here it is, though, in its narrowest and chop- piest form, while hounds are driving forward, and the first stray streaks of snow meet your straining eyeballs. Ugly bank — and stone-faced, too. Nothing else the other side, I hope. Come up, old Confidence ! You must find courage for both of us. Safely atop. Heavens, 88 THE BEST OF THE FUN what next ? On into space, and clown into depth. What manner of men — of farmers, of landlords — ever devised, and contrived, and executed such barrier as this ? Ele- phants couldn't storm it, let alone the black Irish bullocks of two-year-old growth. (By the way, what has become of the stock since autumn, when the fat beasts fairly chivvied the hounds in each field ?) Gallop we now our hardest, while hounds gain ground, and the storm bursts ; but the deer, like a sensible animal, chooses ever the easiest outlet, and hounds don't tail enough to allow of the readiest rider jumping on them. Close to their sterns, though, ride Captain Dewhurst, Mr. Hugh Gore, Mr. Percy Maynard, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and I don't know how many more — and, landing over a wide double, they strike the road (what road, don't ask me), while the pack dash alongside through a thin plantation, and run parallel to them for half a mile. I hate a road to ride in. I hate a road worst of all to jump into. It's a dangerous path to follow; it is a still more dangerous trap to enter. But the deer has taken to it, and we must slip in behind the others — with a wriggle, and a squirm, and a recover — all because it was nothing, and because the top bar, I mean top earth, wouldn't break. Snow and sleet and driving storm were now full in our faces. We jumped out of them, and out of the road, a few hundred yards further on, turning sideways to the gale and hoping that Mercy would keep our heads at least half averted from the blinding storm. So cold and bitter, too. I bethought me of Lord Manners and his Liverpool victory, won, he declared, solely through the medium of his woollen gloves ; and I banged each dog- skinned hand in turn upon my thigh as I galloped, warm everywhere else, and delighted. Nay, I could have laughed aloud, for the pace and the fun and the novelty, till, till — for man is very mortal, even in his hottest moments — I saw something bigger and uglier than I had ever seen before. And a man riding at it, too ; and this in a corner whence there was no escape ! The ditch seemed bound- less, the bank was as the Great Wall of China ; yet there A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD 89 was Mr. Gore and his chestnut flinging upward and into it, and pinned to its side Hke fly to a window-pane, till the mare drew herself foot after foot to the summit. And this, I learned afterwards, was The Gerardstown Double. Yet I believe many — or even most — got up it, and over it. Don't bring it over to our country is all I can say ! We could do nothing at all with it there, believe me. The storm was a tempest now. The snow filled ears and eyes and collars, embedded itself on manly chest, drifted into feminine bosom, and there froze. You could barely see twenty yards (and then only by hurried winks), and yet hounds were running their very hardest, with a cry that cut through the storm like the Inchcape Bell. The best beacon, if you could keep near it, was the crop- tail of Mr. Bo wen's brown mare, whose square quarters could just be distinguished pounding off into the gloom at a pace that threatened quickly to rob us of all guidance. Now he was joined by Mr. Leonard — the best heavy- weight, I make bold to say, I have seen for many a year — and the twain (the latter the deputed Master) kept hounds in touch through the blinding dow-nfall, till they reached Corbalton and its park. Quaint indeed was the prospect now, as the sky cleared and the sun shone through. A merry Christmas party we were — covered one and all from head to foot with encrusted snow, and with a carpet, two or three inches thick, spread white and soft beneath our feet. Twenty-five minutes of the very best to this point, if my standard of estimate be worth anything. Lord Mel- gund, who saw it from the very van, and whose criterion of a gallop with hounds has been formed on a very similar basis to mine, would possibly bear me out. At any rate, I take it, we shall go back to Northamptonshire appraising it thus. And, likely enough, we shall talk for many a day of how some four or five ladies rode through the storm, over a country that, to say the least, awed and astonished us both. Besides her whom I have already taken liberty to name, Mrs. M'Calmont, Mrs. Galbraith, Mrs. Dewhurst (on her wondrous cob, too, and not mounted as in the gallop of Monday), and Mrs. Dudgeon. 90 THE BEST OF THE FUN Post time is closing, and so must I, The run was far from over ; but the rest was slow, though skilful and very pretty hunting. A master of his art is Brindle.y — witness that recovery when hounds had drifted hundreds of yards beyond the line on the river-bank below Corballis — and his manner of handling is quiet and clever in the extreme. Well may his followers put him in the front place of his craft. He worked on now by Kilbrue and Green Park, and took his deer. By no means so exciting as my last previous experi- ence with the Ward was the sport of Monday, 14th March. While I dare not for a moment lay claim to full acquaintance with the craft of stag-hunting, I know at least enough to prevent my expecting a run every day — though the percentage of good gallops is, I take it, greater with the Ward than with any other pack, for the reason that the deer go freely over the open banks, whereas they will often hesitate before plunging through the thorn fences of many parts of England, even running the whole circle of a field in search of an outlet. On Wednesday their deer ran very crooked. More- over, they had given him a very liberal start ; and, with another heavy snowstorm on the point of bursting, there was never scent enough to allow of hounds setting him straight. I would rather take part in a fast run than a slow run anywhere. But especially would I with " The Wards." To begin with, the country, or, rather, its fences, are, to my untutored mind, much more suited to pace than to pottering. I can see plainly that others think the same. The slower hounds go, the longer people hesitate, and the closer they huddle one upon another to the spot where a leader has gone, albeit the fence is banked and modelled exactly the same throughout its length. Again (pardon me for saying it), the Ward field is not the one of all others amid which the practice of riding slowly and in your turn is exceptionally favoured. A mere matter of habit — but a habit to which it does not happen to have given close attention. Courteous, and A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD 91 good-humoured to a degree, tlie Ward field — except with reference to ladies — ignores altogether what elsewhere we denominate, and insist upon, as fia'u — viz. our right of jumping a fence exactly in the order in which we arrive within jumping distance. That this custom does not hold good is very possibly part of the outcome of stag-hunting, and of stag-hunting in its best and fastest form. I am writing for fox-hunters. And I say that for fox-hunting the worst possible school is stag-hunting. What say Masters of Foxhounds ? Flying steeds with empty saddles and dangling reins Changing subject to the other main factor of the sport, to wit, the horse. I should like to prepare you for a vicissitude which you are certain to encounter oc- casionally— if not frequently — when you elect to throw in your luck with the Ward. This is being parted from your horse, and being left only with the consoling as- surance that he will surely pursue his career for many a mile, with no one having the power, if they had the inclination, to stop him. It is not etiquette in stag-hunt- ing to catch loose horses. How should it be, unless your own is very blown, or there be other occasion for assum- ing a virtue ? As a matter of fact, mv dreams of the 92 THE BEST OF THE FUN Ward will ever have for their chief illustrations flying steeds with empty saddles and dangling reins, and narrow- backs upon which horse and rider are slowly separating. I can understand nothing more despairing than the sense of being deserted in a wild, perhaps wholly un- familiar, country by the beast that constitutes your con- veyance for the day, and to whom alone you look for assistance over the dozen vague miles separating you from your hearth. Having once got rid of you, his habit appears to be to see as much of the sport as he can, until he finds himself in a road — when he at once takes first place, outstrips even the deer, and goes off into space. Were it to be my fortune to hunt regularly with The Wards, I should seriously contemplate having all my horses branded, as on the Western prairie ; or even, as that might not explain itself sufficiently to the local mind, have a fully addressed luggage label affixed daily to my hunter's mane. Indeed, now that I am safely back in my native Shire, I may conscientiously affirm that, whatever doubt and alarm may have attended the necessity of negotiating the strange impediments of county Meath or county Dublin, the two points on which I dwelt ever in honest fear, were (i) lest my career should be stopped, and my run lost, by one of these big ditches swallowing me up, horse and all ; and (2) lest the same result should happen by my horse getting away and leaving me afoot. For all I know, it may be in acknowledgment of this last paramount danger^ — so frequently evidenced in fact — that the members of the Ward Union — unquestionably the most thorough and sporting Hunt that clubs together with a view to chasing the stag — do not affect a livery, nor even as a rule garb themselves otherwise than in vest- ments suitable almost equally for running as for riding. The result is wanting in picturesqueness ; though, so far from intending ungraciously to cavil at the general absence of scarlet or of green, the casual visitor may add this also to his debt of gratitude, that he does not find his coat of travel or of cub-hunting out of place amid a strictly uni- formed crowd. DOUBTP^UL MOUNTS ' 93 Often at a narrowback during the run the leading horse would scatter the soft surface-turf, leaving the bank skinned to the bone. Other horses would then land as it were upon a glacier, many of them balancing themselves for a while upon their girths — till they could recover their legs, or couldn't. "Let 'em alone" is, I fancy, the only principle to apply either when they are essaying their jump or when they miss it. Hence it is, possibly, that ladies ride with safety over an Irish country. An Irish horse thinks for himself, and will not be interrupted with impunity. I wonder what an English-bred and English- taught horse would have made of two such tasks as were set to, and achieved by, almost every horse in to-day's field. The one was a stone-faced drop of six feet into a watercourse, the other nearly double that depth from an almost perpendicular bank into a road ! He would pro- bably have jumped off the top, with consequences that you can imagine. Were I rich, and were all my horses English, I would send every one of them to be educated in Ireland, to be taught to think and taught to take care of themselves — and of me. Make a note ; and thank me for another hint, brother- Saxon. Bring out, for slow hunting, small change and enough of it. "The price of a dhrink" is an appeal to yer honour at every iron gate through which you may hope to pass — and is one that you cannot well hope to with- stand. Keep an outside cash-pocket for it : and in your inner pouch have half a sovereign ready for the occasional digging out of your horse from a ditch. CHAPTER XIV DOUBTFUL MOUNTS U^cdiicsday, March 23. — The Pytchley at Misterton — Mr. Bamford welcoming them to breakfast, in open- handed sympathy with their self-infiicted trial. By 9.45 a field of comfortable size had assembled : the rest were at Lincoln, at Leamington, or else breakfasting at home. 94 THE BEST OF THE FUN A cool morning, and a warm midday. I need not detain you with a long recital — of how they killed a brace of foxes without much sport, after hunting another very pleasantly from Misterton to Churchover, where a village sheep-dog spoiled the finish. They very nearly began the day with a goodly gallop ; but at that early hour of the morning the shepherds were — they tell me — still counting their sheep, and our fox was met face to face. I am told further — and this is a very much more serious argument against a 9.30 meet — that the local bone-setters insist they cannot possibly get free at such an hour, and that we may just make up our minds to bind up each other. I am loth to trifle with a subject so unattractive : but I am not superstitious (unless it may be under the threefold combination of a single magpie, a 9.30 meet, and a wholly undue allowance of tobacco over- night), else would I, apropos of broken bones, have turned straight homeward one day very recently. First cheery friend, seeing me mounted on a horse more familiar to him than to me, " Holloa, I wonder how you will get on with that quad ! He put Willie Plunger's shoulder out for him ! " Second good-natured and disinterested friend immediately afterwards, noticing the leather stops that kept my martingale in place upon the brute's bridle rein, '' I say, those are dangerous things. They are always get- ting caught, and poor Jackson was carried in consequence clean over the cliff at Brighton ! " I did not allow myself to be choked off my ride, and driven to seek an antidote in Rudyard Kipling ; but on the other hand I did not allow myself to be mounted on that horse again (he was not my own, please). And this is a true story — if not very strictly to the point. " Did ye catch him ? " asked the village carpenter, as we turned homewards. " Didn't ye now ? " he added in half disdain and half raillery. " Then, ye'd ought to ha' ma-ade more ha-aste ! " You may be aware that various and well-sustained efforts have of late years been made to naturalise in Eng- land the pure-bred Arab, the original source of our best racing stock. It has even been attempted to make what AMATEURS AND HUNTSMEN 95 the new vernacular terms a " fox-catching horse" of him. What he may arrive at in the course of a few generations I dare not hazard an opinion, prejudiced as I am, from Indian experience, in favour of his extraordinary pluck .md endurance. But, were I making the experiment in the first generation, 1 should begin (if I may volunteer the remark) by treating him as I would a native-born farmer's colt, viz. by docking his tail hunter-fashion. Until to-day 1 should have done it merely as a first step towards " con- dition," or at any rate as a move towards befitting appear- ance, just as I should hint to my younger brother that he ought to smoke a cigar in the hunting-field rather than a pipe, or my sister that she should carry her stirrup-leg forward when she is galloping rather than curl it, as so frequently obtains, round the back of her saddle. I might, in my soberer moments, and from a breeder's point of view, recommend the operation, on the principle of root- pruning, viz. in order to develop growth and vigour in the parent stem. But I have a more immediate reason, from to-day. The farmer had built up his gap with heavy thorns. The little Arab took his turn with a light heart, and with a whisk of his tail as if to brush away a mosquito. The latter effort tied him tight to a thorn-bush that had half filled the gap, but that was readily uprooted by the impetus. His owner found speed gradually slackening ; but not till half across the field was he brought absolutely to an anchor. Spurring was no use. The ready courage that would have faced a charging boar, or delighted in a polo scrimmage, had suddenly vanished in mid-field. The desert steed was paralysed. And why ? Only because he had carried his fence away with him in his tail, and could draw it no further. Surely we might be excused for our Ljentie laughter. CHAPTER XV AMATEURS AND HUNTSMEN IVcdnesday Night, March 30, 1892. — 1 am dull, I am dull. Not merely because I was born so, not only because I 96 THE BEST OF THE FUN look back upon little or no sport since my last entry, nor even that I have spent a blank day — no hounds within reach — but because my old goose-quill is wholly unloaded, having nothing aboard but wet ink and a dry retrospect. A right day's fox-hunting gives me — gives all who take part in it — a three-volume novel of reminiscence, incident, subject, and dream — a world of thought, for a while, though like a star it may drop, or may vanish in a night or a moment from our ken. A day's delight is but written on a slate : the sponge of time wipes out by the morrow. Without a thread, a guiding string, a sinew, there is no nerve, no pulsation, no moulding of shape or form — and the bare bone is better buried. I remember nothing of a bad day (no, not bad — a day's outing with hounds is never bad save and except a good horse has been lamed or killed, a good run has been lost, or one's own brittle frame has been shattered for a while) ; but I put a moderate day aside at once in my bath and totally in my dinner — don't you ? I feel grateful for warmth and comfort, and I dismiss the disagreeable, of hope unsatisfied and preparation un- requited. 1 have thrown in my lot with the best of good fellows, and we are at least none the worse for it. I have spent pleasant hours in hope and converse. But I have little to talk about — nothing to jot down for future re- ference. I am sanguine of to-morrow — and I feel better on the thought. Lc roi est Jtiort, vive le roil — which I shall at once proceed to translate, and to drink to the old, old refrain, " Fox-hunting, God bless it ! " For diversion I turn to my hound-books. (I am not about to inflict Kennel upon you. By-and-by, I may brush up my pedigrees, and discourse upon " sorts," for such few of you as will listen. But not now.) And at once my heart goes out to the huntsman. Many of you look upon him as being the happiest of mortals — as having two good horses per diem to ride, free, gratis, and to death if necessary — and as at this time of year having merely to hold his hand for your solid mark of appreciation. Why, this is their most miserable, most anxious, most wearing time ! You and I come home each evenim^ to our creature comforts — meaning, a roll AMATEURS AND HUNTSMEN 97 in a fat armchair, a growl at things in general (especially if we are foolish enough to open letters that might very well wait till Sunday afternoon, and then might properly be told off to answer themselves) before we proceed to eat quite as much as is good for us, drink twice as much as we need, and perhaps give our neighbours all round a dressing over of faintest praise while coffee goes round or conversation threatens to flag. The huntsman, luck- less man, has none of these distractions — at least can allow himself none. The puppies are all in, and the best of them are down with distemper. He has to for- sake his meal, to forego his glass and his smoke — to ignore the fatigue that we all recognise so wearily (we who do none of his work during the hot or chilly day;, the fatigue and bone-ache of enervating spring. His welcome home is the news that his loveliest puppy is dead ; his task that the next best must be saved if pos- sible. And to-morrow he must w^ork hard as ever. Were I huntsman or master again I would — the cost practicable — have a kennel far away, where, under suffi- cient care, the puppies might sicken or thrive till the critical time was passed, and the remnant could speak for themselves. And, believe me, a puppy-walker whose pet has gone to kennel only to die can at least feel equally with huntsman or master. Friday, 25th March, was worked into an amusing day, by the talent of the huntsman and the co-operation of a numerous young contingent — chiefly, I fancy, doing honour to Cambridge. The Pytchley had met at Great Brington ; and, though there was never a great scent the cool day through, foxes were kind, and the ground was favourable. We were in the Brington and Buckby neigh- bourhood— a goodly district, and, what was much to the purpose to-day, a very delectable jump-ground. Goodall and the " big dogs " hunted one fox down in the open ; and made a run, out of no beginning, with another. That mirth was in the air and youth was in the field was early hinted to me — how^ do you think ? By the discovery, at one of the first gateways adjoining No- bottle Wood, of a spur of such exaggerated dimension G 98 THE BEST OF THE FUN as not even the Honourable Crasher would have been armed with after one season at Harboro'. Why, the shaft would have made two of my mature and, unambi- tious goads. I am glad I picked it up, else might it have remained to be dug from the ground a century hence, and exhibited as a token of how the aristocrats of im- perial Britain once took their pleasure in the cruel and bloody pursuit of the fox. Now it remains on ofTer to Lord Shrewsbury as fin-de-siede addition to his collection of Instruments of Torture. They came out to ride, these young gentlemen, half-a- score of them. And right gallantly did they ride, as young bloods should — hounds the excuse. Some had their own horses ; some had Mr. Hames' ; though how my worthy friend of Leicester-town was to get any profit out of the arrangement I leave it to him to say. Hounds ran just rightly for the occasion — that is to say, they never ran fast enough to give anybody a chance of losing him- self, and yet they ran on over a country that offered every temptation and opportunity. Sufhce it to say, that never in after-life are the young sportsmen in question likely to look back with regret to their " flutter with the Pytchley " of this Friday aforesaid ; never need they number it among the occasions on which that '' bitterest memory of the human soul," as it has been termed — to wit, lost opportunity — has to be reckoned. Take this one instance : a chained gate, hounds just carrying a line but the country good enough for anything, fifty or sixty people remaining to make good the afternoon. You know the gates are strong in our Grass Countries, and we don't jump them, for two reasons — (i) because we are afraid to ; and (2) because, if we jumped one occasionally, our horses might expect to jump them all, which, to say the least, would be awkward, considering how closely we stuff ourselves into these outlets whenever we can reach one. But such are not the tenets of Cambridge, nor the teaching of her University. Lord Blandford trotted up, and over, in a moment, as is the habit, I am told, with The Drag. Of course Mr. H. A. Smith, on similar principles, was ready and willing to follow — which he AMATEURS AND HUNTSMEN 99 promptly and properly did, while the field drew rein in amazement and amusement. The first to recover himself was the huntsman — himself no chicken, either in years or heart. "Let me come!" he exclaimed, every feature aglow with merriment as he turned the grey mare for a run : " I'll not be beat by them boys I " (for in moments of excitement the idioms of the Shire ever crop up un- bidden with all who pride themselves on being product of a grazing country). What would have follow-ed I cannot say, except that Goodall would assuredly have got over, and that some of us, in our stubborn pride, would undoubtedly have come down. But a marplot turned up in the person of one who hitherto has invariably been found ready to tackle any big place he may deem requisite. On this occasion he was already on his legs, unchaining the gate. The sport was spoiled, and the fun was finished. It is almost time I told you what the day contained as regards hunting. The best event had its origin from Harpole Hill, a small plantation overlooking the valley towards Weedon. Ten minutes, fast, to ground, were fol- lowed by an hour and a quarter's run, through Nobottle Wood and into the lower country of Brington, Brockhall, and Whilton. Near the last-named village, it is con- jectured, they left their run fox dead-beat, while they pursued a fresh one in a circle by Brockhall, but came right upon their run fox as they circled back, and killed him without difficulty. There are gouty legs in some stables to-day, I warrant. March is especially the month during which the old maxim holds good — " Never go into the stable to-day of the horse you were hunting yesterday !" On Saturday next was there not the ever-amusing little brook ? And, if I remember right, to-day was to have constituted the commencement of a young journal. It had been urged that each and every hunting-man ought to keep a diary, at least noting the day's sport, the horse ridden, &c., with a few plain remarks for future reference. The graduate in question had fully agreed, had bought his diary, and even made preliminary entry when giving orders overnight to his groom — " Meet Daventry. Rode loo THE BEST OF THE FUN Valiant" — leaving remainder to be filled in after hunting. Surely he had forgotten that the morrow was ist April, or he would never have initiated such an undertaking on a date so fraught with disappointment and deception ! At any rate the final entry — -the only entry that Hunt- ing Journal is ever to contain — is limited to the sentence : "That brute Valiant put me into the brook twice" — with one word condemning Valiant and the diary alike to contemptuous oblivion. CHAPTER XVI NORTHERN COUNTRIES " I knows no more melancholic ceremony than takin' the string out of one's 'at and foldin' hup the old red rag at the end of the season — a rag unlike all other rags, the dearer and more hinterestin' the older and more worthless it becomes." — Jorrochs' " Sport'in Lectori Apt and appropriate enough already is the above text to the majority of your hunting readers. I, on the contrary, having brought my old red rag — or, what is tantamount to it, my old black swallow-tail — northward (to the very scene whereat these words were written), have there been airing it awhile before consigning it to the lumber-room, or to the back of the fire. For, within smoke-range of Cannie Newcastle, the fox is hunted for weeks after he is at peace in the fashion-grounds of the Shires ; and, if you knew it, or would — you who are not hasting to race your substance away, but cling to fox-huntmg as closely as you can — you might steal in some years even a month from the summer vacation. We were fairly baked out of the Grass Countries — grilled, melted, emaciated almost, by those final days of sport and heat. The Sunday Turkish bath — often the most renovating of processes — was on this occasion a mere fruitless farce. Even the hot chamber at 155° could bring exhausted nature to no such melting mood as had the gallops of previous days in open air. " Very hard condition, sir," observed the brawnv masseur, as he NORTHERN COUNTRIES loi kneaded the fleshless ribs, drew out the sinewy limbs, and mercilessly pounded the recent bruises of his victim — preparing him thus to visit fresh fields and pastures new. (I must be allowed a sequel in brief parenthesis. It has to do with hunting only indirectly, and with that of the fox ► not at all ; but it embodies a veracious example of the risks and chances of life. Stranger in same dressing-room, having completed his toilet while Fox-hunter is undergoing treatment as above, gives boy a shilling to pack and de- ^ spatch his things after him. Boy carries out the order instanter ; but includes also the whole of Fox-hunter's kit except his Sunday hat. F. turns up cleansed and re- freshed, with just sufficient time to allow of his fulfilling luncheon engagement. Question at issue between Fox- hunter and the officials, and prolonged till F. is very late indeed — in fact, I think, still in abeyance — Will, under the circumstances, a well-ironed beaver be held sufficient to frank wearer to a luncheon party, however select and intimate ?) Arrived north, what I saw there you shall find briefly sketched below. The Morpeth I Tuesday, 5th April 1892, gave me the pleasant privilege ! of seeing this pack in their best country — viz. that ad- joining the Tynedale boundary, and in the neighbourhood of the Master's (Mr. Cookson) seat at Meldon. A change of scene and a change of subject are welcome alike to sportsman and penman ; and when the change involves a run in a new grass country — at a time when our own cherished Shires have practically put up their shutters for the summer — the novelty has a double charm. I I am not one to declare ever that the last country seen ' is the best I have known. But I believe that few of us who affect the Midlands of England are at all aware what , good ground exists in Northumberland. Amid the pressure ' of hunting and of its happy concomitants, I confess I found it impossible instantly to do any justice to the green up- 102 THE BEST OF THE FUN lands on which I have had the good fortune to ride. Hunting and history — though in my case more or less co-existent — often jostle each other as closely as a North- amptonshire field in a gateway. One or other must be squeezed or shut out. The last occasion, I remember, on which I stayed at home to write I lost a good run — after being miserably unhappy all day and writing nothing. Consequently last week I decided on the other alternative, threw my first hurried notes into the fire, and went lumting every day as opportunity offered and generous friendship assisted. Thus I saw various countries that I had hitherto known only through the medium of summer research and of others' experience ; and, with the good luck that has often followed my trips to new ground, fell in everywhere with more than average sport. I left the Northamptonshire turf baked and sun-dried. I found Northumberland grass mossy, elastic, and sound, as I am told it remains nearly the year round, seldom attaining hardness, and never becoming really deep. In the Shires we too often suffer from one extreme or the other. The strong clay either holds our horses or batters them. In Northumberland you gallop always on the top of the ground as gaily as at the Curragh ; and (now I will add something that should surely be held to recommend it) : you don't often fall at the fences ! When you do fall it is not with the thwack that accompanies a turnover in the Merry Midlands. Why this is the case I will endeavour to demonstrate as I go. For the present it is sufficient to say that, during my first week in the North, I scarcely witnessed a fall, though I saw the sadly painful results of one in the shape of a kick in the face to a fallen sports- man. The Morpeth on the day in question met at Benridge, there to be welcomed right royally by Miss Blackburn. If Tuesday be any fair sample, I should say the Morpeth is a hunt exceptionally favoured in thirsty springtime. There are times when thirst is an appalling misery — ask a Montana cowboy, ask an English Guardsman who has marched across the Egyptian desert. There are times when thirst may be a positive convenience. And on this hot Tuesday NORTHERN COUNTRIES 103 it was found, I have strong grounds for believing, a dis- tinctly convenient attribute at more than one period of the day. The Morpeth pack — wiry and hard-working as it seemed on this hot, tiring day — is to be recruited with some twenty-one couple of Lord Portsmouth's, just pur- chased by Mr. Cookson, and will thus, in improved strength and capacity, go shortly into the new good kennels he has erected near Maldon Park. Some useful larch plantations — of the same type that, with the gorses (or, as they term them in the North, whins), form so many of the coverts of the Tynedale country — lay close to the meet of to-day, and from the second of these, Higham Dykes, a travelling fox broke quickly away. Indeed, it takes but little time to recognise that nowhere more than in Northumberland is it necessary for all hands to be on the qui vivc when hounds are draw- ing. In these bramble-carpeted brakes foxes jump up to the first touch of horn, and seldom linger a moment before facing the open. Ranee, a quick man, with a quick eye, and an un- deniable rider over this rough-fenced country, had his pack out at once to the Master's holloa, and the run began. With difficulty at first : for a couple of dusty fallows retained scarce a line — luckily, as it happened, for the man who came there to see ; for he — I — had begun by running my untutored head against the only wired fence in the district, and had to creep back as best I could through a bullfinch that had apparently never known hedge-cutter's knife since Northumberland became a county, though the sheep had done their duty by keeping doorways open here and there through its base. They work their weapons differently, do these northern hedge-cutters, to our knights of the bill-hook, and happily too, for if they once took to bending and laying the thorns on the top of the narrow little banks, how would it be possible to ride over such manner of fence ? No, they limit themselves, as far as one can see, to slicing off occasionally all the best of the wood ; the sheep assist them by nibbling off every shoot they can reach, and the holes, or some few of them, are then mended 104 THE BEST OF THE FUN with thin sawn strips of timber that a hunter can dispel with impunity. Thus much of Northumberland remains comparatively easy riding. What it would be if North- amptonshire hedge-cutters were imported from the Mid- lands, and with them a sufficiency of Leicestershire ash timber — well, the shivering would then be on the part of the rider rather than that of the rails ! As it is, I beg to point to Northumberland as specially innocuous riding ground for the average horseman who can afford to mount him- self fairly, and to whom a heavy fall is no longer an ambition and a pleasurable achievement. At least so do they aver who live there, and whose judgment is based upon a lifetime's experience rather than, as in my own case, upon brief passing acquaintance. As hounds buckled to work on the turf, we found ourselves among pastures wide and wild as those of the Cottesmore, but without the deep ridge-and-furrow, without the steep hills, and without, as I have said, the strong ox- fences that belong to 'the bullock-grounds of Mid-England, and such, as I found on the morrow and since, constitutes the bulk of the smooth highlands of the Tynedale and the Morpeth. In twenty minutes we had passed the World's End farm and reached Ogle Dene — dene being in the language of the country, if I interpret it rightly, a wooded dell, with a possible trout-stream at bottom. By Hetchester they ran on to the verge of Belsay Park (the seat of Sir A. Middleton), when, on the turnpike road that divides Mor- peth from Tynedale, their fox was to be seen travelling the dusty macadam for more than a mile. The view assisted hounds to keep on close terms with him ; and, as he bent into their own country again by Harnham and its quaint cliff, they drove him through Bolam (Lord Decies'), and pressed him hard over Angerton Moor to Angerton Station (some fifty minutes). In the wood, close by, the main earth was open, and in the heat of the day the field turned gladly, to the Master's invitation, at Meldon. Of the field of the day I may jot down the following few names, viz.: Mr. Laycock (also of Churchill, Daventry) and Miss Laycock, Mr. C. Perkins (a heavy-weight of highest calibre, riding excellent horses), with Miss Perkins, NORTHERN COUNTRIES 105 Mr. and Mrs. Orde and Miss Orde, Miss Blackburn, Messrs, G. Fenwick, Liddell, Lawson, F. Straker, Gordon-Wood, Dent, Watson ( 2 ). The Tyxedale I Turning to the Tynedale, I have to begin by noting the death of their late huntsman, Cornish, which took place on Monday, April 4. By birth a native of Devonshire, he * was with the Tynedale hounds from 1869 to 1883, the I greater part of the time in the service of the late Mr. Fenwick, under whom he brought the pack into the highest state of perfection. He was not only a good servant, an excellent huntsman, and surpassingly skilled in the con- ditioning of hounds, but he possessed the invaluable > faculty of making himself liked by the farmers of the country, one and all of whom recognised him heartily as .1 friend. The present huntsman of the Tynedale is H. Bonner, recently of the Meath, and formerly whip to the Bicester and the Belvoir. Having succeeded well in his first season here, he is likely, I hope and believe, to show sport for many years to come. Their meet on Wednesday, April 6, was at Kirkheaton (Mr. Bewicke's), not far from the centre of their country, and approached from the south (as indeed from nearly all . sides) through a wide stretch of fascinating grass, over ! which the eye can wander longingly and unawed. 1 am bound to confess — with all apology both for the mistake at the time and for the present assertion — that in ! sketching the Tynedale among the Hunting Countries of ' England, I was unintentionally misled as to the practi- cability of the greater part of it. As a matter of fact, while much of it is easy, nearly the whole of it is rideable enough, the only exception being in the case of some of the wilder west and north-west, whose walls preclude your riding over them — not so much on account of their height as on account of their being coped with knife-edged pieces of limestone, placed transversely. Thus they form an obstacle that one of experience described to me as '' only io6 THE BEST OF THE FUN fit for servants' horses " — though I don't for a moment ask Mr. Straker or his gallant huntsman to accept- the definition in its entirety. Besides these walls, and besides the lighter fences of the east, there are round Kirkheaton many stone-faced banks, with more or less growth of thorn or screen of timber on top. But of these, as of the majority of the fences of the country, a good Irish horse will make com- paratively light — always supposing he is not blown by the extraordinary pace with which hounds are in the habit of running over these broad ranges of coarse, high-scenting grass. There is nothing whatever to stop hounds ; not even wide ditches such as pertain to Meath. They fly the walls abreast, and they swish through the hollow hedges all in a row. So the least false turn on your part, the least waiting for some one else to make the requisite hole for you — and hounds slip you forthwith. The best authorities on the Tynedale country assure me that riding to hounds here involves a continual struggle not to be run away from ! On a bad scenting day hounds have, both from the wide conformation of the pastures and from the consideration of their limited field, all the room they need. Thus, say I, the Tynedale is, without doubt, a very beautiful and enticing country. Its turf, even this April, is mossy and soft. It is elastic in midsummer, I am assured ; and in midwinter it is never deep. And of the size of these great grass fields I dare scarcely tell you — lest you should deny me belief. But many are of a hundred acres ; some are even more, while I have been shown one or two in which a gallop of over a mile is obtainable. Mr. Straker was fortunate on Wednesday, in that a shower had fallen overnight and damped the surface of the withering herbage. At any rate there was a flying scent ; and, as the foxes of the day allowed, there was sharp fun now and again. But first I must make a note of what was to me a great and novel treat. Mr. Dent, the trainer and once- owner of the Waterloo Cup hero, had most kindly brought Fullerton, Young Fullerton, Needham, and another or two NORTHERN COUNTRIES 107 of Colonel North's grand greyhounds to the meet for me to see. Of racing greyhounds I am far from pretending to be a connoisseur (my experience of coursing being limited to the fact of having first learned to ride Leicestershire by galloping to greyhounds). But no man who loves horse and hound, animal hfe and development, could fail to be struck and delighted with Fullerton's glorious strength and palpable symmetry. Every muscle, every sinew, every line, betokened power, activity, and rare speed. And, with him in memory, I feel already that in future I shall know some little about a high-class greyhound when I see one. The field of Wednesday, besides containing several who were with the ^Morpeth yesterday, held, among others, the Master and Mrs. Straker, Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick, Mrs. M. Fenwick, Mr. and Misses Allgood, Messrs. Robson and Miss Robson, Mr. and Mrs. Bell, Messrs. Straker (C, J., and F.), Captain Bewicke, Captain Browne, Messrs. Stephen- son, Barker, Bewicke, Wallis, &c. April is probably the worst month of the year in which to see a pack of hounds. Indeed it must be often difticult to bring out a full pack at all at such a time. But in the Tynedale to-day I recognised the same beautiful necks and shoulders that struck me a dozen years ago ; and I had opportunity during the day of witnessing their pace and ready drive. And, as I was prepared to see, there were horses in the field such as it would puzzle England to surpass, for fashion and power and value. Of a truth, there is wealth and there is love of a good horse in Cannie Newcastle yet. Very readily a fox was found in one of the Kirkheaton coverts — a larch plantation as afore described — and very hotly they ran him for a few minutes into the Capheaton demesne across the valley, having first threatened the open ground eastward. Through this valley runs the river Blyth, with boggy banks, on uncertain bottom, and very varying width. Where I followed several men and women of the country, the stream had narrowed to very easy jumping dimensions ; while to the left there were men up io8 THE BEST OF THE FUN to their tops in bog, with their horses loose in the treach- erous stream. Next I found myself in a wood surround- ing a residence, whose propinquity I could only guess from the presence of a carriage-drive. Having lost my pilots and hearing a view holloa outside, I decided to get clear of the wood as soon as I could. But this I could only effect by leading my horse through a door in a wall — which was promptly locked after me, while I remained for five minutes in durance vile at the hands of a truculent bailiff, and a victim to the laughing jests of his two comely daughters. At length he vouchsafed to pass me out through a farm gate : and it was at least pleasing to learn afterwards that these sacred precincts belonged to one of the best fox-preservers in the country. Hounds by this time might have been anywhere. But they were not — that is to say, they were divided on a brace of foxes, and no run was taking place. One little wrinkle I learned to-day anent Northumbrian country, viz. that, however tempting and near at hand a gate may be, it by no means follows that it is desirable to ride thither (as one's home-instinct prompts). For seldom is it made to swing ; never is it made to unlatch to the hunting-crop ; and the fence adjoining may often be a preferable, invariably a more rapid, means of egress. Lord Zetland's On Thursday, April 8, 1 eagerly availed myself of a chance of seeing this good pack in their lower country — Scotch Corner the place of meeting, and Sedbury Park the immediate draw. The rain that had favoured Northumberland had not extended thus southward, but a cold, wet fog answered the same purpose — hounds were able to run. In fact they could drive over grass and bring the line across plough, to work out a gallop and make a run — which meant a great deal to a visitor from countries where in the past season hounds have more often found themselves totally helpless. Scotch Corner — about two miles from the kennels at Aske — would appear to take its name from the fact that NORTHERN COUNTRIES 109 the old Scotch road, along which the herds of Highland cattle were largely driven, here joins the Watling Street. (Have I got it right ?) And for our first draw we moved a mile or so towards Gretna Green. The wood at Sedbury Park is one in which, I am in- formed, foxes often hang considerably. But oiu- fox of to-day gave us only time to adjust leathers and to take one turn round its limits, ere Champion had hounds away to joyous note and merry scream — -such as, to my way of thinking, throw Hfe and sparkle into fox-hunting, that some men would make dull, pedantic, or even dolorous. The chase is nothing if not bright and invigorating, and a blithesome huntsman can do more than aught else to render it so. Away over small enclosures and simple fences — a field of some fifty or sixty people, all bent on seeing the sport. A very, very efficient field too, I venture to think ; and especially, if I may further hazard the opinion, as regards the ladies of the hunt. These latter, to the number of a full half-dozen, were making their way over the country quite as ably and readily as the men. Fourteen-stone horses, with riders of either sex quite capable of steering them and doing them full justice, are quite a feature of Lord Zetland's field. And, as it happened, only strong, bold horses and sufficient riders could have made their way across the dense country beyond Skeeby Whin. For, after passing that covert, and leaving some few ploughed fields behind, the chase entered upon a district of rough grass and of rough, unkempt fences, without a gap in any of them. But each bullfinch in turn was bored in as many places as occasion demanded — witness crushed hats, scratched faces, and torn coats ; but never a fall. For the line to Brompton Mill (reached in twenty-five minutes) has not been chosen by a fox, they tell me — and I can well believe — for a year or two. (Yet we ran it again this afternoon !) At Brompton Mill we crossed the Swale -now in its most fordable condition, and needing only an eye to a point of exit — and in ten minutes more were at Brough Whin Covert. It may or may not be a fresh fox that took us round by Colborne Village to Tunstall, no THE BEST OF THE FUN where it was supposed he got to ground. Time, one hour ten minutes. Trotting back by Catterick Bridge and its racecourse, we set off anew from Church Whin, at Kirkbank, to run by Middleton Towers. Difficult, but exceedingly well managed, hunting took us to Black Bull Inn and its lane ; and we then ran the same scratchy line to Brompton Mill, but not so fast as in the morning — our fox being given up when he crossed the water. Time about one hour — to conclude a most pleasurable day's sport. You can tell little indeed of a country from riding over it one day only, and that day foggy and mist-bound. But I have every reason to believe that Lord Zetland's — varying from upper moorland to close-kept lowland — is truly a sporting and enjoyable country ; that it is not by any means a difficult country to ride ; and that, as another characteristic, its hunt is essentially genial and closely bound. I do not know whether I am justified in adducing in example of these characteristics a trivial episode of to-day — and certainly, one has no right to fiaunt one's little jest among strangers, however kindly and indulgent they be found. It was merely the one fall of the day — a very little one, and into a ploughed field too — ^which we in Northamptonshire should welcome as the luckiest possible chance, in preference to an ordinary bang against the hard, hard turf of springtide. The young sportsman fell easily and had no fear for himself ; but more solicitude was forthcoming, and more hearty inquiry rained upon him, than we in rugged Northamptonshire earn even with a collar-bone or a complete knock-out. Don't mistake me. I commend the occasion to your notice, ye gallopers of Northants, in that, but a week before, I saw a gallant young farmer cast exactly thus into a ploughed field, and his horse went on uninterrupted for two fields further. It is true he had rather committed himself to accelerating progress ; for, finding he was unable to clutch the reins as his "nag" left him, he took his revenge by winding his long lash loudly and twice-repeated round the hocks of the miscreant ! But you might have tried to stop him— hounds being at fault. NORTHERN COUNTRIES iii With Lord Zetland's hounds on Thursday were, besides Mr. Cradock (the founder and former Master of the pack) : Mr. and Mrs. C. Hunter, Captain Towers Clarke, (late Master of the West Meath) and Mrs. Clarke, Mr. and Mrs. H. Straker, Mr. and Mrs. C. Straker, Captain and Mrs. Williamson, Mrs. Crane, Mrs. Press, Miss Pease, Miss Neasham, Captain S. Cradock, Mr. Wilson-Todd (Master of the Bedale) and his huntsman, Holland, Mr. D. Lascelles, Mr. Scarth, &c. &c. I have onh' to add that it delighted me to see Champion hunting, and riding to, his hounds. The Braes of Derwent My newest experience of all (unless it was the catching a salmon) lay in a day with the Braes of Derwent — a pack kept by Colonel Cowen to hunt the rough highlands and woodlands south of the Tyne. The hounds — if not a show pack — are capable enough ; while as for the huntsman, Siddle Dixon, it is a treat to hear him rousing the echoes of the woods and denes. On Saturday there happened to be no scent whatever, and hounds could not own a fox only two minutes before them. But I am told by many and trustworthy, that Dixon can hunt a wood- land fox to death in exceptional form. His method with I hounds in these great coverts is certainly bright and encouraging. I am not fond of a cheerless huntsman ; anywhere ; no more are hounds. I hate a dullard in a I big woodland, and so do they ; as they will soon evince by dawdling and shirking work, especially when drawing for a fox or hunting him on a cold scent. A hound dislikes nothing so much as being left out in the cold when the fun is taking place. He will never work freely, unless naturally independent and wilful, if he has no clue to the whereabouts of huntsman and pack, or if he is not sure that he will be called into action directly game is afoot. In the forest depths which engulfed Mr Jorrocks there is especially need that hounds should be kept together and in touch of their huntsman. I wish I could have seen a run with them — and come out alive. But, as I have said. 112 THE BEST OF THE FUN there was no scent on Saturday, even with " the biggest fox whatever was seen," as he flicked across a main ride, and we had barely " counted twenty " ere hounds were puzzhng hopelessly over his line. The meet of Saturday was Scales Cross. The field with the Braes is never a large one. To-day it con- sisted of barely a dozen all told, among them being : Mr. Humble, two Messrs. Cowen (sons of the Master), Mr. Wallis, Mr. Hill, and Mr. and Mrs. G. Fenwick. And this little party saw three or four foxes, found in the i adjacent woodlands, scrambled awhile in the braes and j: denes, and dispersed early in sorrow over the impos- sibility of hunting a fox this day. Captain Middleton It is safe to say that the death of no single man in , England could have gone home to its riding community j so sharply or vividly as that of Captain Middleton. Wher- i ever men rode, wherever men hunted, and wherever they took life happily, his was a familiar figure and a welcome face. They looked upon him, and up to him, as one of the most accomplished and best tried horsemen of the age — one who rode to hounds and between the flags for love of it, never for what he could make or win. His eye to hounds was marvellous ; and he revelled in a strong country and a good horse. He rode with the nerve and light-heartedness of boyhood, with all the knowledge and quickness of a full maturity that had lost nothing of its nerve, its power, or its original fire. Pos- sessed of a wonderful constitution, he never tired. What- ever the hours, whatever the strain of travel, of arrangement, or of social distraction, he appeared ever at the covertside the freshest of all ; had he even been riding a severe race the day before, and travelling all night to return. As one who has known him intimately since his cornet days, and ridden runs unnumbered in his cheery company, I can write pronouncedly on this head. As one who found him a pleasant, happy comrade, a clever, well-informed man, and a genial, unvarying friend, I mourn his loss in deep NORTHERN COUNTRIES 113 sincerity — as will many and many, nay, a countless number of sportsmen and men-of-the-woild. But who shall say this end was the worst for him ? Not I, however sadly one may think of those who have the melancholy right to mourn most for him. He died painlessly — dropped out unawares — in the heyday of his strength and fame. Would he have chosen a sick-bed or a puling old age ? No — and who shall wish it for him ? But through England, and wherever Englishmen fore- gather the wide world through, there have gone up this week the words I find myself uttering sorrowfully, " Poor Bay ! Poor Bay ! A gallant fellow, a good comrade, and a kindly man ! God be with him ! " The Tynedale My last day with this flying pack gave me the oppor- tunity I particularly desired — -of making acquaintance with their wild western ground and highest plateaux. And now I am in a position to emphasise what I have already as- serted, viz. that most of you are little aware how charming a country is to be found in Northumberland, and to be found, moreover, at its best when the playgrounds of fashion are nearly, or quite, dried out. The Tynedale grass would seem to be virtually sunproof. On this Wednesday there was never clatter of hoof, except on a wall-top, and in a wide run (five miles across its breadth on the map) wc never saiv a ploughed field ! Nor am I, if I take the tone of my informants cor- rectly, by any means imperilling the comfort of those already on the spot by calling attention thus to the attrac- tions of Tyneside in spring. Northumberland is too far from London, too remote from the interruptions that the smart world considers necessary to its existence, to allow of the gay mass migrating thither in strength or for a permanency. But there are a number — a very large number — of men and women who set a gallop with hounds, over a grass country, far before any other joy in life. These are accustomed to hunt on, in the Mid- lands, in Cheshire, in Wiltshire, or with the Meynell, till H 114 '^^HE BEST OF THE FUN their hounds meet no longer, and very likely till their horses have not a sound leg left among them. Hunting in these countries after the middle of March is a lottery, often a very expensive one. If hounds run, it is seldom without the tale being told over again next day in stable bucket and bandage ; while if the ground jumps up in your face at such a time, believe me, it hits you wuth venom and malice, and leaves a sting then that in Decem- ber it never possessed. In Northumberland, meanwhile, they are moving on comfortably, with never a jar in the ground, and apparently with that gratifying immunity from peril to horse and man — comparative immunity, at all events — that I have been persuaded to accept as one of the most pleasing characteristics of the country. Here quite a month's hunting is a tolerable certainty after the date in question. Newcastle, with help of the train, will proffer five days a week ; Stamfordham, an excellent base, the same number by road ; and Corbridge or Hexham, on the riverside, some three or four. It would take a large number of people to make a congested field in this open country. At present their muster, even at such a favourite fixture as Hallington, is a very limited one. Sociability suggests increase of numbers ; and, though it is far from my business to issue invitations broadcast on behalf of other people, I believe I am safe in saying that the very sociable hunting folk of Northumberland would gladly see their field somewhat increased. You cannot do much damage to stone walls and banks by jumping over them ; and your horse's feet do not sink deep enough into the grass to do it harm, while the pastures are so wide, and the fences so even along their length, that riders need seldom get in each other's way. On the other hand, hunting the fox — and the consequent riding to hounds — cannot take up the whole of each and every day. At least it is so in the Grass Countries of the Midlands ; and how dull it would be there for the remaining hours, but for the large and sociable company. Man never displays his gregarious instinct to such pleasing advantage as in the hunting field. It is seldom that he there cares to prove himself altogether independent of his fellow-men. And how few would care NORTHERN COUNTRIES 115 to <;o out fox-liuntin^f sint^ly and alone — were such a thin<4 possible ! The average size of these Northumbr.an grazing- grounds cannot be less than twenty acres. Many of the enclosures are double and treble that acreage. Another peculiarity of the Tynedale country is the extent and variety of the views that present themselves as you cross it. Thus on the way to Hallington from the Tyne the eye can roam to the Cheviots on the north (to-day snow- clad to their base), to Crossfell- — one of the Cumberland hills — to the west, and over the river southward to York- shire. In fact you can see to the boundaries of Scotland, Durham, Yorkshire, and Westmoreland ; and yet these uplands are so gently undulating that the country cannot be deemed hilly, as we understand it in Leicestershire or counties next of kin. Northumberland may be a cold county ; but no part of the Tynedale is so high above the sea, for instance, as Naseby's battlefield. The Tynedale foxes, again, belong entirely to the cate- gory of wild animals, accustomed to roam and ready to travel — as wild and indigenous, indeed, as the curlew and the blackcock to these green, moorland - like uplands. There are few- — scarcely any — -villages round which they might prowl for poultry or pickings ; and their size of frame and richness of fur bear testimony to their vigour of race and habit. The meet on the day which forms my theme, then, was Hallington, a couple of m.iles westward of Kirkheaton, of the. week before ; and the site of Newcastle's main source of water supply. The blackheaded gulls of the eastern coast are accustomed to view these extensive reser- voirs as laid out for their especial benefit, and accordingly flock thither at this season as thickly as Bank-holiday trippers to Epping Forest, or the loungers of Newcastle to their railway depot. But more to the point is it that Hallington is the base frequently chosen whence hounds carry on operations in the far nor'-west, to which a prac- tical limit is marked by the crags of Wannie and heather- clad hills such as only a moss-trooper would care to traverse. ii6 THE BEST OF THE FUN To reach Hallington involves a long ride or drive from the banks of the Tyne. But as one rises quickh^ to the upper level, sucii wide views of eligible — nay, beautiful — ground present themselves in succession that the journey should never be tedious or unattractive, unless, as I may now proceed to add, in a blinding snowstorm, such as set upon us this Wednesday morning ! A well-equipped dogcart and unruffled company will, however, laugh off even snowflakes ; and, after all, the same distant landscapes were visible and attractive enough in the evening sunshine, by-and-by. Riders fared not so well ; for they carried on their way a wealth of snow that fairly crystallised them from hat to knee, till they could dismount to shake it off. Nor ought I to omit comment on the bridle-paths which lead so freely across country to the Tynedale meets, taking you through one great enclosure of galloping ground after another as cheerily as, for instance, the grassy track from Twyford to Owston. And, mark you, there is not a railway or canal from end to end of the Tynedale country ! One of the canons of my faith, from Shetland-ponyism, has ever been that a " gallop to covert in Leicestershire is as good as hunting in any other country." But I had not ridden to covert upon Tyneside. I shall never again quote the axiom now. Snow had ceased to fall long ere Hallington was reached — indeed it seemed to have confined its attack chiefly to the bank of the river and to the distant Cheviots. A cold breeze had succeeded ; but the day was fine ; and there was a scent. Hounds began by killing a fox in the Hallington Plantations. Then they gave us a dozen minutes' scurry to a drain by the waterworks — over ground so typical of this section of Northumberland that I feel prompted to set forth each minute and each feature in detail, for edu- cation of southerners such as myself. Take them thus — and if I am prolix beyond fair licence, remember indul- gently that I am as one whose main subject is to be now thrown up for the summer. Hallington New Covert — young whin and young larch (the covert, I am told, that NORTHERN COUNTRIES 117 will remain in years to come a monument to poor Cornish, who worked hard for its completion). A pretty find and a flying start ! Two fields of rank wet grass — the second field, bordered by Bavington Plantation, demonstrating, if it needed demonstration, how very fleet a pack are the Tynedale. They (the dog pack) could travel the level greensward without coming back to the fastest horse of the morning — and that, I fancy, was the Master's. Yet only a day or two ago Mr. Dent, trainer of Fullerton, assured me in all sincerity, and I cannot but accept his evidence, that a good horse can beat the fastest of grey- hounds for a mile ! If this be true, tell me not then that foxhounds are, even for a mile on the flat, as fast as horses ! A sharp twist to the right ! Two more damp grass- fields ; two more open gateways ; some ridge-and-furrow, of mild description, as compared with what we rock upon in our Midland hemisphere ; a stone wall, four feet high to the first comer, about two feet by the time we reach it ; next a stone-faced bank with a ditch on either side ; then a narrower bank with rail on top that scatters readily ; then a broken watercourse — thus half-a-dozen twenty- acre fields traversed ; and lastly an old gate, only left up because not worth moving to mend, and so, eminently suited either to be jumped or broken. Forty minutes of such entertainment would have been delightful — those twelve minutes serving merely for sample, fast, vigorous, and safe. Next, they met with a roaming fox ; and, with some little outside assistance, as against a reputed lamb- killer, they pulled him down quickly. But the run of the day — fifty minutes' quick and capital hunting, and embracing a half-circle whose width was fully five miles — began from Greatlaw, another square larch plantation. Grass still, and continually, by the adjoining covert of Kid law, by the right of Kirk Harle and Little Harle Tower, across the stone-bottomed river Wansbeck to Wallington Hall (Sir G. Trevelyan's), which is situated, apparently, on the very march with the Morpeth (this first quarter hour very fast). Back at hunting pace then along the beck. ii8 THE BEST OF THE FUN and within the Northern border-line of the country, by Kirkwhelpington — the pace good, though half the pack had, if I mistake not, slipped aside on another fox. Then a truly wild, often wet, country, laid out in immense yellow-green fields, with now and then a stone-faced bank, now and then a wall, with the inevitable weak spot whence the coping-stones had been flung; these to be jumped or scrambled, as the case might be. Thus, moving rapidly forward, hounds reached Howick, on the border of the moor ; marking their fox to ground in the gully of Sw^eet- horpe, just before the plantations of Howick. A very sporting run. Of the field of the day the following are a few names, viz.: Mr. J. C. Straker ; Rev. J. and Misses Allgood ; Mr., Mrs., and Miss Fenwick ; Mr. and Mrs. C. Straker ; Mr. and Mrs. M. Fenwick ; Mr. S. and Miss Clayton ; Misses Swan ; Miss Leadbitter ; Messrs. C. W. Henderson, Wallis, M. Liddell, F. Straker, T. Bell, Kirsopp, Ward, C. Hall, Colin Ross, H. Swinburne, Sanderson, H. and R. Blackett, Blayney, Dent. Among the many hapless incidents of the season 1891- 92, Mr. Tailby's breaking a leg is one of the most recent and most regrettable. It threatens, unless the undefeated spirit rises once more in defiance of deliberate conviction, practically to end a hunting career that already numbers forty-seven seasons. One cannot fancy Mr. Tailby — nor, I believe, could he fancy himself — either trotting about on a pony or galloping the roads for a possible point. He has ridden as keenly as a boy, and as hard as an undergraduate, up to this very year ; and it would, no doubt, go sorely against the grain for him to ride to hounds in any other fashion. His exuberant enjoyment of the chase, especially in its most dashing phases, has ever been a delight to witness, and a lesson (as I have read it for a score of years) encouraging and gratifying to men far younger than himself. The hardiest frame cannot go on being knocked about for ever. Mr. Tailby has probably had more bad falls over High Leicestershire than any man alive. And, though all NORTHERN COUNTRIES 119 the courage remains that was wont to take him over the Sket^ngton Lordship in battle with such men as the old Earl of Wilton, with Sir Frederic Johnstone, Captain Coventry, Captain Carnegie, Mr. Powell, and others of the days when Melton and Harboro' rode in hottest rivalry week by week, he is not only the last of these upon the scene of action, but was born long before any but the first-named — besides having been " knocked out of time " more often than all of them put together ! It was, I may mention, as far back as " Running Rein's year " that Mr. Tailby with two horses — one his own, the other Mr. Cradock's — rode from Cambridge to the Derby and back, in twenty-two hours. There are, of course, other districts in which good fox- hunting is to be had besides those which the Immortal One used to term the " cut-'em-down countries." But, apart from home-considerations and home-occupations, it is not every one who cares to migrate after middle age. Else might one venture to hint that, though to " follow on with the ruck " in the Shires would be b,ut poor pastime for one who for so many years has been daily prominent in the van, yet in some other counties, notably on those beautiful grass uplands of the North that I have been en- deavouring to describe, it is quite possible to witness all the sport from a good position without risk of such crush- ing falls as niHst be the occasional portion of any man who regularly rides up to hounds in the Midlands. Very very few men exhibit the recuperative power that has been a characteristic of Mr. Tailby. S//7// where it is often done at a gallop, with never a gate by the way. You may thus, without a fox before you, fre- quently find yourself committed to as much jumping as in many countries (the Midlands of England, for instance) might be forced upon you in a day's hunting. A Gallop from the Parsons should be my heading — the covert a snug hillside patch, with a road beneath it, and by no means dissimilar to our angiilus ridens of the Quorn. The prickly furze of an Irish covert is far more trying to hounds, far more favourable to a fox, than the gorse or briars of the sister Isle. In this instance hounds were all round the green thorny nest in which Reynard was harboured, when Mr. Darby Scully, standing in the road, saw him jump from their midst. The leading hound chased him over the hilltop with not a dozen yards between them : the whole bevy of ladies streamed forth in close attendance — and the men of Tipperary set forth to ride. A closely fenced "bushy" country faced them. INIIGRATION IN THE FROST 205 and they scattered right and left as tliey met the great strai^ghng fences. There is no swishing through the growers as with our straggly bullfinches at home. They grow stout as ash and stubborn as oak. The first fence and its further branches threw a good man on his back — his very pride of position preventing his horse being caught till, two fields on, the latter threw in his lot with some colts. Mr. Riall, on the young Hesper stallion ' I remember on a former visit, took up the running, and held it during the first few furious minutes that led to Shallikoyl (a house with a shrubbery, whereat, if I have it right, a fox has found refuge before). Big grass fields, and strongly thorned banks, were the order of going ; and on one of these Mr, Wyse staked a good horse badly. A stopped drain sent our fox away across a wild, pleasant track of more open ground — the Pepperstown township — till he reached Rathkenny, a good gorse on a hilltop. Hence he could be seen making his way over the next valley ; and soon he took us by Bennett's Hill. To ground under the road at Knockelly, thirty-five excellent minutes. This brought us nearly to Grove ; and hounds killed a second fox in the laurels, within fifty yards of their kennelled comrades. The remainder of the afternoon was occupied in an hour's hunt round and about the big wood of Grove Hill. Here are some few names of the day, besides those already mentioned, viz. : Mrs. Burke, Mr. and Miss Baily, Miss Helme, Lord Charles Bentinck, Colonel Inigo Jones, Captains Pedder, Gough, Joliffe, M'Lean, Messrs. Brand, Curzon, Malcolmson, Gibbons, Nugent Humble, Higgins, Holmes, Dr. Hefferman. Thursday, in its great run of the afternoon, gave us the best sport of all. The morning had been oppressively sunny, almost sultry, when, after a lawn meet at Grove, the Master trotted to the gorse-shrouded hill of Kylna- grana, and there awoke several foxes. It was almost a mercy that no run ensued — till the day had cooled down and a clouded afternoon had introduced us once again to 1 Afterwards a winner at Piinchestown. 2o6 THE BEST OF THE FUN Ballylennan. This was the same low-lying gorse I had seen in the autumn, beautiful in itself, but amid the wettest and strongest surroundings of any covert of the hunt. So I had been told, and so I soon realised — apart from my rough-and-tumble experiences of a previous visit. But our journey thence to-day was southward and eastward, towards the snow-streaked mountains of Waterford and to the verge of the Kilkenny territory. A very unusual line, they told me ; and one they deprecated almost apologetically as a very " cross " country — " the worst they had, and only taken in of late years by Mr. Burke in order to extend his ground." Well, I can only say that it was all grass, sloppy enough for the first couple of miles to have been a snipe-marsh, but sound under- foot, and improving gradually into first-rate galloping- ground. As for the fences, they were, I admit, of a very strange and occasionally somewhat awesome description. But then, as I have already inferred, I am no judge what- ever of what is really the most trying fashion of fence in Ireland. There are many sorts of startling barriers, simple and compound ; and what is daily food in one part of Ireland is dreaded as poison in another. The Irish coun- tries, in fact, differ among themselves (after the manner of their politicians) as widely as from their English neighbours. The only thing for a stranger is to accept the inevitable, do as he sees others do — and make believe, as best he can, that nothing comes amiss. From this point of view alone 1 obtrude my personality, supposing myself a type of Englishman in an Irish hunting-field. I must be allowed another momentary digression, merely to note that, wherever an English wanderer finds himself in Ireland, there will he also find sympathy, cordiality, welcome, and assistance. He will be helped out of difficulties, prompted on occasion, never viewed with jealousy, but treated at all times with a sterling good-fellowship of which it would be hard to find the like, the world over. Now to Ballylennan's swampy gorse — a fox away (as they said he had been before) to the first twang of horn. We splashed round its precincts, and rode nervously after MIGRATION IN THE FROST 207 the Master, wondering what next — the devil or the deep sea — might be awaiting us. Curiously there was little scent for a first three minutes ; perhaps hounds' heads were up, or the water had washed away the scent from the yellow grass. Half-hidden, half-open drains cut each field ; but bullocks had made their own roadways round each fence angle, till some high, blind, and bushy banks became a wild necessity. At one of these — wet and greasy atop because of the water by degrees splashed on to them — they say that no less than seven eager folk lay prone and besmeared. Personally I didn't stay to count them. My mission was, if possible, forward — after the Master. And if my little black Daniel carried me near him, it was due to the fact that his schoolmaster led him, and that he knew more than three months ago. Soon we were out of the swamps of Ballyrichard. Now we were on the best of turf — fences thorny, banks easy and frequented — checked a moment at the river Anner, but went into full play along the hillside that my kindly private secretary has noted at Killaghy. The accepted notion of Tipperary — not mine, but that of the Irish public — is that its banks are broad and bare, and its ditches ;///. lYo such thing, except exemplified to- day, when we rode to the borders of Kilkenny ! First there were high razor-shaped banks, then great thorn hedges (thorns growing as trees) embroidering the banks, with a deep bramble-covered ditch on either side — a cross, in fact, between Northern Meath and the stubbornest of the Belvoir Vale. Again, instead of a whole fieldside being equally practicable, there was seldom but one spot — and that a kind of dive through a hoop — where egress could be insisted upon. And believe me, without prejudice, if it had not been for the Master and Mr Riall, I believe those spots would have been undiscovered still. There w-ere, now and again, iron gates, it is true, between the great grass fields. But more often than not, these gates were mere cold steel delusions — agricultural ornaments, pad- locked until haytime — and we beat the bars in vain. Yet, wherever the two leaders laid bare a bank, the public followed — earliest among them always two young :oS THE BEST OF THE FUN Indies upon grey horses (ponies almost), Miss Evanson and Miss Holmes — ^(they must grant me their names, as I fear no contradiction), with Mr. and Mrs. Clibborn (the former a welter-weight) and young Mr. Hartigan, of well-famed parentage — a boy upon Mr. Burke's extraordinary pony. (Another parenthesis, almost an impertinence — -the same pony, only the day before, had been the exponent of the Afaster's free-heartedness. " Sure, sir," said his footman, " I've been four years in your service, and I've never yet followed the hounds ! " " Haven't you, Paddy ? Then take the ' pony.' Isn't the second whip laid up because he must go riding in one of these four-pound steeplechases ? " z And Paddy did — girding up his trousers with knee-straps, | and walking straddleways for three days afterwards. But he saw all the fun — for, bar Mrs. Dewhurst's little wonder in Meath, the pony in question is the best hunter in Ireland. I would like to see a match between the pair and ride one.) Where was I ? Oh, at about thirty minutes from Bally- lennan — -when a farmer holloaed us back over the Anner (a fresh fox, I believe, for hounds and huntsman wanted to go on, their own side). Then they hunted for ten minutes — a wriggling course, as of an undetermined fox, up to Modresliel (this good name applies, I suppose, to the old woman's cottage, the only distinguishing mark of which was some Httle washing flapping in the wind, and possibly staying our fox's progress). At any rate, after a five-mile point, he turned back from this and Kilkenny. We had run through the valley of Slievenamon (renowned in song), and nearly to the base of the mountain of that name. Mr. Burke — of whom I may be allowed to say with emphasis that he makes half his sport by giving every fox credit for being a good one — had to come back at last, and struck a direct return line towards Lismolin. These names convey nothing to my English readers— very little to me after the moment of writing them, and, as far as I can manage it, spelling them. But this was the only real check in a two hours' run. With a wide right-hand sweep we rode back to Ballylennan, taking in the Kilmount Hills and leaving the Drangan Covert half a mile on our right, excellent pace and good ground all the way ; skirted Ballylennan Gorse \ xMIGKATION IN THE P^ROST 209 after an hour and a half, and, with a turn towards Bally- kiski, came back with a beaten fox to our startin