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http://www.archive.org/details/queenshoundsstaOOribb

THE QUEENS HOUNDS

AND

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

( >//<//■//. j y irrt.t on ■///< </(<r/>t/f.
/,, ^w« '/!.■/■/■ aSotot 1834

The Queens Hounds

A.ND

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

BY

LOBD RIBBLESDALE

Master of the Buckhounds fboh 1892 to 1895

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

ON THE HEREDITARY MASTERSHIP

BY EDWARD BURROWS
COMPILED FROM THE BROCAS PAPERS IN HIS POSSESSION

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

LONG M A N S, GEEE X, A N I) C 0

39 PATERNOSTEB ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1897

All rights reserved

DEDICATED

BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION
TO

IIEIt MAJESTY THE QUEEN

BY

HER LOYAL AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

THE AUTHOR

NOTE

The Publishers desire to tender their respectful thanks to
Her Majesty the Queen for her gracious permission to
select certain pictures from the Royal collections for the
illustrations of this book. Also to H.E.H. Prince Christian
of Schleswig-Holstein, K.G., for his kindness in granting
facilities in connection with the pictures at Cumberland
Lodge. Similar acknowledgments are due to Colonel Sir
A. Cope and Mr. Edmund Tattersall ; also to Colonel
Aubrey Maude for his valuable assistance in the reproduc-
tion of the pictures.

CONTENTS

chaptek page

Introduction 1

I. Georgian Stag-hunting 22

II. The New School 48

III. Charles Davis 59

IV. Debateable Land 82

V. Deer 92

VI. The Staghound . . 114

VII. The Harrow Country ■ 142

VIII. The Forest 158

IX. Banks and Ditches 172

X. Black and White 180

XL Kennels and Stables ....... 200

XII. Aucot Affairs 213

XIII. Predecessors 222

XIV. Venerie and the Valois ....... 244

XV. The Empire and the Republic ..... 258

XVI. French Horsemanship 278

XVII. French Horses 290

Appendix : List of Meeting Places of Royal Hunt . oOo

Index 305

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

Charles Davis on The Hermit ..... Frontispiece

From the "picture by Byron Webb, painted about is:;4.

Windsor Park T« face p. 38

From the picture by J. Wootton, 1737, in the (Jurat's
collection at Windsor Castle.

Lady Lade „ 42

From the picture by Stubbs, in the Queen's collection
at Cumberland Lodge.

Easter Monday : a View near Windsor — Gentlemen

Sportsmen endeavouring to lead the Field . . ., 48

Curricle 51

From the picture by Marshall, in the Queen's collection
at Cumberland Lodge.

H.B.H. the Prince of Wales's Two Chestnuts . . „ 52

Front the picture by Stubbs (ll'M) in the Queen's collec
Hon at Cumberland Lodge.

Charles Davis on The Traverser .... ., 70

From the picture by Barraud.

Charles Davis . . , .. 81

From a photograph by Hills & Saunders.

Lord Coventry „ 82

The present Master. From a photograph.

Easter Monday : a View near Epping — The Heroes
of the Day, Men of determined Courage,
Riding hard — up to the Hounds ... .. liJG

Lord Colville of Culross .. 152

From ' Baily's Magazine,' March 1867.

But you squelch and scramble on . . . . ., I5g

By C E. Brock.

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A Humiliating Pursuit in the Grounds of the

Royal Military College at Sandhurst . . . To
By G. D. Giles.
John Comins

Huntsman to the Queen's Hounds, appointed April 1,
1894. From aphotograph by Hills & Sounders.

More likely to sprain your Ankle than smash your

Hat

By G. D. Giles.
Mr. Edmund Tattersall on Black Bess .

From the picture by Byron Webb in Mr. Tatiersall's
possession.

Lord Cork and Orrery

From ' Baily's Magazine,' June 11S70.

Lord Ribblesdale

M.B.H. 1892 to 1895. From a photograph by Hills d-
Saunders.

The Willows presented a scene of wild confusion

By G. D. Giles.
Unkennelling the Royal Hounds ....

From the picture by Chalon, l<sl7, in the Quean's evllec-
Hon at Cumberland Lodge.

The Prince went at the top of the Hunt , . .

By G. D. Giles.
Lord Lichfield .....,,.

After Count d'Orsay, 1889.
Earl of Chesterfield, 1832

From 'Baily's Magazine, November lsi;o.
Lord Granville

After G. Richmond.
Piqueur dk la Venerie Imperials

After A. dt Drevx.

face p.

100
108

170
182

184

189

195

200

200
237
238
240

M\-l

I

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

The Cream Horse 25

From on oil-painting in tin Quern's collection at Windsor Castle.

New Terrors were added by the Highwaymen . . . . 28
By G. J>. Giles.

Turning out the Deee fob the Royal Hunt on Windsor

Forest 4u

From an old print.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

PAG E

The Accomplished Sportswoman 4o

From an old print.

Moonshine, a celebrated Deer 46

Frequently hunted by His Majesty George III. From an old, print.

Chart of the various Meets of the Royal Hounds, 1841 . 01
From the ' Sporting Review,' in 11.

Hiding unfairly 64

By G. H. Jalland.

To ride jealous in a Forest you must be really intrepid . 69
By G. T). Giles.

The Hermit 76

Front the ' Sporting Review,' 1840.

Harry King ultimately stopped them 78

By G. H. Jalland.

The Deer should go right away out of his Cart like the

' Lord of the Valley ' 96

By G. D. Giles.

Robert Bartlett 97

First Whip to the Queen's Hounds, May lyy5 to January 1854. Front
an old print.

Winchelsea, a favourite Deer 108

Front an old print.

Groves, Deer-Keeper 112

From a photograph by Hills & Saunders.

Luxury 118

From the ' Sporting Review,' 1841.

Roman 119

By G. J). Giles.

Rhetoric 119

By G- D. Giles.

The Country far and wide is up in Arms against us . . 146
By G. D. Giles.

Harry King 148

Huntsman to the Queen's Hounds, July 18CG to December ■ 1W71. From
a photograph by Hills & Saundt rs.

Frank Goodall on Crusader 150

Huntsman to the Queen's Hounds, April 1ST'-! to May 1888. From
apliotograph by Hills <£• Saunders.

xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGB

The Hidden Prehistoric Ruts 100

By G. D. Giles.
Charles Hoare 179

Second Whipper-in to the Queen's Hounds, appointed July 1, 1894.
From a photograph by Hills & Saunders.

YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE REALLY CARRIED . . . . 184

By G. D. Giles.
Charles Strickland 185

First Whipper-in to the Queen's Sounds, appointed July 1, 1894.
From a photograph by Hills & Saunders.

The First Whip's Horse subsided with only his Head out of

AVater 187

By G. D. Giles.
Charles Samways 191

Second Groom to the Queen's Hounds, appointed July 1, LS'J4. From
a photograph by Hills £ Saunders.

It was all I could do to qet ' William ' home . 198

By G. I). Giles.
The old Kennel at Swinley 201

From an old print.
Plan of the Kennels, Ascot Heath ...... 204

Plan of the Kennels. Ascot Heath 205

Josiaii Miles 210

Stud Groom to tin Queen's Hounds, October 1848 to March 1894.
From a photograph In/ A. /•'. Marker
Reuben Matthews 212

Stud Groom to tin Queen's Hounds, appointed April 1. 1894, From

a photograph by Hilh A Saunders.

Plan of proposkd New Mile Course (1895), Ascot, Perks . . 215
Swinley Lodge, the old Residence of the Master of the

Buckhounds . . 23tJ

m an old print.

I.i Rendezvous 202

From1 Manuel dr Vinerie Vramcaise.'

Le Relais Volant 272

From1 Manuel tie Vinerie Fra/ncaise.
M. Putech clearing the Gate at \ Level Crossing UPON

1'atillon 285

By G. ]>. Giles.

MAP
Places of Meeting op the Royal Hint (at end of booh).

THE QUEEN'S HOUNDS

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

INTRODUCTION

BY EDWABD BURROWS
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona

Few of those who share with the writer the memories of an
Eton ' wet-bob,' to whom ' The Brocas,' ' ' Brocas Clump,'
' Brocas Meadow,' and ' Brocas Lane ' are ' familiar in their
mouths as household words,' know the origin of the strange
un-English name which thus lingers on the Eton bank of
the Thames just above Windsor Bridge, but has died out on
the opposite side where lay the manor, styled, at least until
the beginning of the sixteenth century, 'Brocas in Clewer,'
or ' Clewer-Brocas,' and where the position of the Brocas
Chantry, founded by that notable knight Sir Bernard Brocas,
may still be traced in Clewer Church.

Few of those who ride with her Majesty's Buckhounds are
aware that the hereditary Mastership was held by the family

1 Materials for this Introduction are taken from The Family of Brocas
of Bcaurcpaire and Roche Court, by Montagu Burrows, Captain E.N., M.A.„
F.S.A., Chiehele Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford
a work founded on the collection of original Brocas documents now in the
writer's possession.

B

2 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

of Brocas for nearly three hundred years, from the middle
of the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century.

Fewer still among those who ride or row have ever heard
of the connection between this long line of hereditary Masters
and the ruined castle of Sault and a church and villages in
South-Western France, still bearing the name of Brocas,
far from the track of the modern traveller, and buried among
the woodlands and sand dunes of ancient Gascony.

A brief account of certain of these Masters of old time
may form a becoming introduction to modern incidents of
stag-hunting, may bring to light picturesque details of sport
closely mingled with war, may show that the Mastership can
claim an ancient and romantic past, and add proof that in
all ages good sportsmen have been staunch fighting-men and
loyal subjects.

The lands held in ' Clyware, New Windesore, Old
Windesore, Eton, Dauneye, Boveneye, Cokeham and Bray '
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by this family
of Gascon knights, transplanted into England by Edward II.,
were important and extensive. Some ten men of this
name and blood occupied notable positions as favoured
courtiers and trusted servants of the Crown in the brilliant
and romantic period of the reigns of the second and third
Edward and the second Richard, and in successive genera-
tions held such offices as those of Master of the Horse,
Master of the Buckhounds, Chief Forester of Windsor,
Warden of King's Castles, Gaols, and Parks, Captain of
Calais, Controller of Calais, Constable of Aquitaine, Con-
troller of Bordeaux, Royal Ambassador, Chamberlain to the
Queen, Chamberlain of the Exchequer, and King's Clerk of
the Works. It is, therefore, hard to understand the almost
complete oblivion into which has fallen the real origin of the
name that still survives under the shadow of Windsor Castle.
So fantastic and so far from the truth have been the suggested

INTRODUCTION 3

derivations that they only prove how completely family tra-
ditions disappear amid the building of royal palaces and the
founding of royal colleges. Sir John de Brocas acquired
these lands before Edward III. began to enlarge "Windsor
Castle. His descendants had ceased to reside on them
before the foundation of Eton College, and entirely relin-
quished them soon after that event. So long ago ' the knight
was dust, and his good sword rust,' that on the spot where
he dwelt not even

a herald who that way doth pass
Finds his cracked name at length in the church glass.

Yet the swords of these Gascon knights, among whom the
most illustrious was the first Brocas Master of the Buck-
hounds, were kept bright for many years in the service of
their adopted country, for we find them at Crecy, at the
siege of Calais, at Poitiers and at Xajara, while others of their
kin met death in defence of the English shores.

It is singularly unfortunate that the painstaking author
of a recent ' History of the Royal Buckhounds ' ' was ignorant
of the Gascon origin of the hereditary Masters, or ignored
the information that might have been obtained on this
matter. It is, moreover, much to be regretted that in a
history which shows so much research the foolish tradition
is repeated that the ancestor of the hereditary Masters was
Sir Bernard Brocas, who came into England with William
the Conqueror, from whom, in reward for his military services,
he received permission to select lands to the value of 400/. ;
that he chose these lands in Hampshire, and built thereon
a mansion styled ' Beaurepaire,' and that the lives of three
successors of the same name sufficed, by a startling assump-
tion of longevity, to cover a period of 280 years from the date
of the Conquest to the year when Sir John de Brocas served

1 History of the Royal Buckhounds, by J. P. Hore.

b 2

4 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

with distinction under Edward III. at the siege of Calais.1
Such a descent is too incredible to be recorded elsewhere
than in that storehouse of many such apocryphal genea-
logies, the College of Arms, where it appears to have stood
without question for a long period, and whence it emerged
to find, unfortunately, place in the inscription, inserted
only in the eighteenth century, above the ancient and
elaborate tomb of this early Master of the Buckhounds, Sir
Bernard Brocas, in St. Edmund's Chapel in Westminster
Abbey. In fact, this Gascon origin is a matter of more
interest than is generally supposed ; for it was plainly in con-
sequence of their knowledge of breeding and training horses
on the turbulent marches of Gascony that so many members
of the family of Brocas were well fitted to have charge, as
Masters of the Horse, of the royal studs, and, as Masters of
the Buckhounds, of the royal hunting establishment. Thus
is furnished an early and significant instance of the obliga-
tions under which England has ever lain to France in all
matters connected with the chase, and of the striking
advantage which during the Middle Ages accrued to the
former country from the ancestral possessions derived by
her kings from Eleanor of Guienne, not only in the graver
matters of state and commerce, but in the improvement of
the breed of light horses.

The cradle of the race whence sprang the hereditary
Masters is found on the borders of Gascony, where a con-
siderable tract of land was once known as ' the Brocas
March,' where villages still bear the name, and where still

1 Strangely different from these false legends are the real facts. For the
settlement in England of certain members of the Gascon family of de Brocas
did not begin until the reign of Edward II., and it was not until the year 13o:J>
that the uncle of Sir Bernard Brocas purchased Beaurepaire from John
Pecche, whose ancestors had held it for several generations. The line of the
family that remained in Gascony is still represented there by the Comte de
Broca?.

IXTRODUCTION 5

stands the ruined keep of their ancestral stronghold of Sault,
twice styled by Froissart ' a strong and good castle.' Here
dwelt Sir Peter Arnald de Brocas, foully slain at Bayonne
during truce by Earl Simon de Montfort, and here, during
many years of incessant border forays, the de Brocas showed
with other loyal Gascons their gallant devotion to their
' Roy Outremer,' by holding their fortress as a bulwark of
the English rule in Gascony against the ceaseless attacks of
their turbulent neighbours the Vicomtes de Beam, to whose
castle of Orthez the road still runs due south across the old
border line. Wild tales of flight and hot pursuit, of desperate
rally and midnight foray, could that old highway tell in the
days when English and French knights, hard-riding Gascon
borderers and swaggering Free Companions, mustered under
the rival royal standards and the banners of de Montfort,
de Beam and d'Albret, while from the keep above floated
the sable pennon of de Brocas. Strangely must old memories
have been stirred when along the same road in later days,
after the stubborn fight at Orthez, British squadrons pur-
sued the flying French and Wellington received his only
wound. Ruined at length by their loyalty to the English
cause during the disasters of Edward II. 's latter years, the
children of Arnald de Brocas, ' lately slain in the King's
service in Scotland,' possibly at Bannockburn, were' taken
into the royal household and brought up at the English
Court. As no less than three of these young Gascon officers
of the King became Masters of the Horse, and by their length
of service proved their aptness for the appointment, there
are sufficient entries under the name of ' de Brocas ' in the
Record Office to supply almost a history of Edward III.'s
equestrian organisation. Space only permits the mention of
certain facts illustrative of the experience in this matter of
the family which had charge for so long a period of the royal
hunting establishment.

6 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Edward is too often blamed for his large expenditure on
horses, but it is forgotten that his mighty conflict with the
hosts of France, his contests of chivalry, his ' hastiludes '
and military Orders, which largely operated to ensure his
victories, entailed an enormous and special provision for
breeding studs, large sums for purchase money, and a great
array of persons employed in the business. With the very
beginning of this work the de Brocas ' were concerned.
Sir John superintended it for a great part of his life, and
when the great war seemed to be over, it was to him and
to William of Wykeham that the King entrusted the sale
and breaking up of the war establishment. In the long
lists which occur in the Exchequer Accounts of the Ward-
robe of numerous classes of horses belonging to the King
— coursers, palfreys, trotters, hobbies, genets, hengests,
and somers — the ' dextrarii ' or ' great horses ' received
most attention. Provision was made for 102 of their
housings out of 441 ells of canvas and 360 ells of cloth,
which was to come from Candlewyk Street in London.
The boundary between the great cavalry establishments
was formed by the Trent, the division to the north of
this river having its separate ' custos ' under the Master of
the Horse'. The studs were distributed among the King's
manors, such as Windsor, Guildford, Odiham, Woodstock,
and Waltham. The due proportion of expense necessary
for corn, shoeing, litter, headstalls and bridles was borne
by the sheriffs of the various counties. The keep of thirty
horses by one of these sheriffs for sixty days in the year 1338
amounted to 40?. 12s. Gel., or about o^d. per horse per day, while
the keep of a hound cost \&. per day. Special provision was
made for a tunic of blue and a cape of white Brussels cloth
as the attire of ' John Brocaz,' styled in these records

1 The deeds show that the ' de ' before Brocas is gradually dropped as the
family begin to acquire lands in England.

IXTRODUCTION 7

' Custos equorum regis ' or ' Gardein denos grands chevaux.'
The prices paid for horses in 1330 are shown by the follow-
ing sums which passed through the hands of Brocas. ' To
Master Thomas de Garton, Keeper of the King's Wardrobe,
in money paid to him by the hands of John Brocaz for the
purchase of the three undermentioned chargers, to wit, one
called Pomers, of a grey colour with black head, price 120Z. ;
another called Lebryt, a dappled grey, price 701. ; and a third
called Bayard, a bright bay with hind fetlocks white, price
50/.' '

The great cavalry department appears to have been kept
at its full war complement for about twenty years, until the
power of France, after the battle of Poitiers, seemed finally
broken. Thus in 1357 the King commissions Sir John de
Brocas, Edmund Bose, and William of Wykeham to sell off
that portion of the stud kept in Windsor Park, and the next
year the horses beyond the Trent which were of no further
use were sold ; while in 1360, after the Peace of Bretigny,
all the royal studs south of Trent were disposed of and the
proceeds handed to William of Wykeham, ' surveyor of the
King's work in Windsor Castle.' Too soon were frustrated
the fond hopes that it would never again be necessary to
sweep over France with English squadrons, and great was the
need of this magnificent cavalry before the end of the reign.

Many and various were the duties of this active Master
of the Horse. After employment with his son Sir Oliver
in buying horses for the King in Gascony before the great
campaign of Crecy, he is found in command of a consider-
able company at the siege of Calais, and he was chosen
as ambassador to congratulate Alfonso XL of Castile on
his capture of Algeciras from the Moors, and to negotiate
concerning the marriage of Edward III.'s daughter to the

1 The proper multiple for money of this date, for the sake of comparison
with the present day, is approximately 20.

8 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Spanish prince known as Pedro the Cruel. After one of
these embassies he brought back two Spanish jennets as a
gift from Alfonso to Edward. Amid all these public services
he found time to add by degrees to his estates at Windsor
and in Hampshire with the caution becoming one who was
a Gascon and an alien.

The career of his son Sir Bernard, to whom came by
marriage and subsequent direct royal grant the hereditary
Mastership, is so full of stirring episodes and knightly deeds
that it might well form the subject of an historical romance.

Certain picturesque points can only be glanced at here.
As Chamberlain to the Queen, as King's Warden and
Ambassador, as Constable of Aquitaine and Controller of
Bordeaux, as Captain of Calais and Master of the Buck-
hounds, as a warrior at Crecy, Poitiers, and Xajara, this
illustrious Anglo-Gascon trod every stage of the brilliant
times in which he lived. Twice was he summoned
as a witness on high matters of chivalry. Prom his
evidence given in the famous Scrope and Grosvenor Poll,
it appears that he was first armed as esquire on the shore
of La Hogue on the day when the Black Prince was
knighted, and ' that he had fought in France, in Scotland,
in Gascony, in Brittany, and in Spain, in the presence of
kings, princes, dukes, counts, barons, and other great lords,
knights, and esquires, during forty years.' On another
occasion Brocas is found as a witness, with such renowned
co-signatories as Oliver de Clisson, the Earl of Salisbury,
Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, Robert Holland, and Thomas
de Eos, to the claim that King John of France surrendered
to the Gascon Bernard de Trouttes and not to the French
knight fighting on the English side, Sir Denis de Morbeque.
The Brocas pennon must therefore have been in the thick
of that final furious melee which raged on the bloodstained
field of Poitiers round the spot where the French king turned

INTRODUCTION 9

at bay, while his gallant stripling son stood at his side warn-
ing him of the blows rained on him by the ring of emulous
Gascon and English knights. "Well might the French
chronicle quoted later on describe Sir Bernard as ' ung des
hautz homines et nobles d'Angleterre, tres bon chevalier qui
moult grandement avoit servi le Prince.' In boudoir as well
as in tented field his fame appears to have stood high. In
the court of Venus as well as in that of Mars did the Black
Prince befriend him. It has been generally received on the
authority of the Metrical Chronicle of Harding that the
Prince began his suit not for himself, but on behalf of some
nameless comrade-in-arms, to that beauteous dame of royal
blood the Lady Joan Plantagenet, best known as the ' Fan-
Maid of Kent.' We now learn from the ' Chronique des
Quatre Premiers Valois ' that Sir Bernard Brocas was the
knight for whom the Prince thus pleaded, and whose fruitless
suit became the direct cause of that romantic royal match.

The narrative is so quaint in language and so charac-
teristic in incident that it deserves full quotation below.1

1 ' Apres le trespassement de son dit Seigneur moult de nobles chevaliers
qui moult avoient servi le Eoy d'Angleterre et le Prince son tils en leurs guerres
vindrent requerre au Prince qu'il lui pleust a parler a la Comtesse de Hollande.
En especial ung des hautz hommes et nobles d'Angleterre nonime Monseigneur
de Brocas tres bon chevalier qui moult grandement avoit servi le Prince et
pour lui tant en ses guerres que autrement avoit moult travaillie. requist le
Prince qu'il lui pleust tant faire qu'il eust la dicte Dame et Comtesse pour lui
a femme, et qu'il en parlast a la dicte dame. Le Prince pour le dit chevalier
parla a la dicte Dame de Hollande par plusieurs fois. Car moult voulentiers
aloit pour soy deduire veoir la dicte dame qui estoit sa cousine et souventeffoiz
regardoit sa tres grande beaute et son tres gracieux contenement qui merveil-
leusement lui plaisoit. Et comme une foiz le Prince parloit a la dicte Comtesse
pour le dit chevalier la Comtesse lui respondi que jamais espoux n'auroit. Et
elle qui moult estoit soubtille et sage par plusieurs foiz le dit au Prince. " Ha !
A! " se dit le Prince "belle cousine en cas que vous ne voulez marier a mez
amis mal fut vostre grant beaute dont tant estes plaine. Et sevous etmoy ne
nous apartenissons de lignage il n'est dame soubz le ciel que j'eusse tant chiere
comme vous." Et alors fut le Prince moult supprins de l'amour a la Comtesse.
Et lors prinst la Comtesse a plourer comme femme soubtille et plaine d'aguet.
Et done le Prince la prinst a conforter et la prinst a baisier moult souvent en
prenant ses larrnes a grant doulieur et lui dit " Belle cousine j'ay a vous parler

io STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

This episode must have occurred soon after Sir Bernard's
divorce from his first wife, Agnes Vavasour, and he rapidly
found consolation for the failure of his ambitious attempt
to gain the Fair Maid's hand by marrying an heiress and a
King's ward, Mary, daughter of Sir John de Koches and
widow of Sir John de Borhunte. With her he acquired
not only ' Hunter's Manor ' and the hereditary Mastership,
but other lands and manors in Hampshire, one of which,
the Manor of Roche Court, still remains after nineteen
generations in the possession of his descendants. To these
lands he added the lordship of Beaurepaire, near Basingstoke,
purchased from its previous lord, John Pecche, in the year
1353, which he received licence from the King to empark,
and which was destined to be for so many centuries the
chief seat of the Brocas Masters. At length, full of years
and honours, after making elaborate arrangements for the
foundation of the Brocas Chantry in Clewer Church, this

pour ungdes preux chevaliers d'Angleterre et avecceil est moult gentilz homs."
Madame la Comtesse respondi en plourant au Prince " Ha Sire pour Dieu
vueillez vous souffrir de me parler de cettes paroles. Car c'est mon entente que
je n'aye jamaiz espoux. Car je me suys de tout donnee au plus preux de
dessoubz le firmament. Et pour l'amour d'icellui jamaiz espoux fors Dieu
n'auray tant que je vivray. Car c'est chose impossible que je l'aye, et pour la
sienne amour me vueil garder de compagnie d'omme, ne jamaiz n'est m'inten-
cion de moy marier." Le Prince fut moult en grant desir de scavoir cil qui
estoit le plus preux du monde et moult requist la Comtesse qu'elle lui deist.
Mais la dicte Comtesse plus Ten veoit eschauffe plus lui prioit qu'il n'en
cerchast plus avant et lui disoit : " Pour Dieu tres cher Seigneur, en soy age-
nouillant, pour la tres douce Vierge mere vueillez vous en souffrir a tant."

1 A brief renconter le Prince lui dist que s'elle ne lui disoit qui estoit le plus
preux du monde qu'il seroit son mortel ennemy. Et lors lui dit la Comtesse
" Tres chier et redoubte Seigneur c'est vous, et pour l'amour de vous jamaiz a
mon coste chevalier ne gerra." Le Prince qui moult fut adonc embras
d'amour a la Comtesse lui dit " Dame et je voue a Dieu que jamaiz autre femme
que vous vivres n'auroy." Et presentement la fianca, puis aprez assez brief-
ment il l'espousa . . . . De laquelle chose Edouart le Eoy d'Angleterre fut
merveilleusement marry et dolent et voult qu'elle fust mise a mort. Car moult
plus hautement se fust le Prince marie et n' avoit empereur roy ne prince soubz
le ciel qui n'eust eu grant joye se le Prince de Galles se fust mist en son
lignage.'

IX PRODUCTION ii

preux chevalier is accorded a magnificent funeral by his
grateful master Richard II., and, in St. Edmund's Chapel in
Westminster Abbey, a stately tomb, round which still runs
in contracted form the inscription : ' Hie jacet Bernardus
Brocas Miles T. T. quondam camerarius Anne Begine Anglie
c-ujus anime propicietur Deus. Amen.' It is unfortunate that
no solid foundation is apparent for the legend that Sir Bernard
bore the crest, used by him in seals as early as 1361, and still
extant, of a Moor's head wearing an Oriental crown, in con-
sequence of vanquishing a Moorish king in battle.1 Possibly
he fought among those knights of renown who did battle with
Moors ' for the good of their souls ' in the open space between
the two camps at Algeciras, when besieged by Alfonso of
Castile in 1344. At any rate, the tradition was so well
known in Addison's time that the attention of Sir Boger de
Coverley was drawn when in the Abbey to the tomb of ' the
lord who had cut off the King of Morocco's head.' -

Thus, with the marriage of Sir Bernard Brocas and Mary,
widow of Sir John de Borhunte and daughter of Sir Johnde
Roches, begins the long period of the Brocas Mastership
of the Buckhounds, and it becomes necessary to refer briefly
to the early history of the office as recited in an ancient
Brocas document.

List of the hereditary Masters of the Royal Buckhounds by tenure
in capite of l Hunter's Manor,' in Little Weldon> Northamptonshire.

1. Osborne Lovel, Chamberlain to Henry II.

2. William Lovel.

3. Hamon le Venour, by grant from Henry III. in 1216.

4. "William Lovel.

5. John Lovel, oh. 1316.

6. Thomas de Borhunte, ob. 1340, jure Margaret Lovel.

7. William Danvers, ob. 1361, jure Margaret Lovel.

1 Arras of Brocas : Sable, a lion, rampant-gardant. or. Crest of Brocas :
A Moor's head in profile, crowned.
- Spectator, No. 329.

12 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

8. Sir Bernard Brocas (1363), ob. 1395, jure Mary cle Borhunte.

9. Sir Bernard Brocas, second of the name, executed 1400.

10. William Brocas (1), ob. 1456.

11. William Brocas (2), ob. 1484.

12. John Brocas, ob. 1492.

13. William Brocas (3), ob. 1506.

14. John Brocas, 1508-1512. ■

15. George Warham and Balph Pexall, joint Masters 1512-

1514, jure Ann and Edith Brocas.

16. Ralph Pexall (1514), ob. c. 1540, jure Edith Brocas.

17. Sir Richard Pexall, ob. 1571, son of Edith Brocas.

18. Sir John Savage (till 1584), second husband of Lady

Pexall, widow of Sir Richard.

19. Sir Pexall Brocas, ob. 1630.

20. Thomas Brocas, who in 1633 sold Hunter's Manor and the

office to Sir Lewis Watson, afterwards Lord Rockingham.

From the list of hereditary Masters given above it will
be observed that one of the earliest notices of any regular
establishment for the Buckhounds is the grant of certain
lands in Little Weldon, a manor in Northamptonshire, near
Rockingham, to Hamon le Venour, in 1216. It is certain,
however, that the Lovels had held these lands at an earlier
date, for certain territories and the lordship of the Manor of
Little Weldon were granted by Henry II. to his Chamberlain,
Osborne Lovel, from whom they descended to John Lovel,
who died in 1316. Whatever were the original relations of
' Hunter's Manor in Little Weldon ' to the royal manor of
that name of which it formed a part, it assumed under the
Edwards a position so entirely independent of the larger
manor that it is styled in the Brocas deeds and official docu-
ments the ' Manor of Little Weldon,' with ' Hunter's Manor '
sometimes prefixed as an alias. To this ' Hunter's Manor '
was attached in Grand Serjeanty for many centuries the
Mastership of the Royal Buckhounds. For the ingenious at-

1 The tenure of this Master, omittedin the list given in Tlie Family of Brocas,
has been correctly noted in the History of the Royal Buckhounds.

INTRODUCTION 13

tempt made by the author of a ' History of the Buckhounds,'
to which allusion has been already made, to throw doubt on
the antiquity of the hereditary transmission of the Mastership
with ' Hunter's Manor ' — -an attempt apparently based on the
fact that the Lovels and de Borhuntes, who held it before Sir
Bernard Brocas, were styled custodians instead of masters
— needs no further attention than the statement that in the
Brocas documents ' magister ' and ' custos ' are frequently
used as interchangeable terms of the same meaning, and
that in an indenture of Elizabeth's reign the phrase ' Master
or Keeper ' of the Buckhounds occurs. Remote from King and
Court the situation of Hunter's Manor may seem at the
present day to those who forget the central position and
historical importance of Rockingham Forest and Rockingham
Castle in Norman and Plantagenet times. Here, within
reach of the stronghold of Northampton, was the royal
residence, fitted for retirement and the pleasures of the
chase, until, with the increasing necessity of moving the
Court nearer to London, Rockingham was superseded by
the greater convenience and magnificence of Windsor. A
vast extent of country was once covered by Rockingham
Forest, which, when reduced to the limits retained almost to
modern times, was twenty-four miles long from Oxendon
Bridge to Stamford, and twelve miles wide from Rocking-
ham to Thrapstone. Numerous woodlands, quaint forest
names, peculiar customs, and a population that retains it^
forest character still mark the ancient limits. Local names,
such as ' The Lord's Walk ' and ' Harry's Wood,' still recall
the memory of some forgotten royal and noble lover of the
' mimic war ' of hound and horn. Though ' Hunter's Coppice,'
last relic of the ancient 'Hunter's Manor," was broken up
some years ago, there still may be seen in ' Little Weldon '
mounds and foundations of an extensive building surrounded
by a quadrangular moat to which the peasants give the name

i4 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

of ' The Castle ' or ' The Hall,' and which may rnark the site
of the hunting lodge and kennels of the hereditary Masters.
Still do the Pytchley awake the same woodland echoes as
were roused by many a princely Plantagenet, and still hounds
meet on the border of Farming "Woods near an ancient stone
three feet high and now fast sinking into the earth, named
the ' Bocase Stone,' marking the site of a yet more ancient
tree, and bearing still the inscriptions, ' In this place grew
Bocase tree,' and, lower down, 'Here stood Bocase tree.'
Xo local tradition of the meaning of this inscription survives,
and so quaint and unlikely have been the derivations sug-
gested that leave may be taken to hold that here stood the
' Brocas Tree,' and that here, where the old forest tracks,
still traceable, met near the ancient kennels, the hereditary
Brocas Masters, surrounded by their huntsmen, their
' veutrers,' ' berners,' and hounds, and clad in the livery
specially provided from the King's wardrobe, were wont, in
successive generations, to await the royal hunting train
emerging from Kockingham Castle.

While there is clear proof from public records and
documents of the Brocas family of the chief importance of
Eiockingham in the early organisation of the Buckhounds,
it is strange that no direct evidence of the application of
this hunting establishment to the New Forest or other royal
demesnes has yet been discovered.

The tenure of the manor and office by the early Lovels
and de Borhuntes is so similar in most respects to that of
later times, and so interesting from its antiquity, that refer-
ence may here be made to an entry dated August 15, 1316,
wherein the escheator reported that Lovel had held one
messuage and one carucate of land in Weldon Parva of the
King in capite by service of keeping and feeding at his own
charges fifteen ' canes currentes ' of the King's for the forty
days of Lent in each year, and to a later document wherein it

INTR OD UCTION 1 5

is recited that Thomas Borhunte holds of the King in capite
a chain of land in Little AVeldon of the inheritance of
Margaret his wife, daughter and heir of John Lovel, by
service of being ' Venom* le Boy des deymers ' (Master of the
King's Buckhoimds) ; that he has charge of twenty-four hounds
and six greyhounds of the King's, receiving for the keep of
each an obol or \d. a day, and also of two under-hunts-
rnen, whose wages are \\d. a day, with a cloth coat or a
mark of money by the year, and boots ; that he also has
charge of a ' veutrer,' or huntsman, at Id. a day, who is also
to have a coat or a mark of money and 4s. 8c?. for boots by the
year ; that the Master is to keep at his own cost for the forty
days of Lent, fifteen Buckhoimds and one ' berner,' or keeper
of the hounds, while the second ' berner,' the ' veutrer,' and
the rest of the hounds are to be kept at the King's cost for
the whole of the year ; that the Master's salary is to be l^cl.
a day when at Court and V2d. a day when absent on the
King's business, with two robes a year or 40s. ; that the
' seigne en malades ' is to have for daily livery Id. worth of
bread, a gallon of beer, a mess of ' groos,' and a mess of roast
from the kitchen, and that the livery of the huntsman is to
be at the King's will. The most important point in this
ancient document is the absolute acknowledgment of the
hereditary character of the office and of the power of its
transmission through females — a power which in the next
century was abolished by restricting the succession to males,
but which was revived again under the Tudors in such a
manner as to defeat the original object of the Mastership, and
to end in its being bought and sold in the seventeenth century
as private property, with the final result of the formation
of the Privy Buckhounds, the Mastership of which was free
from these feudal hindrances.

To the value of the Manor of Little Weklon, or Hunter's
Manor, there was added, from the middle of the fourteenth to

16 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

the end of the seventeenth century, a supplementary salary for
the Master, amounting on the average to 50/. a year, charged
on the revenues of Surrey and Sussex, and payable by warrant
under the Privy Seal addressed to the sheriff of those coun-
ties. So serious are the delays of payment of this salary
after the Lancastrian accession to the throne, so great is the
risk of its not being paid at all, that public records and the
Brocas papers are full of piteous appeals from successive
Masters, such as that of the year 1449, in which ' To the
Kyng and Sovain Lorde bisecheth mekely your humble
servaunt William Brocas Squyer, Maistre of your Buk-
hounds. Forasmuche that he holdith of you and alle his
Auncestres of tyme that no mynde is have holden to your
noble progenitours, the Manior of Lityll Weldon in the Counte
of North' by Graunte Sergeaunte that is to witte to be
Maistre of your Bukhoundes, and to kepe xxiiij reunyng
houndes and vi grehoundes, and to find a yeoman Veautrer
and two yomen Berners, which Office was of old tyme or-
deyned for the pleasir and disporte of your noble progenitours
and their successours. . . . Wherefore please hit unto your
Highriesse as well tenderly to consider these premisses as the
trewe contynuell service that your said Bisecher hath doon
unto your noble progenitours as to your Higlmesse ... to
graunte unto your said Bisecher the said wages and

fees. . . .

' Responsio

Soit fait comme il est desire juxst le continue d'un
Cedule a ycest Peticion annexe.'

So alike are these petitions and so unchanged are the
general conditions of the manor and service during the
centuries of its hereditary transmission, that we may well
turn in search of more interesting matter to such personal
details of certain Masters as concern their tenure of the office.
Of the romantic career of the first and most illustrious

IXTRODUCTION \7

Brocas Master a brief outline has already been given. In
the next generation the passionate devotion of the loyal
Gascon blood to the failing cause of Richard the Redeless,
son of the 'Prince of Aquitaine,' brought the rising fortunes
of the family to the brink of ruin. For the second Sir
Bernard Brocas, in consequence of his share in the desperate
plot to seize Henry IV. at Oxford, lost not only many a fair
manor, but his head also. Betrayed by the dastardly traitor
Rutland, the conspirators made a dash on Windsor, missed
Henry there by a few hours, and fled in hot haste to Ciren-
cester, where they were forced to surrender. The earls
implicated in the rising having been beheaded without trial,
the knights were taken to Oxford, where the greater number
were barbarously executed, but four, including (according
to the statement of the most trustworthy chronicler) ' Sir
Bernard Brocas Gascon ' and Sir Thomas Shelley, were sent
to London for trial. Thus accuracy can scarcely be allowed
to Shakespeare's graphic narrative of the event wherein
Fitzwater reports —

My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London
The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely,
Two of the dangerous consorted traitors
That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.

Pilchard II. act iv. scene 6.

At Tyburn Brocas alone of the four was exempted from the
degradation of being drawn and hanged, and there they suffered
death with the composure becoming knights and gentlemen,
refusing to the last to betray their associates. For, as
stated in the ' Chronique de la Trai'son,' to the question,
' Say amongst 3rou who they were that belonged to your
party,' ' la ne respondit mil,' none of them replied a word.

Although by the clemency of Henry TV. the forfeiture
and attainder were with remarkable promptitude reversed,
and the family restored in blood and estate, the descen-

c

1 8 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

dants of the attainted knight, taught by bitter experience,
seem to have shunned the dangers of the Court, to have
studied woodcraft instead of statecraft, to have followed the
buckhounds instead of the ' dogs of war,' and to have
devoted tranquil years at Beaurepaire to the service of their
county, by acting, during successive generations, as members
of Parliament and Sheriffs for Hampshire. After keeping
hounds impartially for the Red and the White Eose, the
elder line of the Masters comes, early in the sixteenth
century, to be represented by co-heiresses, Anne and Edith
Brocas ; and in their favour the power of transmitting the
Mastership through females was again expressly granted, to
the exclusion of their living uncles and other kinsmen of the
name, and in spite of the limitation of the succession to heirs
male made in the reign of Henry VI. No explanation of
this remarkable transaction is forthcoming, but significance
of favour in high places attaches itself to the facts that
Ralph Pexall, husband of Edith Brocas, was in Wolsey's
retinue, and that Richard Pexall was the Abbot of Leicester
of whom the dying Cardinal on his last journey ' craved a
little earth for charity.'

It is unfortunately impossible to find evidence that either
Anne or Edith Brocas carried the horn or exercised in person
any duties of their office. They were probably wise to act
by deputy in the reign of that amorous sportsman Henry
VIII. , whose attentions in the hunting-field were apt to
lead to the block. But, had they lived somewhat later,
one cannot but think that a Mistress of the Buckhounds
would have been in place when Elizabeth, Henry's

Man-minded offset rose
To chase the deer at five.

In the next generation Sir Richard Pexall 's claim to the
Mastership was granted by Queen Mary in letters patent, and
the marriage of his daughter to her kinsman Bernard Brocas

IN TR OD UCTION 1 9

of Horton brought it back to the old name. In their son, Sir
Pexall Brocas, there passes across the stage a ruffling spend-
thrift and a riotous braggart who seriously encumbered the
family estates, and brought the Mastership into such bad
repute that the beginning of the end drew nigh. The strange
nature and variety of his career, his habits and proclivities, may
be gathered from the facts that on January 18, 1603, a pardon
was granted by James to Sir Pexall Brocas, Knight, for all
riots and unlawful assemblies before March 20 last past ; that
six years later Sir Pexall conveyed by deed to trustees the
greater part of his estates, including Little Weldon and the
Mastership of the Buckhounds, for the purposes (1) of erect-
ing a tomb to his honour in Westminster Abbey, near to that
of his grandfather, Sir Richard Pexall ; (2) of founding a
college at Oxford, to be called ' Brocas College ' ; and that in
little more than three years from the date of this pious con-
veyance ' he did open penance at Paul's Cross, where he
stood in a white sheet and held a rod in his hand, having
been formally convicted before the High Commissioners for
secret and notorious adulteries with divers women.' A touch
of picturesque assurance is added to this swashbuckler's
career by the tradition ' that he was attended by thirty
men in scarlet that waited upon him to the Lord Mayor
when he went to demand a dinner after doing penance.' It
need scarcely be added that on the expiration of his penitent
mood the conveyance above mentioned was promptly
revoked. This notorious Master entered upon his office and
manor without licence from Elizabeth, a trespass which was
pardoned ; but it was not until nearly the end of her reign
that his claim to the ancient salary of 50Z. per annum from
the Sheriffs of Surrey and Sussex was recognised by the
judges on appeal. To this petition Sir Pexall soon added
another, for among the claims made by hereditary officers
for places at the ceremony and procession at King James's

20 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

coronation, is found one made by him ' as seised of Little
Weldon to be Master of the Buckhounds.' This claim
was unsuccessful, as was that made at the coronation of
Charles II. by Lord Rockingham, who had by that time
acquired the Mastership by purchase.

The merely nominal character now assumed by the
hereditary office, and the serious difficulty, largely increased
under Henry VIII., of obtaining any salary, pointed to an
imminent change in the constitution of an establishment
that had become unsuitable for modern requirements. That
this change had begun under Henry VIII. by the substitu-
tion of the Privy Buckhounds as distinct from the hounds
kept by the hereditary Masters is clearly shown by an
indenture, preserved among the Brocas documents, of great
value and interest to the subsequent history of the subject.
For it is from this Privy Pack, with its Masters, one of the
earliest of whom was George Boleyn, holding office at the
King's pleasure, and not from the hereditary and feudal
organisation, that the present establishment and the modern
tenure of the Mastership directly descends. In this impor-
tant and decisive indenture, dated July 13, 1598, whereby
Sir Pexall Brocas deputes Sir John Stanhope to discharge
the duties of the Mastership, it is recited that Sir Bernard
Brocas and his heirs became seised of the Mastership,
and ' being so seised, the late King of famous memory,
Henry VIII., by the sinister persuasions of divers of the
then servants of the said King, seeking their own private
gain, did erect, make and establish another office called the
Master of his Privy Buckhounds, and the same office, together
with divers new fees and wages for exercising the same new
office, did give and grant to divers persons to the great
damage, prejudice and disinheritance of the said Sir Richard
Pexall and of his manor aforesaid, and to the great and
extraordinary charge and expense of the said King.' It is

INTRODUCTION 21

further explained in this deed that Queen Mary did revoke,
repeal, and make void the said new office, and did confirm
Sir Richard Pexall and his heirs in the ancient hereditary
office.

In spite of this strenuous opposition of the hereditary
Masters, the Privy Buckhounds were re-established under
Elizabeth and James, and for a time the old and the new
systems bitterly contended for the mastery, until in the early
part of the seventeenth century the hereditary office became
practically obsolete. It was in this condition when Thomas
Brocas, in the year 1633, sold it to Sir Lewis Watson for
3,000/., with the Manor of Little AVeldon, held by his
ancestors for three centuries. Thus ended at last the long
line of hereditary Masters, but not the loyalty of their race.
For it appears from contemporary authority that Beaurepaire,
their ancient seat, was one of the last houses in Hampshire
to hold out for Charles's hopeless cause. Surprised and
surrounded at length by a Roundhead force from Abingdon,
the Brocas troop, after throwing into their moat the last
pieces of plate that had not been melted down for the King,
cut their way through to Basing House, to reinforce their
neighbour, the gallant old Marquis of Winchester, in his final
struggle. There for a few more desperate months the de-
scendants of the faithful Masters of the Buckhounds fought
on under that Paulet motto which might well have been
theirs also, Aimez Loijaute. For not many families can
boast, as can that of Brocas, that thrice in their history,
once in Gascony and twice in England, their fortunes have
been ruined by devoted loyalty to their King.

22 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE I

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING
I summon up remembrance of things past

I am afraid that a great deal in this book has little or nothing
to do with the Queen's Hounds. Often and often they have,
as it were, to be dragged in by the scruff of the neck. I
am constantly running out of my course, and at the outset I
must plead this as my excuse for the many liberties taken
with the unities of time and place in the following pages.

History, according to the late Master of Balliol, is
Biography, and tested by Dr. Jowett's standard, any strictly
conscientious history of the Buckhounds must leave much to
be desired. For many long tracts of years they want the
breath of life. Like most institutions they are not palpable.
Their existence is abundantly vouched for by warrants,
salaries, and accounts, but this is a very sinister waj^ of
reaching history. Besides, the history of the Royal Buck-
hounds has been done already, and well done. In his work
on this subject, Mr. Hore taps and samples every available
source of official information. He has brought a trained
and patient industry to bear upon much old English and dog
Latin. Pipe Bolls and the penetralia of public offices have
been forced to yield their increase and been turned into
type and plain figures. But cheerfully as he threads his
way through this valley of dry bones and the dust of ages,
Mr. Hore laments over and over again the absence of authen-
tic records of actual hunting incidents. Where as an inves-
tigator he has failed, I am not likely to succeed. Thus the

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 23

lack of material might account for the short work made of
several centuries, and be my apology for skipping the trunk-
hose periods. I am further relieved from having to touch on
the earlier associations of royalty and stag-hunting by the
fact that my friend Mr. Burrows, who, as a descendant of
the hereditary Brocas Masters of the Buckhounds, is the
proper person to remind us of these vanished ages, has told
us about them in the Introduction.

Mr. Lecky, in one of his most engaging chapters, com-
ments upon the fact that countless Enclosure Acts and the
spread of agriculture had led to much less wild stag-hunting.
But, on the other hand, it may be noted that these very
Enclosure Acts in Bucks and Berks hastened the dawn of
civilisation in the shape of the deer cart. Although I cannot
fix an Hejira with absolute certainty, the credit of this in-
vention belongs as much of right to George III. and his
hunting advisers as the credit of hunting at force — that is, of
unharbouring and riding to a deer with hounds — belongs of
right to Edward III. and his hard-riding Gascon Master,
Sir Bernard Brocas. I shall, therefore, without further
apology, begin with a short survey of Court and country
hunting under the Georges.

There is really little to be said about stag-hunting under
George I. The Buckhounds, Mr. Hore tells us, were not
idle —they certainly cost money, and his pages will repay
the attention of those who like comparing expenditure
statistics of the past with the present. But George I., as
everybody knows, never settled down in England. As Dr.
Johnson explained to Boswell in the course of a panegyric
upon Charles II., he 'knew nothing, and desired to know
nothing ; did nothing, and desired to do nothing.' The fine
company on the Mall, the beauty of St. James's Park, im-
pressed him not at all. The oaks of Windsor only made
him regret the limes of Herrenhausen. He was over fifty

24 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

years old when he ascended the throne of his ancestors, as
he called it in his first speech to Parliament— too old to learn
a new language and new hunting ways. He never went out
if the weather was bad, hardly realised the Buckhounds, and
threw them and the Master of the Horse department into
commission and the greedy hands of the Duchess of Kendal.
An instance of the German complexion which pervaded every-
thing at Windsor occurs in a picture at Windsor of George I.
out hunting in the Great Park with his suite, by Gohrde.
The names of the fourteen or fifteen personages are all given
on the tablet. With two exceptions they are all German.
Even one of these exceptions is Germanised, the huntsman
being handed down to posterity as ' Ned Finsch.' In fine
weather, however, the King went sporting occasionally. In
September, 1717, we hear of his diverting himself with hunt-
ing in Bushey Park. After which, alighting from horseback,
his Majesty walked above three miles with a fowling-piece
in his hand, and killed several brace of partridges flying.
During the summer of 1724 a stud of nice horses was got
together and sent to Windsor for the King's stag-hunt-
ing, but there is no account of his ever using them. He
went out pheasant-shooting in August of the same year,
earlier than even the writers of the first of October leading
articles begin their pheasant-shooting. From eight in the
morning till nearly five that day he only shot two and a
half brace, and one and a half brace of partridges. But,
besides the gratitude we owe to George I. for the passive
respect he paid a free government and a free people, we
must, with the picture of the Queen's Jubilee Procession
fresh upon our minds' eye, ever be grateful to him for
bringing over the cream-coloured horses and their scarlet
housings of velvet and morocco.1

1 For very many years past the cream-colours have all been bred at Hampton
Court. The only new blood that has been obtained — at all recently — was in 1893,

GEORGIAN STAG- HUNTING 25

According to Mr. Green, George I. had the manners of
a gentleman-usher. Gentlemen-ushers are not clearly defined
types of human nature, but I take them to be personages
versed in the grave issues and nice points of Court ceremonial.
At all events, when he fell out with his son the rupture
was so decisive that the servants of the Prince of AYales's

The Cream Horse
From an oil painting in the Queen's collection at Windsor Castle

children were not allowed to wear scarlet liveries, only yellow
ones being permitted ' according to precedent.' However,
the Prince of Wales and ' cette diablesse Madame la Prin-
cesse,' as her father-in-law habitually called her, made the
best of it, and set up for themselves at Leicester House and

when a two-year-old stallion and filly were bought of Prince Schaumberg-Lippe.
The Prince's stud was sold by auction in the beginning of this year, and I believe
the Queen's and the Hanover stud are the only ones in Europe. Four brood
mares are always kept at Hampton Court, and only stallions are used in the
State coach.

26 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Richmond Lodge, ' where,' says Walpole, ' the most promis-
ing of the young gentlemen of the party, and the prettiest
and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new Court.'

George II., soon after his accession, appointed Colonel
Francis Negus Master of the Buckhounds. The colonel
was to defray all expenses on a yearly salary of 2,341/., and
this stipend appears to have continued till 1782. The
accounts as compared with the present day are chiefly
remarkable for their variety. The responsibility of the
Master of the Buckhounds covered, as Mr. Hore says, a
wide field of action. Colonel Francis Negus had all sorts of
things to do besides looking after the hounds and hunt-
horses. He distributed King's Plates at race-meetings, fed
the wild turkeys in Bushey Park, and managed the royal
menagerie in Hyde Park, where the king's tiger accounted
for six pounds of boiled beef and mutton daily. Extracts
from other sources of information appal one by the number
of hunting and other accidents. Thus we have the Duke of
Grafton, at that time Lord Chamberlain, thrown into a mill-
race near Datchet and very nearly drowned ; and pages of
honour, hunt servants, ladies of the bedchamber, physicians,
and gentlemen and gentlewomen of all sorts and condi-
tions are always coming to grief and having to be bled. One
day a stableman was riding an over-fresh horse which
took fright at a swan which flew out at it from the canal
in Bushey Park. The horse ran away, impaled itself on
some iron spikes, and had to be destroyed. Lady Suffolk
said it was lucky the man was not hurt, on which the
king snapped her up very short. ' Yes, I am very luck}',
truly ; pray where is the luck? I have lost a good horse,
and I have got a booby of a groom still to keep.' Lord
Hervey instances this as an example of George II. 's rudeness
and want of feeling, but even kings are human.

On one occasion, Sir Robert Walpole 's horse fell just in

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 27

front of Queen Caroline's chaise ; it was on August 14, a hot
and dusty day, not the time of year one would choose either
for hunting or for falling on a hard road. Sir Robert
was not hurt, and soon remounted. The Queen, however,
' ordered him to be bled by way of prevention.' Sir Robert
was Ranger of Richmond Park, and hunted a good deal
with the Buckhounds in a green suit, sometimes, Mr. Hore
tells us, officiating as Field Master. No doubt he did
it capitally. The best of hacks will fall, but possibly Sir
Robert did not ride very well-bred ones, as Horace Walpole
used to relate that his father rode two horses to a standstill
between London and Richmond Lodge, on the afternoon of
June 14, 1727, when he galloped down to tell the Prince of
Wales that his father had died on his way to Hanover.
Perhaps they were Norfolk hackneys.

New terrors were added to hunting at this time by the
number of highwaymen who infested the neighbourhood
of London. Thus, when Lord Tankerville, Master of the
Buckhounds in 1733, sets out from London in June to
make arrangements for the hunting season, he takes with
him ' a guard of retainers and troops.' Little else is recorded
of his Lordship's Mastership, but Sir R. Walpole had a good
opinion of Lady Tankerville, and recommended her for the
discharge of delicate duties. When in later years he ad-
vised the Queen to choose the king a mistress, rather than
let him choose one for himself, as he was bound to have
one, Sir Robert proposed Lady Tankerville as a decent and
obliging sort of woman in preference to Lady Deloraine, who
had two dangerous things, a weak head and a pretty face.

Mr. Ralph Jenison, M.P., appointed Master in 1737 and
again in 1746, is the last commoner who has filled the
office. As far as I know, Mr. Jenison was the only Master of
the Buckhounds who was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The picture is in the possession of Mr. Adair, who succeeded

28 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

to it from Lord Waveney. It is a curious thing how few
people Sir Joshua Reynolds painted in hunting or even in
riding dress. I only remember one lady, a most distinguished
and admirable picture of Lady Charles Spencer, in a scarlet
habit, deerskin riding-gloves, with — it must be admitted —

New Teekoks were added by the Highwaymen

a shocking grey horse. This picture is now at Ferrieres. Of
course there must be several others, at all events of men. At
the same time Sir J. Reynolds did not look to dress for the
breath of life as much as Velasquez and Gainsborough did.
He is rather too prone to robe, or rather garb his women,
and to pose them as saints or nymphs.1

But to get back to hunting : in 1735 the great crowds
which came out with the king's hounds led to arrangements
by which people could only hunt by ticket, which had to be

1 Dr. Johnson criticises this : ' I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to
heroes and to goddesses . . . that art which is now employed in diffusing
friendship, in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent,
and continuing the presence of the dead.'

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 29

signed by the Kanger of Windsor or his deputy. As the
Great Western, one of the motor muscles of the Queen's
Hounds, was not available in those days, Londoners could
hardly have got as far as Windsor ; but be that as it may,
the London merchants and tradesmen have been fond of
hunting from old time. A charter of Henry I. entitled the
citizens of London to hunt deer ' as freely as their ancestors
had done ' in the Chiltern Hundreds, Middlesex, or Surrey,
and the wolf in Middlesex and up to the northern gate of
the City. The Lord Mayor of London, who is still regarded
by many French newspapers and most French people as the
head of most of our institutions, including the House of
Lords, was the ex-omcio master of the ' Common hunt,' and
riding to it was an ancient and cherished civic right. But
an ' inundation ' of building, to quote a contemporary writer,
spoiled the Common hunt country in the reign of Elizabeth.
Deer were getting scarce, for the forest country was shrink-
ing away before the needs of population, and the fields
of Islington and St. Giles no longer witnessed the once
familiar spectacle of a hare or a stag pursued with due
solemnity by the sleek pack of some worshipful City com-
pany. With less hunting, gout, which was at this time
styled 'the enemy,' began to infest the well-to-do City men.
They soon became, like George Selwyn's friend, too ' able '
judges of a turtle. In his ' Pills to Purge Melancholy,'
D'Urfey makes fun — or what passes for fun in his estima-
tion— of the Common hunts, and describes the City notables
riding through Cheapside and Fenchurch Street with their
spurs put on upside down and their backswords across their
rumps. Arrived at the fixture the master gets to business :

My Lord, he takes a staff in hand to beat the bushes o'er,

I must confess it was a work he ne'er had done before ;

A creature bounceth from the bush, which made them all to laugh,

My Lord he cried, ' A hare ! a hare ! ' but it proved an Essex calf.

And so on and so on.

30 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

This is not quite fair ; as Mr. Hore tells us that the
Cornnion hunt, under the mastership of a Mr. Cuttenden,
was showing good sport in 1723. By this time, how-
ever, many members of the Common hunt hunted
with the Buckhounds, not perhaps at Windsor, but about
Bushey and Eichmond and Hampton Court, and Mr.
Hore pleasantly describes a celebrated hunting alderman,
Humphrey Parsons, twice Lord Mayor of London, and a
predecessor of Colonel Thornton, Mr. Chaworth Musters,
and ' Jacob Omnium ' in the forests of Chantilly and Fon-
tainebleau :

' Towards the end of the reign of George I., Humphrey
Parsons became very conspicuous through an incident which
took place when he was hunting with the staghounds of
Louis XV. in the forest of Fontainebleau, in the month of Sep-
tember, 1725. On this occasion we are told that Alderman
Parsons, "being mounted on a spirited English horse, contrary
to the etiquette of the French Court, outstripped the rest of
the field, and was first in at the death. The king enquiring
who the gentleman was, one of the adulatory attendants
indignantly answered that he was ' Un Chevalier de Malte.'
The king, however, entering into conversation with Alderman
Parsons, asked the price of his horse, upon which the Chevalier,
with true politeness, answered that it was beyond any price
otherwise than his Majesty's acceptance. The king could
not resist the acquisition of so perfect a hunter, even upon
such terms ; consequently, it was duly delivered at the royal
stables. As a quid pro quo, Louis XV. gave Alderman
Parsons — who was a famous brewer — an exclusive monopoly
of serving the French nation with his Extract of Malte,
yclept in the vernacular ' London Stout.' " ' '

Somerville, to whom the first Lord Fitzhardinge always

1 History of the Buckhounds, by J. P. Hore, ch. xii. pp. 264-5.

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 31

declared he owed all his knowledge of hunting, was himself
a master of the hounds. He wrote his poem ' The Chase ' in
George II. 's reign. It was still the age of elaborate similes,
and the poet seizes the opportunity of paying a tribute to the
king's military talents in a comparison of a level pack of
hounds to a body of troops :

As some brave captain, curious and exact,

By his fix'd standard forms in equal ranks

His gay battalion ; as one man they move,

Step after step ; their size the same, their arms,

Far gleaming, dart the same united blaze ;

Eeviewing generals his merit own.

How regular ! how just ! And all his cares

Are well repaid, if mighty Geokge approve.

So model thou thy pack, if honour touch

Thy generous soul, and the world's just applause.

But although he had his fixed hunting days, George II.
had very little complaisance for other people who wished
to go away from London for their hunting. Lord Hervey
tells us that when the king got back from Hanover
in November, 1735, nothing English suited him ; no Eng-
lish horses were fit to be ridden or driven ; no English
coachman could drive, no English jockey ride. The men,
he said, only talked of their dull politics, the women of
their ugly clothes. It is true that he had upset himself,
Lord Hervey adds, by travelling in ' a violent manner,
only for the pleasure of bragging how quick he moved,'
but on arriving in London he was annoyed at finding Sir
Robert Walpole gone off to Norfolk for his hunting ' congress,'
a thin Court, and a more or less empty town. This — Sir Robert
being away — he put up with rather crossly, as he said no
man worked harder than Sir Robert Walpole, and that his
mind wanted rest and his body exercise ; ' but he had no

1 Sir Eobert Walpole only took thirty days' holiday in the year, ten in
August and twenty in November, when he entertained a large hunting party at
Houghton.

32 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

patience with the Duke of Grafton, who also wanted to be
off fox-hunting. The king told him it was a pretty occupa-
tion for a man of quality and of his age to hunt a poor fox.
The duke said he did it for his health. Upon this, the
king asked him why he couldn't ride post for his health,
adding pertinently that, with his ' great corps of twent}*
stone weight,' no horse could carry him within hearing, much
less within sight, of his hounds.

This period marks the commencement of a radical change
which was gradually taking place in the relations between
town and rural society in England, and which could not but
have an important effect upon country sports. Hunting, and
especially fox-hunting, was now beginning to attract the
attention of the ancestors of the men who were later on to
inspire ' Nimrod's ' pen and Ferneley's and Aiken's pencil.
In the earlier years of the eighteenth century hunting was
the business of the smaller gentry and of the parsons, and
a rough, boisterous sort of affair. ' There he goes,' says
Diana Vernon of her cousin Thorncliffe Osbaldistone, ' the
prince of grooms, and cock-fighters, and blackguard horse-
coursers.' Here and there a great nobleman or consider-
able squire kept hounds, especially harriers.1 At Badminton
and Brocklesby and Berkeley, at Belvoir and Goodwood, a
pack of hounds was part of the apparatus of the estate which
went on from father to son. But it is doubtful whether
the sort of people who hunt most now hunted much then,
and it certainly was never the serious occupation of the
Court in England as it was in France. During the last two

1 ' I am very sorry,' writes Somerville to a friend, ' I must deny myself the
pleasure of your good company to-morrow. I was to-day with my Lord
Coventry's harriers, and I know Ball will not hold out two days together. I
meet them again on Thursday morning in Wilmcote Pasture, near Stratford ;
and should think myself very happy in your good company. I must be there
at six in the morning. It may be that a little variety may please you, and
induce you for once to condescend to hunt hare.' — Records of the Chase, p. 156.

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 33

reigns a king over the water gave the zest, not only of
self-interest but even of self-preservation, to the dreariest
routine of Court life. Great people hung about the Court
and kept themselves in evidence not perhaps so much on
account of what they might be able to say or to do for
themselves, but for fear of what others might say or do for
them. Besides, an immense number of places, not merely
of profit, but of influence under the Crown, were to be had,
which entailed little ability or trouble. There were no
Blue-books, no long speeches to read, no Press Associa-
tion or Reuter telegrams — no public affairs or interests to
keep in touch with. Politics were comparatively private
transactions. Both in this country and in France the
quick-witted, sharp-eared memoir- writers make us see that
politics were then largely carried on by intercourse often of
a gallant and agreeable kind, by conversation, and by the
repetition of conversations. More business was got through
in the corridors of St. James's or Kensington than in White-
hall. The Court backstairs teemed with better opportunities
for parliamentary preferment than the House of Commons.
The most powerful minister had often to square his accounts
with a lord of the bedchamber or an attractive maid of honour,
before he consulted his colleagues or gave the rein to his
statesmanship. William III. had never let the conduct of
foreign affairs out of his own hands. Up till the death of
Anne, the Court to a great extent qualified the Cabinet.
Anne presided with solemnity at her Cabinet. She kept up
all the prestige of the appearance of a governing monarchy.
But George I. and George II. were depressingly constitutional
sovereigns, and were very much aware of Parliament and of
the Whigs. George I. was preoccupied with the desire to leave
well alone and to live out of England as much as he could ;
George II., although he was always crowing loudly to the
contrary, was led by his wife, and his wife was guided by the

D

34 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Whig Ministers. The place-hunter, inured alike to asking
favours and to refusals, still flourished. He always will. But
times were changing, and a gold stick was beginning to mean
very little more than it looked.

London, and indeed town life generally, was very popular
in the earlier years of the century. On the other hand,
' mere ' was the adjective which seemed to belong of right
to country life and country folk. In October, 1705, Mr.
Pope writes to Mr. Wycherley from Bracknell of their
character in Berkshire. Mr. Pope is very much out of
humour with things in general, but ' methinks,' he says,
' these are most in the right who quietly and easily resign
themselves over the gentle reign of dulness.' Then he comes
to the hunting men of the district, ' a sort of modest, inof-
fensive people who neither have sense nor pretend to any, but
enjoy a jovial sort of dulness. They are commonly known in
the world by the name of honest, civil gentlemen. They live
much as they ride — at random — a kind of hunting life,
pursuing with earnestness and hazards something not worth
the catching.' Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son
abound in slighting references to these honest civil gentlemen.
Tested by his standard of breeding and propriety, he has the
least sympathy of ail with fox-hunters. A good-natured
fox-hunter, he says, may, of course, be ' intentionally civil,'
but at the best he can only mean well. Capitals, which he
likes extremely, are the only places to live in. There are
only three capitals — London, Eome, and Paris — and London
is the only possible one. The smaller men followed suit.
Thus Dr. Warner, George Selwyn's chaplain, happening to
arrive at Leicester in the race time, thinks it right to
lament the poor show made by the country squires. ' God
help them,' he says, 'with their triple bands and triple
buckles to keep in their no-brain,' and he is disgusted at
recognising a friend (Colonel Guise, of Highnam) with his hat

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 35

decked with this ' post-boy ornament.' No doubt he pretended
not to see him. In short, the doctor feels quite sick and sore
about them, especially when he hears ' a well fancied oath
from the mint of the metropolis ' robbed of all its ' grace '
by their vile pronunciation. ' Oh ! ' he cries, ' better is the
corner of a housetop than an habitation amongst such tents
of Kedar.' '

But about the middle of the eighteenth century a change
in habits began to operate. It was partly due perhaps to
AValpole's policy of proscription, and its political and social
effect upon the Tories, but anyhow a larger country life came
into fashion. The management of their estates, the breeding
of stock, drainage, planting, and reclamation, as against the
laying out of formal gardens and the posting of statuary,
began to interest people. Lord Chesterfield's letters to his
son, written with the object of making him a cunning and
accomplished man of the town-world — for he was not to hunt
like Wyndham, a Master of the Buckhounds, and only to eat,
not to kill game — resulted in the best picture of him being
the one in which he is talking over the points of a prize
heifer with his agent in a straw-yard. George III. would have
been delighted. ' For my part,' he said, when he read Lord
Chesterfield's letters, ' I like more straightforward work.'
The days of the country bumpkin who hunted all the
morning, and, to Lord Chesterfield's disgust, appeared in
the Pump-rooms at Bath in boots and spurs, a leather
cap and a deerskin waistcoat, were numbered. He was no
longer to be the interpreter of country life, and country life

1 Dr. Warner, like many parsons, knew what a hunter should be. It
was after the ' hard day's christening ' that he writes, over-full of claret, to his
patron about his travelling hackney : ' I was hunting yesterday on Bay Spavin,
who astonished me with the discovery of qualities I never knew he possessed ;
agile as a spaniel and resolute as a lion. He wants thrashing along the road,
but in the field, where I took him yesterday for the first time, he is all anima-
tion.'

d 2

36 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

was to take a new ply and tone from a very different type of
man.

Turnips and seeds and sheep-shearings began to occupy
the attention of great men. Towards the end of the century
Burke's letters, as Mr. Birrell tells us, thrill with passion on
these topics. Fox was never so happy as when in his fustian
coat and white beaver hat he leaned over the palings at
St. Ann's and talked to passers-by about the crops. Miss
Maria Holroyd, whose letters so brightly reflect the ways
of the political society in which she lived, writes of the
farming rides she is looking forward to with her father,
and Lord Sheffield himself, though detained in London by
his official duties, writes fidgety letters about drilling turnips
and taking advantage of the cooler weather and damp roads
to send the waggon oxen to Lewes. Lord Althorp came
later. But not the least of Lord Althorp's distinguished
services to his generation were those he rendered to the
management of grass lands and the breeding of sheep.
High farming began to occupy the fruitful leisure of poli-
ticians in those days. In these days it is golf, or theology,
or the unemploj'ed.

I imagine that in memoirs written say since 1884 the
term ' country party ' would be meaningless. ' Conmgsby '
and ' Sybil ' could not have been written without the country
party, but Mrs. Humphry Ward finds no place for them in her
admirable ' Sir George Tressady.' As far as political influ-
ence in the old sense of the term goes, the country gentlemen
might just as well colonise the Gordon Hotels as live amongst
their own people. Of late years neither party in the State
has had to lull the suspicions or coax the prejudices of the
' Civis agricola ' Montalembert admired so much. Except,
perhaps, in Ireland, where, as Lord John Kussell said, the
land is still the life, the heart of politics has shifted from
the country house to the streets.

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 37

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the fathers
of the gentlemen in top-boots, who in Mr. Reynolds' picture
are watching with gloomy dignity the last stage of the 183*2
Reform Bill in the House of Lords, were just beginning to
see where their real influence and interests lay. Even the
great revolution families whom power and office kept con-
stantly in London were always anxious to get away. Politics
and hunting entered together upon a new phase of their
existence. The former began to realise the country, the
latter to catch the tone and fashion and style of the town.
No doubt country life had always kept a strong hold of
the English character, and the Court was neither splendid
nor amusing. ' No lone house in "Wales with a mountain
and rookery is more contemplative than this Court,' writes
Mr. Pope. But such a keen observer as Lord Hervey, quite
as professed a lover of the town as Dr. Johnson or the Duke
of Queensberry, speaks despondingly of ' the rural epidemic '
madness which wTas becoming chronic.

I never came across any mention of the Master of the
Buckhounds either in Lord Hervey's 'Memoirs' or in
George Selwyn's letters. In the latter, however, there are
frequent allusions to hunting, and the following witty descrip-
tion of a weight-carrying pony for sale might have been
written yesterday. Writing to George Selwyn from Win-
chester, in April, 1767, Sir R. Smyth tells him that a Dr.
Thistlethwaite is dead and his horses are to be sold :

' Amongst them is a little bay gelding, about thirteen or
fourteen hands, with flaming full long tail, strong enough to
carry you, the mayor, and all the money you ever spent in
elections at Gloucester together. The Doctor, some forty-
eight stone, always shot off his back, and the keeper killed
all the deer from him. I mention this as a proof of his
sedateness. He goes fast enough to carry you close to fox-
hounds in full chase; but if your affairs do not require

38 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

so much attention a snail would distance hini. His figure
is such that if you were to meet a tailor on his back you
would pull off your hat to him, though you did not owe
him one shilling. I know twenty men of weight who want
him, but the weight of metal will have him.'

I remember a horse-dealer saying to me at one of our
periodical jingo high tides that a war would play the devil
with hunting — he meant horse-dealing. In 1734 the Buck-
hounds played a very honourable part in our history.
They helped to avert war. The affairs of Poland had led to
a general international complication. The usual suspicion
in this country was aroused as to the designs of France.
' I hate the French, and I hope as we shall beat the French,'
said Lord Grantham, and everybody agreed with him. There
were noisy appeals to national honour, and violent attacks
were directed against the Minister. George II. was full of
fight. His personal bravery was incontestable. He was
longing to put on the hat and coat he had worn with dis-
tinction at Oudenarde at something more stirring than the
public festivals at which they had hitherto appeared. Walpole
stuck firm to his policy of neutrality and inaction. But
Queen Caroline was inclining towards the war, and he wanted
to bring her into his way of thinking. Lord Hervey hated
standing armies with the holiest Whig hatred, and was
entirely in Sir K. Walpole's ' interest ' to boot. Luckily
he had exceptional opportunities not only of learning the
queen's sentiments, but of conveying to her his own and
Sir K. "Walpole's. Wednesdays and Saturdays were the
king's hunting da3's. The king, who had the manners of a
drill sergeant, always ordered the queen out, and she came
out in a chaise. As this is not a lively amusement for four
or five hours, she had undertaken to mount Lord Hervey the
whole season, who, although he gave some promise as a
jockey in his youth, tells us that he now loved hunting quite

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 39

as little as she did. By this arrangement he could ride
constantly by the side of the chaise and entertain her,
' whilst others were entertaining themselves with hearing
dogs bark and seeing crowds gallop.' The most and the
best were made of one or two slow dragging stag-hunts,
whilst Sir Robert was keeping the field in order, or enjoying
himself at the tail of hounds. But Lord Hervey puts it in
a modest way. 'The queen herself,' he says, 'was enough
prejudiced too on this side [war], till Sir Eobert Walpole
unwarped her from it, and made her see how much this
inclination jarred with her own interest.' This strange
Paul and Apollos planted and watered to good purpose.
' Madame,' Walpole was able to say to the queen one
morning in 1734, ' there are 50,000 men slain in Europe
this year and not one Englishman.' Surely that entitled
' le gros homme,' as the king called him, to laugh his heart's
laugh at coarse jokes and in coarse company. To call
spades spades, and take the world as he found it.

As far as I can make out, George I. and George II. con-
fined their hunting operations to the parks, but George III.
was a stag-hunter of a very different mettle. His sport is
conscientiously recorded by the ' Brooksby' of the day in the
' Sporting Magazine.' The scribe's style feels the century ; it
is elaborate and artificial. Still, in his own Court Newsman
sort of way he manages to tell us a good deal about the
stag-hunting. Here is his account of a run with a deer
called Compton : ' Lord Sandwich and his prime minister,
Johnson [the huntsman], on October 1, 1797, afforded such
a specimen of the superiority of stag-hunting as can scarcely
be found in the records of sporting history. Upon his
Majesty's arrival at Ascot Heath on the morning already men-
tioned, the deer Compton was liberated below the Obelisk,
and going off with the most determined courage and inex-
pressible speed, bid a seemiDg adieu to all competition. The

40

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

hounds were laid on with only five minutes' law, and the
scent laying well they went away, breast high, in a style
that "beggars all description" ; eight of the fleetest horses
only, out of at least a hundred, being enabled to lay any-
where by the side of them, till headed in absolute racing by
Johnson, the huntsman, assisted by Nottage and Gosden,
two of the yeoman prickers.

; They brought him to view at Black Nest ; here he
repeatedly endeavoured to leap the high paling of Windsor

Turning out the Deer for the Eoyal Hunt on Windsor Forest

Great Park, but without success, and the deer, hounds and
horsemen were all intermixed in one general scene of
confusion, when, by a most wonderful exertion, the deer
reached the park by the hawhaw through the shrubbery,
and plunging into the immense sheet of Virginia Water,
passed entirely through it. Here his Majesty entered
most energetically into the spirit of the chase, absolutely
assisted in getting the hounds forward, laying them on

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 41

where the deer left the water, and speaking to them in a
sporting-like style.'

His Majesty's hounds hunted from September 25 —
Holyrood Day — till the first Saturday in May. On Holy-
rood Day they at that time always met at Charity Farm.
Billingbear. Either harvests must have been earlier than
they are now, or this was all grass or forest country.
Tuesdays and Saturdays were the hunting days, and in
Christmas and Easter weeks they hunted alternate days.
Crowds of foot people used to come out these holidaj- weeks,
and we hear of their delight and amazement ' at the leaps of
unprecedented height and exhibitions of uncommon strength '
of an unnamed deer in and out of the back-gardens and
drying-grounds of Staines. Then, as now, a great many
people drove after the Buckhounds, the ' surrounding spot,'
as a contemporary scribe calls the turn-out, being embellished
and ' beautifully variegated ' with carriages containing ladies
of the first distinction. I dare say the lemon-yellow post-
chaises and the gay curricles and their smart cargoes looked
very nice ; and one day his Majesty was given an opportunity
of exhibiting in a ' striking and public manner ' his proper
solicitude for the ladies. It was in October, 1793, and the
ground was iron-hard. Prince Adolphus, a distinguished
stranger, was out. The deer ran indifferently, and the hard
ground lamed half the horses. A Mr. Griffin "Wilson, how-
ever, drove his lady in a phaeton after the hounds in so daring
a fashion that the king, who was a little out of humour,
asked hirn whether he thought he had driven fairly or not.
Mr. Wilson seems to have had nothing to say in reply to so
pointed a question, whereon the king proceeded to say that
whatever right a gentleman had to his own neck, he had
none to hazard a lady's. This improving of the occasion
met, we are told, with very general approval.

The ladies, howTever, were not always out in carriages.

42 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu apologises to Lady Mar for
having neglected her correspondence by saying she has not a
moment unemployed now she is at Twickenham. ' I pass
many hours on horseback, and, I'll assure you, ride stag-
hunting, which I know you'll stare to hear of. I have
arrived at vast courage and skill in that way, and I am well
pleased with it as with the acquisition of a new sense.'
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was at this time in her sixty-
fourth year, and was enjoying the service and companion-
ship of a really nice horse. ' I have got a horse,' she writes
to Lady Mar, ' superior to any two-legged animal, he being
without a fault.' I dare say her friends wished she had not
taken to hunting. ' Her narratives,' Horace Walpole writes
to somebody, ' become incomparably tedious.'

Now for the young ladies. Mr. Pope, as we have seen,
tells Miss Martha Blunt how he meets the Prince of Wales,
with all the maids of honour on horseback coming back
tired and hot from hunting. These ladies can hardly have
done themselves justice on the hired hacks provided for
them. But the 'Sporting Magazine' speaks of Lady Lade
and Lady Shuldham as always being well up. Lady Lade,
who had started in life as a cook, after a good run in
October, 1796, is declared to be the first horsewoman in
the kingdom. In the picture at Cumberland Lodge she is in
a lightish blue habit. The conspicuous horse is a bay brown
against a very real Windsor background. It is a charming
painting and the landscape is in Stubbs's best manner.1 On

1 This picture must have been a commission of the Prince of Wales — for
we hear of her attracting the Prince's admiration out hunting at Windsor.
Lady Lade was also greatly noticed at the execution of Sixteen- String Jack, a
notorious and popular highwayman, who was hanged at Tyburn. He was re-
markable for the originality of his dress, and for wearing a bunch of sixteen
strings at the knees of his breeches. Neither she nor Sir John Lade can have
been to the king's liking. Lady Lade was also painted by Sir Joshua Eeynolds
in a big hat. She looks very pretty and demure in this picture. Blue habits faced
and turned up with red, and white beaver hats with blackfeathers, were the regu-
lation for the queen, princesses and ladies of the Court in 1779.

.-

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING

43

another occasion when the Buckhounds met at the Blackbirds
on Waltham Common, we hear of. a young lady displaying
; a specimen of agility in following the hounds through the
enclosures as would have surprised Lady Salisbury herself ' —
T suppose the same Lady Salisbury who wrote upon archery
in the first number of the ' Sporting Magazine,' and who
hunted her own harriers. She was burned to death at her
writing table.

The accomplished Sportswoman

George III. was ' critically exact to time.' At eleven
o'clock he used to ride up on his hackney, accompanied by
the master of the horse, his equerries and retainers, and any
distinguished guests or strangers. His favourite hunters
were Hobby and Perfection. The hounds were twenty-four
to twenty-six inches, lemon pyes and black and white, with
big ears, and could run for half an hour, giving tongue like
Big Ben, but they never could have driven like the present
foxhound pack. They were always being stopped to let his

44 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Majesty get up, which is not surprising, as he rode nineteen
stone ; but if the accounts of their runs are to be trusted,
they seem to have dragged over great tracts of country.
The story of George III. driving home to Windsor in a
butcher's cart, after a quick run to Aldermaston, miles
beyond Heading, is well known. On that occasion he sur-
prised the butcher by his wise converse on beef and mutton.
George III. wore a light blue coat with black velvet cuffs,
and top-boots buckled up behind. An old workhouse dame
told the ' Druid ' how she had once seen the deer taken near
Leatherhead ; years had created a confusion in her mind
between the gay dress of the huntsman and servants and
the simple insignia of the king. ' His Majesty wore a scarlet
coat and jockey cap, with gold all about ; he had a star on
his heart, and we all fell on our knees.' She was probably
right about the cap. They came into fashion in 1786, when
George III. discarded his three-cornered hat. The old
Duke of Grafton, Lord Grenville and Lord Pembroke had
always worn caps, and they now became general out of
compliment to the king. The six yeoman prickers wore the
scarlet and gold braid coats as they do now. The Master
wore the same gold couples and belt he wears to-day, and
I suppose scarlet ; but in a coloured engraving of the pic-
ture by Sir J. Keynolds of Mr. Jenison, the coat is green and
faced with red, and more like the ' venerie ' coat of the Second
Empire, which I believe was an exact revival of the Louis XV-
hunt coat, except that the Bourbon coat was blue and the
Empire green.

This is what happened after the deer had been safely
taken : it is all much the same as now.

' The horns now repeat the musical prelude of the
morning. This ceremony continuing a few minutes for
the purpose of demonstrating to the hounds that they
have obtained a victory, they are drawn off, and the deer

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 45

conducted to the first farmhouse or receptacle of safety,
from whence he is removed on the following day to the
paddocks at Swinley Lodge, before described. The time
and place of meeting for a future day being adjusted before
the departure of his Majesty with his attendants, he gene-
rally proceeds to the nearest town where a post conveyance
can be procured, and returns instantly to Windsor ; and
most frequently without taking the least refreshment, what-
ever may be the distance or the length of the chase.
Instances have occurred when his Majesty had not reached
the castle till eight or nine in the evening, at the dreariest
season.'

George III. rode to a pilot. On one occasion they came
to a place which the king did not quite fancy. He hung a
little. ' John has gone over, your Majesty,' said one of the
equerries, hoping no doubt that a hole might be made for
him. ' Then you may go after him,' said the king, and
jogged off to find a nicer place. But the king's personal
attendants do not appear to have been great thrusters.
Very possibly they were indifferently mounted ; but Colonel
Gwyn, one of the equerries, who married Goldsmith's and
Hoppner's Jessamy Bride, was a brilliant exception, and we
hear of his going so well in a good run (October 24, 1797),
that he is complimented upon displaying when out hunting
' more of the genuine unadulterated sportsman than the
effeminate courtier.' Moonshine, Starlight, Compton, and
Highflyer were great Georgian stags. The two former earned
their names from so often running them out of daylight.
Moonshine ran for seven — some say for nine seasons. The
deer were established in the same five paddocks at Swinley
as the deer of to-day, their housekeeping being conducted
' in a style of invigorating luxuriance.' George III. acquired
the freehold of the present paddocks of Swinlej- in 1782.

46

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

I happened to re-read the ' Four Georges ' just as we
began forest hunting in 1892 — my first season as Master —
and Mr. Thackeray shall tell, in his own beautiful English,
the sadness of the last few years of our stag-hunting king's
life. ' He was not only sightless, he became utterly deaf. All
light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures
of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight
lucid moments he had ; in one of which, the queen desiring

F

a ^Bk Jp

CZ~

fy -'SEl r: r

m mig^mm

•«j

WfctpsT--

m0mm^r^-:

Moonshine, a celebrated Deer, frequently Hunted by
His Majesty George III.

to see him, entered the room and found him singing a hymn,
and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he
had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and
then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with
a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his
heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation
to submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again
fled.'

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 47

The blue hunting coat had to be folded away. The
early farming rides, the punctual hunting mornings, the
kennels, the deer paddocks, the hunter-stabling passed away
for ever out of his life. If he had a careful and affectionate
valet, I dare say the queer old top-boots were put into grease
against his getting better and wanting them. If not, I
suppose that, like their master, they just perished away.

48 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTER II

THE NEW SCHOOL

The good of other times let others state,
I think it lucky I was born so late

In 1813 the historic Charlton hunt was broken up. The
Regent acquired the Goodwood hounds by gift from the
fourth Duke of Richmond, and Charles Davis went to the
Ascot kennels as first whipper-in under Sharpe, his future
father-in-law.

Mr. Mellish, Master of the Epping Forest Hounds, had
been robbed and murdered one evening on his way home
after hunting with the King's hounds and dining at the Bush
in Staines ; and from this time a couple of boys on horse-
back used to be sent out with the Buckhounds whenever
George III. hunted. Each boy carried a brace of horse
pistols, which at the end of the day they handed to the yeo-
men prickers who rode home alongside of the king. Accord-
ing to the 'Druid,' Charles Davis started as one of these boys.
The ' Druid ' in his own line, and within the very differing
limits of his opportunities, was as felicitous a compiler of
hearsay as Boswell. Take, for instance, his drive with Dick
Christian in 'Silk and Scarlet.' He gives to everything he
hears from others a visible flash of life and character which
makes it, as it were, fasten upon the eye as you read. Some-
times, perhaps, he relates what he would have liked to
hear in addition to what he heard. When his admirers
gave him a dinner in 1859, Charles Davis himself told them

THE NEW SCHOOL 49

circumstantially about this ' unfortunate gentleman's ' fate,
and how from that time on, two yeomen prickers with pistols
always accompanied George III.'s carriage back to Windsor.
But as he gives no colour to this being a personal remi-
niscence, I must reject with regret a legend which it would
have pleased me to preserve.

The arrival of the Goodwood Hounds at Ascot started a
new period in stag-hunting. From this time stag-hunting
of the present day may be said to date. The old order
changed in many ways. Up till the end of the century the
Royal yeomen prickers all carried French horns, which we
may be sure they wound pretty frequently, and a great
musicianing went on when the deer was first uncarted,
' an awfully impressive prelude,' says our chronicler. ' We
comfort our hounds with loud and couragious cryes and
noises both of voyce and hound,' writes a stag-hunter of 300
years ago. Even now stag-hunting is apt to be rather a
noisy proceeding. Lord Chesterfield presented Frederick,
Prince of Wales with a black boy named Cato,1 who in-
structed the gentlemen of his household in blowing the
French horn and the various calls and signals of musical
venery. Africans were as honourably associated with the
horn in those days as the French with cooking in ours.
The celebrated ' Hellgate ' Lord Barrymore kept four
Africans in scarlet and silver on the staff of his Louis XV.
hunting retinue ; and I have a little picture at home of
a fashionable early eighteenth-century concerto, with two
Africans in the background making the utmost of their
opportunities.

A sustained chorus of horns and vociferous hounds
greeted the arrival of his Majesty at the meet, sped the

1 Cato was the great maestro of his day. Sir Walter Gilbey has a picture
by Wootton in which Cato in a turban and aigrette appears with his horn.
Vide Hore, Hist, of the Royal Buckhounds, p. 322.

50 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

deer upon his way when first uncarted, and enlivened all
concerned when he was taken. One way and another, says
the sporting magazine of the day, a meet of the Eoyal hounds
graced by ' the condescending affability and kindness of the
Sovereign to the loyal subjects who love and surround him,
may be candidly considered a repast too rich, a treat too
luxurious, for a meeting at the side of a fox-hunting covert
to be brought into a successful competition with.' But these
ceremonies were now dispensed with, and the term ' yeoman
pricker ' gradually fell into disuse. Only the huntsman now
carried a horn of the present bugle shape, and a fast fox-
hound pack cram-full of the stout Goodwood and Egremont
blood — Jaspers and Dromos, Ledgers and Jumpers — took
the place of the old Magpies and were entered to deer. ' It
delights me,' George IV. writes to the ' gentleman hunts-
man,' as he always called Davis when, on Sharpe's retirement
in 1822, he was appointed to that post, ' to know you have
got the hounds. I hope you will get them so fast that
they will run away from everybody.'

The purport of his son's good wishes on Davis's appoint-
ment would have made George III.'s flesh creep. But
George IV. 's hunting notions and sympathies, even during
his father's lifetime, were so entirely with the new school of
stag-hunting that I have purposely made no mention of him
in the chapter I have devoted to the Georgian period ; this
seems to be the right place to do so.

On New Year's Day, 1828, Davis notes in his diary that
Dom Miguel of Portugal hunted an untried Windsor havier
from Salt Hill. The Dom was attended by a distinguished
company, including the Duke of "Wellington, Lord Mary-
borough, who was Master of the Buckhounds at the time,
and Lords Mount Charles and Albert Conyngham. The
king himself had made very proper preparations to accom-
pany this grandee out hunting, although he did not actually

THE NEW SCHOOL 51

grace the proceedings with his presence. When George IV.'s
wardrobe was sold after his death, everybody was sur-
prised at its variety and profusion. It was the history of
dress for the last fifty years in this country, and an
edition de luxe of the orders and Court costumes of every
Court in Europe. Whips and canes alone amounted to
several hundreds, and Mr. Greville, who was on most
confidential terms with the king's valet Batchelor, especially
notices a dozen brand-new pairs of corduroy riding
breeches which he had ordered to hunt in with Dom Miguel.
It was said that the time Louis XV. devoted to elaborating
statistics and returns of his stables and kennels would have
sufficed to post him up in the interior economy of his army ;
and George IY. appears to have spared himself as little when
clothes were concerned. Baron Gronow tells us in his
Memoirs of the hours of meditative agony which the Prince
of Wales dedicated to the fashions of the day, and up to the
last, as his pages lamented, he had a very wicked memory
for clothes, and often upset them by asking to look at a
coat which neither he nor they had seen for years. At the
time of Dom Miguel's visit, however, he had become
much too heavy to think of hunting ; indeed, owing to his
great weight and swelled legs, he had not hunted for a long
time ; so the order can only have been given from a sense of
the eternal fitness of things, and by way of a tribute to the
days when he lived at Kempshot and rode his dear Curricle,1

1 ' Curricle,' according to the inscription on the back of the picture from
which the illustration is taken, was a brown horse ' got by Trentham out of
a sister to Gay, and was bred by the third Duke of Eichmond as a racehorse ; he
was considered remarkably speedy, but neither slow in carrying weight nor run-
ning a distance. As a hunter, however, he possessed all the three rare qualities
quite to perfection.' Stejmen Goodall, the heaviest servant to hounds in the
kingdom, rode Curricle for many years. He was bought at a very high figure
for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Prince ever after declaring that
Curricle was not only the finest but the best horse he ever saw, and that the
best runs he ever witnessed were from the back of his ' dear Curricle.'

e 2

52 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

and when his name stood at the head of the list of the Hamp-
shire Hunt.

George IV. — then Prince of Wales— lived at Kempshot
from 1788 to 1795, 1 and he had a pack of staghounds which
were hunted by George Sharpe, who afterwards wTent to
Ascot as huntsman, and whose daughter Charles Davis
married. The stables at Kempshot were full of high-priced
horses, but the stable management was bad and they never
looked well. The Prince was already very gouty, and a
stout, strong woman named. Nancy Stevens acted as his
nurse, and always helped him in and out of his bath.
Whilst he lived at Kempshot he hunted regularly, and a
little from the Grange and Crichel, where he lived when
he left Kempshot. It was whilst he was living at Crichel
that he rode home one day with a Rev. William Butler,
whom he cross-examined upon the drinking capacities of
various esteemed boon companions in the neighbourhood.
He asked the reverend gentleman whether it was true that
a certain gentleman was in the habit of drinking three bottles
a night. Mr. Butler had no accurate information, but was
inclined to give no credit to the story, adding that he would
be ' as drunk as a prince.' When the Prince got home he told
the story against himself, but he did not quite like it at the time.
Many years afterwards Mr. Butler attended a levee, and the
Regent was heard to mutter : ' The Rev. William Butler ; I
sha'n't forget the Rev. William Butler.' Shortly afterwards he
presented him with a fat Crown living. Once, when Mrs.
FitzHerbert was staying at Kempshot, there was a great
lawn meet and breakfast. Lady Jersey and Lady Conyngham
followed the hounds on horseback ; but Charles James Fox
— who once rode post part of the way to Newmarket on
the wheeler behind the Prince of Wales on the leader, with
the postillions inside — though booted and spurred, was so

1 Sporting Reminiscences of Hampshire, by ' A5sop ' (F. Heysham, Esq.)

X

THE NEW SCHOOL 53

gouty that particular morning, that he could neither ride nor
walk. In 1793 the Prince of Wales gave up his staghounds,
and Mr. Poyntz of Midgham, who only gave 81. for his unfor-
tunate hunt-servants' horses, but always drove up to the
meet with four horses and postillions, took over the direction
of his hounds and turned them into foxhounds.

At this time, and indeed for many years later, George IV.
never seemed tired of trying hacks and hunters ; nor could
he resist an invitation from Milton — the great horse-dealer
of the day— or anybody else to give the company at Carlton
House or the Pavilion a show. By all accounts he rode a
hack well, his seat being so easy that it is said never to
have soiled or ruffled his tight nankeen pantaloons ; and
his favourite hacks Tiger and Tobacco Stopper carried him to
perfection. Tiger was light below the knee, and he was
told he should give up riding him. He refused, saying,
' Tiger disdains to fall down.'

In 1786 Wraxall tells us that the Prince of Wales was
in the full bloom of his looks and accomplishments, and that
he led the way in every sort of fashionable pleasure and
sport. There is a picture of him by Hoppner at Hertford
House which fully bears out Wraxall as to the distinction
of his good looks and the mantling bloom of his complexion ;
a lovely kitcat of poor Mrs. Robinson (Perdita) hangs in the
same room. He is in a blue coat with a star, and wears his
own wavy hair. The pose is instinct with the ' fascinating
ease ' Lady Jerningham admired so much. Even in those
Florizel days he was under the ascendency of his uncle
Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, whom he grew to dislike so
much in later years. The Duke of Cumberland did all he
could to widen the breach between father and son and
to consolidate a Carlton House party. According to Lord
Hervey, Walpole pursued the same tactics with George II.
and Frederick Prince of Wales ; but, whereas Walpole did

54 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

his utmost to prevent them meeting in the peace-making
circumstances of hunting, the Duke of Cumberland and
the Prince of Wales were often out on the king's hunting
days, not, however, to amuse themselves, but to annoy him.
Neither of them ever spoke to him, and they made fun of his
slow ways, slower horses, and homely clothes.

About this time the Due de Chartres (afterwards Philippe
Egalite) and several French gentlemen of high degree
came over frequently and hunted and made love in this
country. It was a period of Anglomania in France, and the
Due de Chartres took all his men out of the Louis XV.
liveries and jack-boots, and put them into long skirted
scarlets, top-boots and hunting caps.1 There was a con-
stant interchange of hunting civilities between the great
hunting folk on either side of the Channel. The Marquis
d'Argenson arranged with the Duke of Grafton for long
hunting visits, and actually built kennels at Les Ormes
— these arrangements, which earned the difficult approval
of Arthur Young, being interrupted by the Revolution.
Mr. Meynell got so tired of the visitors out hunting that
upon one occasion he was heard to say that he wished we
were comfortably at war again.

Horses of all kinds, even during his last illness, were
always in George IV.'s thoughts, and he saw most of Rat-
ford, his stud-groom, who came to him on the Duke of
Queensberry's (' Old Q.') death. There was no lack of con-
stancy wherever they were concerned. In the middle of a
great State function he turned to Mr. Greville, who was taking
an official part in the proceedings, with a ' Which do you
fancy — the horse or the mare ? ' in an audible aside, and

1 When the Due de Chartres first came over in 1783, Lady Clermont arranged
a great dinner for him. According to Horace Walpole, he came dirty and in a
' frock ' with metal buttons enamelled over with hounds and horses. Sir Joshua
Reynolds painted him the same year, being commissioned to do so by the Prince
of Wales. The picture was burned in the fire at Carlton House.

THE NEW SCHOOL 55

excused himself laughingly afterwards to the Duke of
Wellington by saying it was ' a little bit of Newmarket.'
But with his racing career and its vicissitudes, with his
debts and his indiscretions, with the sincerity of his selfish-
ness and the half-heartedness of his attachments and his
friendships, these pages have no concern. For all these
things, and more also, he has been apostrophised and trounced
by Mr. Thackeray with an energy which, to my mind,
damages the literary and critical perfection of the last of
the ' Four Georges.' Considering, too, that Mr. Thackeray
felt him to be a dressed-up sawdust marionette, it seemed
hardly worth his pains. Many of the foibles to which his
critic brings a cudgel would have been better chastened
with a riding whip. Let us remember that a very charming
woman dignified him by her disinterested and abiding affec-
tion, and that the Duke of Wellington, who had the meanest
opinion of his judgment and found him a difficult man to do
business with, declared him to be very clever and amusing.

At all events, stag-hunters of the first fifty years of this
century owe much to George IV. He brought Charles Davis
to Ascot : he insisted upon a fast foxhound pack. In Charles
Davis, as we shall presently see, he promoted the right man
to form and educate a new school of stag-hunters.

The king can certainly have seen little of the hounds
in the field after Davis's appointment ; but I dare say he
saw them now and again in kennel. He told a Newmarket
trainer one day at Ascot that he was very happy with his
hounds and his Virginia Water. He used to drive himself
about the Park and Ascot and Swinley. There is a picture of
him in Huish's Memoir, driving away from the Sandpit gate,
where he had a menagerie of the better-disposed wild animals.
He is in his pony phaeton, sitting well up in a tight * double-

1 Mr. Cobclen, whose family have been established in Windsor as tailors to
the Crown since the reign of George III., tells me that his grandfather used to

56 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

breasted coat, white duck strapped overalls, and a white
beaver hat. A yeoman pricker acts as outrider on a natty
bob-tailed horse with a lash to his whip, and two grooms,
dressed much as the Eoyal procession grooms are dressed
now, are riding behind. None of the party carry their whips
quite right ; and George IV. the worst of all, out like a fishing
rod : but this must be the artist's and not his friend Sir
John Lade's ' fault, who had taught him to drive in their
palmy days. But to return to the hounds. George Bartlett,
Davis's feeder, tells me that George IV. liked a light-coloured
hound, and wished Davis to stick to the Goodwood lemon-
pye, which for some few years after they came to Ascot
distinguished the Eoj'al pack, a notable lemon-pye named
Minos being a great favourite of his. ' But,' says Bartlett,
' Davis liked a good tan, and wouldn't have them ' ; and
Davis was the sort of man who got . his way. I am sorry
myself the lemon-pye has been lost. I like an odd colour
in hound or horse ; it gives character. Moreover, neither
Davis nor King was very successful as regards colour.

go up to the Castle every evening to see to the buttons and button-holes of the
clothes the king had worn; some of which were certain to have started from
the tightness George IV. insisted upon.

1 The Lades (or Ladds) were a remarkable pair of people. Lady Lade I
have already spoken of. Sir John was Mr. Thrale's ward, and his extravagance
prompted Dr. Johnson to write a poem on his coming of age. When Dr.
Johnson lay dying he repeated this poem with great spirit to Mr. Windham,
saying he had never repeated it but once before, and had only given one copy
of it away to Mrs. Thrale. There are several four-line stanzas full of zest and
point. Two must suffice here :

' Loosened from the minor's tether,
Free to mortgage or to sell,
Wild as wind and light as feather,
Bid the sons of thrift farewell.

' Call the Betsys, Kates, and Jennies,

All the names that banish care ;
Lavish of your grandsire's guineas,
Shew the spirit of an heir.'

THE NEW SCHOOL 57

When Goodall took over the pack in 1872, the ' good tan '
was conspicuous by its absence. 'I found them,' Frank
Goodall writes to rne, ' bad colours, mostly black and
white.'

Davis's diaries and manuscript books are very well kept,
but the comments are lamentably few, and he confines him-
self generally to the bare facts of the day — where they met,
how long they ran, the expenses, and so on. But on May 2,
1829, Davis enters in his diary — it is almost the only entry
where he commits himself to an observation : ' Turned out
an elk at Swinley ; he wobbled away — I could not call it
running — for half an horn-, and I took him at Bagshot. The
hounds would not hunt him.' The elk was to have been
fatted for his Majesty, but he was ultimately sent to the
Zoological Gardens. I suppose he came from the menagerie.
As far as I know, this is the last record of George IV. 's
direct intervention in the affairs of the Buckhounds, and not
a very proper one.

Very few words will suffice for William IV. As a boy
he hunted when ashore, and I have no doubt rode with the
dash of a seaman and the undeniable courage of his race.
But I have only been able to trace one circumstantial occa-
sion to his credit as a stag-hunter. In 1791, the French
Kevolution being at its height, Kempshot was crammed
with French emigres of distinction ; and ' iEsop ' relates
how a stag-hunt was got up by the Prince of Wales for
their amusement ; post horses being hired from Hartford
Bridge to help out the Boyal stables and mount them.
William IV. was at that time a middy at Portsmouth
and came out on a pony ; but he got into a deep ditch
early in the day's proceedings. This hunt nearly drove Sharpe
mad owing to the crowd, the confusion, and the horns of
the excited visitors, which they had stuck to in spite of the

58 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

French Eevolution and the hurry of their departure from
France.

After William IV.'s death, the Hampton Court stud,
which, contrary to expectation, he had kept up well, was
broken up in spite of a memorial from the Jockey Club and
remonstrances in both Houses of Parliament. The year-
lings made very poor prices, and looked wretched owing to
a visitation of influenza — the crack Wings having gone
blind from the illness, and only making 46 guineas. Three
high-caste Arabian mares covered by a thoroughbred sire
headed the list ; they made 50, 150, and 105 guineas respec-
tively. A black Arabian stallion made 580 guineas, being
bought by the German Government ; and a bay Arabian,
450 guineas, by the French. But Turks and Arabians were
by this time going steadily out of repute. Eastern blood
seemed to have done all it could for us : its direct influence,
indeed, was held to be against a horse, and in 1782 the
Jockey Club, in the conditions of the new Cumberland
Stakes, gave the immediate produce of an Arabian an
allowance of 3 lbs.

I have now brought up the historical part of this book
to the accession of our present gracious Queen. As the
Adam Smith of stag-hunting economics, Charles Davis must
have a separate chapter to himself.

59

CHAPTER III

CHARLES DAVIS

Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam.

Charles Davis was born at Windsor in January 1788.
His good looks gave him his start. It is true that his father
hunted the King's harriers,1 and that in any event he would
probably have entered the Royal service in some capacity or
other. But this is Dr. Croft's account of the beginnings of
his conspicuous career, as related to him by a very old
inhabitant of Bracknell (since deceased), who knew all the
circumstances. I give it in his own words : ' Young Davis
had been to school at Windsor or Eton, and on returning
home one day, went into the cloisters at the Castle, where
he was met by the King. Davis was a slim, good-looking
lad, and the King took a fancy to him, spoke to him, asked
him what he might be going to do, &c. Davis could not
say what he was going to do. The King asked him if he
would like to go hunting. Davis's father was at this time
huntsman to the King's harriers, but the King did not know
that he was talking to his huntsman's son. The boy said he
should like to go hunting very much. The King asked him

1 In Davis's diary several mentions of hare-hunting occur, but they are
casual and uninteresting. On May 14, 1832, Davis notes that the Duke of
Brunswick and his suite hunted with the harriers in Windsor Great Park. Con-
sidering the time of year, and seeing that they turned out three box hares and
killed them, it is strange to find him noting it as a good day's sport.

60 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

what his father was. In this way it came about that he
was made whip under his father.'

So it was settled, and hunting became Charles Davis's
profession when he was about twelve years old. But I
think he went on with his schooling. His feeder, George
Bartlett, who still lives at Ascot, and whose memory is
excellent, tells me that George III. gave Lira 1/. a week and
sent him to a school at ^Windsor, which probably means
that the king arranged that he should stay on at school
for a little longer, before going into service at the harrier
kennels. ' Stoody, stoody, stoody, always stoodying at thy
books. Take, I say, my advice, sir, and stoody fox-hunting,'
said Luke Freeman — Lord Egremont's kennel huntsman
and a great character — to one of his master's sons, the
course of whose education interfered periodically with
his hunting soon after Christmas. Doubtless the young
' sir ' would have been only too pleased to have done
so. An open Januar}- is a sweet and bitter month to
many a schoolboy. But Davis, in spite of such an early
apprenticeship to business, must have found time for his
books as well as for his hunting. A few letters of his which
I have seen are certainly the letters of a man of education.
They are written in a graceful, early Victorian hand, the
sentences have originality and turn and precision, proper
words fall into their proper places, and there are no mis-
takes in spelling.1

The following is quite as good an example of his
style as anything I have seen. It is in reply to Sir John
Halkett's complaint that his hounds broke away directly they

1 His biographer in ' Baily ' tells us that he had a great liking for reading
and that Charles Kingsley and Whyte Melville were favourites. Mr. Bowen
May tells me that he remembers Lord Dufferin giving Davis Letters from
High Latitudes, and that Davis had told him he had enjoyed reading it very
much.

<&]

e •. MilOUS MEETS ©F riir

*©,

%

t84i, for the Proprietor of the Sporting Review Br I. Mitcheli, 33 Old Bono Street

62 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

saw the deer van. Davis underlines heavily all the words
printed in italics.

' Ascot Heath :
' December 12, 1839.

' Sir, — I am delighted to hear of your good sport, but
am exceedingly grieved at your information respecting the
Hounds breaking away : I always profess candour, and must
therefore give my opinion thus. I realty believe there is
no cure for your grievance ; it probably might have been
■prevented, the method of which cannot be put on paper, as
it consists of a thorough knowledge of the temper, disposi-
tion, &c. &c. of each Hound — to so great a degree as to know
what each intends to do, before putting their vice in prac-
tice— and at such times, speak not harshly, but kindly,
and even your countenance must bear the impress of
friendship.

' Correction I do not advocate, and it is equally wrong to
say I never suffer the whip to be used — but certainly not
when you are taking them to the meet ; for by causing one
Hound to cry out, the others would be off, " gadding o'er the
plain." I am sorry to hold out no encouragement, but it "is
only an opinion after all. Hounds are sagacious beyond
the belief of many, and man must use his own intellect, and
learning too, to deceive them ; therefore you must not try
deception with them, but treat them with the greatest confi-
dence, and make them know you are beholden to them, not
vice versa. For instance, yonder is a cluster of people ;
they, the Hounds, know that the Deer is gone from that spot.
You must beg of them to go there quietly, not say " You
shall do so." If you saw me trot up to the spot, I must
assure you it was an exception to my general way ; for
I creep as quietly and as slow as possible. Yesterday I
did so, and stood some time within five yards of where the
Deer left the cart. I never heard of any pack doing this but

CHARLES DAVIS 63

this one. Lord Derby's used to fly away in all directions;
the Eoyal Hounds in the olden times did so too.'

There is always a natural and comfortable tendency,
when a personality like Davis's is concerned, to take refuge
in general terms. He was a perfect specimen of a royal
servant : a thorough gentleman ; a miracle in the saddle ;
an example everywhere else, and so on.

But as the present case is worthy of something more
than mere generalities, I am indebted to many hunting men
for personal recollections of Charles Davis— things they saw,
things they knew ; things they noticed and drew deductions
from, and which had impressed themselves in colours, as
it were, on the magic-lantern slides of memory.1

I shall first give extracts from Dr. Croft's and Mr.
Cordery's letters in their own words. Both these gentlemen
are excellent judges of hunting and of hounds ; they are
both Berkshire men ; famous riders in their day, and were
cradled, as it were, in the wildest and roughest part of the
Queen's country, the forest and heathlands and the intricate
Bracknell country. Writing to me from Bracknell, Novem-
ber 1895, Dr. Croft, in the letter already quoted, after telling
me about George III. and Davis in the cloisters, goes on : —
' Davis's best time was before mine, but he was very good
in my younger days. He left much in his latter days to his
men, but he was always near enough to see what was going
on. His hounds in the forest were as perfect in close hunt-
ing as harriers. They were left to depend on themselves,
and so required but little assistance. "Let them alone"
were his words to his whips at check. I never heard him
say anything about a bad scent ; he told me he would rather
have a third-rate scent for his hounds, as the pace was then

1 Especially to Colonel Anstruther Thomson, Sir A. Halkett, Captain King-
King, Mr. Bowen May. Dr. Croft of Bracknell, and Mr. Cordery of Hall's Farm,
Swallowlield.

64

5 TA G- HUN TING RECOLLECTIONS

quite fast enough for pleasure, as the pack would have to
fling round occasionally and give you a chance to be nearer
to them. The Bracknell country was very difficult to get
over in former times — hedgerows very broad, and ditches
wide and blind, much overgrown with grass and brambles.
Davis had his field under good control, and he never minced
the matter if he saw any man riding unfairly. His language
was strong and not always parliamentary, but was most
effective at the time, and, I have heard, lasted into the future.

T" y~" ;^. -43 •'

Riding Unfairly

..-'■

If his temper was hasty it was soon over and forgotten.
He was a perfect gentleman in appearance, manner, and
conversation, well educated, and, I should say, of good
ability.

' These hounds, as you know, from the first were fox-
hounds. I believe he bred from the best of his own and
others, but he managed somehow to make them peculiarly
his own, so much finer and more racy-looking than even the
foxhounds of the present day. Getting them faster began,
I dare say, when the King told him to make them fast enough

CHARLES DAVIS 65

to run away from the field. This most certainly he did, for
they ran away from the field on several occasions in the
Harrow country, and I have experience of their doing this
in the Bracknell country.

' His hounds appeared to love him, and one of the prettiest
parts of the day was, when a check occurred, to see them
fly to his call, and all the pack cluster round his horse, and
he take them to a holloa and plant them on the line of scent.
I think this control was due in a great measure to his system
of entering the young hounds in the forest in October. The
deer were nearly always taken without injury, and many
were hunted for years, and knew how to take care of them-
selves.'

Mr. Cordery first knew Charles Davis in 1835. He used
to see him out with Sir John Cope's foxhounds — for Davis
loved fox-hunting — and also with the buckhounds. ' I thought
him,' he writes, ' as good as any one I ever saw on a saddle.
Used to ride over a country very easy, and never seemed
to distress his horse. He liked a clean, well-bred horse, and
was master of him and his men and his field and his hounds.
Kespected by every one, his word was law, his hounds he
loved, and woe be to the man who rode over one.

' Mr. Davis's hounds were not quite so high as yours.
Bitches very neat, and smaller, I think. Perhaps your
present pack goes a little faster than they did, that is be-
cause the country is so much more open now. Aldershot
Common all open at that time, Wellington College and
Broad Moor the only two houses. On each of these commons
you could see hounds a mile off. Have been hunting all day
and only have seen a man snipe-shooting. Very open and
wild at that time ; much troubled with bogs where there were
no rides. Mr. Davis did not ride fast at his fences ; good
trot or canter he would ease his horse to.'

Catching your own again, as some one called hunting

F

66 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

the carted deer, lacks the inevitableness we prize in wilder
sports of the field. All concerned know only too well, not
perhaps quite what will happen, but what is meant to hap-
pen. Upon the other hand, the master and hunt-servants of
a stag-hunting establishment — I speak from some experience
— are always on the edge of novel and often ridiculous
incidents.

Some people, however, seem able to invest the most
untoward circumstances with their personal prestige. A few
of this sort should be kept for stag-hunting. Charles Davis
appears to have been one of these gifted personages. It is
true that he hunted a very much better country, and that in
other ways (which I shall refer to presently) he enjoyed sub-
stantial advantages which no Queen's Huntsman since his
retirement has enjoyed or can hope to enjoy. Yet it cannot
be supposed for a moment that he can have hunted the
Bnckhounds for the forty odd years he carried the horn
without having to put up with his share of the tiresome
things which attend upon stag-hunting. Some of these
are difficult to suffer gladly ; ' and if record speaks true,
we must remember that Davis had to satisfy a critical
and superfinely mounted field who came out to ride, and to
ride against each other. He must have been familiar, as we

1 The following entries are, alas ! familiar to most stag-hunters :

' February 5, 1*24. — Paid two men 5s. Gd. for getting into the water at
Uxbridge by Lord Maryborough's order.

' January 28, 1824. — Paid 2s. (kl. for a window broken by a stag.

' December 11, 1837. -Met at Salt Hill ; took in the Playing Fields, Eton.

'December 29, 1837. — "Seymour" destroyed himself in a conservatory at
Taplow.'

This diary and a horse-book of Charles Davis were kindly lent me by Mrs.
James King, widow of Mr. James King, a brother of Harry King's, who succeeded
Charles Davis as her Majesty's Huntsman in 1860. Whether the amount
of the fee or the "getting into the water' was Lord Maryborough's ' order,'
the amount is not excessive. I know the water at Uxbridge well. It used
to affect me very much in the same way as the waters of Babylon did the Jews
of the Captivity. About the worst place I know, to take a deer comfortably.

CHARLES DAVIS 67

are now, with the good-natured but irresponsible foot people ;
with the deer which runs up and down the first fence, or
prefers the haunts of men to the shaggiest heath or fairest
champaign ; with the gentlemen who ride the deer, override
the hounds, or ride over other gentlemen. But I feel that
Davis was able to invest all these things with a decorum
as majestic as his neckcloths. Thus when we read of his
lying in a Vale of Aylesbury ditch, after a run which for
pace beggars description, with his arm round Richmond
Trump's neck — a position full of restless discomfort to both
parties — there is something chivalrous and romantic about
it all which redounds to the credit both of Davis and the
gallant Trump. Pictonally, it is all but a subject for Sir
Edward Burne-Jones rather than for Caldecott or Leech.
And the present Duke of Richmond tells me that he once
saw him direct the operations of a whipper-in in a punt — a
trying test — without the slightest sacrifice of dignity.

Mr. Bowen May, who began his stag-hunting under Lord
Maryborough, and who still notes with an observant eye all
that concerns his favourite pursuit, tells me that he once
asked Davis about the pace of a pack of hounds. Davis, who
had strong convictions as to the excellence of his own hounds,
replied in a letter that the Queen's Hounds were the fastest
pack in his opinion, and that nine miles in the hour was
about their best pace. But this pace was far exceeded by
Richmond Trump's day.1 It was all over grass, and Davis
only weighed about ten stone, and had it all to himself on
the Clipper, an animal up to sixteen stone. When Mr. Davis
lay in the ditch with one arm round Richmond Trump's neck,
as already related, he pulled out his watch with his free

1 I have found the entry in his diary, March 13, 1832 : ' Richmond Trump
at Lillie's, ran one hour, took at Twyford between Bicester and Buckingham —
ran twenty miles in one hour.' In his horse-book I find that the Clipper was
bought in the Christmas quarter of 1831 of Mr. Anderson for 120 guineas ; he
was sold again at Tattersall's in the summer quarter of 1834 for 24Z. 18s. Qd.

f 2

68 STAG-HUXTIXG RECOLLECTIOXS

hand, and timed the run. Nobody but Davis could have
done so ; but his skill and knack with deer were most remark-
able. Colonel Anstruther Thomson told me he once saw
Davis jump off his horse in a narrow lane ; a tired stag was
coming up it slowly with all the hounds round it. He let
it half pass him, caught its horn with his left hand and swung
his whip round with his right, keeping the hounds at bay.
and held the stag till some one came to help him. The
Trump had been out twice before that season, and started
on his career as the Eichmond Knobber. After the Ayles-
bury performance, however, he was renamed Eichmond
Trump, after a popular fighting man of the day, who doubtless
much appreciated the delicate compliment.

I spoke just now of substantial advantages which the
best Davis period enjoyed as against the present day. Until
well into the fifties the Queen's Hounds moved about and
saw a great deal more of other countries than they do now —
an excellent thing for everybody.1 A run in the New Forest
inspired their huntsman's Aluse. She keeps very near the

earth.

At Vinney Old Ridge they found a prime stag,
And ran hard for an hour, which caused him to flag.
He was taken near Burley alive, safe and sound,
But in less than ten minutes fell dead on the ground.

It is noteworthy that the New Forest deer hardly ever
survived a run, although they were always taken alive, if
possible, with the object of sending them to Windsor or Eich-
mond for a change of blood. Upon one occasion Davis said,
• We shall kill every stag in the forest if we stay here long.'

1 As well as going for a month or more every season to Aylesbury, they went
for about a fortnight at a time to Sir Robert Throckmorton's at Buckland,
near Faringdon, during Lord Granville's Mastership ; and to Hampton Court,
and on to Epsom with Lord Rosslyn ; the deer during these outings to Epsom
being kept in loose boxes belonging to trainers. And for many years, as every-
body knows, the Queen's Hounds used to go down to the New Forest late in the
season.

CHARLES DAVIS

69

They had not the condition which I shall insist upon in
another chapter.

The New Forest hunting was no joke. In 1848 we hear
of Lords Canning, Granville, and Rivers coming over to
Heron Court from Highcliffe, disgusted with the danger of
the ground, and declaring they will never hunt there again :
a groom having been killed, three gentlemen badly hurt,
whilst Lord Granville had had his face cut by the boughs

To RIDE JEALOUS DC A FOREST YOU MUST BE REALLY INTREPID

of a tree against which his horse had carried him. Lord
Malmesbury relates how, some years before this, Mr. Assheton
Smith and Lord Cardigan rode jealous of each other with
the Queen's Hounds in the Xew Forest. A large party was
assembled at Mr. Compton's, and the night before these gentle-
men glared at each other all dinner time, as if they were
mortal enemies about to fight the next day. Lord Cardigan's
horse after a ' regular race ' outstayed Mr. Assheton Smith's,

jo STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

To ride jealous in a forest, you must be really intrepid !
' iEsop ' relates how on another occasion Mr. Smith was
talking to Charles Davis, and not looking where he was
going to, when his horse suddenly swerved, Mr. Smith falling
on his back over the horse's shoulder. An officious well-
wisher asked him if he was hurt — always a mistake when a
man has tumbled off — on which Charles Davis turned round
and said, ' He is much too hard to hurt,' an encomium
which greatly pleased Mr. Smith.

I read somewhere or other that a great many pictures of
Davis were painted at different times. His namesake and
relative painted him several times on Hermit, the grey horse
he is riding in the well-known engraving of a Meet of the
Buckhounds on Ascot Heath during Lord Chesterfield's
Mastership. Then there is another engraving of him on
Columbine, a short-tailed mare which went to Badminton
and bred some capital coach-horses. The Duke of Beaufort
was telling me about her only the other day, and I have
the entry now before me in Davis's horse-book. For the
Michaelmas quarter 1831, under 'Horses sold,' he notes:
' Brown mare Columbine and foal to the Duke of Beaufort,
19Z. 5s.'

I believe, though, that the most characteristic and best-
known engraving of him is on Traverser, after Barraud.
Without placing this picture in such company as Titian's
' Charles V.' or Velasquez's ' Don Balthazar Carlos ' at Madrid,
or Stubbs's 'Duke of Hamilton ' in the green coat on the chest-
nut hackney, if the painting is as good as the engraving
it must be a very charming and distinguished equestrian
portrait. People who care for sporting engravings should
buy it ; it is getting very scarce. In my time the reduced
photograph from the engraving was popular at Harrow. I
had one in my room over the mantelpiece. How often
have I looked to Mr. Davis for inspiration in the horrid

CHARLES DA VIS yi

stress of iambics, and wasted my time in thinking that
Traverser was the sort of horse I should like to ride hunting
on some day, and Mr. Davis's the sort of seat I should like
to have ! Traverser was bought for Davis by Lord Gran-
ville, and was one of his best horses. He made a noise ; but a
whistler of Traverser's scope and quality, ridden by an artist
of Davis's weight and knowledge of the country, will always
beat an average sound horse — at least, that is my experience.
How well the artist has put him on the horse ! His length
of limb guarantees that smoothness of seat which Don
Quixote impressed upon Sancho as being the peculiar attribute
of a great gentleman. When some one asked Sir K. Sutton
whether a stranger out with his hounds could ride, Sir
Bichard said he did not know, adding ' I should think so, for
he hangs a good boot.' So did Charles Davis.

In the most literal sense of the word he was pictur-
esque ; and was becomingly aware of it. ' Davis,' a gen-
tleman tells me who knew him well, 'was always fond of
a grey if he could get one to suit him ; I think he thought
himself better looking on one.' George III.'s choice was
inspiration. Nature had dedicated him to scarlet and gold,
and had given him the right colouring and complexion for
scarlet. In the February number of ' Baily's Magazine '
for 1867 a pleasant requiescat in pace article appeared upon
Charles Davis. The writer (' The Gentleman in Black ' ')
had known the subject of his memoir well for many years,
had ridden for several seasons with the Queen's Hounds, and
all he says has the value which nearness and the habit of
personal intercourse alone can give. This is what he says
of Davis's appearance : ' He was very tall and thin, probably
6 ft. 1 in. in height, and only weighing nine stone and a
pound or two. He was a good-looking man, with a large
handsome nose and good dark eyes and eyebrows. The ex-
1 The Eev. C. Clark, of Simnhigdale.

72 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

pression of his face was severe and serious, latterly with
many lines about the mouth, unless when excited by
conversation on his favourite topics. When not officially
dressed he had a very gentlemanly, almost aristocratic, appear-
ance, and always appeared to advantage amongst the fre-
quenters of the stand at Ascot.'

Appearing to advantage in the stand at Ascot, or indeed
anywhere else, is eminently satisfactory. But his biographer
goes even further : ' In plain clothes, he looked like a peer of
the realm.' This is a pleasant tribute to the good looks of the
House of Lords, but it would probably be nearer the mark to
say that all peers of the realm did not look like Davis. In
externals, at all events, and indeed in character, he had the
knack which Mr. Emerson somewhere or other lays stress
upon, of never reminding us of others.

Davis kept his figure to the last, and was one of the few
men whose legs were sufficiently straight and clean on the
inside of the knee-joint to wear becomingly the skin-tight
leathers which were generally the fashion in his best days,
and which are still to some extent the fashion for the royal
servants. In his day the hunt-servants wore very much
shorter and closer-fitting coats than they do now — hardly
any skirt ; the old yeoman -pricker tunic pattern of coat
was retained for very many years ; and I remember think-
ing, when first I hunted with the Buckhounds in 1879
from Aldershot, that Goodall's tunic-like coat and tight
leathers gave a rather postilliony look. Whilst I was Master
I lengthened the coats very much, both in the waist and in
the skirts — a long coat seems to seat a man better on his horse,
and it is certainly comfortable and more becoming to the
average figure.

The slimness and youthfulness of Charles Davis's figure up
to the very last were in great measure due to the simplicity of
his life and the regularity of his habits. Like a wise man he

CHARLES DAVIS 73

was very moderate in eating and drinking, and treated his
digestion with constant deference. Colonel Anstruther
Thomson tells me that one day, when the hounds met at
the Crooked Billet on Egham Heath, Davis said to Lord
Rosslyn when he arrived, ' I hope you will excuse me if I
do not ride hard to-day.' Lord Eosslyn asked what was the
matter. ' If you please, my lord, I allowed myself to be per-
suaded to take a bit of pheasant last night at supper. It
was rather high and it has disagreed with me.' However,
there was a scent. Davis was riding a horse he liked, forgot
all about the pheasant and its effects, and went like a bird.
He liked a little wine, and sometimes accepted presents
of wine from his field, which he much appreciated. Dr.
Croft tells me he never remembers him having anything to
drink at a meet or on the road home ; nor would he allow
his men to do so.

Ladies going out hunting with the Queen's Hounds did
not meet with much approval from Davis. He made an
exception in favour of a Miss Gilbert, ' on account of her
cheerful spirit and dashing riding ' — qualities which are more
often apt to inspire a huntsman with suspicion rather than
confidence — but especially on account of her Spartan en-
durance of long rides home at hounds' pace, of which he him-
self was a great exponent.

He was very particular about feeding punctually, and
would allow no noise in the kennel. The whips were
sent in before feeding time to prevent a note. Those were
the days of stern kennel discipline. The celebrated Tom
Smith on one occasion tied twenty-five couples up in a row
to the park palings and had them flogged till all hands were
tired ; and the same gentleman would couple a wild hound's
forelegs under his neck and have him led for miles by a
whipper-in. But Davis's striking control — some might say
over-control — of his pack was due, as we have seen by his

74 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

letter to Sir John Halkett, to the love which casts out fear
and begets perfect understanding. Speaking of the wonder-
ful discipline of the Royal pack, Sir Arthur Halkett writes me
from Pitfirrane, N.B. : ' "When I was quartered at Hounslow in
1857 with the 3rd Light Dragoons, I saw an instance of this,
which I would not have believed possible, unless I had seen
it. The hounds were running up a grass lane, and got a
view at the stag, when Davis galloped along the hedge side
of the field, jumped into the lane in front of the hounds,
and drew his horse across the lane, holding his whip out at
arm's length. Although they were in full cry at the time, not
a single hound attempted to pass his horse — and when he
considered the stag had got a decent start, he lowered his
whip, and the pack dashed on again, on the line. It was the
most beautiful and perfect example of hound discipline I ever
saw.' He exercised his hounds all the year round, and went
out himself with the young hounds four times a week, and
with the old hounds twice a week. He took them chiefly
into Windsor Park till July, by which time they were broken
to fallow deer ; and Davis used to go off to Newmarket to
stay at the Palace with his brother-in-law, Edwards, the
King's trainer and former jockey. So far, I have not been
able to find out anything about his habits at Newmarket, but
in his later years, if his biographer is right, he can neither
have amused himself nor others very much at Ascot. ' He
spoke,' we are told, ' of the old days when royalty was regu-
lar in its attendance, and when the aristocracy and beauty of
England walked up and down the course between the races ;
rather of the glories of the past, Lords Jersey and Verulam,
the old Duke of York, of Zinganee, and the Colonel, and
Mr. Petre's Cadland, than of the present. Racing had in
his mind become vulgarised and common,' and so on, and
so on.

A friend, who has hunted with the Queen's Hounds

CHARLES DAVIS 7s

regularly since 1862, writes me a less flattering account of
them at that time. ' The first time I saw them we had
over thirty couple out. We uncarted at King's Beech,
and of course they tailed all over the place. He always
stopped them at the end of the first ten minutes or so.
Between Sandhurst and Swinley the ground had just been
planted, so you could see hounds and ride to them, instead
of brushing through jungles after them, as now. I thought
his hounds very weedy and mute, and a bit flashy as well,
but perhaps I didn't know much more then than I do now !
The old man could gallop, and was pretty handy when
wanted, though he didn't jump a lot. He rode Comus,
a roarer, as often as he could. Davis always showed
the deer to the hounds wThen taken. His horn was like a
young trombone, and sounded like the roar of a rutting stag ;
but hounds came well and handily to it. At this time they
were said to be flashy from being too often stopped and
taken to holloas. I fancy very few were homebred ; you
can't get drafts like gloves, all one size or colour.'

Excepting the Hermit, Davis rode all his horses in a
single-rein snaffle. 'His hands,' writes Dr. Croft to me,
' were quite in the right place, and his horses seemed to take
hold of him just sufficiently to keep him in his favourite
position. I consider he rode with rather long stirrups, and
his position when galloping was standing. He was a
fine horseman, with a most perfect seat. It was rare,
when going fast, to see him sit down in his saddle ; but his
position standing in his stirrups was very fine, not to be
equalled.' In the picture of Davis and Columbine, he
is standing up in his stirrups. I am sorry to say he has
his cap off, which I do not like ; and in a little loose
engraving I have of him, he is standing up to Hermit and
going great guns. Once hounds are away and settled,
I confess I like to see a long, thin-legged man sit right

76

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

down in his saddle, even if he has not, like Mr. Varnish
in ' Market Harborough,' the air of playing a favourite
instrument. The standing-up seat, with your horse mov-
ing like clockwork and going right into his bridle, is to my
mind the seat for a critical time, when it is a matter of
lifting hounds and taking them on to a holloa. The late
Frank Beers did this to perfection. But all agreed that

The Hermit

whatever Charles Davis did on a horse was right. You
could not, by all accounts, get him out of drawing with his
horse, your eye, or the circumstances.

Some people invest every horse they ride with character
and morals. I do myself, and although I have suffered some
literally stunning disillusions I shall continue to do so.
Davis had favourites, but, according to his biographer in

CHARLES DAVIS 77

* Baily,' spoke very little about horses or their peculiarities.
He accepted them as horses, and turned them to their best
account. But as he had no sentimental prepossessions, so he
had no prejudices. The late Sir Tatton Sykes would never
look at anything over 15.2. The present Lord Lonsdale has
fixed an arbitrary weight — a horse must scale 10 cwt. as a
minimum to carry hirn — but Davis told the ' Druid ' that he
had been carried equally well by horses of all heights from
14.3 to 16.2, although, as a long-legged man, he liked a tall
horse. He spoke most of Hermit's performances, but often
mentioned an instance of his having been beaten on Hermit
by a little roan mare, nothing more than a pony, belonging
to a trainer called Dessy.1

He considered Hermit the stoutest and best hunter he
ever had. He was bred by Mr. Gates, of Brookwood
Stumps, near Woking, from a white Arabian mare. Gates
sent the mare to Grey Skim, who then stood at Pet worth ;
so Davis was indebted to the Wyndhams for his favourite
horse, and to some extent for his favourite hound blood.
Hermit was six years old when he was bought of Gates
in 1832 for 150 guineas. I have before me the entry
in his horse-book. The horse had been leading gallops for
thoroughbred horses. Harry King rode him the first season
with the Buckhounds. Dr. Croft says he was a very wild
horse at first, but King was a fine horseman with good hands,
and soon got him right. The story is that on one occasion
the field had been stopped by a canal somewhere in the
Harrow country, and the hounds had got a great start over
that fine vale. Davis, probably aware of some danger
ahead, bade Harry King try to stop them. By this time

1 The great Mr. MeynelTs best horse, South, was only fifteen hands. He
gave 300 guineas for him, and sold him to Sir H. Fetherstonhaugh for 500
guineas ; and a Mr. Porter in Warwickshire achieved a great reputation with
two mares, 14.3 — own sisters.

78

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

they were flying like pigeons over the grass, more than a
mile away. To his surprise he saw Hermit gaining on
them ; and Harry King ultimately stopped them. When
King came back, Davis only remarked that the horse seemed
to go a fair pace, which King admitted, and from that

• -..

Hauby King ultimately stopped them

time on, King rode him no more. Davis rode him for nine
seasons ; he broke down through injuring his coffin bone
by jumping down a deep place into a lane. His appearance is
well known to most people who look at hunting engravings,
from Sir F. Grant's picture of Ascot Heath. Hermit was a

CHARLES DAVIS 79

stallion ; and in those days stallions were much more fre-
quently ridden with hounds. Anderson the dealer, who kept
a few staghounds at Brondesbury, had a milk-white stallion,
said to be so handy that he could jump through a window.
This animal was specially commended by ' Nimrod ' for his
cleverness in the suburban scenes of his exploits. It seems
a pity that Hermit was never put to the stud, but he was
one of many examples of a very good horse with very
crooked forelegs, amounting almost to deformity. His heart
weighed 21 lbs., eight pounds more than Eclipse's.

Hermit shows a great deal of Arab — a lovely head and
a bump on his forehead. He carried, as the dealers say,
' two good ends,' and was a beautifully coloured horse, with
no thickness or muddle in his white and markings. When
a grey horse of that glorified rocking-horse type is as good as
Hermit was, there is nothing, to my mind, so attractive or
so becoming. Davis was quite aware of it. The ' Druid '
noticed portraits of him on Hermit in nine positions when
he went to see him at Ascot. Mr. Edmund Tattersall, who
lent me the sketch by Byron Webb from which the Frontis-
piece is taken, declares it to be Davis's seat and look on
Hermit to the life. At the same time, both the position of his
left hand and of his saddle leave much to be desired. Mr.
Tattersall, whilst he corroborates Dr. Croft as to the excel-
lence of his hands, says that Davis always rode on a short
rein. But Hermit's immediate Arab descent must be held
mainly accountable for this. Arab shoulders seldom carry
an English saddle becomingly. I don't say that they are
necessarily bad, but they are often thick and inelastic ; the
wither wants line and drawing, and very few Arab horses
lend their forehand to your seat and horsemanship.

Charles Davis's horsemanship was as stainless as King
Arthur's morals. But I imagine his riding appealed to the
head rather than the heart. As we have seen, the expression

8o STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

on his features was severe and serious, and I cannot help
thinking that his riding to hounds may have been a little
wanting in geniality — perfect in form and satisfying in
result— but somehow wanting in that impalpable quality
which makes riding over an intricate country with certain
people so amusing. In a point-to-point steeplechase Jem
Mason rode Lottery over a locked gate 5 ft. 6 in. high,
off a newly-stoned road, in preference to a hairy bullfinch at
the side. ' I'll be hanged,' he said to his friends when they
were walking over the ground, ' if I am going to scratch my
face, for I am going to the opera to-night ' ; and Lottery
jumped it like an antelope. There was no shadow of turning
about Davis, but he would never have said that. Doubtless,
had it been a question of rescuing the Trump or the Miller,
he would have ridden over the gate, but he would have done
it with the somewhat dismal zeal of a permanent official,
rather than the zest of a man of pleasure. I admit 5 ft.
6 in. high, and the take-off would make most people feel
grave.

Perhaps, too, Davis took himself a little seriously. He
read the newspapers religiously ; went to church regularly ;
never had a horse out on Sundays ; made an excellent
speech ; favoured the Whigs in politics. All these things
contributed to make up a valuable and respectable citizen.
Moreover, the even and deserved prosperity of his career, his
converse — almost identity — with great personages, and the
responsible authority of his position may easily have induced
a certain semi-royal aloofness. I feel confident that he
was never in anything like a scrape — this is of itself quite
a misfortune — and I question whether he ever had much to
do with the scrapes and shifts of others. Under the startling
influence of gratitude, Tom Oliver once swore a great oath
that he would fight up to his knees in blood for Jem Mason,
who had won him 100Z. with Trust-Me-Not, relieved him of

( t/un'/r.)

<f /■/.).

CHARLES DAVIS 81

the pressing society of the bailiffs, and set him again on his
rather unsteady legs. But it is doubtful whether anybody
ever had occasion to enter into such savage covenants for
Davis. We might have asked him to stand godfather to our
first-born, or act as trustee to our marriage settlement — if in
order — but we should not have dared to write to him as Tom
Oliver did to Mason, to say we were in Short Street and
entertaining the sheriff of the county.

For some years before his actual resignation, failing
health and increasing years had led to arrangements with
King, by which Davis only went out hunting and remained
out for his own pleasure. But in 1866 he had a bad fall and
hurt his leg, and at the end of that season he asked leave to
retire, and Harry King was appointed in his place. He died
at Ascot on October 26, 1867, of bronchitis, in his seventy-
ninth year. Charles Davis left no family.

II n'y a pas d'homme necessaire, but within the possi-
bilities of this unimpeachable aphorism it was manifest that
his death had made a gap, and that his life had made a quite
particular impression upon a considerable public. Davis's
was a conspicuous career, many things conspicuously
English had contributed to his renown. But the distinction
of his looks and ways, the elegance of his seat, the scarlet
and gold of his public duties, the bold serenity of his horse-
manship are not of themselves enough to account for the
vitality of his prestige and tradition. All these things we
admire in horse- and hound-loving England ; all these things
will be associated with and ornament his memory and
profession. But there is something else of Charles Davis
which I like to think lives to inspire and to encourage.
There is the staidness of his private life ; there is the
conduct of responsible duties ; there is the example he
has left us of endeavour to provide things honest in the
sight of all men.

G

82 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE IV

DEBATEABLE LAND

As it was ray privilege to think with my own reason ; so it was my duty
to see with my own eyes. — Gibbon's Autobiography.

' The great difficulty is the Master of the Horse.' So writes
Horace Walpole in one of his most serious letters to Mr.
Montague in 1760. Those were the braver days of Court
appointments and Court influences. Yet a Walpole or a
Charles Greville of 1892 might have written much the same
of the Master of the Buckhounds. Although perhaps a little
of the Bottom type, this ancient officer of state was quite a
lion in the path of Mr. Gladstone's last administration.

The difficulty in 1760 lay in the choice of the office-
holder and the rivalries of claimants. That was certainly not
the case in 1892, for, if anything, Mr. Gladstone had more
places than peers. The question was whether there were
to be any Buckhounds. Their situation was precarious.
Hunting has always been more or less associated with
Tory principles and machinations, and the Buckhounds
were represented in several party newspapers as being kept
for the amusement of a dissolute and exclusive gentry.
Social reformers both in and out of the new House of
Commons were actively hostile. And it is not to be wondered
at that the party wirepullers inclined to compromise.

In the event — in spite of the menaces and exhortations
of an excited section of our press — it was decided to appoint

LORD COVENTRY, THE PRESENT MASTER

DEBATEABLE LAND 83

a Master of the Buckhounds upon the understanding that
he was to prepare himself and those committed to his
charge for their latter end. The process was to be gradual ;
as far as possible painless ; but it was to be complete. The
doomed office was offered me, and, mindful of Lord Lans-
downe's advice to the most eminent of a long line of pre-
decessors,1 I accepted it with all its suicidal conditions.
One Minister wrote congratulating me on my moriturus
appointment, and I discussed in cheerful after-dinner con-
verse the various aspects and possibilities of disestablish-
ment with one or two of our most trusted leaders. There
are kennel secrets just as there are Cabinet and stable secrets.
But I must chance the charge of indiscretion this paragraph
may bring up against me.

Threatened men, they say, live long. At all events a
threatened placeman quickly develops new instincts of self-
preservation. I made up my mind very quickly that the
office and its responsibilities would be entirely to my liking.
Ascot Baces and the terrors of the Boyal Enclosure were in
a reassuring distance. Forest hunting, on the other hand,
was already beckoning to me in the near and inviting fore-
ground. After going through the stables at Cumberland
Lodge with Lord Coventry, the most helpful and entertaining
of predecessors, on a glorious day in August, and just making
acquaintance with the hounds, the sun- bathed kennel green,
the wisteria in heavy bloom against the yellow brick of the
hack stable, I determined that life was sweet, and that I
would die hard. Even a ' Star-man ' should not rebuke me
for these admissions, seeing that they illustrate the most
malignant instincts of the Court -placeman.

I quite see that my having taken so naturally to my new

1 Lord Granville consulted Lord Lansdowne as to whether he should accept
the Buckhounds. Lord Lansdowne's reply was that he had never yet known it
go against a man's political career to have something to give up.

g 2

84 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

duties is no evidence one way or the other in the case
sought to be made against the Buckhounds. I only dwell
upon this in order to make it clear that I saw a great deal of
them, because I liked the whole thing. The first season I
lived at Ascot till July, 1893. So, during the three seasons
I had the honour of hunting the Queen's Hounds, it is hardly
too much to say that I had almost daily opportunities of
arriving at conclusions based upon personal experience and
observation. Most people will agree that conclusions founded
on practice must always have a slight pull when placed in the
scales with conclusions based upon theory, hearsay, and con-
jecture— even granting the fullest credit for sincerity and
bona fides to the opponents of stag-hunting.

May I add that, if anything, my prepossessions were not
in favour of stag- hunting ; and that even now I should not
care to start a pack of staghounds myself, or to locate myself
in a stag-hunting country ? On the other hand, I have formed
a definite opinion as to its possibilities and limitations, and I
am quite clear as to what I think and do not think about the
' cruelty ' question. If the Queen's pleasure and the vicissi-
tudes of politics gave me the chance of doing so— say to-
morrow— I would gladly hunt the Queen's Hounds for another
three years. I should not say this if I thought it cruel, and,
setting aside private and personal considerations, had I found
myself in substantial agreement with Mr. Stratton and those
for whom he thinks, I should, upon public grounds, have
deemed it my duty to our gracious Queen to say so, when an
opportunity was given me of stating my opinion upon the
cruelty question at the time my three seasons' Mastership
came to an abrupt end in the summer of 1895.

So now for a little controversy. Excepting sentimentally,
I have never been attached to the theory that an institution
should be upheld merely because it exists. That such and
such a thing should go on being done because it has always

DEBATEABLE LAND 85

been clone, is a method of reasoning which may be held
partly accountable for the catastrophe of agriculture and for
the costly -eccentricities of so-called estate management.
Indeed, the lapse of years pleaded in its defence is often the
most vulnerable point of an institution.

Tested by these proper standards, there is a weak point
in the armour of the Buckhounds as an institution. More-
over, it is a weak point which cannot be adequately or
intelligently guarded by any ' J'y suis, j'y reste ' justification.
At the best, any such justification is to my mind only a
disengagement, and not a parry. Curiously enough, how-
ever, this real weak point to which I refer has never been
attacked by the critics. As I am in a good-natured mood,
I will just indicate the outlines of what I mean.

Wire in Middlesex, the villa in Berks, the pheasant in
Bucks, all the apparatus of population and residential
amenity have changed the face and the habits of the Queen's
country. The Master is obliged to constantly bear in mind
that in many parts of a wide district he no longer has the
free warren essential to stag-hunting.

Disraeli was proud of London because its environs could
not be reached with ' fatal facility.' I think the passage occurs
in ' Tancred.' But this evidence of expansion is no source
of satisfaction to the Master of the Buckhounds. When
arranging his meets he will often regret the days when a
lady friend of Mr. Rogers was made ill by a fright she got
from an omnibus on her way from Richmond to London.1

Some day, the want of country must decide the Buck-

1 ' At that time,' says Mr. Rogers, who had called to inquire after the

invalid, ' omnibuses were great rarities, and while Miss was coming to

town, the footman, observing an omnibus approach, and thinking she might
like to see it, suddenly called in at the carriage window, " Ma'am, the omni-
bus!" Miss , being unacquainted with the tenn, and not sure but an

omnibus might be a wild beast escaped from the Zoological Gardens, was
thrown into a dreadful state of agitation by the announcement.' — Tabic Talk
of Samuel Eogers.

86 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

hounds question for friend and foe alike. Time is on the
side of those who would like to see the Buckhounds given
up, but the time is not yet. Middlesex I give up. But the
pheasant people in Bucks only require occasional considera-
tion : all about Ascot it would appear that the villa industry
is suffering from over-production ; on the Surrey and Hamp-
shire side a wide extent of rough country can very easily
be extended, with advantages which will be referred to else-
where.

It has often been observed that those who attack institu-
tions, and especially institutions resting upon the titles of
time and custom, are usually better up in their case than
the defenders. The sub-editor of any thoroughpaced progres-
sive newspaper could ' arrange,' in the French sense of the
word, the House of Lords in a fashion which would astonish
and bewilder a respectable handful of average peers. The
fact is that, unless perhaps the ratepayer can be directly
interested in the matter, the conservatism of mankind has
always to be reckoned with when any definite proposal is
made to alter a usage or transform an institution. Thus,
when any such enterprise is in question, the attacking
forces have to take great pains. It is advisable to know the
strong points before attacking the weak ones. In discussion
it looks well to give these strong points full recognition.

But, in this matter of getting up their case, the agitation
against the Buckhounds seems to me rather an exception
to the general rule. I suppose it is a natural inclination to
see what suit? us, and to shut our eyes to what does not
suit us. Very likely I shall often do so myself in the course
of these pages, but the critics of the Buckhounds appear
to have done this to a quite unusual degree, and their case
has suffered in consequence. Either stupidly, or perhaps
from the fact that their occupations and aptitudes do not
permit of any practical knowledge whatsoever of stag-hunt-

DEBATEABLE LAXD 87

ing,1 these gentlemen have jumped into the error of general-
ising from exceptions, and they have tried to establish the
exception as the rule.

Every now and again a deer meets with an accident, and
has to be destroyed. Every now and again a deer may be
killed by the hounds. I admit this in the freest and fullest
way, and I will make the opposition a present of my own
experience of these occurrences. In three years, on the
whole fairly open seasons, I remember losing four deer ;
or let us say five, for I am not speaking b}^ book, but to
the best of my recollection. Certainly five covers it. Two
of these are cases which I have seen instanced from time
to time with great richness of circumstantial detail in the
newspapers, and upon which the agitation still largely rests
its case. These deer came by their death through being
hunted, but I may here remark that not one of these four
or five deer was killed or even touched by the hounds.

Let us, however, for a moment assume that they had
been so killed or so hurt, is it fair to take these exceptional
cases, and present them to the large public who have no
possible means of arriving at any real opinions one way or
the other as the regular incidents and accompaniments of
stag-hunting ?

I should protest against this tyranny of isolated texts,
if I attached any argumentative value to the method, but
I attach no such value. Indeed, the weakness of their case
lies in the method adopted. Eailway accidents are very
terrible things. Why do we not, therefore, do away with
fast trains ? Why do not people give up railway travelling '?
Because accidents of this kind are exceptional ; because they
stand out in startling, and yet in a sense most reassuring,
relief, as exceptions. Granted that there is no analog}'

1 The first petition (1892) was very largely signed by the hands in
Huntley & Palmer's Biscuit Works at Reading.

88 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

between stag-hunting and railway travelling, there is in
the reasoning process which should be applied to both.

And now for a moment let us turn from the opponents
to the defenders of the Buckhounds, and see what they have
to say about it all. The opposition to the Queen's Hounds,
as I understand their case, concentrates upon a charge of
colossal cruelty ; the defence, speaking broadly, takes its
stand upon a flat denial of cruelty, and a muscular ' all

d d rot ' to any ethical considerations which may be

advanced.

Eolands and Olivers of this build are as unlikely to
compose their differences as opposite angles or the Irish
party, and are best left to themselves. But speaking more
particularly, I remember being told by several people who
claimed to have given special attention to the subject, that
the agitation against the Buckhounds was only the first
parallel of a general attack upon all field sports, and upon
hunting in particular. I confess that is not the impression I
have formed. Here and there no doubt people may exist
who, in the matter of field sports, are of the sour mind of
Lord Macaulay's Puritans. Here and there an individual
may be cited who, for some reason or for no reason, honestly
dislikes hunting ; I have read that the late Professor Free-
man became so angry as to alarm his family whenever he
heard the cry of foxhounds running. But at all events
neither the Archbishop of Canterbury nor Mr. Stratton can
be included amongst these eccentrics.

Let us devote a moment to the Archbishop in this con-
nection. The Archbishop of Canterbury thinks a pack of
hounds a very proper appanage of Koyalty. And, with a
superfluity of charity, he recently placed himself at the head
of a number of well intentioned gentlemen who seriously
recommend to Lord Salisbury the transformation of the Buck-
hounds into a National Drag-hunt. Now a National Drag-hunt

DERATEABLE LAND 89

is no doubt an alternative, and that is about as much as need
be said about it. But this last petition — signed by the Arch-
bishop— takes up fresh ground. It pegs out, as it were, a new
claim in the cause of the humanities. The horses ridden
by the hunt-servants and others after the Queen's Hounds
are now to be included in the area of organised cruelty.1
It is not explained how the National Drag Hunt is to get on
without horses ; but we can hardly expect the Archbishop
to know all about drag-hunting as well as about stag-hunting.
When I took over the Queen's Hounds, the simpler form of
agitation was at its height. Under the leadership of Mr.
Stratton the horse argument had not been invented.

I made up my mind to make the acquaintance of Mr.
Stratton as soon as possible. Somehow I felt persuaded of
his sincerity ; besides, the zeal and resolution of his attack
upon the scarlet and gold of our dynasty rather interested
me. I wished to hear for myself what he had to say
about it all. The opportunity soon came. Early in the
month of October we ran a hind out of the forest to
Wokingham. She ran into a little stream, and was safely
taken a few hundred yards from the many-gabled old red-
brick almshouse of which Mr. Stratton is the warden. He
takes admirable care of the old people, and is much esteemed
by them. ' There,' said Harvey, the Queen's huntsman, to
me in a stage whisper, ' is the Rev. Stratton ' ; and there
he wTas, watching our proceedings. I at once introduced
myself, and we had quite a nice talk. On that occasion Mr.
Stratton assured me that he was no enemy to fox-hunting.
Quite the contrary ; a Staffordshire man, he was brought up
to like it, one of his nearest and kindest relatives, as he told
me, being a great judge of a fighting cock or a foxhound.
After that we had some little correspondence of quite a

1 'Merciless riding of horses in the effort to save the deer for another day,'
is the way it is put : see The Times, Nov. 23, 1896.

90 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

friendly character, and, although we disagreed, we did not
misunderstand. At least, speaking for myself, I certainly
never misunderstood Mr. Stratton's attitude. Honest dis-
agreement never hurt anybody. Mr. Stratton and I started
and parted very good friends, as far as our personal relations
at that time were concerned. I trust, though the exigencies
of politics have severed us, we so continue.

But admitting the root and branch opposition to the
Buckhounds to be honest in its sentiment and single-hearted
in its aim ; admitting that it has no dark designs upon hunt-
ing, shooting, fishing, or any of our institutions, from beer
to skittles ; is it quite honest in its argument ?

By all means let the case against the Buckhounds be
stated with zeal and conviction. But let it be stated fairly,
and — at the risk of repetition — I say it is not fair to represent
the exception as the rule.

Hunting the carted deer has always had — and I suppose
always will have — its critics and its apologists. I am not
going to attempt any further controversial apologia. It
would only be tiresome, and I dare say as unconvincing as
apologias usually are. Plato — I am quoting the tainted
authority of a sporting writer, and I have not been able to
discover the passage x — laid it down that hunting was a divine
institution. I do not suggest that Plato would have included
modern stag-hunting, and I advance no such claim on its
behalf. Tried by the purest standards of hunting, it cannot,
to my mind, take rank with fox-hunting. But during the
last four or five years the Buckhounds have become the
villains of politics. Sins are laid to their charge which they
know not of. Speaking as one most intimately connected
with the establishment, I hope in the following pages to
establish the exaggeration of the grave charge of systematic

1 Probably he had in his mind the opening words of Xenophon's essay on
Hunting.

DEBATEABLE LAND 91

cruelty brought not only against these loyal servants of the
Crown, but also against the staff and against the field of the
Queen's Hunt. The best way of doing this seems to me to
tell my readers as much as I can of the everyday life of
the establishment. We should all — men, deer, horses, and
hounds — like the public to know all that there is to know
about us.

92 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE V

DEER

Foot-people staring and horse-men preparing,

Now there's a murmur, a stir, and a shout,
Fresh from his carriage as bridegroom in marriage

The Lord of the Valley leaps gallantly out.

Successful stag-hunting depends upon two things — the
condition and the humour of the deer you hunt. I put these
in front even of country — upon which I have laid stress else-
where— and very much in front of scent. Anxiety about
the latter need never keep the stag-hunter awake. Some
days of course there will be a better scent than others ;
every now and then circumstances, the only ' force majeure '
which besets stag-hunting, may run you out of scent. But
there is always scent enough for hounds to hunt a carted
deer on days when they could not own a fox. I have often
seen the Queen's Hounds make up what seemed an impossible
leeway. As Davis said to Mr. Bowen May, ' The scent
of a deer is much sweeter.' Country, as I have already said,
I rank very high. It would be madness to start a pack of
staghounds in many parts of nineteenth-century England
which are hunted by foxhounds. But the condition and the
temperament of your deer — for perhaps it is temperament
rather than humour — come before country. Given these,
and given anything approaching a decent country within a
two-mile radius of your turn out — surely a very moderate
postulate — you are all right. 'An amiable deer,' as the deer-

DEER 93

keeper at Swinley described Sepoy to the ' Druid,' will have
you out of the bad country in a twinkling. Upon the other
hand, I must admit that the condition and temperament
of the Swinley deer — certainly their condition — sometimes
prevented us taking them. ' Where did you take him ? ' in
a stag-hunting district is the equivalent of the ' Killed the
fox, sir ? ' or the juvenile ' How many have you cotched ? '
which is put to the fox-hunter so often, so good-naturedly
and so unselfishly, on his way home from hunting.
Taking the deer is, of course, the proper conclusion of a
day's stag-hunting. I admit that there is a certain flatness in
having to tell these kindly and interested questioners that you
have left the deer out. It sounds and is rather ineffectual.

Whatever may be said against the long pilgrimage-like
dragging runs to which the athletic Swinley deer often treat
their followers, there is a certain satisfaction in bringing
such runs to their legitimate ending by taking the deer, and
a corresponding dissatisfaction about having to give him up.
It is nice, too, after a run like Bartlett treated us to on
January 27, 1892, from Hawthorn Hill to Stanford Dingley,
ten miles beyond Reading, to be able to bid good-night to
your good deer comfortably housed in the best loose box
about the place, up to his knees in long wheat straw.
There you know he will stay, the honoured guest of pleased
and sedulous hosts, until his carriage is announced some
time next day.1

How well I can see and recall it all ! ' Ex uno disce
omnes.' As I run a rather unpractised eye for the third
time over the pack I come to the startling conclusion —
which however I keep to myself — that we have got a

1 Bartlett did not get back to Swinley until past four o'clock on the Saturday,
but he was not in the least stiff, and at once went in at his carrots, old beans,
and clover-hay in famous fashion. This deer was named after a family which
for a century had been associated with the Koyal pack.

94

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

couple more than we started with. This turns out to be a
mistake. We are really a couple short, as Needful was run
over by a handsome landau and pair at the meet, and
Wellington was badly lamed by a gentleman, supposed to
be a captain from Aldershot, at the first fence. Bartlett is
being attended to and refreshed in his comfortable quarters.
The men's horses look a little tired ; yet liberally ridden
throughout, they have stayed. And here, faint but pur-
suing, come the second horsemen, who appear to have obeyed
their instructions to ' keep following on ' to the letter. As
to my own, he turned up with William half an hour ago
at a desolate cross-road. How he got there Heaven only
knows, for we were by this time clean out of our own coun-
try and geography ; but there he was, like manna in the
wilderness, waiting for me, with the horse cool, and the
stirrups ready altered to my length. William, considering the
generous way in which he insisted upon being ridden from
Hawthorn Hill to close against Loddon Bridge, still seems
as fresh as a daisy. But it is getting late ; the sunset has
robed the sky in rose and lilac. And now the distances are
fallen asleep, and the foregrounds are getting drowsy. We
must be moving. Horses, however tired, hack home cheer-
fully with hounds ; so do men. What though there are
ten long miles between us and Beading, good stabling, gruel
and linseed, and the welcome the Queen's Hounds can always
count upon. Is there not also the nearer and nearer anticipa-
tion of the snug coffee-room of the Great Western Hotel, of
the change you so prudently sent there, of the loin chop to
which you know the head waiter — the best of my acquaint-
ance— will give his particular and expert attention ? There
is even a reckless, thriftless sort of satisfaction in the calcu-
lation that you are short of horses, five-and-twenty miles from
the kennels, and a good four more on to that from the hunt
stables at Cumberland Lodge.

DEER

95

It is true there are sets-off against these pleasurable emo-
tions. No one has seen or heard anything of the second whip
since three o'clock. He was last seen dragging his horse
through the Reading municipal sewage farm — a four-year-old
with a future, one of the ' no one knows what this horse
may grow into ' sort — on trial from an austerely just dealer.
The first whip's horse, who seemed quite himself but five
minutes ago, has been taken ' queer.' He has just been half

» !«*:M

The Deer should go eight away out of his Cart like the ' Lord
of the Valley '

pushed and half supported into the empty two-stall stable of
the Marquis of Granby, and, you are informed, has now
• started blowing.' The way to Reading seems perplexing ;
the locals, whom the spectacle of the hounds has gathered
round you, not being agreed amongst themselves. There is
no telegraph office, you are dining at seven to go to the play,
and you do not know the name of the theatre. But what good
fun it all was ! Was there ever such a deer as JBartlett, or

96 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

such a pack of hounds as the Queen's, or such a country as
England, or such happy things as leathers and top-boots and
a plain flap saddle ?

I spoke just now of successful stag-hunting. I admit
the difficulty of exactly defining what this means ; it is a
pastime so full of paradox and anomaly and contradictions,
but at all events I know what 1 understand by it myself.
To begin with, the deer should go right away out of his
cart like the ' Lord of the Valley.' We had a deer called
Blackback, who would take off from the floor of the deer-cart
just as if it was a spring-board, and strike straight away into
his gallop. Mind you, it was not fear, it was courage made
him do so. Blackback was a most easily handled deer, quite
understood the nature of things, and never showed any signs
of terror or even anxiety. In the next place, T do not like to
see a deer often during a run. He should go straight away
in the Blackback style, and hardly be seen again until he has
had enough of it. I do not like to see or even hear any more
of a deer, once the inevitable cart business is over, than I
should of a fox, given the same conditions of country. In the
run I have just touched upon, I only saw Bartlett once at
Bearwood : hounds had turned back very short and sudden in
the fir woods near the house, and hearing thern turn I got a
nick up the high road. I saw him jump in and out of it
three hundred yards in front of me as quick as thought — just
as you would like your horse to go in and out of a road
in a point to point race. That day we ran a point as the
crow flies of twenty miles — twenty-four a gentleman from
Slough, whose horse succumbed the same night, declared,
and it must have been thirty miles or more as the hounds
ran. This same deer pleased me in the same way when we
ran him from Aldershot to within a mile of Sutton, near Aires-
ford, when H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught was out with us
and saw all the best of it and in the right place. In the long

DEER

97

distance covered by hounds that day after the turn-out I again
only saw him once, a long way off from the turn-out, until
we hunted up to him on some juniper-studded downland
near Lord Ashburton's place. I can see him now, standing

Eobert Baktlett, Fikst Whip to the Queen's Hounds,

May 1835 to January 1854

\_Ttie head of the family from whom the. celebrated deer takes its name]

haunch-on to us against the steely blue afternoon sky, look-
ing back to see if we were coming. It was an inconvenient
place to take a deer, and there was nowhere to house him.
We were all the best and most understanding of friends. My

h

98 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

second horseman and I just moved him along two or three
yards in front of our horses to the nearest homestead, half
a mile or so away in the valley below. He went much
more kindly than many a Craven shorthorn or any Lonk or
Herd wick wether would have done.1

At the risk of redundancy, I will insist again upon mettle
and fettle as the things most profitable to stag-hunting.
The ridiculous and unseemly things which sometimes occur
out stag-hunting may usually be traced to the want of the
one or the other, or of both. It is foolish to hunt a
weak deer, and wrong to hunt an unwilling one. A stag-
hunt does not depend upon the mere capture of the deer —

1 Mr. T. Nevill, of Chilland, says in his MS. journal written in 1870 : ' I so

far succeeded in taming a red deer presented to me by the Duke of Beaufort in

1855, that I turned him out on Winchester race-course and other open places,

and after giving us an excellent chase, when he had gone to bay and the hounds

were whipped off, he came at my call and followed me home, trotting alongside

my horse. Once he took soil in a pool after a very good chase : the moment I

called him he came out with a great bound, and galloped alongside of my

stirrup iron, to the astonishment of my sporting friends. My hind Princess

was just as tame. She fed in a field with our cows, started away when she

heard the deep note of two couple and a half of hounds, when I laid them on,

ran thirty miles and was lost, the hounds and horses being quite beaten. Three

weeks afterwards I heard of her whereabouts, took the same number of hounds

and hunted her— racing pace— for an hour, when she ran among some cows.

The huntsman called to a labourer to open a farmyard gate. In she went with

the cows. I dismounted, and the moment I called she came and pressed so

closely to me that I was afraid she would tread on my feet. A fallow deer

presented to me by the Earl of Portsmouth was made equally tame. This deer,

although so frequently chased by the hounds, would come up at feeding time,

and eat meal out of their trough.' But Mr. Nevill's command over animals

was extraordinary. Notwithstanding his apparent helplessness, for he was a

cripple from youth, he could hold horses that ran away with other people, and

thought nothing of putting a half -broken thoroughbred colt in harness, and

driving him alone for the first time. Many savage dogs, which their owners

dared not go near, were given to him on condition that he unchained them, and

took them away ; and a jackal given him by a friend from India would follow

him about like a dog, range the fields a long way in front, and come back on

being called and roll round his feet. ' I repeatedly hunted him,' says Mr.

Nevill in his MS. , ' with my bloodhounds. If closely pressed, he would frequently

get his back to some bank or knoll and fiercely keep them at bay, showing his

white teeth till I came to the rescue.'

DEER 99

I give this part of the business credit for many practical
and sentimental advantages — but, after all, the run is ' the
true pathos and sublime ' of the game. Yet, given that your
deer is as fit as a fighting man, and as great a votary of his
profession as a game-cock, he requires sympathetic handling.
A deer must not be hunted as you hunt a fox. Catch-
ing him as soon as possible is just what you do not want
to do. The huntsman of a pack of staghounds must dis-
regard opportunities which are often hurled at his head.
No healthy-minded fox-catcher ever gives a fox a chance.
He would as soon think of casting forward. But to press
home your advantages with a deer means that you run
great risks of bewildering and so spoiling him, or even
killing him. In any case, you will disappoint an eager field by
depriving them of what they conceive to be their full rights ;
that is, plenty of galloping, jumping, and tumbling about.
Moreover, it is well to bear in mind that a deer is quite as
easily killed by over-driving at the beginning of a run, before
he has had time to take his bearings, as at the end. ' Nimrod,'
indeed, disapproved of bursting a fox. A celebrated exponent
of this operation was Mr. Thomas Smith, of whom an admirer
said, ' If I were a fox I'd sooner have a pack of hounds behind
me than Tom Smith with a stick in his hand.' In reference
to him, ' Nimrod,' in his hunting reminiscences, says : ' What
is called bursting a fox, and hunting him to death, are very
different operations, and on this subject I can state an
incident to the point which I witnessed with Lord Kintore's
hounds in Scotland. We had run a fox about twenty
minutes into a small cover, whence we viewed him break-
ing away again. " Pray help Joe to stop the hounds," said
Lord Kintore to me, blowing his horn at the time. " Let
him get well away, and we shall have a run." He did get
well away with the body of the pack on his line, and the
result was a beautiful fifty minutes. I call this fox-hunt-

H 2

ioo STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

ing.'1 Lord Kintore would have made a capital Master of
the Buckhounds.

The best deer run to points, and I think concern them-
selves little about wind, although their preference is said to be
to run on a side wind ; but it is as well to uncart a deer with his
head up wind, and give him time to make up his mind. It is
customary with the Queen's Hounds for the first whip to ride
the deer for a few hundred yards, to keep him away from the
country which you do not want him to take over, and to edge
him into the country you do. Davis liked to point him to-
wards any conspicuous hill, such as Harrow, if he could, with
a good stretch of country before him, and believed in giving
him a sort of cynosure. In the sequel, I think it makes very
little difference.

With certain deer, however, I got to know where to send
my change or my hack almost with certainty. I remember
turning out a havier named Lord Clanwilliam just under
Maiden Earley. He ran us out of daylight to Easthamp-
stead. "We had him harboured in one of Lord Down-
shire's woods and found him there a fortnight later. It
was a very pretty find, quite like the real thing, and he
gave us a good run. He ran the last six or seven miles
almost stick for stick of his old line the reverse way. We
must all have jumped several fences in exactly the same
places — I know I did — and we took him in an outhouse in
the very next field to the one we had turned him out in. It
is related of the Miller, a noted deer in Davis's time, that
if he got two or three hundred yards out of his old line
he would take the greatest pains to right himself, and
would then set to in earnest. The Miller ran for eleven

\

1 ' Nimrod ' cites, in proof of the advantage of letting a fox get well away in
his own way, and at his own time, the fact that a woodland fox which has stolen
away, and only been viewed when well away, will stand longer before hounds
than a fox found in a gorse cover.

DEER 101

seasons, and niade theni stop out so often that Davis used
to put an extra guinea in his pocket whenever he was
hunted.

Davis, much as he enjoyed and reverenced fox-hunting,
was, as it were, cradled in stag-hunting. Thus, as we
have seen, a fine perception of the ways and habits of deer
had grown with his growth. Dr. Croft tells me that his
deer were nearly always taken without injury. Season after
season found the old names in the Swinley paddocks. ' The
science of stag-hunting,' a friend of long experience writes to
me, ' lies in the management of the deer : the rest is a matter
of a bold, fast horse and an adhesive buckskin.' At all events,
everything depends upon the old deer, the deer who know their
points and have learned how to take care of themselves. Thus
a man may be a good huntsman with foxhounds, and fail
from his very qualities as a huntsman of staghounds. An
apologist of the last century — for hunting the carted deer has
always had its Strattons and its Bowen Mays — puts it in this
way : ' Here our chase differs from every other of the field,
and proves itself worthy of the title Eoyal, for as it is the
sport of majesty, it is also strictly the seat of mercy ; for in all
other sports of the field, as each individual considers himself
the hero of the day for being first in at the death, here the
arduous determined struggle is who can most exceed in his
exertions to save life.'

Thus, one of the most difficult things for persons in
authority out stag-hunting is to know when to stop hounds
and when to press a deer. Some deer, as I have said, go
away with a bang, make up their minds and yours m the
first field, and prosecute their point with the determination
of a Deccan boar ; but I have known deer which have given
us capital runs make very poor starts. The weather or some
accident or caprice may have something to do with it, but
there are good sulky deer just as there are good sulky race-

102 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

horses. Guy Fawkes,1 a great celebrity of my time, was
usually a little bit tricky at first — what a hansom-cab driver
means when he tells you that his horse is ' nappy.' From the
cabby it is all but a commendation, and the nappy ones are
nearly always stout ones. The racehorse Lanercost, it was
said, would make a race with a donkey, and I call to mind
several good deer who had a little of the Lanercost indolence
about them. I have had before me an old hunting diary of
Freeman's, who was whip to the Queen's Hounds in the
forties and fifties : invariably good runs for several years
stand to the credit of a deer named Sulky. Sometimes the
names of the Swinley deer had and have no connection with
anything in particular ; but in this case, I imagine, a deer
would hardly have been given such an ugly and undeerlike
name, unless it was in some way or other appropriate.

I have heard it said that hunting the carted deer, if
not a science, requires a system. I cannot quite agree.
You never know what deer are going to do. They will run
up and down the fences, stand in the corner of a field look-
ing at you, trot back down a road into the pack instead of
galloping away from it, and altogether behave in a most
un-Landseer-like way. They oblige you often to trust to
luck or to the inspiration of the psychological moment as
it arises. Either of these plays the deuce with a system.
Sometimes, if the deer is disporting himself in the road,
it is best to let the pack go right up to him and let him
canter along in the middle of them under the safe escort
of the whips until he jumps out. Then stop hounds till
he has got his start. This looks bad, especially if the hunts-
man is at all excitable and fond of blowing his horn. The
master in such an emergency should, if he can persuade his

1 Mr. Gladstone took an interest in Guy Fawkes. Only the other day he
asked me after his welfare and recent performances. Alas ! multis Me bonis
flebilis occidit.

DEER

103

horse to understand, pass sideways down the road at the
head of the field, restraining the wagonettes and the hard
riders by voice and gesture as well as he can.

If, instead of being in the road, the deer is trotting up and
down the fences, it is usual to send on a whip with a couple
and a half, who generally have to be dragged to the scene of
action with backward and protesting glances. This does not
look well either. It is a curious thing — I am now supposing

WlNCHELSEA, A FAVOURITE DEER

the deer to be looking serenely at the impatient hunt from the
angled corner of the same field — that hounds never seem to
realise the deer on these occasions. They cannot bear leaving
their companions, and dread missing some fun. Once they
get there, however, the reluctant couple and a half enjoy
themselves amazingly. A bitch called Cheerful was ridicu-
lously fond of this guerilla duty. She never forgot a delight-
ful quarter of an hour she once had all alone with a deer wTe

104 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

had brought from Bramshill. After a great deal of dodging
about she succeeded in driving him single-handed into a small
wayside pond near Elvetham, when we took him. Ever after-
wards she always tried to sneak on whenever hounds were
stopped. I never discovered the qualities of heart and
head — except I suppose that they could be easily stopped
— which recommended particular hounds for this duty ; but
particular hounds were always selected by the huntsman.
Cheerful and another great favourite of mine, a bitch called
Notion, also an adept, were exceptions to what I have just
said about hounds not seeing and realising a deer. It was
always difficult to keep either of them with the pack. In any
difficulty, whether indeed they saw the deer or not, they were
always rushing forward, longing to show off and be of use.

But in all these seasons of perplexity, unless you know
from experience that his behaviour is mere self-consciousness,
I am sure that the best thing to do is to make up your mind,
and not be too long about it, that there is nothing to be got
out of the deer. Leave him to his devices, waste no more
time, send for the deer-cart and turn out a second deer.
Although, as I have already said, I did not like being beaten
by a deer at the end of a good run, any legitimate excuse for
establishing an outlying deer is to be welcomed. One thing-
must always be borne in mind. It looks best, and, indeed,
is best in all emergencies, to show no symptoms of hesitation,
to appear to take whatever happens as matters of course and
calculation, and to reject all advice.

I said just now that hounds did not seem to realise a deer
at times. It is curious too that in the case I have just out-
lined, that of a fresh deer cantering along in the middle of
the pack — I mean a deer that has not given anything like a
run — hounds do not try to get a hold of him. I have no
distinct recollection of ever having seen a hound in such a
case jump up at a deer, or even snap with any determination

DEER 105

at his hocks. Even if he is standing still, a strong fresh deer
with the slightest advantage of ground will hold his own, and
the hounds will not go in at him. No doubt the men are
usually there or thereabouts, and the thongs in near earshot ;
no doubt, too, most of the hounds have had reason to acknow-
ledge at some time or other the flashing accuracy of a red
deer's forefoot ; but making due allowance for these considera-
tions, this can only be accounted for by the force of education
and example. The courage of individuals cannot be doubted.
A hound called Falkland, a three-season hunter which I sent
in a draft to Baron Houdemarre in Normandy, went straight
in at a wTild boar the first day in a way which the Baron
described to me as heroic ; so did one or two of the others,
but Falkland would not have done this with a deer. Like
most people do, he conformed to public opinion. Not be-
cause he was in the least afraid of the deer, but because he,
the individual, had been merged in the pack. But a deer
must have the advantage, or at all events not the disadvan-
tage, of ground. In a ditch, for instance, he at once loses
all his prestige, and is in a fair way of losing his life. The
best of deer have a great liking for deep wet ditches, and
seem to forget all sublunary things in their enjoyment of
them. A wired country is bad enough ; a wire fence some-
times throws a deer in a most disagreeable way to see ; it
prevents the men riding to hounds and being there to help
him if he is in any straits ; but I declare water-meadows are
worse, and hounds should always be stopped at once.

I spoke just now of the value of old past-master deer,
but it is only fair to say that an untried deer will often give
you a fine run. Indeed, as a rule, I think, a deer tells you
all about himself the first time you hunt him in an open
country. He may not give you a good run the first time,
but by the pricking of your thumbs or some other esoteric
communication you know that it is in him to do so. Thus

106 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

every deer should be given a second or perhaps a third chance
of winning the affection of the establishment and the esteem
of the public.

I see, by some notes taken in 1892, that the Swinley
herd consisted in the middle of the hunting season of
twenty-five deer altogether. We had eleven stags, seven
hinds, four polled haviers and three haviers in the paddocks.1
This may be taken as the average constituency. Most of
the deer at Swinley are Windsor-bred deer, with the excep-
tion of one or two from Richmond Park. At that time I
remember the only really intractable deer we had was a
Richmond stag, and, from a hunting point of view, a very

1 I am indebted to Mr. F. Simmonds, of the Woods and Forests Department,
for the following rather technical particulars of Swinley Paddocks, which are
in his charge : — ■

There are five separate deer paddocks at Swinley, comprising altogether an
area of 12. 0. 35. acreage. The paddocks are supplied with water from a stream
flowing out of a neighbouring pond, small bays being made for the recep-
tion and storage of water. A certain acreage of the paddocks is manured,
harrowed and rolled every year, and the deer are shifted about from one
paddock to another, as occasion may require. If deer are left to graze the same
pasturage year by year, as at Swinley Paddocks, the herbage would go back
unless well manured and attended to by manual labour, although deer manure
is of first-rate quality. Deer are not good farmers, because they will only feed
upon the very best grazing to be had, leaving the rough parts untouched. The
paddocks are fenced by an oak fence standing eight feet out of the ground,
five feet of this being a close pale fence from the ground, and the upper three
feet open palisade. An iron ground sheet at the bottom of the fence is let
into the ground about nine inches, and an iron sheet about three inches wide is
laid along the fence where the close pale fence and the open palisade meet.
The average price of the fencing, including banking, is 31. 12s. Qd. per rod. The
paddocks are treated as permanent pasture and never meadowed. Fencing for
deer paddocks must be strong and kept in constant repair. In September,
1889, a very high wind broke down several rods of the fence, and when
Goodall began forest hunting, all the deer, with one exception, were lying
wild in the forest, but he took them all by degrees. The area of each
paddock is —

acres

rods

poles

3

1

28

2

3

31

2

0

8

2

2

25

1

0

23

DEER

107

moderate animal. When it was a question of carting him,
he used to rear up on his hind legs and strike in a most
unfriendly way and with painful celerity.

The 'Druid,' in one of his books, attempts to draw dis-
tinctions between different breeds of deer from the hunting
point of view. The Woburn deer, for instance, he speaks of
with admiration ; the Chillingham deer, imported by Lord
Kinnaird when he was Master of the Buckhounds, with faint
praise. I think it very doubtful myself whether the strain has
much, if anything, to do with deer running well or ill. Yet,
if I do not attach importance to how they are bred, I do
attach it to where they are bred, and I should always prefer
deer drafted to the paddocks from large parks like Windsor
and Richmond. The larger and the rougher the better.

Except for an occasional drive in the deer-cart — in reserve
— many of the Swinley deer are mere walking ladies and
gentlemen,1 or at best understudies for the leading character
parts. ' Fruges consumere nati,' they are bovine in their
habits and interpretation of everyday life, preferring the
quiet plenty of the paddock to the distinctions of the chase.
However, they justify their existence very tolerably as veni-
son. A fat saddle helps amazingly to repair the gaps in
Farmer So-and-So's fences, or even the depredations of Lord
Suffolk's ' turnip trarnplers.'

In my time only the good deer were hunted — deer that
I knew could go and would go. This has always been the
rule in the Royal establishments. I hear they were better
than ever last season. It is difficult to say whether a deer
will run well or ill. Much depends upon temperament
and accident, a good deal upon the state of the ground,
and a little upon the weather. Like other professionals, deer

1 Our crack deer come out four or five times a season. Bartlett one season
was out six times, I think, and never had a scratch of any sort ; but this is an
unusual number of times. Three would be about the average for the good deer.

108 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

have their days. It would also be difficult to say whether
stags or hinds do best. Stags are, of course, the stronger,
and the great long-distance runs have almost invariably
been after stags or haviers. But towards the end of the
season, say about March, when the country dries up and
the fallows look pale and the pastures sallow, I like a
hind best. They are gayer, and run the roads less than
stags or haviers. I remember a wonderfully good fifty-five
minutes with a hind named Hawthorn. The meet was
unfashionable — Ascot Heath, which at that time of year
means the Forest. We turned her out on the verge, close to
South Hill Gate. She went straight out into the open
towards Wokingham, and we never saw her till we took her
after an eight-mile point. There may have been one or two
natural checks, but I never stopped hounds once, and we
were galloping all the time. Mr. T. Donovan, of Cork, was
much delighted. He was at that time living and dealing at
Reading, and a famous neighbour ; for if, as often happened,
we were short of horses, he would always lend us one. The
South Berks woodlands and Mr. Garth's heather were little
to his liking. He frequently took his gods to witness that
the Queen's Hounds kept him alive, and he used to assure
us of a cordial welcome if the Royal establishment could be
permanently transferred to Ireland. I remember that day
particularly, as we both rather mismanaged our hunting
seats over some strong black rails which a small boy on a
white pony with a crupper had jumped like an antelope.
Timber is an unusual fence in the Queen's country. It
seemed unjust ; and a nervous surprise is not the frame of
mind in which to ride at this sort of obstacle.

It is often impossible to account for a deer's actions. In
1892 Lord Clanwilliam, a havier named after the distinguished
Admiral who assisted in capturing him in Englemere pond
the first day he was ever hunted, ran us out of daylight after

DEER

109

delighting an immense concourse at Cobhani, where we had
met by invitation of the Master of Old Surrey and the
farmers of that sporting part of the world. "We were nearly
forty miles from kennels, and hounds and horses had to sleep
out. After the stag had been outlying two or three weeks,
I sent the hounds to try to catch him, as we could not
afford to be without so good a stag. They found him on the
hills above Boxmoor, and ran him fast for an hour and a half
in a most distressing country for horses, having to whip off
in consequence. Lord Clanwilliam, however, behaved mag-
nanimously, and having seen the hounds out of sight retired
into the porch of a limekiln. Some children saw him stand-
ing there and rushed off to tell their father, who was anchored
in a neighbouring public-house. But, according to the
account given me, it was nearly four hours before anything
was done by the company in the public-house to secure him.
The porchway was, however, eventually blocked up, Lord
Clanwilliam having been good enough to remain there the
whole of the time. I saw this deer two or three days later
at Swinley, looking very well, but not in such good condition
as before he lay out.

Loss of condition is always involved in lying out. If
they gain in wildness they lose in wind and muscle. An
outlying deer is a bad neighbour. The}' are wasteful feeders,
and the lean tillage about Bagshot and Bracknell would
quickly suffer if many deer were left out. I remember
an outlying deer behaving very badly to the asters and
carnations in a villa garden, and I am bound to say the
massacre of domestic picotees and malmaisons by a so-called
wild animal would quite have justified a Berkshire adaptation
of Ansdell's ' Crofter's Bevenge ' from the best bedroom
window.

In the paddocks the stronger stags hustle the weaker, and
a good deal of bullying goes on. There is always a master deer.

no STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Bartlett was master deer during my time, having bested a
deer called Blackback. Attached as we all were to Guy
Fawkes, who had quite as much guile as his namesake and
more personality about him than the others, I think Bartlett
was the best and the most reliable deer during my Mastership.
The other crack deer in my time were Lord Clanwilliam,
Blackback, and Kunaway. The latter got his name from
a remarkable exploit. Half an hour after his first arrival at
Swinley he was startled by the crack of a whip, and jumped
out over eight feet of oaken paling. He was out for some
weeks before he was taken after a capital run. I remember
seeing Guy Fawkes jump a frowning, tarred, Masterman
Keady-ish palisade within which the proprietor of the villa so
often sees fit to entrench himself, which must have been over
seven feet high. I also saw a deer jump a solid brick wall
out of the high road near Chalfont St. Giles, off the foot-
path. It was a continuous brick wall, coped at the top, and
looked quite unjumpable.

The beasts which roam over the plain
My form with indifference see ;
They are so unacquainted with men
Their tameness is shocking to me.

But the tameness and indifference which often shock the
stag-hunter can hardly be accounted for by Alexander
Selkirk's theory. The Windsor deer are as accustomed to
civilisation, the Queen's lieges, and the latest fashions, as the
sheep in Hyde Park. It is just the same when they get to
Swinley ; there is lots going on past the paddocks. Ascot
week is quite a gala, and the deer pay an inquisitive and
pleased attention to the smart ladies and gentlemen and car-
riages driving past their pleasant precincts on their way to the
races. I mentioned elsewhere the ' exhibitions of uncommon
strength ' of an unnamed Georgian deer in and out of the
back-gardens and drying-grounds of Staines. Perhaps this

DEER 1 1 1

particular deer was a specially selected holiday cheap-jack,
as it was Easter week, when crowds of holiday-makers used
to come out. There are always one or two of the back-garden
sort at Swinley. But why are deer so fond of premises and
people ? ' I have never made out whether the deer is a bold
animal or a timid one. I am told that even the wild deer
on Exmoor will run into farm-buildings like the carted
deer. Not so very long ago one was killed in a dining-
room and another in a conservatory. It is true that the
latter was a Quantock Hill deer, which, as they live on a
very small tract of country, are really more like park deer.
I understand, too, that the Exmoor stags will trot down
a road towards the field just as the carted deer do, the only
difference being that the field, instead of standing still and
letting the deer come through them, as we do in Bucks and
Berks, gallop as hard as they can away from the deer.

I have already quoted from an old sporting magazine of the
last century the statement that the deer of that day lived at
Swinley in great luxury. This standard of comfort is still
scrupulously maintained. The sweetest second cut of clover-
hay (the first cut is too tough for deer's teeth), the glossiest
old beans, the juiciest carrots are very specially chosen for
them. I think the Swinley deer lead quite happy and con-
tented lives. A Black Mount deer would pine for the shrill
breezes of the tops, the sun-clad face, the cool stone and
shadowland of the long corries. But these are the park-bred
deer of Mrs. Hernans's stately homes of England. I won't
say anything about heredity and evolution, but they would
find the conditions of a Scotch forest very uncomfortable and
inconvenient.

Any hurt or mischance to a deer is a matter of poignant
regret to the whole Buckhounds establishment, and to the

1 Pliny observes that a deer pressed by hounds often takes refuge in the
haunts of men ; so does Du Fouilloux.

I 12

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

stag-hunting public. Lord Cork and Goodall once got wet to
the skin in a five-foot-deep pond in the interests of Hark-
away. When Bartlett was in difficulties one December day
in the ooze of the Loddon, the men went in nearly up to
their necks in icy cold water and mud to rescue him. And I
could give several conspicuous instances of the same kind
which happened during my Mastership.

Gkovks, Deer-keepek

Diet and solicitude, however, will not do everything for
condition. Whether a Master holds himself, his huntsman,
or his deer-keeper responsible for the condition— that is, for
the fitness — of the deer, the actual responsibility and credit
largely rest with the deer-keeper. Looking after deer may

DEER 1 1 3

not be as rare a faculty as, say, water divining, but a man
who really understands deer under the artificial and high-
feeding conditions of deer kept for hunting in paddocks is a
very valuable factor in a stag-hunting establishment. Nor
is it altogether a question of care and regular diet and ways.
There must be the sympathy of secret understanding between
the care-taker and the cared-for. The deer-keeper must be,
as it were, their familiar. I remember its being said of the
head-stableman in a livery yard, who seemed able to make
a bad doer thrive and to alter an ill-tempered horse's nature
from the moment he had anything to do with them, that he
told the horses little stories. A good deer-keeper must have
something of this about him, and at Swinley we are for-
tunate.

I will conclude with a word as to exercising. The few
times a deer is hunted in a season will not keep him in
sufficiently good wind for the deep country he is expected to
show sport over. To my mind, deer should be exercised in
the paddock. During my time wTe had a bob-tailed lurcher
called Charlie. I think he was half greyhound, half collie.
Harvey bought him for a sovereign of a travelling tinker.
This was a wonderful dog to exercise deer, and such a
mover ! The deer and he were famous playfellows, and I
do not think you could have got him to touch one. Poor
Charlie, I heard the other day, had to be shot, being sus-
pected of dumb madness. I was very sorry, and I shall
always remember the good-humour of his innocent pursuit.

ii4 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE VI

THE STAGHOUND

Nobleman. Huntsman, I charge tbee, tender well my hounds :

Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss'd ;

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd brach.

Saw'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good

At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault ?

I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.
Huntsman. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord ;

He cried upon it at the merest loss

And twice to-day pick'd out the dullest scent :

Trust me, I take him for the better dog.
Nobleman. Thou art a fool : if Echo were as fleet,

I would esteem him worth a dozen such.

Lord Foppingtox in ' The Kelapse ' declares that in his
opinion a man of parts and breeding can do without books,
and amuse himself very well with the ' natural sprouts ' of
his own imagination. But there are times when we should
think of others as well as ourselves, and Lord Foppington
had not undertaken to write a book about the Buckhounds.
He was much too sensible. So at the outset let me acknow-
ledge that a considerable portion of this chapter is the
result of books and reading. The literature of the subject is
large and rather formidable.1 Scribes are not always authori-
ties, and many of the best authorities are not scribes.

1 Xenophon's Cijneyeticon runs into twelve books, and in many respects is
curiously modern. A passage occurs in the sixth book beginning : iireiSav Be
■jrepl rbv Aayai &ai, StjAov iroiT)(rovffi rip Kvi/r)y4rri avv reus ox/pats to. aw/xaTa '6\a
ffwanKpahaivovcrai, iroA.€iui/cis eiri<pfp6/xevai, <piAoveb«os Trapadeovaai, avvTp&xovaai
<pi\on6vu>s, ffwicTTafxevcu to^u, Bu(Trajxeva.i, etc. etc., describing a run on the Attic
Highlands which might have been written, say, by the late Mr. Dear of Winchester
of a run with his pretty harriers over Worthy Down.

THE STAGHOUND 115

However, I have levied upon other writers' researches and
recollections the odds and ends which seemed most likely
to season an excursion on the predecessors of the modern
staghound. From first to last, except some shreddy
personal experiences, there is nothing new nor original
about anything I have to say about these antiques. A
foot-note is not an enthusiastic expression of gratitude.
But I see no more handsome way of acknowledging the
heavy debt of gratitude I owe to the many excellent writers
whose works I have consulted. From some of these, en-
couraged by Mr. Fox's observation, that Hume's practice
of quoting from other writers gave an agreeable variety to
his style, I have here and there given passages in their
full text.

Since Lord Wolverton's hounds were sold to go abroad,
and Mr. Thomas Nevill's pack was broken up by his death,
as far as I know there is no pack which can lay claim to
being distinctively staghounds.1 Dr. Collyns writes in the past

1 According to Turberville, we owe the staghound to one Brutus, who, having
got into serious trouble in Italy for killing his father, settled in Britain near
Totnes, and brought with him some hounds which were so staunch that, ' a
hart once found, they would never leave 'him till his death.' Brutus must have
been a country gentleman in advance of his time, for, notwithstanding the
graphic scraps in Horace, Od. i. 1, 25, Epist. i. 2, 65, the popular form of ' venatio '
with the Bomans was the hunting spectacle, in which hundreds and sometimes
thousands of wild animals were slaughtered in the amphitheatre to gratify the
populace. It seems to have come at last, in the days of the Empire, to pure
delight in shedding blood, e.g. King Bocchus sent 100 lions to Bonie in Sylla's
piffitorship, ' with the proper number of javelin men to destroy them ' in the
circus. Sometimes a number of large trees torn up by the roots were planted
in the circus, and the less savage animals being admitted into this extemporised
forest were given up to the people, who were allowed to rush into the arena and
carry off what they could. At the consecration of the Amphitheatre of Titus,
5,000 wild beasts and 4,000 tame animals were killed. At a venatio given by
Probus there were 1,000 ostriches, 1,000 stags, 1,000 boars, 1,000 deer slaugh-
tered, and on the following day 100 lions and 100 lionesses, 100 leopards and
300 bears, and we hear of a hippopotamus and five crocodiles in tanks in the
amphitheatre, eighteen elephants, camelopards and giraffes (Scaurus, b.c. 58),
a python sixty cubits long, and thirty-six crocodiles contributing at different
times to the popularity of Empire (Augustus, 29 B.C.).

i 2

n6 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

tense of the old Devon and Somerset staghounds in his in-
teresting book on the chase of the wild red deer. ' A nobler
pack of hounds no man ever saw. They had been in the
county for years, and had been bred with the utmost care for
the express purpose of stag-hunting. What the exact origin
of this breed was I am unable to state with accuracy. The
bloodhound and old southern hound, however, were beyond
doubt amongst the ancestors of the pack, which when sold
consisted of about thirty couples. In height, the hounds were
about twenty-six to twenty-eight inches ; colour generally
hare pyed, yellow, yellow and white, or badger pyed, with
long ears, deep muzzles, large throats and deep chests. In
tongue they were perfect, and when hunting in water, or on
half-scent, or baying a deer, they might be heard at an
immense distance. Even when running at speed they gave
plenty of tongue, and their great size enabled them to cross
the long heather and rough sedgy pasturage of the forest
without effort or difficulty. The hills and woods of Devon
and Somerset will never again ring to the melody of such
a pack.'

Mr. Fitt, in his capital ' Covert-side Sketches,' accepts a
comparatively modern hound called Windsor, described in
the ' Sporting Magazine ' for April, 1840, as the true stag-
hound. He even goes further, and accepts him as the type of
the staghound of George III.'s pack in its best days. This
Windsor was a distinguished member of the Massy Buck-
hounds, a crack Tipperary pack of that day, and was pre-
sumably entered somewhere about 1820. This is what his
biographer has to say about him : ' Windsor, who deserves the
name of ' Ultimus Eomanorum,' was the noblest buckhound
I ever saw, although I have been in their celebrated company
almost from my infancy. His colour was white with a small
spot of yellow upon each ear, heavy dew-lap, immense fore-
part and somewhat cat-ham, which belonged to their pristine

THE STAG HOUND 117

form.' With the requirements of modern hunting the whole
conception of the staghound has changed. No two animals
in the matter of points can be more different than the stag-
hound featured and characterised in these graphic extracts,
and the ideal a Master of the Buckhounds sets before him to-
day. As to the points of these ' vieille roche ' aristocrats, it will
be seen — again I quote — that they were not arrived at with-
out care and meditation. The cross is as complicated as a
Chinese puzzle, and is worthy of a pigeon-fancier. ' They
were a cross of the Irish wolfhound, the Irish bloodhound,
and the Spanish dark red bloodhound ; and they were after-
wards crossed upon the large English bull-dog, and partook
of that animal's appearance in their silky (sic) coats and
large and deep-set underjaws.'

Colonel Thornton bought the best of the Koyal hounds
and removed to France in 1814. I imagine they were not
anything to boast of. George's III.'s illness must have taken
a great deal of the heart and spirit out of the hunting. Sharpe
was an old man. In-and-in breeding, and the habit of con-
stantly stopping hounds for a quarter of an hour or twenty
minutes to let the king, who would go no faster than he
liked, get up, and yet having very long days and dragging
over miles of country, had demoralised the pack, both in
the kennel and in their work. By this time, according to
a correspondent of the ' Sporting Magazine ' (March 1814),
men, horses, and hounds had ' dwindled by rapid degrees
from splendour to decency, from decency to poverty, from
poverty to inability. Those,' he adds, ' which don't eat are
going mad, and those which are not going mad can only
eat.'

The Colonel, I suppose, had formed his estimate of French
taste in hounds during his hunting tour in France, and he
no doubt knew where to place them. The King's hounds
were not his sort if the pictures and the record which

n8

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIOXS

appeared in Daniels' ' Rural Sports ' of one of his own
breeding named Merkin speak true. There is nothing
to choose between the Colonel's Merkin ; Luxury, a crack
hound in the Royal kennel in Davis's best period, and which

Luxury

he considered faultless ; ' and Roman and Rhetoric, a dog
and a bitch now in the Ascot kennel.2

1 Charles Davis in a letter to the ' Sporting Review ' in 1841 wrote :
' Luxury is now six years old, and was bred by me : she is twenty-three inches
high, and I consider her in every respect perfect ; her sire was the royal hound
Lightning ; her dam, the Duke of Rutland's Syren. Lightning was descended
from the blood of the late Duke of Richmond, which I consider the stoutest
of any in England. Syren's Belvoir blood is sufficient guarantee for its ex-
cellence

2 Roman is by Warwickshire Rhymer out of Lord Leconfield's Rosemary ;
Rhetoric, by Roman out of Ruby.

THE STAGHOUXD

119

The foxhound was not a fresh creation at the time fox-
hunting first came into fashion. Side by side with the

:^SfSh^^^^^^_. I

Roman

/ • -. - ■

Rhetoiuc

southern hound, which we may take to be the original
Georgian staghound, the northern hound had by this time

120 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

(say 1814) flourished for upwards of a century.1 Originally
a distinct Yorkshire breed— as a Yorkshireman, I insist
upon keeping alive this most honourable tradition — this
northern hound is the modern foxhound. The northern
hound was an established breed in Yorkshire in Gervase
Markham's time. As against the southern hound, Markham
praises him for his ' swiftnesse,' and describes a most racing-
like animal with round feet and many other precious fox-
hound characteristics. On the other hand, then as now,
silence was the price which had to be paid for pace. ' To speak
of their mouths, they have only a little sharp sweetnesse
like a jigge, but no depth or grand-like more solemn music'
Their nose Mr. Markham thinks as good as, indeed, because
more sensitive and responsive, better than that of the southern
hound. ' You shall understand that these swift hounds are,
out of their haste and nimbleness and metal, more subject
to make default than other hounds, yet full as curious and
full of scent as any other, as you shall perceive by the quick
knowledge and apprehension of their own errors, casting about
and recovering the scent, and so going away with the scent
before any huntsman can come up to help them.' M. de
Ligniville, a great French veneur and writer of the seven-
teenth century, speaks constantly of the excellence of the York-
shire hounds ; they are, he declares, the best in the world.
He himself possessed a white northern bitch called Mouille,
which could not be beaten. The hounds, not only in Woot-
ton's, Stubbs's, and Sartorius's more important pictures, but
in most hunting scenes to be found in old country houses, are
in appearance to all intents and purposes foxhounds, except-
ing in colour, for Belvoir tan was still a luxury ; they have
all the points of the modern foxhound, and none of those
of the Massy buckhound or of Dr. Collyns's majestic

1 The date ascribed by Mr. Baring Gould to ' Arscott of Tedcott ' and to his
famous fox-hunt in the West country is 1652.

THE STAG HOUND 121

heroes. Very often the artist is not satisfactory, nor the
hound, but the type is a foxhound type and not a staghound
type. Indeed, as against Mr. Fitt's ' Windsor ' theory, in the
picture at Cumberland Lodge, by Chalon, of Sharpe with
the King's hounds, the hounds are more like the modern
foxhound-harrier than the redoubtable ' Ultimus Romanorum '
of the ' Sporting Magazine.'

The Duke of Richmond gave me the other day the con-
temporary account of the great Charlton run, when twenty-
three ' glorious ' hounds ran into a bitch fox after having
run her from 7.45 a.m. till 5.50 p.m., on January 26,
1738, fifty-seven miles, two furlongs, ten yards by measure-
ment as hounds run. Xo wonder Charles Davis declared
there was nothing like the old Goodwood sort, and stuck
to them. These were foxhounds,1 of course, and the chronicler
tells us with unction that after crossing Halnaker Hill to
Sebbige Farm, the Master of the King's (George II.) Stag-
hounds, Mr. Jenison, had had enough of it : ' thoroughly
satisfied ' is the way he puts it.2

But to return for a moment to Merkin and her owner.
Colonel Thornton thought such great things of Merkin
that he backed her to run any hound of her year on a
drag or train scent five miles over Newmarket, giving 220
yards start, for 10,000 guineas.3 Merkin's time trial —
incredible as it sounds — was four miles in seven and a
half minutes. The match does not appear to have come

1 William III. took the Grand Duke of Tuscany to hunt with the Charlton
foxhounds.

'-' The inference is that neither he nor his horse was accustomed to such
runs with the slow and heavy staghounds.

3 These contests were very fashionable at this period. In the match for
500/. between a couple of Mr. Barry's and a couple of Mr. Meynell's hounds,
sixty horses started, and only twelve got to the end. Seven to four was bet on
Mr. Meynell's hounds, who were badly beaten. The course was from the
rubbing-house at the town end to the starting-post of the B. C, and the distance
was covered in a little over eight minutes. The last horse was Bib, ridden by
Will Crane, and he was a King's Plate winner.

122 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

off, and the Colonel sold Merkin for four hogsheads of after-
dinner claret. He appears to have liked bringing wine into
a deal, and he sold Dash, a celebrated pointer — painted,
I think, by Stubbs — to Sir R. Symons for 160Z., to be taken
out in champagne or burgundy, a hogshead of claret, an
'elegant ' gun, and another pointer. Dash was half a fox-
hound, and a celebrated French Vendee hound called
Greffier was half a pointer.

It would be worse than the evolution of the northern
and the southern hound if I delved into the action and
reaction of foxhound and pointer blood, but I remem-
ber well that, as a boy, I used to go and shoot at a very
good grouse moor called Strathavon, near Tomintoul, with
Colonel Legendre Starkie, who had a great kennel of pointers
and Gordon setters. I remember the particular style and
excellence of a black and white pointer ; he used to stand
to birds with his stern straight up in the air. This was
not quite right, but Colonel Starkie liked him especially
from his striking likeness in appearance and ways to a
foxhound. On this subject he writes to me : ' Shot, like
many of my pointers, had three crosses of foxhound in him
from three different kennels, Osbaldistone, Sir Harry Good-
rich and Captain J. White. All these men had a famous
breed of pointers, and each one of them had used the fox-
hound cross. This gave to their progeny endurance, and
good legs and feet and pace.'

Mr. Mellish's hounds were lemon pyes,1 and hunted wild
fallow deer in Epping Forest up till 1805. As far as I can make
out, they were the foundation of the old Devon and Somerset
staghounds. In 1825 the Devon and Somerset were sold
by Mr. Lucas to Mr. Shard to hunt carted deer in Hamp-
shire. ' Nimrod ' paid Mr. Shard a visit at Little Somborne

1 Mr. Darby described the old Epping Forest staghounds as ' pointer fleshed,
with a stalliony look about them.'

THE STAGHOUND 123

in December 1825, and professed himself highly satisfied
with his equipment. 'Whatever Mr. Shard does, he does
with spirit ' — a prime requisite, I concur, in carted deer-hunt-
ing— and the turn-out generally appears to have been on the
Windsor model, as two good-natured friends of Mr. Shard's
acted as yeomen prickers, which, says 'Nimrod,' 'gave
the whole a very classical effect,' Mr. Shard's own person
being adorned and enlivened by a handsome belt to which a
bugle was suspended. They had not much of a hunt over a
fenceless and featureless country ; and the deer went for
three miles with a couple close at his haunches. The deer
after being taken was blooded in the tail, Sangrado's treat-
ment, or this half of it, being in vogue at that time with
stag-hunters ; and he was in such fine fighting form by the
evening that he seriously injured the first whipper-in.
Speaking of these big North Devon hounds, ' Nimrod '
observes, ' I should not suspect the Hampshire flints
agreed with hounds of this great size ' ; nor did the Buck-
inghamshire flints and hills agree wdth the coarse, heavy-
shouldered, so-called staghound of the Ascot kennels of
thirty years ago.

But the old Devon and Somerset hounds cannot have been
as slow as the Royal hounds in George III.'s time. The Rev.
Mr. Russell writes of a celebrated trencher-fed pack and of
this blood : ' I hunted, as many days in every week as my
duties would permit, with John Froude, the well-known vicar
of Knowstone, with whom I was then on very intimate terms.
His hounds were something out of the common, bred from the
old staghounds, light in their colour, and sharp as needles ;
plenty of tongue, but would drive like furies. I have never
seen a better or more killing pack in all my long life. He
couldn't bear to see a hound put his nose to the ground and
" twiddle his tail." " Hang the brute ! " he would say to the
owner of the hound, " and get those that can wind their

i24 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

game when they are thrown off." Mr. Kussell's reverend
compeer was an excellent judge of what a staghound should
not do.

I alluded just now to Mr. Nevill's hounds. Mr. Thomas
Nevill was the younger brother of Mr. Benjamin Nevill,
of Chilland, between Winchester and Alresford. These
gentlemen were Hampshire yeomen, of old and honourable
descent, and were possessed of considerable means. Mr.
T. Nevill rented Chilland House from his brother, and kept
a famous pack of St. Hubert staghounds from 1853 until
his death in 1878. In spite of his infirmities, he was
an enthusiastic stag-hunter, and was very constantly out
with the Queen's Hounds when they went into the New
Forest. He was obliged to use a saddle of a peculiar
make, in consequence of having injured his hip-joint
when a boy. It was supposed that he would never be
able to ride again. The saddle which he invented, how-
ever, enabled him, though enduring much pain, to hunt
his hounds, standing quite upright in the stirrups. ' I
cannot,' he writes, ' describe the pain I went through at
first, and still sometimes feel, or the narrow escapes I have
had from many falls from losing my balance; but, thank
God ! I made my saddle answer sufficiently to enjoy riding
to my hounds. I once rode from Chilland to the New Forest
to hunt with the Queen's Hounds, and had a magnificent
run from one end of the Forest to the other, a distance
calculated by my friend when I returned in the evening to
Chilland at 100 miles. My Dartmoor carried me through
the chase and half-way back ; then I took a forest horse
which brought me home.' Dartmoor was nearly thorough-
bred, but only 14| hands high. He is buried in a meadow
near the house, with a deer and many bloodhounds near him.

Two or three days after I joined the depot at Winchester,
the sale of Mr. Nevill's effects was announced by his executors.

THE STAGHOUND 125

I went up to Chilland to see what was to be seen : a small and
poor house on the roadside ; three or four lean paddocks, with
black tarred palings adjoined it ; some shaggy thatched stabling,
and two or three ricks of hay. The hounds had already been
disposed of, but there were two or three horses and I think
two or three deer ; but in those days I cared nothing for deer.
Inside the house there was nothing, or next to nothing, of
interest, but I remember in a glass case a stuffed rat which
had stood up for twenty minutes before the Talbots in a
twenty-acre turnip-field. However, they stuck to him like
leeches and killed him handsomely. It was said that latterly
they got so wayward and headstrong— for a bloodhound is
never wild in the foxhound sense of the term — that they
would run anything from a red-legged partridge to a turkey-
stealer. But in their case it could hardly be called wayward-
ness, for Mr. Nevill encouraged them to hunt anything and
everything. In a letter to ' iEsop,' Mr. Nevill writes in 1861 :
' I now state to you the different animals the bloodhounds
hunt. I often kill fourteen rats a day with them in turnips
and hedges, and their cry is equal to their chasing the deer,
and with the same energy as when after the stag. Badgers
and foxes turned out, and drags, even as far as man, as I
have recovered with them stolen goods from a thief. Water-
fowl in sedge I occasionally hunt in the meadows for amuse-
ment, and sometimes take them. One day I chased a swan
for a quarter of a mile in the main river, and to see the
hounds swim after him and come again to the bank and rest
themselves for a moment, and then gallop away again, was
astounding for a sportsman who would hardly believe such a
thing. This shows the breed of the magnificent St. Hubert
hound.' '

I never saw these hounds in the field, or indeed, strictly
speaking, in kennel, but Mr. Nevill had presented my old
1 Sporting Reminiscences of Hampshire.

126 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

friend, Mr. John Tubb, the eminent Winchester horse-dealer,,
who is still enjoying an honourable and esteemed retirement
from affairs in that city, with a fine representative of his
breed. When I knew this dog he was as blind as Homer,,
and no great company, but he was a favourite in the yard,
and Mr. Tubb used often to sing his praises and exploits to
the disparagement of a fine muscovy drake, also well stricken
in years, which I believe he originally acquired as a bad debt,
and to which he had never taken kindly. I forget the blood-
hound's name, but I think it was Conqueror or Rufus. It
had a Norman smack about it, certainly. He was a reddish
dog ; indeed, from age and grisliness he might have been called
roan, with only a saddle of rusty black. Mr. Nevill bred
them to black and tan, and to the richest of both colours ;
he drafted them hard for colour, and never used a faint-
coloured dog. 4This one, I rather fancy, was drafted on this
account, as I believe, although he had nasty flat feet and in-
eligible fore-legs, he was a good-looking hound of his sort.
It was difficult to judge of his intelligence — a quality claimed
for the St. Huberts — as he was not only afflicted, but passed
his time always on the chain. He would, however, sometimes
set up a noble bay of recognition on his master's approach,
and upon one of these exhibitions of instinct and good-feeling
I remember John Tubb quoting the first verse of ' Old Dog
Tray ' with visible emotion. He also fetched some plum-
cake for him, of which Rufus was very fond. Upon one
occasion Rufus was all but settled by the depot coach get-
ting hung up on his chain and kennel, which was located at
the entrance to the yard. He was extricated with difficulty
and half throttled by over-close relations with a soft wheeler
we called Delilah, whose numbness was the ' causa mali ' — at
least, so the coachman declared. But I must not be led
away into reminiscences of ' Our yard,' as Mr. Tubb always
styled it in the converse we daily held together, and when

THE STAGHOUND 127

he was speaking to any rifleman. It was with Mr. Nevill's
hounds that Captain Henry Ward of the 60th Rifles was
riding a recent purchase of John Tubb's which stopped half-
way through the run, and, as Mr. Tubb described it him-
self, ' went and died,' thus irretrievably disgracing himself.
The horse had been most fairly ridden, and the run was in
no sense classical, rather the reverse ; but Ward was in a sad
way, and at once volunteered to help John Tubb over the loss
with something over and above the owner's risk, two guineas,
backing up his declarations by an instantaneous tenner.
This John Tubb gratefully accepted, but refused to take a
shilling more, and ever afterwards cited Henry Ward as the
mirror of depot chivalry. It turned out that he had only
given 7/. 15s. for the horse the day before, so everybody was
pleased.

Lord Wolverton's hounds, with very different conditions
of mastership and economics, were much the same as Mr.
Nevill's. I was only out with them twice — once with Lord
Wolverton, who hunted them himself in Dorsetshire, and
once with Lord Carrington, who, I think, also hunted them
himself from Wycombe. But I remember both days pretty
well, especially the Dorsetshire day. We drove to meet
them somewhere in his best country, from Sherborne, a
largish party. It was a glorious day late on in the season,
and I shall not forget seeing those handsome hounds half
swim and half ford a stream and shake themselves dry in
the Riviera sunshine. The sky and stream were all blue,
the rich grazing lands near the water all emerald, the
margins all gold with kingcups.

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils,

or the kingcups and the bloodhounds, and Lord Wolverton
in his green coat on a milk-white horse, which all do quite

128 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

as well as daffodils. But from a hunting point of view every-
thing went wrong. There was little or no scent, unusually
little for a deer, and the hounds were either very stale or
slack or very much out of humour. Lord Wolverton had
warned us not to seem to take any notice of them, or under
any provocation crack a whip or speak to a hound, and he
invited our particular attention to one old dog who, if trifled
with, or if he imagined himself trifled with, came straight
at your boot ; we noted his terribly uniform markings as well
as we were able with reverent respect.

As far as I recollect we never ran a yard, and the hounds
acquiesced in every difficulty. But we enjoyed our day.
We were in a fine country, and at the end of the season
this sticky vale rides well. A yellow bay horse I was riding,
called the Stag, sprang on and off the roomy banks with
all the airs of a dancing-master. At one moment Lord
Wolverton seemed to contemplate buying him at 300/. 1
did all I could to encourage him ; unsuccessfully, however.
The black and tan strain survives in Dorsetshire in the
kennel of a spirited lady. Their nose and perseverance are
tested by drag-hunting after a fleet page-boy. The other day
Buttons only just got home in time, and slammed the door
of a friendly outhouse in the very jaws of his pursuers,
who were in quite an ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' humour. ' The
hounds,' said Mr. Merthyr Guest, when he heard of it,
' richly deserved the boy.'

The day we hunted from Wycombe the St. Huberts ran
pretty well for the first twenty minutes in an orderly string,
but with persistence and a sonorous, if rather intermittent,
cry. There was nothing extraordinary, however, in the way
of music, but this may have been partly due to the line taking
us over dry cafe-au-lait-coloured fallows and ploughs. Just
as in the Vale of Blackmoor, the chorus was loudest at the
fences ; to my mind a detestable trick. It was said of the

THE STAGHOUND 129

North Devon lemon pyes that with the wind right you could
hear them four miles off on a good scenting day. At one or
two rough hairy places that day the noise was tremendous,
and the black and tans would certainly have been heard a long
way off. Every hound meused and waited his turn, throw-
ing his tongue freely. In his ' Riding Recollections ' Whyte
Melville speaks of Lord Wolverton's hounds running at a
great and sustained pace ; of their charging the fences like
a squadron of heavy dragoons, and so on. Now an all but
solitary experience counts for nothing, but certainly nothing
of this sort appeared either in the Vale of Blackmoor or on
the Wycombe day. Nor, I confess, on the former day did
they ' turn like a pack of harriers ' to their huntsman, in spite
of his marked and unwearying deference to all their humours
and susceptibilities. Whyte Melville knew a great deal about
hunting. Like Kingsley, whom he admired so cordially,
he knew all about it instinctively. Added to this intui-
tive knowledge he had diversified his ideas by the test of
countless experiences of hounds, horses, and countries. But
in this appreciation of the Talbot as a stag-hunter, setting
aside the observations he makes on the umbrageousness of
his disposition, his natural wish to please an old friend, and to
commemorate the pleasures of bygone days must have led him
a little further than he really intended to go. However, most
people would quite as soon be wrong with Whyte Melville
as be right with any other writer on sporting subjects.
Mr. John Roden, who bred eight couple of Lord Wolver-
ton's hounds when first he started his pack, writes of them
in a letter to the ' Sporting Gazette,' May 2, 1874 : ' They
will not be driven or stand cracking a whip ; they get sulky
or cross ; they must be let alone, and the slower they go the
more beautiful the hunting. ... In work they do not cast
like other hounds ; each hound goes alone and never
watches for another dog ; in fact, they never take their nose

K

130 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

off the ground, and only one deer was killed by them in
Dorsetshire. Even in the same field they never get a view,
so all the deer have been saved without difficulty.' As no
man ever hated his own flesh, we may assume that Mr.
Roden is writing sympathetically of the St. Huberts ; but
it is clear that they are not adapted by their ' ingenium ' to
hunt in a pack, admirable as individuals may be on the line
of a page-boy or a turkey. One of the many lovely and
pleasant things about a pack of foxhounds is an almost over-
alertness to each other's possibilities. At the shyest sugges-
tion of a note, five out of six hounds fly to the scene of the
discovery, bent upon confirming and wresting it from the
discoverer. In a sense, a foxhound is apt to prefer his
neighbour to himself —often too much so, indeed, in drawing.
The bloodhound looks upon his neighbour either as a
nuisance or a superfluity.

So much, then, for the two main varieties of the authentic
staghound as known to more or less contemporary history.
That is to say, first, the lemon pye, magpye, and badger pye,
like George III.'s hounds which Colonel Thornton took
to France, and like the Epping Forest hounds which went
to North Devon ; and, secondly, the black and tan St.
Huberts or Talbots of Mr. Nevill and Lord Wolverton.
It is as well, both for their own sakes and for that of
their admirers, that they have either gone abroad or dis-
appeared. They would have been sadly ridden over in these
days, when riding is the avowed principle of so much hunt-
ing, and especially of stag-hunting. Whatever their qualities
may have been of nose and patience, it is certain that the
value of these was largely modified by characteristics requir-
ing exceptional conditions, which ' these mixed times,' as
'Nirnrod' called the democratic expansion of hunting even
in his day, can no longer be expected to afford.

And now I have done with ancient history and tradition,

THE STAGHOVND 131

and I come to the stag-hunter of the present day. I will
narrow him down to the hounds which have come within
my own experience — the Queen's. Give me, to hunt the
Swinley deer over the wide and varied district known as
the Queen's country, a foxhound of the highest mettle
and courage to be got. It is only with the foxhound that
true joys are to be found. But here I may fairly be
asked to state my general proposition more precisely. In
foxhounds, granted the same spirit, there is as everybody
knows a diversity of gifts. If, then, such a question be
put — and for the sake of answering it, let me assume that
it is put — I should say, after the experience of three seasons'
stag-hunting, that both for appearance and style I would
breed and draft a pack of staghounds to the standard of
two particular packs — the Blankney bitches at the time
Lord Lonsdale hunted them from Brigstock, the largest
of the Hursley bitches during Colonel Nicholls's Mastership,
say in the early seventies ; or, if we are to come nearer
to the present day, to the model and fashion of a lemon
pye strain which go straight back to Blankney blood, of
which there are now a few individuals in Mr. Butt-Miller's
kennels at Cricklade. Very likely it might be objected by
some that the Hursley bitches would, at the time I am
speaking of, have been on the small side for the heath
and the Queen's forest country, but I do not believe a
word of it. For one thing, except in some of the lower
sweeps of the Chobham ridges, there is very little of
the high sinewy heather which the Devon and Somerset
have to contend with ; but, even if there were, they would
have streaked through it on a scent as if it were paper.
Besides, the Berkshire side of the Queen's country in
Davis's best time, say in the forties, was a much more
stubborn country than it is at present. There was more
heath, less reclamation, great fuel fences as close and

K 2

132 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

thick as haystacks, and yet Bartlett his old feeder declares
that Davis's hounds were bred much smaller and finer
than ours of to-day, and yet ran quite as hard.

England's green pastures are grazed in security,
Thanks to the Saxon who spared us our flocks ;

He who, reserving the sport for futurity,
Sweeping the wolves away left us the fox ;

and the pastoral as against the woodland characteristics of
England have given us the foxhound and obliterated the
staghound. He is the result of the country he hunts in
and of the horses ridden to him, not of the animal he hunts.
M. de Ligniville declares in his book that the speed and
drive of the English hounds of his day were due to their
being ridden to by gentry mounted on barbs and Turks in
condition.

Put him where you will, at home or abroad, there is
nothing like the foxhound. At times — as, for example, when
he should be getting out of the way of a carriage — he
certainly seems to think very little for himself. At other
times — as, for instance, when in defiance of horn-blowing and
remonstrance he flies on a heel line like a pigeon — he seems
to think too much. But given the most untoward and
unfamiliar conditions of climate, diet, management and
huntsman, a foxhound will always have a try. Anywhere
and everywhere, although he may not always persevere, a
well-bred foxhound cannot help trying.

An illogical willingness to spend himself for the
smallest wages adapts him, moreover, particularly to stag-
hunting. Whyte Melville somewhere or other in one of his
pleasing and unpretentious excursions into ethics tells a
story of a foxhound which, as a puppy at walk, had once
caught a swallow with a broken wing. It ruined his
prospects in life. The prisoner of hope, ' cette eternelle

THE STAGHOUND 133

esperance qui ment si bien qu'on la croit toujours,' he' ran
hiniself out chasing swallows.

To a certain extent the Queen's Hounds have to hunt
their deer in the same spirit. It is true that Mr. Assheton
Smith declared that blood was not a necessity to finely
bred hounds. He cited, in proof of this, a week of most
extraordinary sport to which his hounds once treated
him, after they had been out for nine days in succession
without blood. Besides, I quite admit that a bulky havier
and a sound swallow are not comparable pursuits. After
coursing him in view, Rhetoric and Rhapsody have the
constant satisfaction of running up to striking distance of
their old ally and baying respectful defiance at him.
Honours, so far, are quite easy. But now the deer and his
safety and comfort become everybody's business. Their
part in the transaction is only acknowledged by loud and
threatening rates of the whips, or, worse still, by the stinging
thong of some well-intentioned amateur saviour of venison
in distress. This must be galling and disagreeable. I
should have been sadly sorry — so would every member of my
field — -to see a deer hurt by a hound. Yet I could not but
be a little sorry too sometimes for the hounds, and regret
the ungracious rebuffs which had to be administered to
these faithful subjects of the Queen.

The average stag-hunter no doubt admits that the
hounds are necessaries. He would not like not to find
them at the meet, and during the pursuit they are a sort of
legal tender that he is really having a day's hunting ; but
here his interest in them ceases, and I can quite understand
his point of view. Even fox-hunters settled down in hunt-
ing quarters to all the rigour of the game will notice fifty
things about horses, bits and bridles, boots and breeches,
habits and pretty faces, for one thing they will notice
about the hounds. In every hunt of course there are

134 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

exceptions, who are understood to frequent the flags in the
dog-days, and who ask to be allowed to sample the young
entry at inconvenient times. But I am generalising, or
rather averaging. Besides, even these exceptions rely for
their reputation chiefly upon two or three couple of easily
recognised hounds. One season, years ago, I hunted a little
from Brackley, and a ruddy whole-coloured Grafton bitch
called Glory was in constant request. Someone was always
cheering or chiding her. I even knew her by sight myself.
On November 12, 1872, the Queen's Hounds ran a deer
called Highlander from Uxbridge Common through Lord
Ebury's park, and took him after a fine run. Frank Goodall,
who then hunted them, enters in his journal : ' I shall
never forget poor old Garland cutting the herd of deer
asunder in Moor Park, and carrying the line across the park
all by herself; it was, indeed, most beautiful.' I wonder
if anybody else, out of I dare say 100 or 150 persons,
except Lord Cork and the whips even noticed Garland's
distinguished services on this occasion. Fortunately there
is always a per contra in most human affairs, and although
it is the fashion to pity the Queen's Hounds for all kinds
of humiliating indignities to which they are subjected
by their followers, they enjoy some advantages which do
not fall to the lot of foxhounds. Indeed, most of the
stock accusations of unfair riding made against the Queen's
field are unjust and as apocryphal as travellers' tales. If
the turn-out is properly selected and the laying-on properly
managed — and a little foresight on the part of the Master
and hunt-servants should always be able to compass this —
the pack should get away all together, and thus, though
they may of course be over-ridden, individual hounds are
not liable to be cut off and carried off the line, as constantly
happens when only three or four couple get away with the
fox, when the field is eager, and the first fence away from the

THE STAG HOUND 135

covert looks made to jump. In such cases, unless you suffer
from a huntsman who waits for his hounds to get together, the
body of the pack scattered about in the thriving hazels of a
big wood have to make up their leeway as best they can ;
they do not get the ' all start fair ' chance which staghounds
get. Besides, owing to the ill-hung, patched-up nature of
the gates in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, and to the
good-natured character of most of the fences making it
easier to jump the fence rather than have to fumble and
perhaps get off to open the gate, the Queen's Hounds do
not get so much squeezed out at gateways as often happens
in strongly enclosed and well-gated fashionable countries,
when the huntsman, with any few hounds he can get
together at the moment, has gone on as quickly as he can
either to a holloa or at the hest of that mocking spirit,
information.

A Master of hounds of my acquaintance, who hunts his
own pack in a wild and strong country, and who takes a lot
of catching if he gets away on anything like terms over what
William Goodall used to call the ' big old grasses,' writes to
me : ' My experience is that few who have their two horses
out for a day's hunting, a pair to drive them to covert,
and a hack to gallop home on, care about the hounds
which have given the day's sport, or observed the way in
which they hunted during the day, the way they drew for
their fox, the head they carried over the grass, the way they
stuck to it over the fallows, or the old hound which took it
down the road when the body of the pack was at fault, so
long as they were able to tire their horses, dirty their boots,
and have a good gallop over a negotiable country ' ; and he
goes on to say : ' I have been asked most pertinent questions
about hounds by people whom one would have thought were
the most unlikely to have interested themselves in such
matters, and I have picked up many a wrinkle from the

136 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

criticism of a man who was riding the horse that had taken
the milk to the station, when most of us were still folded in
the arms of Morpheus. This, perhaps, is not very remark-
able, as the probability is the dairy farmer walks a puppy
and rides to hunt, whereas the other hunts to ride, and
has a garden and a gardener which dispense very readily
with the companionship of a foxhound puppy.' No doubt
this is all absolutely true ; but, like most matters of fact,
it must be made the best of. The hound — as I shall have
occasion to say later on — is paramount in France ; the
horse here.

But the over-riding, or rather the being ridden over con-
tingency, is one which largely determines the selection, the
career, and the future of a Queen's buckhound. Every now
and then Goodall notes in his diary how poor old this or
dear old that have got a little too close to some cut-me-down
captain, whose name he always contrives to get hold of.
Military rank is invariably given to the equestrian in these
semi-obituary notices. Possibly the neighbourhood of
Aldershot and Windsor, and the fact that unmanageable
horses seem to be an inseparable element in the society
of large garrison towns, account for this. But the question
of over-riding brings me to one or two of the more particular
reasons which justify my original and — setting aside harriers,
otterhounds, and beaglea— self-evident proposition, that a
foxhound is now the only possible staghound. Nose is hardly
the first consideration with a stag-hunter. The scent of a
deer lies so high and sweet, that most days there is enough
scent to carry them all along with their sterns as straight as
tobacco pipes — as Mr. Tom Smith liked to see them — a
rare thing with foxhounds. Nor do the Queen's Hounds
profess, like the St. Huberts, to take a line along the bottom
of a stream, that is, under water, as tunefully as along
its soggy margin. A well-watered road is more likely to be

< -

< <

THE STAGHOUND 137

the scene of any signal exploit in the neighbourhood of
Windsor. But still we have always had a Garland or two
about the place, and a thick-shouldered, throaty hound called
Cardigan twice gained a reprieve from transportation to
France by hitting off a cold line on the hard high road. It
is worth remarking here that such a lover of a good-looking
hound as the late Mr. Smith, who not only knew how to hunt
hounds but also how to draw a hound, rather agrees with the
French critics I shall refer to later on, who think that in
our rage for pace and shape we sacrificed nose. ' A throaty
hound,' says Mr. Smith, ' is now rarely seen in a pack,
although very common some years ago, when men thought
more of hunting than of riding ; but by getting rid of the
throat the nose has gone with it, for a throaty hound
has invariably a good nose ; and that hounds were so until
the end of the last century, nearly all sporting pictures of
hounds will prove.' This reminds me of a story told me
of George Carter, for many years huntsman of the Fitz-
william, and a famous hound-breeder. Hounds could
scarcely feel a line on some dusty fallows when a throaty
hound called Eemus opened with decision, and held the
line across the furrows. Carter cheered him to the echo.
' Yooi Eemus, I'll give you a bitch for that ! '

Speed and drive are the first things to think about in
a hound to hunt the carted deer. These are all-important.
It is true that draft as you may, and draft as I did for speed
and dash, every hound cannot go in front. In the nature of
things that is impossible. Even running at a strong head,
hounds make their little mistakes and suffer their little ill
fortunes which are constantly changing their order in the
pack. But in a pack of twelve couple — in my opinion the
right sort of number for stag-hunting with a large field of
horsemen — every hound should be fast enough to stay in

138 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

front if he gets there, thanks to a good start or to some little
accident in his favour.

A strong deer nearly always involves a certain period of
pursuit about which there are few pleasurable agitations.

The fastest are failing, the truest are tailing,
The Lord of the Valley is over the hill.

He always is, or seems to be. It is an idiosyncrasy of stag-
hunting, and these dull bits must be relieved by racing pace
contrasts. Everyone knows a particular sort of hound — he is
as ubiquitous a type as the pug-fox,1 who always will get him-
self headed somehow. The hound I am thinking of seems to
be always behind, though always galloping. Incessantly you
pass him, repass him, and yet overtake him again. Yes, there
he is again, staunchly pursuing, usually with his ears back.
He catches your eye each time out of the corner of his own
with an amiable ' Here-we-are-again ' twinkle. Fox-hunting,
he may often have many fair — or at all events plausible —
excuses to offer, and we may be certain he would state them
admirably. Even stag-hunting he might have something to
say in his defence, and complain of the wagonettes and
lighter vehicles which keep up wonderfully well. But in stag-
hunting excuses cannot be accepted. The first year I had the
hounds, we had one or two of the sort. With a couple or two
more unprofitable servants they found their way to the boards
of a great London theatre — a box for the men being a part of
the consideration very properly insisted upon by Harvey —
and nightly enlivened the vicissitudes of a hunting party and
the echoes of an enchanted forest in a most lifelike manner.
I was told that the way they strained upon the leash
after some offal ingeniously displayed in the opposite wings,
brought out in much admired relief the well-turned limbs

1 Our fox-hunting ancestors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
divided foxes into two classes — the greyhound and the pug. The pug was only
hunted if no greyhound was forthcoming.

THE STAGHOUND 139

and proportions of two or three beauties becomingly attired
as yeomen prickers.

But, passing from their successes on the stage, drafts from
the Queen's pack distinguished themselves in many ways
during my time. Falkland (the hound I have already men-
tioned) was a weakish ill-coupled dog, but had the blood of
all the best kennels in his veins, and covered himself with
wounds and glory worthy of his namesake.

In thee alone, fair land of liberty,
Is bred the perfect hound, in scent and speed
As yet unrivalled, while in other climes
Their virtue fails — a weak, degenerate race.

Somerville is quite right, and it may here be pointed out that
only English blood answers with boarhounds, and that a
pack of boarhounds must be constantly recruited from
England. It is admitted by French authorities, notably by
the late Due d' Aumale, who told me so himself, that even the
produce of English hounds mated in France will not do as
well, climate and conditions apparently having a detrimental
effect upon their fire and courage. A pied hound called
Woodman, which I drafted for rather lumpy shoulders and
a suspicious tendency to the kennel lameness once so dreaded
at Ascot, was sent by Harvey to Captain Peacocke, who
was at that time hunting his old country, the Isle of Wight,
and Captain Peacocke wrote to me afterwards that Wood-
man was invaluable on a road, although not distinguished
for drawing. And a bitch named Nellie, which was too
small for us, went to Prince Murat, and entered so well at
roedeer — a most difficult animal to hunt — that he told me
last year that he was breeding from her.

Up in my part of the world there is a celebrated pack of
blue-mottled harriers known to a wide circle of admirers
and friends as the Kossendale. They are ridden to by the
subscribers, but have always been hunted on foot by two

140 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

men in scarlet coats, knee breeches and gaiters, and tall
beaver hats with gold bands. ' Hey ! stick, stick,' is the
only caution and encouragement they get, both in and out
of season. This is the converse to the stag-hunter's cheer.
With us ' Get away on, hanging about there ! ' is the counsel
of all perfection. It must not, however, be supposed that,
like Sir Walter Scott's hero, the rush and fury of the chase was
all we cared for at Ascot. Quite the contrary. Staghounds
should be able to race like Persimmon, but I would have them
hunt like what Mr. Smith calls ' ploughholders ' ; and with
this object in view I used to meet in the heather districts
oftener, I think, than some of my hard-riding field liked.
What I disliked of all things was a hound which bayed
at its fences ; in the early part of the season the young
entry were a little apt to do this. It is hereditary, I believe,
but I think it was often due to a sort of shyness and
bewilderment at the stampede which a Hawthorn Hill or
Wokingham field means, and if not the result of heredity they
often come right. How well I remember a bitch called
Nemesis, which was actually sentenced to transportation
to the boar-hunting baron aforesaid. I can see her now
hanging in a sort of cluster with another first-season hunter
whose name I have forgotten, on a little bank on Mr.
Auckland's farm. I stopped the impetuous ' William '
almost in his take-off, and sacrificed my start to give myself
the satisfaction of helping them over, my opinion of the
delinquents not being improved by my catching the thong
of my whip round a powerful bramble. Meanwhile, there
they sat, eyeing me deferentially, but making little or no
effort to get over. However, Comins begged Nemesis off
on the score of her youth and noble collaterals, and she fully
justified his clemency and judgment.

Staghounds do not have to draw. Lord Henry Bentinck,
when he hunted the Burton country, used often on a gloomy

THE STAGHOUND 141

December evening to throw his hounds into a big woodland on
their way home after a long day's hunting. The hounds which
drew well were the hounds he bred from, for drawing under
these circumstances was his great criterion of stoutness. But
although the Queen's Hounds have not to draw, they must
be stout and tireless, for they are never vanned, and on the
Buckinghamshire sides, hounds go twenty miles to some of
the meets by road, and then have to hunt all day in hills
and flints and get home again.

In conclusion then : speed, dash, stoutness, and nose are
the four things to go for and insist upon in the modern
staghound. I know that I have not assigned the same im-
portance to nose in what I have said as to the other qualities
— perhaps I have not attached enough. But still, for
the ' sweet ' scented deer give me stoutness and speed first.
Since I wrote the earlier portion of this chapter, I have
come across some observations of Mr. Smith's, which are so
wise that they shall finish it up for me. After laying stress
upon the supreme importance of nose and stoutness, he
says : ' The two qualities often go together ; for it is the
stoutness which makes a hound willing to try to hunt and
make use of his nose, which a slack hound would not try
to do.'

142 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEK VII

THE HAREOW COUNTRY

After years of life together,
After fair and stormy weather

Will it evermore be thus
Spirits still impervious

Are the bounds eternal set
To retain us — strangers yet ?

Ale, in the Harrow country, was Charles Davis's favourite
meet. How often, during my own Mastership, have I
been congratulated upon being the hunting suzerain of
those elysian fields ! Nor is this to be wondered at. Few
people fond of hunting can travel northwards by any of our
great railways without for a few moments thinking a little
less affectionately of their own country ; without con-
trasting its uninviting ploughs, its bleak moorlands or its
cramped enclosures with the smooth sea of emerald, and
the virgin enclosures which Harrow spire commands.

Alas ! the glory has departed. The Harrow country sur-
vives as a tradition. It has long ceased to be a fact in the
everyday life of the Koyal pack. The hunt horses used to
go on to Uxbridge or Hillingdon the night before hunting,
but the stabling they occupied knows the welcome invaders
no more. "Whyte Melville, I think, breaks Satanella's neck
and her rider's back in a newly drained pasture somewhere
out Pinner way. It would be a breach of the unities to do
so now. If the Queen's country is ever to be the scene of

THE HARROW COUNTRY 143

the same sort of euthanasia, the novelist must have recourse
to an oubliette in the heath or to a Buckinghamshire wattle.
I do not know the beginnings of our ending as regards
the Harrow country. Nominally, of course, the country is
still by way of being hunted over by the Queen's Hounds.
Even in my time the Middlesex farmers still received and
expected paddock tickets for Ascot races. But for many
years past there has existed an uncomfortable sort of judicial
separation tantamount to a divorce. Possibly at some time or
other there may have been some little unintentional neglect
of the diplomacy of hunting, upon which we hunting folk must
learn to rely in these days quite as much as upon the science
of our huntsmen or the good gifts of an open season. Possibly
the reduction in the £ s. d. allowances to the Master of the
Buckhounds during Lord Bessborough's Mastership, and the
consequent reduction in the number of hunting days from
three to two, may have had something to do with it.
But be all that as it may, it is certain the conditions
of this part of Middlesex can never have been favour-
able to the stability of hunting. Graced conspicuously
with all the most attractive features of a hunting country,
the corresponding mind and disposition have always been
lacking. There are not, and never have been, any large
estates with resident owners to help hunting. Much of the
land is owned by non-residents, and occupied by tenants
with no direct or personal interest in it. Nearness to a
great city gives every acre an accommodation value. Much of
the pasture is let for summer grazing to cattle-dealers. Hav
for the insatiable London market is the staple and most
remunerative industry. Lord Cork told me that when first
he hunted in the Harrow country he was struck by the
manure which had almost expropriated stock. In the
better times rents were run up to a very high figure.
Even in these days they have kept up. To pay them the

144 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

meadowland must be wound up to the highest pitch of
production by heavy manuring from the London mews
and dust-bins. These speciality conditions of agriculture
did not agree very well with the Queen's Hounds and their
following, and I am free to say that very rich permanent
meadowland does suffer from a huge field of horsemen
in wet seasons. But it must be borne in mind that the
Queen's Hounds never, even in the palmiest days, hunted
the Harrow country — except for an odd day by arrangement
— after Christmas, and with a travelling deer probably did
less harm than a pack of foxhounds, or even harriers on a
twisty fox or catchy scent.

All about Harrow the grass has always been a sensi-
tive plant. One of the favourite amusements in the
Easter term when I first went to Harrow was going out
jumping on a half-holiday. It was never a general practice,
but a certain set were much addicted to it. A great friend
of mine at Harrow, ' Budge ' Arnold — a son of Mr. Matthew
Arnold's — was a great organiser of these parties of six to eight
boys. You jumped, as you hunt in France, by invitation.
The success of the party depended to some extent upon a
sort of jumping jester, who was expected to do something
amusing, or which we thought amusing. As far as I
recollect, this usually took the form of jumping into a muddy
pond. It sounds a simple and not very exhilarating
pleasantry, but, like many other things, all depended on how
it was done. I have seen it quite fail in its object, and in
that case the drenched and shivering jester was called an
ass. The crack jester in my time was Elliot Neeld, in
Butler's house. He always came off.

The jumping parties were capital exercise, and gave us
a famous appetite for muffins and hare soup of a most noble
liver-chestnut colour at Winkley's. I have never met with
hare soup of that exact colour or consistency since. As

THE HARROW COUNTRY 145

somebody may always be trusted to say at a shooting-party
luncheon, it was not the worst part of the day. The nearest
I ever get to it is in the commercial room of a country inn :
a good place to make for, both for fare and company.
Exclusive, no doubt, but we can all travel in small courtesies.

But there was a hazardous as well as a gay side to a
jumping party. There was always the chance of being
chivied, caught, and haled before some rural Jeffreys by the
angry occupiers of the soil. Embalmed in the oral history
of the school were noble legends of stand-up fights and
desperate melees, in wThich brave Harrow boys of the past
had successfully engaged a savage but courageous peasantry.
In my time no one was ever caught, and there were no fights
or melees of this Homeric kind, but I remember Arnold ' and
myself being chased. The farmer's men, encouraged by their
employer's curses and liberal promises of beer, until he was
beaten off by want of condition, ran well over a fine line of
country on the Pinner side, and the palisade of the Phil-
athletic field, which was our point, is not the sort of obstacle
you can take in your stride. However, we shinned over it
somehow by a short head, and they did not follow us into
the school territories. The episode lost nothing in the telling
at ' Four Bill.' I recall these reminiscences in evidence of
an almost morbid consciousness of the preciousness of grass
which animated the occupiers of land all about Harrow as
far back as 1868-9.

Lord Cork became Master of the Buckhounds for the
first time in 1866. But long before that the Harrow country
was a sort of hunting Eastern Question. For several years
prior to 1866 his predecessors had been discouraged, if not
actually prevented, from taking the hounds into the best of

1 To my sorrow, Arnold died the following year, in the middle of the term,
quite suddenly, and after a few days' illness. I missed him very much. For a
long time we had inhabited the same forms ; our progress up the school being
very temperate.

L

146

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

it. In theory the Queen's Hounds hunted it ; in practice,
however, it was in an uncomfortable way. No one knew
what he was writing about better than the late Mr. Higgins,
and nothing could be better or more amusingly done than his
account of a day with the Queen's Hounds written early in
the forties, and during Lord Rosslyn's Mastership. I must
not spoil it by a paraphrase. The road which Mr. Higgins
(a fine horseman) would have us believe he has been sticking

The Country Fab and Wide is vp in Amis against is

to, no longer serves : ' In a fit of frenzy we deviate into a
green lane ; becoming still more excited we open a gate
into a field, and adventure upon a cart track. The track
ends in a heap of manure ; we desperately crawl through
a weak place in a fence, and, our blood being up, jump
a couple of rotten hurdles ; and then we are entangled in
the heart of the Harrow country. The deer and hounds
may be gone to York for all we know or care ; for on collect-
ing our scattered senses we find that we have objects of major

THE HARROW COUNTRY 147

import to attend to. We are in the enemy's camp ; the
country far and wide is up in arms against us. No man will
tell us the way to the nearest road ; insidious clods only
pretend to open gates, that they may get a grab at our reins
as we pass through ; and others, infuriated, flourish pitchforks
in gaps and accost us in terms " peu flatteurs." We bestir
ourselves like men, to extricate ourselves from the unhand-
some fix, and ride as we never rode before or intend to ride
again. Some get falls, and are led away into captivity by
the lords of the soil ; but the survivors, of whom I have the
fortune to be one, after escapes of a perfectly Afghan charac-
ter, manage to gain the high road from Uxbridge to London,
when they hail the seventh milestone with joy, not, I trust,
unmixed with gratitude.' '

This little instantaneous photograph may also be interest-
ing, even at this distance of time, as signalling the ' lucida
sidera ' of those days : ' King sticks to them ; about five or
six other men do likewise. On the left, Dicky Vyse, Beau-
champ Proctor, and Billy Baillie of the Blues lie well along-
side the leading hounds. Stout Makepeace follows gallantly
in their wake, as well as his weight will permit. On the
right, Davis glides smoothly along, whilst Jem Mason and
Allan Macdonough are racing with one another, looking out
eagerly for the big places to jump.'

During Lord Cork's short tenure of office in 1866 — he
was only in a month or two — hints were freely given him
that the difficulties were not insuperable, and that if the
tenant farmers were properly approached their objections could
be got over. This was actually effected by Lord Colville's
tact and urbanity, the best of all sesames for locked gates.
This is what Lord Colville writes to me about it himself :
' I cannot tell you under what circumstances the Queen's
Hounds were banished from the Harrow country. But one

1 Wild Sports of Middlesex.

l 2

148

S TA G-H UN TING RE COLLECTIONS

day during my first season, Harry King — the then huntsman,
and who had recently succeeded Charles Davis— said that
a gentleman from the Harrow country wished to speak
to me : it was, I think, Mr. Sherborn. He [Mr. Sherborn]

Harry King, Huntsman to the Queen's Hounds, July 1866
to December 1871

said he thought there was a feeling among the farmers that,
under certain conditions, I might take the hounds back there.
Some time later he told me that the farmers and owners
consented. We might have a day or two in the Harrow

THE HARROW COUNTRY 149

country, but the hounds were not to go there if the ground
was wet. The first run we had over the Harrow country
was on December 23, 1867. We met at Denham Court, and
had an excellent gallop over the grass, an hour and twenty
minutes, and took at Willesden. I well remember how well
poor Harry King rode to his hounds, over a stiff country
which had not been hunted over for nine years, and where
gaps were scarce.

' On March 2, 1868, we had a meet at Denham Court. It
was late in the season, but the country was dry. The Prince
of Wales was out, and we had a remarkable run. From
Denham Court we ran past Pinner to the foot of Harrow
Hill. The deer went right up to the top of the hill, I believe,
passed through the churchyard, and down the other side of
the hill into what are called " Duckpuddle Fields," and
thence to Wormwood Scrubbs, where I well remember see-
ing the Due de Chartres, his horse bogged, with a wire fence
twisted round his legs. We took the deer at Paddington
Goods Station, and accompanied the Prince of Wales to
Marlborough House, riding through Hyde Park and down
Constitution Hill in hunting dress.'

Lord Cork came back to the Buckhounds in January
1869. As the Harrow country was always forbidden fruit
after Christmas, it was not until the autumn of the same
year that Lord Cork was able to form an opinion of its
boasted merits from personal experience. He and Frank
Goodall had some capital fun over it, as the following
letters from Lord Cork, and a few extracts from Goodall's
well-kept journal, which he most kindly placed at my dis-
posal, will show. They have the value of being the testi-
monies and experiences of riding men in a riding country.
Goodall was quite undefeated over the biggest country in
England. When huntsman to Mr. Tailby he held the
position, in the estimation of those most competent to form

1 50 5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

an opinion in his day, equivalent to that held by Firr now.
His style of riding compared favourably with that of Charles
Davis and Jem Mason in their best days. He rode over a
country with the same ease which characterised those two
fine horsemen. The flying fences, the jumping from grass

Rk

y^jjjgS^

jflH

w**^

3f mB

Frank Goodall on Crusader. Huntsman to the Queen's Hounds,
April 1872 to May 1888

to grass, the fair take-off of the Harrow country, were
entirely to his mind when he was riding Cardinal or Crusader,
and showing the field how the thing should be done. He
never really took to the sticky bank and ditch business, but
enjoyed some fine runs over it.1

1 Goodall writes to me from Lyndale, Southall, where he is now living : —

In reply to your letter, I have much pleasure in giving you my opinion of

the country hunted by the Queen's Staghounds, and may add that I consider

you have paid me a great, compliment in asking for it. The Harrow country

I liked exceedingly, and it reminded me very much of Leicestershire. It

THE HARROW COUNTRY 151

Now for Lord Cork ; in Goodall's journal there are con-
stant references to his riding. He is always there to keep
the field in order, help to take a deer, and to show them
how to ride in any and every sort of country. So his
opinion of the Harrow Vale is worth having.

' A good many short and some long runs,' he writes me,
' soon convinced me that on a good horse, and with one's heart
in the right place, there were few greater enjoyments than a
turn-out at Bull's Farm, at Down Barn, at North Holt, and at
Wiltshire's Farm, near Hayes, or a take near Harrow or
Pinner. During 1869 the 9th Lancers were quartered at
Hounslow, and a cheery hard-riding lot they were. Headed
by Lord Bill Beresford, they were always to the front over
both the Bracknell and Harrow country, and — may I be
forgiven for saying it — sometimes nearer the stag than the
hounds.

' I remember well a run at the end of December, when, in
consequence of King's illness, I had to hunt the hounds my-
self, a difficult task at any time, particularly when personally
the hounds know little about one. The meet was at
Uxbridge Common, the field large, consisting of some of the
hardest riders from London and adjoining neighbourhood, and
my 9th Lancers. My friend, Mr. F. Cox, in his day one of
the finest horsemen in England, and still with a seat which

was nearly all grass, with flying fences, plenty of water to get over, but less
room between the fences than Leicestershire. To negotiate this country a
horse must not only be able to jump, but both race and stay — the only draw-
back to this country being that there was not enough of it, and the meets were
long distances from the kennels, the nearest being Hayes, sixteen miles away.
My favourite horses for this country were ' Cardinal,' chestnut, very plain look-
ing, but good ; ' Norman,' a chestnut purchased by Lord Hardwicke, whom I rode
for ten seasons, and who only gave me one fall, which I may say was a very
bad one, and laid me up for the rest of the season. ' Crusader,' a grey horse
purchased by Lord Cork, was a very great favourite of mine, and I think the
best I ever rode during my long hunting career. He was a big upstanding
horse, standing 16.2, full of quality, no fence too big, no water too wide, and
no day too long.

152 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

many younger riders might well have imitated, was there as
usual to welcome the pack with which he had hunted all his
life, and to give his kindly and most useful advice to the
master. The deer on being turned out went straight away
in the Windmill Hill near Ruislip, then over some large
fields rather deep in places, the fences being strong but
mostly negotiable, in the direction of Pinner, crossing the
London and North-Western Railway between Pinner and
Harrow stations. Here, to the best of my recollection, we
had our first check ; distance, about seven miles. The deer
appeared to have been headed soon after crossing the line,
and to have amused itself in running up and down some of
the high fences. The hounds after some little delay, having
caught sight of him, the deer again put his head straight across
the vale, leaving the hospitable roof of Mr. Brown at Hinton
on the right, under the Midland Railway between Edgware
and Mill Hill stations. Up High Wood Hill (a good pull up
with a tired horse) by Totteridge Park to Chipping Barnet,
where he went into a pond and was quickly captured.

' At this distance of time, twenty-five years, I cannot well
recollect the names of those who went through the run, but
I know they were very few. Shirley of Twickenham, who
possessed, after Jem Mason,1 perhaps, the finest hands in
England, and was a good all-round sportsman, was certainly
there. As I often told him, he was a bad man to follow, as
whatever the fence might be, he never hustled his horse nor
seemed to increase his pace, which on this occasion I found
out to my discomfiture, as at the last fence but one he
brought me down in consequence of this wonderful art, over
a brook with a cut-away bank on the landing side. Fortu-

1 A story is told of Jem Mason riding the line of hounds over a stake and
bound country without a mistake when the ditches were full of snow, and in
many cases on the take-off side, the take-off itself thus being a matter of guess-
work. This is a dazzling illustration of ' hands ' and of what can be done.

***

THE HARROW COUNTRY 153

nately the ditch was not deep. I was soon mounted again,
and I think followed Shirley in a good second. Messrs.
Talbot, "Walter Colson, Sanders, and the whips soon followed
close up. Distance from London and North-Western Rail-
way, about eight miles ; total, about fifteen miles.

' Another good run, the date of which I cannot remember,
was from the back of Wiltshire's Farm, near Hayes. The
first stag having proved a failure, and preferring the brick-
yards to giving a run, I ordered Goodall to take the animal
as soon as possible. In the meanwhile I galloped back to
where I had left the deer-cart, and ordering the driver to
come on as quickly as possible, took it into a field with a
brook for the first fence. The deer thus uncarted in the
presence only of myself, had plenty of time to look about him
and start off at his own pace. This it certainly did, for when
Goodall and the field came back nearly fifteen minutes had
elapsed. Yet on my telling Goodall to lay on the hounds, they
seemed to fly. I don't think I ever saw hounds run faster.
We all had to ride pretty hard to keep with them. Those
who hesitated were soon out of it. The line taken was over
West Hill Farm and straight up to Harrow School. There
we had rather a long check, the deer dodging about the
lanes. Goodall at last viewed the deer crossing the school
cricket-ground. He put on the hounds. The scent seemed as
good as in the morning, for the hounds again left us rising
the hill to where Kingsbury Races used to take place. It
was as much as the few who still remained could do to
keep them in sight. Turning to the right of Kingsbury by
Neasden to Willesden, the deer was eventually taken at
Brondesbury in a yard belonging to the late Mr. Sheward,
of Green Street. I consider this the best run I had with
the hounds.'

Goodall's accounts of runs and incidents speak best for
themselves. Of the excellence of a day when a hind named

154 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Miss Headington gave them a very capital run, he says : ' This
day I consider a most extraordinary good one. Out of a field of
400, thirty-eight showed their faces at the finish, including
the noble master [Lord Hardwicke] on his good horse, White
Boy, who carried him from start to finish in the front.' And
he adds : ' My horse Cardinal carried me well, although he
began to go at last very, very politely.' Goodall had ridden
one horse all through. They left off thirty-two miles from
kennels.1 'March 22, 1875.— Meet— Denham Court. Un-
carted in a field close to the fisheries, and had a most capital
two hours and forty minutes, and took at Bushey, near Wat-
ford. I got a regular ducking riding over a wooden bridge 2
at Hamper Hill. My horse Bosslyn slipped on one side and
came upon his back on the top of me, and in the struggle
my spur got caught in the stirrup, and he dragged me down
the brook for fifty yards, and luckily my spur leather broke
and let me at large. Although I felt very much shaken I
went on and did my duty, and rode home twenty-four miles
in wet clothes.' He enters under date November 27, 1877 :
' The Prince Imperial was out to-day ; he rode my favourite
mare, Countess, and I fed the hounds and left them at Lord
Salisbury's, at Hatfield, for the night. I came home by train,

1 The deer was taken three fields from Scratchwood. This was a celebrated
fox-cover in the old Berkeley country in the beginning of the century. Lord
Berkeley found a fox in Scratchwood and killed him in Kensington Gardens.
Lord Berkeley's country extended from Scratchwood to Thornbury, in Glouces-
tershire, and he had a kennel at Gerrard's Cross, where the Queen's Hounds so
often meet, as well as at four or five other places. ' The tawny coats ' hunted
over 120 miles of country, and at one time thirty hunt horses were located in
the village of Charing, now Charing Cross.

2 The same thing happened to me some years ago with the Queen's Hounds.
Lord Suffield, at that time Master, had mounted me. He led his horse, The
Dunce, across. I stupidly thought I could ride across it. There was a little
rail about two feet high at the far end, and when my horse — a very free but most
intelligent animal by Bass Rock — saw The Dunce arch over, he began to trot.
I shall never forget the disagreeable sensation of going off the planking. I was
hardly hurt, and we got out the right side without the loss of a moment, but
rather wet.

THE HARROW COUNTRY 155

wet through to the skin.' This day they met at the ' Eose
and Crown ' inn, Harrow Weald, and ran through Cannons
Park. Londoners may like to know, or doubtless do know,
that the two inspiring stone-f acaded houses on the north side
of Cavendish Square were built from designs for the lodges of
Cannons, built in the early years of the last century by the
Duke of Chandos, the supposed ' Timon ' of Pope's ' Essay
on False Taste.'

I spoke just now of the services rendered to the Queen's
field for many years past by the Great Western Railway.
' Hunting,' I remember Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild
saying to me some years ago, in days when, if hounds really
ran over a gentlemanlike country, he would go like a swallow,
' is a charming amusement, but a detestable occupation.' At
the risk of a charge of heresy and schism I entirely agree.
But if this be true of fox-hunting, it is trebly true of
stag-hunting. Stag-hunting is essentially the professional
or busy man's playground. The stag-hunter should have
other occupations or interests sufficient to make his day
with the stag a treat and the loss of it a disappointment.
For this reason London is the best, and indeed the only,
place to hunt the stag from. In ' The Xoble Science '
Mr. Delrne Radcliffe investigated the effect which railways
would be likely to have upon the breed of horses and upon fox-
hunting. He predicts that they will become ' the most oppres-
sive monopoly ever inflicted on a free country.' The most
narrow-spirited, he declares, will agree to this. And this is
his conclusion of the whole matter : ' When we consider the
magnitude of the convulsion which this mighty railroad
delusion will effect, the fearful extent of its operations, the
thousands of human beings thrown out of employ, the
incalculable diminution in the number of horses and conse-
quent deficiency in demand, we cannot but wonder at the
blindness which has countenanced the growth of a monster

156 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

which will rend the vitals of those by whom it has been
fostered.' These prophecies need no comments. It may,
however, be worth remarking that many fashionable hunting
countries are rinding it necessary to protect themselves by
stringent and scaled regulations as to subscriptions, because
of the immense expansion of hunting which train services
organised ad hoc mean.

A short time ago the ' Field ' newspaper took exception
to the ratcatcher costume of the Queen's field, and it must
be admitted that an intelligent foreigner, captivated, we will
say, by Sir F. Grant's picture of Ascot Heath and its patri-
cians, who hires a horse for a day with Lord Coventry, would
be aesthetically disappointed. We can no longer boast of a
d'Orsay, a Brummell, a Beaufort or an Alvanley. Black-
ing is no longer made of port wine and red currant jelly, or
boot-top liquid of champagne and apricot jam. We feel the
levelling tendency of the democratic tailor.

The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Connaught always
wear scarlet out with the Queen's, and approve of the strictest
tenue. Of course it is the counsel of perfection. But it
must be remembered that the Queen's field has changed
very much in the last thirty or forty years. The loss of
the grass country, and the excellent sport shown by
Baron Rothschild — a pack like the Queen's without the
bondage of a subscription — over a fine country, essentially a
riding country, and in many ways a stag-hunting country,
have seduced the richer London contingent from Slough
and Uxbridge to Leighton Buzzard. The field is now
chiefly local and resident. Day in, day out, ten to twelve
would now be a high average of horses boxed from Padding-
ton, and comparatively few are kept at livery either at
Slough, or Windsor, or Ascot. As a matter of fact most
of the regular London gentlemen who hunt with the Queen's
Hounds have stuck to the traditions of the past and to scarlet.

THE HARROW COUNTRY 157

I hear that the doyen of the hunt, Mr. Bowen May, ordered
a new red coat this very season, and it is the large and ever-in-
creasing local field who are responsible for the relaxation in the
morals of hunting dress. Far be it from me to speak lightly
of these high things, but it may be pointed out that the large
majority of those who hunt with the Queen's are not hunting
in a large way: probably, if the staghounds were abolished,
they would give it up altogether, and get their exercise from
golf or cycling. I dare say a great many of them are not
very rich, and are not in a position to undertake the serious
responsibilities of leathers and top-boots, which in many
ways mean a considerable tax upon the resources of a small
establishment. De rigueur hunting dress must be very
well done or not done at all. Some excellent servants never
learn to do leathers properly. It is at once an art and a
craft. Tops, too, want an eye for colour.

I am a stickler for the tall hat. It looks the best, and
in every way is the best for riding of all kinds, which
includes falling. A tall hat gives a little finish to horse-
manship which the wideawake can never hope to achieve.
But given the tall hat, properly put on box-cloth breeches
and well-cleaned butcher boots look a great deal better than
the buckskins and tops of the single-handed or the parlour
maid. My old friend, Mr. John Tubb, whose instinct in all
these matters was unerring, always admitted a strong prepos-
session in favour of what he styled ' a man dressed serious.'

158 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE VIII

THE FOREST

Lauclabunt alii claram Rhoclnn, aut Mitylenen,
Aut Epheson —

or Wokingham or Gerrard's Cross, but every Tuesday and
Friday in October the Queen's Hounds meet on Ascot Heath
at ten o'clock — not the Ascot Heath of Sir F. Grant's well-
known picture, but on the grass immediately in front of
the Royal Hotel. A brass band discourses here during the
race week, but the hounds and hunt-servants look much
nicer there than the band-stand. The field is small, uncon-
ventionally dressed, and uncertainly mounted. The hunt-
servants wear their oldest coats, and, in my time at all
events, did not ride their most precious horses.

The deer cart is sent either to Red Lodge, Gravel Hill,
or South Hill Gate, which are within a couple of miles of
Ascot. The First Whip rides on to uncart, and, after giving
him (the Whip) a few minutes' law, hounds move off and
are laid on in the usual way. Unless we were fortunate
enough to have harboured an outlying deer, this accurately
describes the routine preliminaries of a day's forest hunting.

Anybody who has hunted with many different packs of
hounds must have observed that every hunt enjoys some
native characteristic of its own which the stranger is invited
to notice. There will always be something or other which
the country claims as a more or less satisfactory distinction.

THE FOREST 159

These distinctions are often anything but reassuring : such,
for instance, as drains — which, if you get into them, involve a
stay for hours, and a sovereign to pay for a team of cart-horses
— menacing stone-faced banks, or impervious doubles. On
the other hand, you may be congratulated upon the first
draw being in the centre of ' our vale,' or on the sporting
indifference of the farmers about seeds and roots.

The forest and the forest hunting claim and deserve
special consideration. To my mind, the forest is not enough
appreciated by the gallants who ride to the Queen's Hounds.
They think it dull. Some little time ago an article in the
' Spectator ' declared that the ideal of modern hunting is
; to ride hard and straight,' and even went so far as to
represent an accident as its pleasurable objective. What
would Sir Roger de Coverley and the stone-grey horse
have said to this '? I shall admit over and over again in the
course of these pages that staghounds are things to ride
to. Agreed and agreed, that, tried by the aesthetic canons
of a riding country, it is better fun to set a nice horse going
after a Reading-bound deer from Hawthorn Hill than
through the fir-trees and Spanish chestnuts of Swinley ;
but, still, much of the wide landscape stretching away
from Ascot to Winchfield and Farnham and Guildford and
Woking possesses a chief essential of any hunting country,
and the very first essential of a carted-deer country — wild-
ness. I do not mean to say that all this country is forest.
A low margin of cultivation, the course of a stream, a kinder
soil, have here and there invited enclosures and tillage, a
farmhouse or two, and a few cottages. But this makes a
little change. It is true that the sour grassland is boggy, that
the banks are rotten, and that there is a good deal of untidy
trailing wire. But you squelch and scramble on in the
hope, which always animates the cross-country rider, of
soon getting into a nicer bit of country.

160 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Thus the forest and the heather make up for much
which the encroachments of population have taken from the
wide provinces over which Charles Davis hunted the Queen's
Hounds thirty years ago. You cannot quite get rid of the
deer cart, nor of the mysterious attraction this ' very pulse
of the machine ' has for a considerable public on wheels
and on foot. Three large colleges, Mr. Waterer's extensive
nurseries, and the Gordon Boys' Home are disenchanting
occurrences ; and I remember a humiliating pursuit in the
grounds of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, owing
to our civilian horses not liking the look of the abattis and
inundations, revetments and trous-de-loup which train our
youth to arms. But you can still ride for miles in certain
directions without meeting a soul or seeing a house. No cattle,
no sheep, only sand and heather, birch and fir, and sweeps
of yellow bog-grass. Red brick, tarred palisades, and resi-
dential amenity stop short at the Bracknell and Bagshot road.

I never dared to turn out on the sly, and, as it were, draw
through the forest until we hit the line.1 It would have
disappointed so many people, and after all would only have
been a distinction and not a difference. Besides, in the
forest, at all events five minutes after hounds are laid
on, given a little luck and a little imagination, you are
hunting a wild animal in a country as wild as Uam Var.

No one knew this country I have outlined better than
Charles Kingsley. He has described it in a way I can never
hope to arrive at. The thrill of hunting things was in his
blood. When I was a little boy, I was at a famous private
school at Winchester, kept by the Eev. C. A. Johns. Mr.

1 This is undoubtedly the right and ideal way to manage the uncarting.
Davis, I am told, always uncarted quite away from the crowd, and only put a
couple of old hounds on to keep the deer moving, thus saving him (the deer)
from being mobbed and bewildered and letting him get his bearings and make
his point. But in these days it would be very unpopular and almost impossible
to carry into effect.

THE FOREST 161

Kingsley, as he was then, and Mr. Johns were old friends
and brother naturalists. I remember, one July afternoon,
Mr. Kingsley taking our class in Xenophon. We felt
flattered, but nervous. In the first three or four sentences
we came to rjv 8s /xsyas irapdhsicros. He forgot all about the
rest of the lesson, and went off into a ringing description of
hunting cheetahs and Persian greyhounds, and bustard and
florican, and antelope. And then, having made us see the
rrapaSsLTos, he told us about the Chase at Bramshill, and its
Scotch and silver firs, and the bishop who shot the forester
by mistake and built the almshouses at Guildford to his
memory.

One of the happiest days of the year at that happy school
was when we all went down to Lyndhurst to hunt white
admirals and fritillaries. Twice, I think, Mr. Kingsley came
with us. I can see him now, with his trousers turned up high
over famous lace-boots and a butterfly-net and collecting-
box, coursing a purple hair-streak over an intricate country,
in the hope of catching it before it spired — which is the
way of purple hair-streaks — into the high oak-tops. But
I remember something better than that. I can hear him
viewing away a fox we put out of a snug patch of whitethorn .
His scream was as ' remarkable and susceptible ' as Jack
Raven's.

At three-and-twenty, Kingsley tells us, his brains were
full of bison and grizzly bear, mustang, bighorn, and ad-
venture ; but, fortunately for us, these things were not
for him. Had it been otherwise, ' Westward Ho ! ' and
' Hypatia ' might never have been written. His lines fell
in quiet places, amongst quiet people. Eversley is. close to
Bramshill, on the skirts of the Hampshire moorlands. It
is not in the forest proper, which, I suppose, is confined to
Windsor and Swinley Forests ; but the country round
Eversley and Bramshill is still rougher and wilder. The

M

1 62 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Queen's Hounds ran over it several times in my day. I
remember one particular day hunting a deer on a cold but
fairly holding scent across Hartford Bridge flats. As they
hunted like beagles, and chanted their Gregorian, and now
and again spread like a sky-rocket, the men and I — to use a
West Biding expression — were 'rarely suited.' One season
we had an outlying hind about Bramshill ; we never caught
her, but she came back of her own accord one day to the
Paddocks, and in at the Paddock gate, which Groves, the
deer-keeper, propped open for her. She was so difficult to
harbour that we called her Hide-and-Seek. Like an en-
chanted deer in a German fairy tale, she seemed to know
what we were about. Once she had been harboured in a
small wood below Bramshill House for several days, and
used to go out and feed every night on some turnips. The
very day the Queen's Hounds met at Bramshill to try to catch
her, they seemed to hit a line on their way to the meet over
Hartford Bridge Flats. Of course, we never found Hide-
and-Seek, and the very same afternoon she was seen hanging
about Swinley Paddocks. As far as I remember, she again
worked her way back to Bramshill, and eventually came
home to her friends and the old beans and clover hay at
Swinley.

When ' Nimrod ' made his tour of inspection of the reput-
able hunts of his day, he dismissed Sir John Cope's country,
as it was then, in a very cursory way. My boy was at
a capital school just against Eversley Green, under Brams-
hill, and I remember his saying in a rather homesick letter,
' The fir-trees are very dismal.' ' Nimrod ' was of the same
opinion. ' It [Sir John Cope's country] partakes,' he says,
' of a sort of Cimmerian darkness in November,' and he
warns the hunting aristocracy, whose society he affected,
against its clays and sands, bogs and heath, immense fuel
hedges, deep, blind ditches, and bad foxes.

THE FOREST 163

But Mr. Kingsley never tired of the firs and their ' saw-
edge ' against the red sunsets, and all their belongings and
incidents.

Mr. Garth in his scarlet and Mr. Cordery in his green
coat were ever welcome sights, the hounds and hunt-
servants his chosen brethren and companions. And so one
afternoon, he tells us how, after visiting his sick people, he
rides the old mare away through the fir woods, under the
dome of buff and grey cloud, and comes right across Mr.
Garth's hunted fox. Shall he halloa as he did in the New
Forest '? It is needless. Louder and louder, nearer and
nearer, swells up the chorus music of hounds running in
woodland.

Perhaps he may have written the ' Ode to the North-
East Wind ' when he got home that day.

Through the black fur forest

Thunder harsh and dry,
Shattering down the snowflakes

Off the curdled sky.
Hark the brave north-easter!

Breast-high lies the scent,
On by holt and headland,

Over heath and bent.
Chime, ye dappled darlings,

Through the sleet and snow,
Who can override you '?

Let the horses go !
Chime, ye dappled darlings,

Down the roaring blast,
You shall see a fox die

Ere an hour be past.
Go ! and rest to-morrow,

Hunting in your dreams,
While our skates are ringing

O'er the frozen streams.

Somerville never wrote anything like that. There you
have the life and character of the well-bred foxhound in
verse.

This is what he says of the foxhound in prose : ' The old

M 2

1 64 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

savage ideal of beauty was the lion, type of mere massive
force. That was succeeded by an over-civilised ideal — say
the fawn — type of delicate grace. By cunning breeding and
choosing, through long centuries, man has combined both,
and has created the fox-hound, lion and fawn in one ; just
as he might create noble human beings, did he take half as
much trouble about politics (in the true old sense of the
word) as he does about fowls. Look at that old hound,
who stands doubtful, looking up at his master for advice.
Look at the severity, delicacy, lightness of every curve. His
head is finer than a deer's ; his hind-legs tense as steel
springs ; his fore-legs straight as arrows ; and yet see the
depth of chest, the sweep of loin, the breadth of paw, the
mass of arm and thigh ; and, if you have an eye for form,
look at the absolute majesty of his attitude at this moment.
Majesty is the only word for it. If he were six feet high
instead of twenty-three inches, with what animal on earth
could you compare him ? Is it not a joy to see such a thing
alive? It is to me at least. I should like to have one in
my study all day along, as I would have a statue or a
picture ; and when Mr. Morrell gave (as they say) two
hundred guineas for Hercules alone, I believe the dog was
well worth the money, only to look at.' The last sentence
would have delighted Captain Cook, a great authority in
his day. In his book published in 1826, the Captain
complained that, while people thought nothing of giving
three hundred guineas for a hunter, they would not o\mz
money enough for hounds ; ' whereas,' says the Captain,
excited into italics, 'everything depends upon a pack of
hounds.'' I do not like the prose so much as the verse. It
is a little excessive, and the ' breadth of paw ' will not do
for Peterborough.

But old Virginal has hit it off, and Kingsley turns the
mare's head homewards. This is a capital description of

THE FOREST 165

forest-riding : ' So homeward I go through a labyrinth of
fir-stems, and, what is worse, fir-stumps, which need both
my eyes and my horse's at every moment. . . Now I plunge
into a gloomy dell wherein is no tinkling rivulet ever pure ;
but, instead, a bog hewn out into a chessboard of squares
parted by narrow ditches some twenty feet apart. Blunder-
ing among the stems I go fetlock deep in peat, and jumping
at every third stride one of the said uncanny grips half
hidden in long hassock grass . . . out of it we shall be
soon. I see daylight ahead at last, bright between the dark
stems. Up a steep slope and over a bank which is not very
big, but, being composed of loose gravel and peat-mould,
gives down with me, nearly sending me head over heels in
the heather, and leaving me a sheer gap to scramble through
and out into the open moor.'

I said just now that the forest was unpopular with the
riding men. They dislike the unfairness of its emergencies
and the certainty of its vicissitudes. A Jem Mason may be
cast in a pot-hole, a Jock Trotter flounder into a gobble-
cow bog, and the hidden prehistoric ruts, made nobody knows
how, leading nobody knows where, may at any moment
discountenance a Gambado.

' It is these plaguy holes on the heath throw a horse
down,' observed Mr. Garth to a dear friend of mine,1 after
watching him recover from one of those long-drawn-out
blunders that seem a lifetime to the rider. This is danger
unredeemed by distinction. Yet, assuming you escape all
the untoward possibilities of a forest run, it is a great
mistake to think that it is an easy thing to ride to. In
hunting jargon you must keep right at the tail of hounds.
A deer will hardly run the present fast foxhound pack

1 The late Mr. John Hargreaves of Maiden Early, for many years Master
of the South Berks. Mr. Hargreaves was in his real element amongst the
banks and ditches of the Hawthorn Hill country, and often came out with us on
a Friday.

1 66

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

out of scent on a good scenting day. He does not go
much faster at one time than another, but he goes no
slower, and he keeps going on. So do the hounds. Under
the fir-trees, and even among the birch and Spanish chest-
nut, there is no undergrowth to stop them. On a really
good scenting day hounds can carry a head through a great
deal of the woodland, and there are none of the limn
palisaded enclosures which the economics of forestry have
recommended in the New Forest. The forest banks and

Tin: Hidden Pbehistobic Huts

grips mean nothing to the necks and shoulders and the dash
which their inheritance of the best blood in England gives
the Queen's Hounds, and outside on the open moorland, the
heather, except here and there in the deeper hollows, is not
high enough or strong enough to make hounds go appreci-
ably slower. It makes them string, and individual hounds
single themselves out. A rather long-backed hound named
Hotspur, which Harvey brought with him from the Isle of
Wight- —a great favourite of mine — always led through the

THE FOREST 167

really thick heather. Thus, when hounds really run, and
the man really rides to them wherever they go — following
the rides on such occasion is a mere hope-for-the-best affair
— a really fast forest run is in some ways a greater test of
horsemanship than crossing the obvious enclosures of a
fairly fenced hunting country ; I think Comins, the Queen's
Huntsman — a most dashing forest rider — will agree with me.
In the latter case on a free and experienced horse the rider
need only be a passenger, but in the forest the man must
ride his horse, he cannot be merely carried.

In the forest, as anywhere else, it is an advantage to be
on a fast horse ; but, whatever you are on, you have often
got to ride him fast, under circumstances peculiarly un-
favourable to fast riding, and which are often irritating to
the temperament of a high-couraged and sensitive animal.

I remember hunting for a few days with Lord Lonsdale
some years ago when he hunted the Woodland Pytchley.
One afternoon, latish on in the season, wTe literally rode into
an old dog-fox in Boughton woods. He jumped up between
us. The hounds got away right on the back of the fox.
AYe both started on the back of hounds. I was riding a
handy, quick horse by Berserker, and those stately wood-
lands have been well administered and thinned. But Lord
Lonsdale lost me in three minutes — not so much because
he was riding a faster horse, although I dare say he was, but
because of his superior horsemanship and his knowledge
of manege riding, which, to my mind, especially distinguishes
him from other celebrated riders to hounds. It is your legs,
and not your hands, which take a horse through trees.
Since then circumstances have given me plenty of oppor-
tunities of learning to ride quickly through woodlands ; but
I am no good at it. Perhaps on that account I may be
overrating its difficulty.

But whatever the forest may be for the rider, it is a

1 68 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

famous place for hounds No huntsman with Swinley
Forest within five hundred yards of his kennels can find an
excuse for not having hounds in condition, almost at any
season of the year. It is a mere platitude to say that there
is nothing like big woodlands to teach a pack of hounds to
run together and hunt together. AVe all know that. But
the anomalous and inevitable conditions of hunting the
carted deer give to forest hunting a quite particular value.
Thanks to the forest, or the forest country, the Queen's
Hounds enjoy advantages without compare, and which should
be turned to the fullest account.

Once forest hunting begins, the young entry get their
chance. They begin to realise themselves. Life is not to
be made up of snubbings from the siirly old hounds, of dull
constitutionals, of quarrels with Splendour and Streamer, of
the unbroken monotony of regular hours, regular meals, and
of kennel-life generally, with not nearly so much to do as
there was in and about the pleasant farmyard near Woking-
ham or Slough.

During the first two or three days' forest hunting it is ad-
visable to check hounds every now and then ; Charles Davis
always did this, and his hounds in the forest were said to be
as perfect in close hunting as harriers, although he was in
the habit of taking out over thirty couple, and a large propor-
tion of unentered hounds. It gives the stragglers a chance
to get up. But towards the end of October these artificial
checks should not be necessary. A hound hates being lost
in a great lonely wood with no familiar sights or sounds for
miles, and a hound which is always getting lost is either
peevish, faint-hearted, or slow, and not worth Scotch oat-
meal at 13Z. a ton. The open heather country is a capital
test of drive and action. I like to see hounds lay themselves
right down over the rough ground or the patches of burnt
heather as if it were permanent pasture. Some hounds,

JOHN COMINS
Huntsman to the Queen's Hounds. Appointed April 1, 1894

THE FOREST 169

good ones too, have a sort of high, romping action at these
times which I never approved of. On a scent a hound
should streak along.

And now as to horses in the forest. The horses, I
think, are cleverer than the men. I have seen wild, light-
headed horses never put a foot wrong. They make their
riders and themselves hot, cross and uncomfortable ; but, in
apparently constant jeopardy, they seem to enjoy the same
sort of protection which Providence is said to accord to
drunken men in railway accidents. But it is difficult to say
how a horse will carry you in the forest. I had a black horse
called William which I rode for three seasons with the
Queen's Hounds, and which I always rode a good deal
during the forest hunting. William, now the favourite of
a friend of mine, is a very free horse in the open, childishly
fond of galloping and jumping, and indeed, unless ridden in
front, he ' pleasantly tightens the rein,' to quote a dealer's
euphemism ; but in the more gloomy and mysterious parts
of the forest, or in deep, suspicious-looking heather, William
would always go behind his bridle, ringing a sort of tune on
his bit at an extravagantly actioned trot. At such times he
seemed to have laid upon himself a self-denying ordinance,
neither to catch hold nor to gallop until things were more
like what he was used to. This kind of pace has two
objections : it does not get you on very fast, and it gives you
a tremendous cropper if anything goes wrong. I have a
lively recollection of William, when conscientiously escalad-
ing an ineligible bit of riding ground near Minley, being-
betrayed in a thicket of rhododendrons ; even his shoulders
could not save us — to use an expression of that noted
horseman, Dick Christian, he fell 'like a clot.'

I had another horse called Agitator, by Republican ; he
was own brother to Doneraile, and had won one or two
steeplechases himself. Agitator was a charming hunter,

170 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

with fascinating ways and style about him ; but the swish
of branches used to excite him, and he would bound about
in a most foolish way at times if I rode him through the
stuff. He was 16.3, and not at all the sort of horse
which you would pick for the forest ; but however close the
grips came together, you could not make him put a foot
wrong, and you could not have filled an hour-glass from the
damage he did to the crumbly little banks you occasionally
have to cross. This instinct some horses have of putting in
a short one has always seemed to me like the instinct of
time which some people possess in a greater degree than
others. There is no better test of an active, resourceful
horse than to canter him along the grass siding to a high
road, with different-sized grips at short intervals. If he
times them all without disturbing the smoothness of your
seat, or making you involuntarily job him in the mouth, you
may be sure it is all right. It is not a trial an intellectual
dealer will often recommend to you.

I always liked the forest as a school of morals for excit-
able, fractious-mouthed horses, which are often treated with
greater consideration than they deserve. Nine times out of
ten, so far from being humoured, they should not even be
consulted. ' He wants very light hands ' is an implied
compliment to a horse's courage and to his owner's riding,
but it usually only means that this undesirable animal has
always had his own way about his neck and head and
mouth. Light hands are not the same thing as good hands.
Very often light hands only mean that the rider has a good
seat, and is consequently undisturbed by a rough uncom-
fortable ride, and independent of his reins. The late Mr.
Chapman, one of the hunting horsemen of the century, once
told me that you should think of your horse's mouth as a
piece of delicate pie-crust. It is a pleasant fancy, but, like pie-
crust, a mouth wants making, and depends on the cook. Mr.

THE FOREST 171

Chapman himself always rode on strong bridles and asserted
his prerogatives. He would never put up with the various
liberties a light bridle permits a horse to take with his
rider. A long cheeked sliding-bar double bridle, a Cheshire
martingale, a leather strap instead of a curb chain, turnings
here, twistings there, plenty of fir-trees, and the discontents
and surprises of the forest are the best things in the world
to make your Rupert and Lady Clara Vere de Vere lose the
self-consciousness which so often renders them a nuisance
to themselves and their riders.

And so farewell to the forest and the heather, to the lean
cultivation, the ineffectual turnips, to the commons and the
geese, the jays and the unfashionable side of the Queen's
country. Let all stag-hunters remember that Charles
Davis, the great tradition of the royal pack, was devoted to
the forest. One October, on the last day of forest hunting
years ago, he said to Dr. Croft, of Bracknell, who knew him
well, and to whom I am indebted for a great deal of help
and information, ' Now my fun is over — on Tuesday my
troubles begin.'

172 STAG-HUXTIXG RECOLLECTION S

CHAPTER IX

BANKS AND DITCHES

Make me feel the wild pulsation I have often felt before,

When my horse went on before me and my hack was at the door,

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming sport should yield,
And rejoicing in the cropper that I got the second field.

Ha, ha, ha ! was that an oxer? What, old Eambler, is he dead ?
What of that ? pick up the pieces, he was mortal, go ahead

There is very little to be said about the Buckinghamshire
side of the Queen's country. It is a land of large undulations,
light-coloured plough, beech-woods, and flints. Here and
there in the valleys a narrow tract of permanent pasture
cheers you up, and fills another corner in the sketch-book of
memory. . I saw the body of the pack carry a rare head up
the emerald stream line of the Amersham Valley one day,
with a hound called Splendour three hundred yards in front
of them all — we could never make out where or how he had
got such a lead. But it cannot be considered a good hunting
country from a riding point of view. In old days the Queen's
Hounds used sometimes to run down into the Vale of
Aylesbury from Gerrard's Cross — at least, so the late William
Bartlett, for many j^ears second whip, used to tell me. One
or other of our Kestors used always to remark to me — it was
the veteran commonplace of this particular meet — that the
wind, whatever its quarter, was right for taking us thither.
Bat, alas ! it never did so in my time. At the same time,
all about Gerrard's Cross and Beaconsfield is not by any
means a bad stag-hunting country. At all events there is

BANKS AND DITCHES 173

lots of room, and we had some capital gallops in that part
of the world. When there had been plenty of rain these
pale ploughs and the high beech-woods carried a capital
scent, and the configuration of the country wanted a galloping
horse ; indeed a better bred one than Berkshire.

The best thing 1 remember was fifty minutes from Chal-
font Park with an outlying deer, named Bramshill. We
found him in a large patch of broom, just above Captain
Penton's house, where he had been treated for two or three
weeks as an honoured guest. Harvey drew up to him
very quietly and slowly, and the hounds had owned a line for
three hundred yards before the deer jumped up. This
was a very pretty find ; the deer jumped with such gay
bounds through the broom. I was riding a mare called
Milkmaid, not up to my weight, but she was all but clean-
bred and fast, and carried me well. I don't think I ever
remember going for so long at top speed. Comparatively few
people really lived through it or saw it. As there was
nothing to jump all the way, there is no harm in saying so ;
it was more like a flat race. Bramshill took to the reser-
voir at Chalfont St. Giles, and we had to leave him there.
This deer was a great water lover. We had taken him in a
pond at Elvetham the first day he was ever hunted. The
following year I took him down to the Vine, where we
hunted one day by invitation, thinking we were safe in that
dry and waterless country, bat he found his way straight
to the only ornamental piece of water for miles, Ewhurst
Park, and he again refused to come out.

There were several good riders who used to come out on
the Bucks side of the river, most notably Mr. Drake, the
rector of Amersham, who joined us once or twice. Except for
the Rev. Mr. Fowle, whom George III., on a public occasion,
declared to be one of the best cavalry officers (Mr. Fowle having
at the time of the French Wars raised a corps of Berkshire

174 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Yeomanry), one of the best riders, and also one of the best
preachers of his acquaintance, and whom he much wished
to make a bishop, the Royal Hounds do not appear to have
ever been distinguished for any of the hard-riding parsons
who adorn the sporting literature of fifty years ago. A
writer of authority in the early years of this century declares
that he would back the bench of Bishops against the
Judges any day over a country or on the flat, and the pages
of ' Nimrod ' teem with the exploits of resolute clergymen,
who seem to have been especial favourites, and to have often
attracted distinguished and particular notice. Thus, ' the
Rev. J. M.,' writes the Duke of Cleveland in his diary,
' shone as conspicuously on his grey mare as in the pulpit,
and was alone with hounds over Ainderby Moors.' Again,
' The Vicar of P. is no humbug,' writes ' Nimrod.' This
satisfactory conclusion was due to the Vicar's love of hunt-
ing, and to the sporting character of his invitation to the
writer and Sir Bellingham Graham to drink more claret. ' If
you drink enough, it will make your eyes look like boiled
gooseberries.' The first time I saw Mr. Drake out we hap-
pened to run fast over half a dozen old grass fields with rough,
old-fashioned fences. This was quite at the beginning of the
run, and we were all full of go. As I watched the ' seriously
dressed ' horseman smoothly cutting out the work for us
on a well-bred old chestnut horse, I knew at once we were
entertaining an angel unawares. Perhaps Mr. Drake would
have come out oftener, had he known the pleasure and
interest his style of riding gave us all.

Whether hounds run fast over it or slow, Bucks is not
at all a bad country to give a horse confidence ; the neat
wattles are encouraging to a degree, and here and there a sort
of fringe of young and innocent hazel, with no ditch, teaches
a horse to get up. As far as I remember, the only time I saw
a bona fide upstanding gate jumped by one of the Queen's

BANKS AND DITCHES 175

field was on the Bucks side. Mr. Shackle of Eedleaf
was the hero of this incident, on a well-bred black horse
he owned in 1892. It was charmingly done, and the black
horse landed noiselessly on his hind legs on to a rough ser-
vice roadway leading into some farm buildings. I nearly
Absalomised myself by jumping the fence alongside into an
orchard with apple-trees of the most gnarled and deformed
description. The gate, too, was new, painted black ; the next
worst colour to white.

The Slough country, with its once popular meets, I
consider quite unsuitable to stag-hunting ; it is distinguished
by almost every characteristic you don't want — population,
wire, a river, a canal, a railway, cabbages, strong wheat
land, and soggy grass with a black subsoil. The opening
meet at Salt Hill is one of those institutions which can no
longer be defended in practice. In 1893, I remember, we
spent the whole of our time — it seemed very long — crossing
and recrossing the river by Maidenhead Bridge, finally taking
the deer in Weston's yard before a large assembly of Eton
boys and maidservants. It was stag-hunting at its very
worst. Indeed, I have often thought the best thing about
these teeming flats between Bray and Windsor — which I
admit sometimes carried a scent— were the varying prospects
of Windsor, rising like an enchanted castle into the clearer
sky out of the lilac-blue haze which broods upon the low
horizons of the Thames Valley. Often and often I have
thanked Windsor with loyal satisfaction for that stately out-
line of towers and terraces, and felt compensated for a stupid
hunt.

But now let me take my readers to the banks and ditches
of Berkshire. Most of the glad emotions so pleasantly
recalled to us by Mr. Bromley-Davenport in the couplets
quoted at the head of this chapter, are to be had for the ask-
ing by the stag-hunter ; indeed, if there is a scent and] the

176 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Queen's field are in the humour — which, to do them justice,
they invariably are — and if the deer goes the right way
from Hawthorn Hill, it is very possible to rejoice in your
cropper at the first fence which happens to be a very
typical example of the Queen's bank and ditch country.

There are no oxers — nor need this be a matter of inex-
tinguishable regret — and very little timber. Mr. Van de
Weyer's fine grass land around New Lodge was fenced with
rood upon rood of uniform post and railings, but I do not
think I can remember seeing them jumped. One day
when we nearly ran straight over this bit of country, I
thought of doing it, but there it ended. The rails are not
very high, but they are painted black, and they stand up out
of the level fields with horrid integrity without a suspicion
of a lean from you. The geometry of their alignments gives
the whole affair a building-plot look ; and in bold relief
several hunting gates are painted a staring white, and open
easily and quickly. It requires moral as well as physical
courage to resist such a conspiracy. A sporting doctor was
the only conspicuous exponent in my time of timber jump-
ing. He had a white horse and a bay horse, which like him-
self were both highly versed in the art, but he literally had to
hunt for opportunities of exhibiting their talents.

There is no water either in the Berkshire side of the
Queen's country ; that is, no jumpable water. The not-to-be
denied stag-hunter will have frequent opportunities of swim-
ming if so minded, but very few of pounding the field over
a bumping brook. Take them all through, the fences are
mostly of the deferential breed ; you seldom come to the
sort of place which Jem Mason described as comprising
eternal misery on one side and certain death on the other ;
or of the character so neatly suggested by a hard-riding
nobleman to his huntsman : ' What's the other side, my
Lord ? ' ' Thank God, I am.'

^

&

<

BANKS AND DITCHES i77

But the best part of it — all about Wokingham and
Hawthorn Hill and Warren House — is quite a nice country
to ride over on an active horse, who goes up to his bank
with a flippant one, two, three, four, and his ears pricked and
jumps on and off it quick. And the banks are not big and
wide like some of the Blackmore Vale banks which consti-
tute quite a regular operation. When all goes well, you do
not get quite the same emotion as you do in a stake and
bound country, on a free horse. They are not to be had in any
on and off country. But, on the other hand, when all goes
wrong, you are not liable to the imperial crowners which
Mr. Sawyer watches his friends take in Market Harboro',
and which are so capitally rendered on the yellow back of
that most admirable and inspiring novel. You are much
more likely to sprain your ankle than to smash your hat ;
the very few falls I had were all of this latter sort, and I
cannot remember having ever been shot handsomely into
the middle of next week. Indeed, with the exception of
the railway gates of an occasional level crossing, and a
fair choice of well-protected deep cuttings, Bucks and Berks
only present average opportunities either for falls, or for
conspicuous exploits. Jack Mytton and men of his kidney
would find little to satisfy their ambition in the Queen's
country.

Some few examples of punishment cheerfully taken by
the men of old time and of their ethics may serve to edify
the present and rising generation of horsemen.

' No sympathy was like his,' says Mr. Mytton's biogra-
pher.1 It certainly found vent in unusual ways, for we read
of his knocking down his tutor and putting an eminent
horse-dealer to bed with two bulldogs and a bear, to say

1 He might have added his digestion. On one occasion he and a friend
consumed eighteen pounds of filbert nuts. At the close of the seance they
were ' up to their knees in nut-shells.'

N

178 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

nothing of larger traits of a generous nature. Nature,
however, cannot be expected to be prodigal of her Myttons,
and it might not be easy to string together a long chaplet
of true Mytton lustred pearls. Here, however, are two or
three merely average selections.

' Nimrod ' relates how a Mr. Stanhope who was staying
at the time with Sir Bellingham Graham, being already in
a more or less maimed condition from previous exploits,
was stretched for dead early in the day. He was taken to
Bosworth and blooded ; three ribs being found to be
broken. Mr. Stanhope, however, resisted these insinua-
tions of the faculty, and came out again two days later.
The field were hindered by some high rails which were
being pulled down, when Mr. Stanhope insisted on ' having
a try,' with the result of another heavy fall. 'You are a
good one, by G ! ' exclaimed his host ; but as he pro-
bably did not wish to have him laid up in his house all the
season, he added, ' You shall ride again no more,' and Mr.
Stanhope, to his great annoyance, was sent in a post-chaise
to Leicester. This fall accounted for two more ribs and his
breast bone. ' Not a bad sort to breed from,' is the chro-
nicler's appreciative comment.

Upon another occasion, a Cheshire whipper-in pleases
' Nimrod ' very much by this account of his injuries : ' Three
ribs broken one side, two on tother, both collar bones, and
been scalped.' It further appeared that his horse ' Valentine,'
whom, it is true, he calls a ' dunghill brute ' for lying on him
half an hour, when he did get up, kicked him on the head till
the skin hung down all over his eyes and face. ' And do you
know, sir ' — this was the part of the story which appealed
most to ' Nimrod's ' best feelings — ' When I gets to Wrexham,
I faints from loss of blood ! ' Only a Blackburn Bover could
stand this sort of thing in these days. As a pendant to this
undefeated hunt -servant may be cited the gay stoicism of a

BANKS AND DITCHES

179

man of fashion. This was a Mr. Williamson, who fell from a
height before a large company into a deep road. ' There was
something very frightful in the motions of Mr. Williamson.'
It turned out that, in addition to more important injuries,
this gentleman's jaw was broken, and most of his teeth

Charles Hoare, Second Whipper-in to the Queen's Hounds,
appointed July 1, 1894

knocked down his throat. Mr. Williamson was young and
good-looking. He declared he would not have taken a
thousand guineas for his teeth, but with true sportsmanlike
feeling said he regretted them less than the run he had missed.
It is true that Mr. Henry Kingscote's feat in getting to the

n 2

180 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

end of a fine run in spite of eleven bad falls, owing to having
blinded his horse, is recorded as a somewhat rare example of
grim resolution. Such incidents were taken in perfect good
part, and in an ' all in the day's work ' spirit which would
cause something like alarm and even unpleasantness in these
more narrow-minded days. What for instance should we
say to this ? Mr. Assheton Smith and Mr. J. White always
rode very jealous of each other. On one occasion they came
to a great bullfinch with only one possible place in it. Mr.
White got at it first, but stuck fast in the middle of it, to
Mr. Smith's great annoyance. ' Earn the spurs in, and pray
get out of my way,' says Mr. Smith after a decent interval.

' If you're in such a d d hurry, wThy don't you charge

me ? ' was the rejoinder. Mr. Smith took him at his word,
and on they went as if nothing had happened. Or, to the
generous sang-froid of one of the many hunting Dukes of
Grafton ? The Duke had been thrown into a ditch ; a young
curate who was following him stick for stick shouted out, ' Lie
still, your Grace,' and cleared him handsomely. The Duke,
we are told, on being extricated from his predicament by
his attendants, declared himself highly satisfied with such
an exhibition of presence of mind, and upon rejoining the
hounds promised the young divine his first vacant living.
This he carried into effect, remarking to his friends, when he
told the story, that if he (the curate) had stopped to help
him out, he should never have patronised him. Whilst we
are considering the mighty deeds of the past, and in a day
of magnum-like flasks and trunk-like sandwich cases, it
may here be noted that Mr. Meynell — the hero of the great
Billesden Coplow ' run and the ' Hunting Jupiter ' of his
day — always breakfasted on a tea-cup of veal tea, and

1 Feb. 24, 1800. From the Coplow by Tilton, Skeffington earths, to Enderby
Warren, crossing the Soar below Whitstone. Twenty-eight miles in 2 hours,
15 minutes.

BANKS AND DITCHES 181

depended during the day upon a flask of tincture of rhubarb,
the only refreshment he carried.

But passing from the chivalry and stomachs of our
forbears, it may here be observed without disrespect to
their memory that a note of the many more clement and
intelligent conceptions of manners and taste, which have
fruitfully multiplied during the inspiring reign of Queen
Victoria, is the changed standard of riding to hounds. Little
or no credit is now awarded to a Mr. Stanhope. A man
who overfaces a generous horse and is always taking heavy
falls, is looked upon as a fool — all but as a knave. That
So-and-so is always ' on the floor ' is as much as saying that
So-and-so is a poor performer. He is spoken of in accents
of pity, not of admiration ; and you are given to understand
that though his heart may be in the right place, his hands
and another part of his person are elsewhere.

Every now and then, of course, some great necessity
arises, and a gallant pair pound the field. A fall is inevitable,
but fine shoulders, fine hands, and a fine seat bring the
staunch partners out of the crisis handsomely. I have seen
both the late Mr. Chapman and Mr. Corbett Holland fall in
a way which was a lesson in the arts of horsemanship. But
to ride your horse fairly, to get to the end of many runs with
few falls, and to finish a season with a soundish stud, is now
the criterion of artistic riding to hounds, not the bravo-like
adventures of the Mytton type, which entitled the foxhunter
to a place in the sporting anthologies of sixty years ago.

And now as to the sort of horse to ride with the Queen's
Hounds. ' Whoever rides Radical should be as quiet as a
mouse, as bold as a lion, and as strong as a horse.' So said
Mr. Assheton Smith, which is the same thing as saying
that Eadical was not everybody's horse. At the same time
horses of his class, for he was one of the best-bred hunters
which ever went over Leicestershire, are the best anywhere

1 82 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

and everywhere. All who have hunted in a bank and ditch
country have met the victim of an uncomfortable conviction
that the animal he happens to be riding is out of his proper
country ; that he exults in big flying fences, and disdains to
lay a foot to a bank. Nine times out of ten, however, you
would find the same individual — say if you met him in
Mr. Fernie's country — paralysed by the self-same animal's
supposed preference for banks and doubles. Here and there,
perhaps, a Leicestershire horse is not at his best in a bank
country. Badical, for instance, ridden by anybody but Mr.
Smith, might not have done himself justice in the Bracknell
country ; and it is undeniable that many good horses are not
quite Leicestershire horses. But for my own riding any-
where I like a horse which has been obliged to jump high,
and wide, and strong ; and in the whole of my hunting
experience I only remember owning one horse which could
not be trusted to kick back at a bank.

One of the finest exhibitions of hunting riding I ever saw
was in the Cattistock country some years ago. The late Lord
Guilford was at that time hunting the country. We found a
fox in Briarswood, and ran for twenty minutes very fast over
the best of the country. All banks and doubles. Lord Guilford
was riding a horse which had only arrived the night before,
and had been sold out of Leicestershire because he took off
too soon from courage and over- jumped the fences and him-
self. A horseman such as Lord Guilford was — I put him in
the first half-dozen of my acquaintance — can to some extent
govern accidents ; but I cite this as an illustration of the
steadying effects big banks have upon the most extravagant
high-flyers.

There is a picture, by Byron "Webb, of Mr. Tattersall on
a thoroughbred mare named Black Bess, with the Queen's
Hounds in an alluring middle distance, in the little room
facing the office at Albert Gate, which he has given me leave

n h

£ i

H

H Si

H w

R *

BANKS AND DITCHES 183

to reproduce. The man and the mare are just what stag-
hunters should be, and equally good-looking. I delight in
the green coat and the careful ease of the abundant cravat.
But this mare is the very model of a stag-hunter. All blood,
fore-legs right under the points of her shoulders, long deep
ribs, no lumber, and I will wager you would hardly hear
her on the hardest high road — a great point in a stag-
hunter. Road work, and fast road work, is inevitable, and
a noisy hackney-actioned horse knocks his legs to pieces in
no time, to say nothing of getting upon his rider's nerves.

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula carnpuru.

That is right enough on the permanent pasture or in an
hexameter, but it is a desolating sound on the "Wokingham
and Reading road.

Thoroughbred horses, Dick Christian told the 'Druid,'
make the very best of hunters. ' I never heard,' he declared,
' of a great thing but it was done by a thoroughbred horse.'
They certainly make the best stag-hunters, for only blood,
and quality legs and feet, can stand the long distances, the
long runs, and the road work. Bucks is hilly, Berks is
deep. A slow or underbred horse is soon blown, if not actually
outpaced by staghounds, and the more confidence you have
in his jumping and his courage, the greater the disaster
wiien it comes. After twenty minutes you would not know
the horse ; poor devil ! as he rolls and slobbers along he
would not know himself. Is this the animal that devoured
the first four fields like a tiger, and jumped like an india-
rubber ball ? With the thoroughbred horse it is just the
other way. He is often a bad beginner, but the farther
he goes the better he goes. The first fence he all but fell
from getting too near it, the second fence not liking the look
of some straggling thorns he came round, the third fence he
left his hind legs ; but though annoyed or disappointed with

1 84

5 TA G-HCNTING RECOLLECTIONS

him, you know he does not mean falling, and you wait his
own good time. Now you have been going for the best part
of an hour, the claims of high descent have asserted them-
selves, the best blood of a century is coursing and mantling
through his veins, he swells the muscles of his neck, and
cracks his nostrils in patrician disdain of every difficulty ; he
is jumping bigger and bigger, galloping with the force of a
steam-engine, collecting himself with the balance of a rope
dancer. You know what it is to be really carried.

YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE REALLY CaRRIEK

However, I must not gallop my Pegasus to death, and
restrain myself from any further description of an animal
we most of us desire, all deserve, but never find. Suffice it
to say that a horse must have his veins full of winning-post
blood to carry you safely after the everlasting Swinley deer
and over the inevitable miles home.

A sentence in one of Lord Cork's descriptions of a good
run in the Harrow country suggests a few further observa-

^s^A^^^^

-j*"-

BANKS AND DITCHES

185

tions on mere riding to staghounds. ' To hesitate,' he says,
' meant that you were out of it.' Of course this is in a measure
true of all riding to hounds when they run fast, but it is
especially true of staghounds. Given favourable conditions,

Chaeles Strickland, First Whipper-in to the Queens Hounds,
appointed July 1, 1894

pace with staghounds is epidemic — you keep on going fast,
going on.

A good deer, although he may not run a straight point,

1 86 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

always gives that impression. It is a question whether he
can be headed, once he has made up his mind ; and this
accounts, to some extent, for the extraordinary places he
will run into. If he had meant crossing it, I do not think
Epsom Hill on a Derby day would have turned Guy
Fawkes. Thus staghounds, once they get settled, run on
at a pertinacious sort of speed, which most people must find
rather tiresome after a bit. There are none of the lightning
changes of temperature which illuminate a run with fox-
hounds. Staghounds, for instance, would seldom inspire a
' Thirty quick minutes from Eanksborough Gorse,' written,
I believe, between dressing time and dinner in the congenial
atmosphere of stained leathers and a hot bath. But there are
exceptions to every rule, and there can be no question that
every now and then the Queen's Hounds, not only in pace,
but in their drive and fling, give you all the ' vital feelings
of delight ' of the foxhound.

It is a question whether you can ride ' cunning ' with
staghounds. In all kinds of hunting a really high post
and rail or a sullen brook are apt to develop the guile of the
Ked Indian. Very often this does not matter much when
fox-hunting. Horrible injustices often occur, and the battle
is often rather to the wary or the swift than to the brook -
and rail-jumpers. But with staghounds the event seldom
transforms hesitation into judgment. Once you begin to
hesitate, it is a hundred to one you see no more of the
gallop. One has to account for one's failure somehow, of
course ; you acted, for instance, upon a theory that the deer
would not go here or was making for there. I have occasion-
ally practised this self-deception upon others, but rarely with
any success upon myself.

I remember especially missing the end of one of our
more or less classical runs from Shinfield, close to Beading.
We ran for a great number of miles under a needlessly

BANKS AND DITCHES

187

splendid sun, the deer being ultimately taken in Fleet Pond
after a great display of aquatics. In this case a deep river
with a boggy bottom, a high bank, a mere apology for a ford,
and an impetuous horse with a great taste for ' taking off ' on
the slightest provocation, suggested a theory as to the run of
the deer. Satan in boots and breeches, who is always at hand
on these occasions, whispered something about a bridge, just

The First Whip's Horse subsided with only his Head out of Water

as Valesman, the first whip's horse, subsided with only his
head out of water under our startled eyes. At the head of the
divisions of caution which quickly form on such occasions
I led the way at a confident pace to the nearest high
road. We kept bolstering ourselves up by saying, ' He
is hanging our way.' ' This is his line ! ' and no doubt
I pressed into our service something about a side wind,

1 88 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

which is always supposed to woo the affections of the hunted
red-deer. Not a bit of it. We never got to hounds again, and
I had twenty miles home to Reading, suffering from a hot
red coat, a spring headache, and that intolerable sense of
injustice which always accompanies well-merited misfor-
tune.

A writer of some note of George III.'s day declared that
were the king once to see a fox well found and handsomely
killed he would give up the staghounds. He condemns
stag-hunting for its lack of ' ecstasy,' and the glorious
uncertainty which should distinguish hunting ; the sulky or
generous temper of the deer being the sole variety the stag-
hunter can count upon. It is true the stag-hunter recks
nothing of the hazards of a doubtful find, a wild night, a
chain of woodlands, and a main earth. But to say there
is no uncertainty is to say you have never ridden over
the banks and ditches of Berkshire after Bartlett or Guy
Fawkes.

LORD EIBBLESDALE
M.B.H. 1892 to 1895

1 89

CHAPTER X

BLACK AND WHITE

Hie potens sui
Lfetusque deget, cui Ifcet in diem
Dixisse, Vixi : eras vel atra
Nube pclum Pater occupato
Vel sole puro.

Spoeting literature often suffers from a surfeit of success.
In the jungle, on the river or the hill, and especially in the
hunting-field, the reader's mouth is over-satisfied with good
things. As an antidote I will cite one of my own personal
experiences of the Harrow country. For the most part these
are dismal and ineffectual to a degree. With the exception of
one day, when we met at Harefield, and ran into a detest-
able country — ' the wrong way,' with which all beasts of the
chase are so conversant — we only met once in the Harrow
country of famous tradition during my Mastership, so I re-
member this occasion very distinctly. Like my more fortu-
nate predecessors, I too had received several assurances from
individuals of welcome and goodwill. It was a dry time,
and an experiment seemed worth trying. I am horribly
afraid of wire ; not on account of the horsemen, who, in
the well-laid-out environs of London, may be trusted to
take remarkably good care of themselves, but on account
of the deer and the hounds. The latter can of course be
stopped, but there is nothing more sickening than the sight
of a good deer doing his generous best in a wired country ;
and the Master of a pack of staghounds who knowingly

iqo STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

exposes and condemns a deer to what this means, is a
criminal in boots and breeches. However, the farm upon
which we were to turn out, at all events, was not wired.
If, as I expected, we ran at once into a wired country, I
meant to stop the hounds and trust to luck, which had often
befriended me, as regards the deer. In the event, however,
these resolutions were not tested, as it was impossible to
hunt owing to a cotton-wool fog which never lifted.

Never shall I forget the depressing accompaniments
of that day. Just as we grumble more at our mishaps than
we give thanks for our benefits, bad days have always
impressed themselves more upon me than the good days.
Only one of my stalwarts, the London gentlemen, turned up
at Paddington with a friend from the North. The pea-soup
fog would certainly not have kept the rest at home ; and as
my eye swept the platform for my missing divisions with
all the heart-searchings of Deborah and Barak, I realised
that their absence could only be due to the Quixotic nature
of the enterprise. Neither the veteran scarlet of Mr. Bowen-
May nor the dreadnought outlines of Mr. Noble Smith
were to be seen. On the other hand I discerned a respectful
pity in the demeanour of the courteous staff of the Great
Western Bail way, who contribute so materially to the
comfort of hunting with the Queen's Hounds. However,
after our locomotive had wheezed and creaked like some
monster in distress, off we went in an all but empty train.
London's yellow-brick girdle always depresses me. But
on this particular morning the row upon row of crowded
loneliness, the symmetrical monotony broken only by the
pre-eminence of some public-house, the panorama of neutral
tints, were quite in harmony with my spirits. Circumstances
seemed to be too much for me, just as they must be for
those who have to live in those endless yellow-brick houses.

There is a great deal about the look of a platform when

BLACK AXD WHITE

191

you hunt by train. Some look like the job, some do not.
This particular one did not. The fog seemed thicker than

Charles Samways, Second Grc

Hoc:

ever, which was consoling at all events. Like AVatchhorn
before Sir Harry Scattercash had given him the second

1 Samways entered Her Majesty's service in 1875 as rough-rider ; he was
appointed second horseman to the Master of the Buckhounds in May 1880, and
promoted in 1894 to be second groom, vice Reuben Matthews.

192 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

glass of port wine, I was by this time longing not to hunt.
The hounds and hunt horses had slept at Hillingdon, and
my second horseman met me at the station with a de-
pressing account of a dull evening, chilly stabling, and
languid feeders. It was all very different to the cheer-
ful days of yore he remembered. Sam ways is a man of per-
ception, resource, and counsel. A good second horseman,
like a good valet, should guess what his master is thinking
about, and I saw ' the day's disasters in his morning face ' ;
he now declared the fog would never lift, suggested the
next train back to Paddington, and that he should ride one
of my horses on to the meet and send the hounds home.

But by this time the two London gentlemen had coaxed
their shrouded favourites out of the horse-boxes, and Were
asking their way to the hotel. Evidently they were all for a
ride of some sort. For the matter of that, so was I. The
bare mention of Agitator had cheered me up. ' Post equitem
sedet atra cura.' This, as Major Whyte Melville has pointed
out, is one of the very few mistakes Horace has made. In
the shape of an awkward stile downhill, 'cura' may for
a moment be embodied in front of you, but there is no
room for him behind really superlative shoulders, and these
consolations were waiting for me only a hundred yards
away.

The railway hotel, implacable yellow brick of course,
was as little like hunting as the platform. We were looked
upon as peculiar animals by an indolent landlord and an
incredulous barmaid, Samways in his gold-laced hat being
taken, I imagine, for some mounted janissary of the London
County Council. However, the cherry brandy — a great
incentive to stag-hunting — was pronounced all but up to the
Slough sample by my companions. That being the case,
there was nothing irretrievably rotten in the state of
Denmark. Whilst I was writing a letter- — in itself an out-

BLACK AND WHITE 193

rage on a hunting morning — an old gentleman in a pea-
jacket drew a confused picture of what things used to be
before Lord John Russell's Reform Bill, in a manner which
would have delighted Lord Marney. Those, it appeared,
were the days to go hunting in. ' Things,' as he rather
vaguely kept declaring, ' were something like.' What with
the plush furniture, the oleographs and Japanese grasses
of the parlour, and the damaged reminiscences of the pea-
jacket, the icy fingers of depression began clawing at me
again. No time was to be lost in mounting. There was
nothing for it but the elaborate freedom of Agitator's
action. Agitator in the meanwhile had created a diversion,
though hardly in our favour, by planting one neatly on the
potboy's posterior, whom, failing an ostler, Samways had
commandeered from the security of the bottle and jug depart-
ment, and who was now being lectured for his folly in getting
near a long-tailed blood horse. ' You'll know better another
time,' Samways was sternly saying as we came into the
yard, an assurance which did not seem altogether to comfort
the potboy. Five shillings, however, did wonders for the
injured part and off we set for the meet. But the mist
grew worse every yard of our way. I divined wire every-
where, which is much worse than actually seeing it. The
kindest of welcomes awaited us, and a most hospitable host
had all sorts of good things to eat and drink laid out for
our benefit, but there could be only one opinion about the
fog. As to the wire, the hunt-servants who had come a
different way, and one or two unenthusiastic local sports-
men, confirmed the opinion I had already formed. Even
Comins, the keenest and hardest of stag-hunters, thought it
would not do. For once I was glad that the weather made
it impossible to hunt, and glad to order the hounds home.

So much for a dies atra. And now let me refresh m}rself
with the recollections of a much more amusing day, when

o

i94 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

we met by invitation in the old Berkshire country, which I
jotted down at the time.

March 2, 1893. Posted from Swindon to Kitemore. Orr-
Ewing put up hounds, horses, and men at the kennels ;
self, horses and Sain ways at Kitemore. A very wet night.
However, it had faired up by the time we started. Water
out all over the place. Forded the redoubtable Eosey Brook
on our way to the meet, a lively but not inviting stream.
Van de Weyer, who I suppose has often been in it in old days,
had prepared me for its peculiarities. This morning it was
running bank-high and out over the banks. Took a mental
but futile note of the look of the ford we crossed by. A great
concourse at the turn-out. Foot-people for miles round. I
was told many had started at 4 a.m. to get there. Waggons,
musicianers and cock-shies. Might have been a country
race-meeting by the look of things. Serried ranks of
spectators drawn up on neighbouring high grounds com-
manding the Eosey. We were all hospitably entertained
by several capital farmers,1 living at Baulking ; my host
had very pretty daughters. Sloe gin, I think it was — very
good, and fashionable heliotrope colour. Found the Beau-
fort contingent all landed up, well-mounted, and ready for
anything.2 Joe Moore had managed their journey arrange-
ments capitally. Turned- out Blackback soon after twelve
o'clock, amidst great and general confusion. Fast-asleep, who
was very fresh, nearly threw me off by shying at the Aunt
Sallies, just as I was going to address the foot-people on
the situation. By the time I had recovered one stirrup
and my hat, Blackback was out of the cart. After going
two fields parallel to the brook the hill-folk turned him

1 Mr. George Reade, Mr. Robert Whitfield, and Mr. Thomas Matthews.

- Messrs. J. Hibbard, James, Charles, and William Eich, Joseph Moore,
Joseph Large, and the late Mr. Frank Hiscock, all came up from the Duke of
Beaufort's country.

BLACK AND WHITE 195

down over the Rosey, which he crossed at some conventional
willows — a nasty, flooded-looking place from where we
were. The knowing ones now made off for the ford. How-
ever, the heliotrope kept a good many in the path of
glory. The country being very deep and much water out, I
gave him very little law — also on the principle of ' For God's
sake start us, captain, before the whiskey is out of us ! '

The willows presented a scene of wild confusion. For a
hundred yards each side of where the hounds crossed there was
no reasonably fair take-off, the water being out over banks. I
think all the hunt-servants more or less got in. The fact is,
we are more accustomed to boating than water-jumping. Mr.
Harvey, on Romeo, appeared to make a sort of duck and drake
job of it, but did not part, greatly to his credit. The spluttering
about was tremendous. Waterspouts filled the startled air.
Everybody got in. Charles Rich, according to his own ac-
count, climbed up one of the willows after driving Moore's old
grey that he was riding into the water up to his neck. I could
not understand what he did next, but they got over somehow
on right side together, Charlie being wet up to his middle. ' A

d d good performance, I call it,' he said to me afterwards,

which, as he weighs nineteen stone and is no climber, I
think it was. Self, and Goldsmith on a well-bred white
horse, and one or two more rode up the brook. Goldsmith
found a place with a little rise to it, good take-off and friendly
bush. It was really no width anywhere, so we got over.
Luckily, hounds had gone no pace meanwhile, and dragged
along into the wrong country, of course, Lechlade way out
of the Vale. The chase now led us to the Thames, running
strong and high, only to be crossed by an unholy white spar-
bridge near a weir. For once the men^and hounds managed
to get over first ; then came Jim Rich and one or two of my
Wiltshire friends, burning to distinguish themselves. Jim
Rich's fool of a horse slipped and got cast on the bridge.

o 2

196 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Hind leg hitched through the spars; all passage blocked.
A nice predicament for me and large and brilliant field !
At first we gave the usual advice. ' Take care ! Look
out ! Mind where you're going to ! ' His brother Charlie
again on the right side, urging him to shove the blooming
horse into the river and let him swim for it. Jim seemed to
think it a good joke ; and if it had to happen, it was as well
it should happen to a Rich. They have a talent for rescues
a.nd emergencies, and are the sort of Deal fishermen of the
Beaufort Hunt. Meanwhile, there we all were. After hop-
ing against hope, I started magnd comitante catervd for the
nearest bridge, four miles off. By this time I was on William,
and directly we got to the high road we set off at a strong pace.
The high road had all the requisites — hard, wide, well-kept,
and no grass siding to lure one off it. After galloping for fif-
teen bright minutes or so, we at last saw scarlet specks bobbing
along about a mile away from us, half right. Thank Heaven !
hounds looked as if they were only just running. After
some difficulty in persuading William of my good intentions
— for he fancied by this time that he was taking the good
news from Bruges to Ghent — I turned out of the road with
Sturges on his white horse and two of the second horsemen
who had kept ' follering on ' with their usual dash ; the rest
of our party being beaten off by our superior disregard for
our horses' legs. We made straight for them over quite a
nice line of hunting country. To my surprise, or rather not
to nay surprise, there were both Charlie and James Rich.
Just as they were resolved on putting Charlie's first counsel
of perfection into effect, the animal had recovered the leg
which was over the edge of the bridge. Not liking the look
of the swirling starchy water, he made a great effort, ably
assisted by Charlie, who had hold of the root of his tail,
the others meanwhile hauling at other coigns of vantage.
Up to this point I. think they had enjoyed this more than any-

BLACK AND WHITE 197

thing. We had to go back over the spar-bridge, and another
horse did just the same thing. This time the body servant
of a young lady with a deep silver lace band hat, and the old
drab Zouave gaiter. However I was the right side, having
exerted my prerogative of ' Master, please ! ' and bidden Jim
sternly to the rear. Charlie was with difficulty restrained
from staying to see if he could not get this one in, and
lustily roared the same advice to Hatband. After dragging
on a mile or two we had a long check, the floods and our
ignorance of fords and bridges having played the dickens
with us. Just as we were settling down into the doldrums
of stag-hunting a baker's cart brought up tidings of great
joy. The baker had met the deer at some cross roads about
two miles away. Harvey at once subjected him to a severe
cross-examination as to his acquaintance with the look of
a deer, perhaps remembering the story of the yokel who
took a squirrel for the fox — ' He wor but a little one, and
he run up a tree.' The baker stood it well, and offered to
go with us as a sort of hostage, declaring he would chance
it, which I suppose referred to the afternoon delivery.

Harvey having satisfied himself of the baker's bona
fides and natural history, started off at a hard-held gallop,
blowing his horn. We wanted a little enlivening. The baker's
roan pony leading us to such purpose that his loaves kept
being jerked out from time to time. The baker must have
forgotten the cross road, for when he came to it on he went.
' Hold hard ! ' we all shouted, like one man, whilst I added
the conventional ' You're all over the line ! ' On this he
pulled up so short that one wheel went into the ditch, and a
large wicker basket flew out. However, it was all right, and
that thick-shouldered Cardigan hit it off and took it down
the road at least two hundred yards ; none of the others
seemed to own it. We slotted him out of the road, and then
hunted up to him rather nicely over a fair country, through the

198 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

park and young plantations of a gentleman's seat to a large
piece of water (Buscott Reservoir), in which Blackback was
swimming serenely about. In went the hounds, and I began
to feel nervous. Bartlett's ' fine tenor of entreaty and remon-
strance now rent the air — it is always one of his great
moments — though I never saw any effect produced on the
hounds.

Harvey, meanwhile, blew his horn, trotting ■ promi-

iT WAS ALL I COULD DO TO GET ' WlLLIAM ' HOME

nently up and down the bank, whilst all who knew how
cracked their whips. My Wiltshire friends were quite en-
tranced with the spectacle, and declared with one accord
they would have come miles to see it alone. Blackback,
meanwhile, was veering unconcernedly about in the middle,
very little in front of Notion, who, ever since she once got a

1 For many years second whipper-in, retired on pension in 1894, and died
the same year (see footnote to p. 93).

BLACK AND WHITE 199

nip at a deer in the Loddon, has much improved m her
swimming. There was no boat-house, and I was beginning
to be really uncomfortable, when, greatly to my surprise and
satisfaction, out went Blackback on the far side. We ran
into him in a deep ditch three or four fields further on. Jim
Rich had an arm round his neck in a trice, as if he had been
at it all his life. There can have been only twenty or thirty
people up with us at the end. All my Beaufort guests were
there, I am glad to say. William had had quite enough of
it. He tires himself from his implacable energy. I gruelled
him at Farringdon, where I had some poached eggs. Inn
full of talkative and happy hunters. We all thought Joe
Moore's horse was going to die when we got him into the
stable. A stiff brew of hot ale and whiskey was being ad-
ministered when I left. It was as much as I could do to
get William home the two or three miles I had to go to
Kitemore. He dwelt like lead upon his own footsteps. We
were both very glad to see Samways. Only a couple short,
I think, and the men's horses did pretty well, in spite of their
moderate performances at the Rosey Brook. They are not
quite what they should be. Bocksavage out, and preserved
a knowing air of mystery throughout. It is a pleasure to
see him ride over a country. Ease and power combined.
His horse always gets the best possible chance, and always
seems to take it. He said he thought the hounds were fat.
I dare say they are. They certainly are good ones to eat.

Not a very brilliant point, but we circumvented a lot of
country, and I think the people of the district all enjoyed
it. WTe were treated with great hospitality and kindness.
Brown, who hunts the old Berkshire, and Orr-Ewing, the
Master, had thought of everything possible to help us in
every way. The Queen's Hounds had not been in this part
of the world for seventeen years when Lord Cork brought
them down.

2oo STAG-HUXTIXG RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE XI

KENNELS AND STABLES

' There can be no more important kind of information than the exact know-
ledge of a man's own country ; and for this, as well as for more general reasons
of pleasure and advantage, hunting with dogs and other kinds of sports should
be pursued by the young.' — Plato, Laws (Jowett), vol. v. p. 334.

Queen Anne established the kennels on their present site
at Ascot. She inherited her father's love of hunting-, who,
as Duke of York, was if anything over-fond of it. Pepys
more than once complains of the routine Admiralty business
falling into arrears owing to the Lord High Admiral being
out hunting. Swift speaks of her hunting in burning July
weather in a calash — a sort of gig — for she did not ride much
latterly, and in order to get about and see the hunt she was
always having new rides cut and bogs drained. We horsemen
owe much of the pleasure of the October forest hunting about
Swinley and Bagshot to Queen Anne.

Kennel lameness was the great scourge of the Ascot
kennel in the earlier years of this century. Sharpe and the
whips, described rather mildly as ' kind and civil ' men by a
writer in the ' Sporting Magazine ' of 1814, appear to have
acknowledged themselves powerless to deal with it.1

George IV. thought otherwise. Brighton, in his opinion,
was the panacea for all things hurtful, and for a year or two
he sent Sharpe there with the hounds for sea-bathing, their

1 The central figure in the plate opposite is G. Sharpe, huntsman ; the
ethers are C. Davis, J. Mandeville, and J. Freeman.

1

^
^

1

KENNELS AND STABLES

20I

departure for the sea-side being formally announced in the
' Gazette.' Brighton failed, and Davis appears to have
thought, like Sharpe, that there was nothing to be done, and
that five or six couple at the least must always be down
with it. He speaks of the lameness like a man who has lost
his sense of proportion and possibility. ' No artificial means,'
he writes to Mr. Vyner, the author of ' Notitia Venatica,'
' can make a lame kennel a sound one. You may build it
with marble and alabaster and heat it with fire ; all won't

The old Kennel at Swutley

do,' and in 1838 he sends Sir John Halkett the best dog in
the kennel, Ganymede.

' I should be pleased,' he writes, ' to give you one of the
best and stoutest I ever bred. He was never known to
tire, but he is now afflicted with our cursed torment, kennel
lameness, of which he may recover in a fresh place, but
never would here.'

This taking them to a fresh place seems to have been
the only remedy practised with any success. Bartlett, his

202 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

feeder, whom I have quoted so often in the course of these
pages, declares to nie that he has seen hounds taken away in
the kennel cart, unable to move, to farmhouses where their
kennel might be a pigsty, but in about three weeks they
would return, permanently and effectually cured. A curious
fact which Bartlett also brings to my notice is this. The
same lameness was rife at Cumberland Lodge in the harrier
kennels ; the suffering harriers, brought to the Ascot kennels,
got well in about three weeks, and the change to Cumber-
land Lodge had the same effect upon the impotent staghounds.
Bartlett sticks to it that the cure was permanent. But it
is difficult to reconcile these statements with the Sharpe and
Davis view of the malady.

Under Harry King, things were no better; he had to
some extent imbibed the paralysing conviction of his chief
that there was nothing to be done. But thanks to Lord
Cork, the Ascot kennel is now free from ' the cursed torment.'
When he took over in 1866, the lameness was very prevalent.
He had all the kennel yards and houses laid with con-
crete over a thick layer of dry rubbish, and on the top a
layer of asphalte. These practical means succeeded, a
further improvement being made by Goodall, who, when he
was appointed huntsman, raised the benches nearly two feet.

There was no symptom of kennel lameness during my
Mastership, and I imagine — although on this point my
opinion is not worth much, seeing that I was not brought up
to hounds — the plan and general arrangements of the kennels
and premises are favourable to health. The drainage is ex-
cellent, all sewage being carried on to a small sewage farm
by a well -planned and rigorously inspected system of pipes
and sympathetic manholes. The water supply is pure and
abundant, and the kennels and whelping houses face south-
east by east, which I understand is a desirable aspect.
Large grass yards inside the precincts make famous play •

KENNELS AND STABLES 203

grounds for the young entry, and the hunt-servants and
feeders have a bit of garden ground attached to their
cottages. There is ample and excellent storage for meal
and coal, so that the Master, if so inclined, can take advan-
tage of low prices. The average establishment has always
been forty couple, say thirty- five couple of working hounds.
It sounds a good many for two days a week, but the Queen's
Hounds are never vanned, and the flints on the Buckingham-
shire side and the five-and-twenty miles journey home, which
is a constant experience, must be taken into account.

Harvey instituted a capital practice, although I do not
know whether it has been continued. The hunting pack
after being fed were always turned into a big loose box
filled seven or eight feet high with wheat straw, and he did
not disturb them till well on in the next morning.

There is no difficulty about getting walks, and in my
time we entered six or seven couple out of the five-and-twenty
walked in ' the district ; but it is not a country for good
walks, as there is not enough grass land or milk, and too
much residential amenity. The two plans of the kennels are
not quite up to date, but they give a good general idea of the
premises and distribution. But enough of technicalities.
When the thorns and daisies are out, and the whelps about,
and the sun is shining, no pleasanter place than the kennel
green can be imagined.

In 1875 the Queen honoured the kennels by a visit.

' And now,' Goodall notes in his journal on the 23rd of
March, ' a red-letter day. Her Majesty went all over the
kennels, taking great interest in the hounds and in every
detail.' This was indeed an honour. Not even the fact he
records of being very ' unpresentable ' from a black eye and
contused face, due to his fall with ' Rosslyn ' off the wooden
bridge, could diminish Goodall's pride and pleasure.

But Chance, the most sensible and companionable of

204

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

kennel hacks, is waiting on the pillar reins of the hack stable,
and I must canter over to Cumberland Lodge, by the pleasant

— i-

«--0:9t>---->

'Jl

S § o
tJ <

s ovu

grass rides we both know so well. The situation of Cumber-
land Lodge is fairly central, and the place has great advan-

KENNELS AND STABLES 205

tages of good air, famous all-the-year-round exercising
ground, and plenty of things for the horses to look at — deer,

and cock pheasants and rabbits, and fern and fine trees.
They make a little variety for them at exercise.

The present buildings stand on the site of an old keeper's
cottage described in Korden's Survey (1(307) as Hayman's

206 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Lodge ; a comfortable range of warm-toned red brick, with a
high-pitched gable roof, and all sorts of proper and sympa-
thetic things about it — wide lawns, spreading trees, a cricket
ground, and at the back a very remarkable kitchen garden.
The stabling has all the dignity and character of a royal
and ancient establishment, and the refined look which only
belongs to the older-fashioned stabling of people of quality.
They were built by Charles II., like his father, a fine school-
horseman, who delighted and surprised the Duke of New-
castle by the gay shrewdness of his sayings about horses, and
also by the integrity of his equestrian principles. Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, added to and improved Cumberland
Lodge during her rangership of Windsor Great Park, and Sir
Jeffry Wyattville carried out some further additions whilst he
was playing the very deuce at Windsor. Mercifully, however,
he did not think it worth ' Gothicising.' I forget how much
stabling there is, but we always had a lot of horses there,
twenty-five or thirty, and yet there always seemed to be plenty
of room, and plenty of work for more. Most of it is stall
stabling, but of the wide, long, generous sort, with old oak
divisions and posts. Horses do here just as well as in boxes,
and a shy feeder put next a greedy one very soon gets into
the spirit of feeding time. The summer boxes are very good,
the best I think I ever saw : every two boxes has an open
yard the full size of both, and the horses take turns in
going out, one all night and the other all day. Given the
right sort of land with shade and water, spareish for grass,
with a sweet bite here and there, I like turning horses
out myself. Here and there an individual horse is better
summered in a box ; but most horses gain in every way
by the contrast and the freedom of the out-door life. It puts
nature into them and makes them more independent and
sensible. At Cumberland Lodge we had no grazing land.
However, this I think is the only weak point ; and many

a

^

KENNELS AND STABLES 207

people would not agree with me as to the benefit of the out-
door life, and the change from a box, where a horse can
neither see nor even hear his companions, to a sort of club life.
The Prince of Wales summers his hunters at Cumber-
land Lodge, and in the days when H.R.H. kept harriers
(which he afterwards gave to the farmers of the Queen's
country) the harriers were kept there. In the good time
when H.R.H. hunted frequently with the Queen's Hounds,
that is, in from about 1864 into the beginning of the seventies,
he saw some excellent runs and owned some capital horses.
Lord Colville has already told us of one great run. I
believe only three really saw the end of that one — Colonel,
now Sir Nigel, Kingscote, King the huntsman, and Mr.
Sowter, the well-known Haymarket saddler ; but the Prince,
Sir Nigel tells me, went at the top of the hunt as far as
Harrow, when with the majority of the field he made a bad
turn in the lanes. On this occasion the horses were sent
home by train to Windsor, and the Prince's horse, a very
favourite mare named Firefly, caught cold and died within
a day or two. Another run in which H.R.H. rode ' hard and
well ' — terms which are not always synonymous — and to the
end, was from Taplow to St. Albans. Sir Nigel instances
another, when the deer was taken near Tring — which must
have been a long point — where they had mutton-chops and
poached eggs so well served that they merited and received
very special attention and commendation from the Prince.
Some of his best horses were Firefly, Paddy, Thornton,
Rural Dean, Q.C., Lockington, and Charlie, and they were all
ridden regularly with the staghounds. Though all were well-
bred high-couraged horses, Thornton, Firefly, and Paddy
were perhaps the special favourites. Q.C. was a grey ;
the Prince was mounted on him by the Duke of Beaufort
when he was staying at Badminton, and liked him so
much that he persuaded the Duke to sell him. ' Paddy,' Sir

2o8 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Nigel writes me, ' a chestnut horse which I bought out of
sale of the present Duke of Westminster (then Lord Gros-
venor), was, take him all in all, the horse H.B.H. liked
the best for many years ; and once when staying at Bad-
minton we had quite a good run over the Dodington Vale
up on to the high country toward Badminton. I well
remember the Prince riding Paddy over a stile first, that,
with horses having come so far and so fast, very few indeed
would have looked at.'

It is a common saying that a moderate horse really fit
will beat a first-rater that is not fit, and the importance
of condition in a stag-hunting stud cannot be overrated.
Average condition will not do. A horse must be wound
up, and never allowed to get stale, otherwise the effects
of a severe day's hunting take a long time passing off.
Propitious antecedents play a great part in conditioning
a hunter. Personally, I should never buy young horses for
the stag-hunting work : it is not so much that a well-bred
young horse may not carry the huntsman or whip to the
very end, and come home apparently fresh, but it takes the
steel out of him, and his constitution is apt to resent it. A
stag-hunter must be a seasoned animal. I like them eight or
nine years old, out of a crack stud, with three or four years
of some one else's oats in them, plus the elbow grease some
Meltonian Mr. Tiptop's subordinates have devoted to muscle
and sinew.

I referred just now with grateful recollection to Chance.
And it may here be noticed, that good kennel hacks are most
valuable servants in the Koyal establishment. They are like
the odd man in a large house, who always does most of the
work. The hunt horses are sent on direct to the Bucking-
hamshire side meets, and the men ride their hacks on
with the hounds, the hacks being sent back to Windsor, and
waiting there till the hounds arrive, or meeting them else-

KENNELS AND STABLES 209

where on intelligence, or the chance of the hounds coming
home that way. This saves the Cumberland Lodge stud
many a mile, and gets them into their own quarters a good
two hours earlier. But given the alliance of the hacks,
mounting the establishment is a serious matter. To get on
comfortably with the Queen's Hounds and the tireless Swinley
deer, you really want two sets of horses, one for the Bucks
side and one for the Berks. The furthest meet from Cumber-
land Lodge in the Friday county is Loddon Bridge, thirteen
or fourteen miles ; and most of the best Friday meets are
within ten miles, but the Chalfonts, Holtspur Heath,
Beaconsfield, all run into fourteen to twenty-five miles.

' I have been stag-hunting for between thirty and forty
years, and I have come to the conclusion that the demand
on the stud in the Koyal Hunt is greater than that upon
the stable of a master of foxhounds.' So writes Sir Henry
Simpson, the widely known and respected Windsor veterinary
surgeon, and he goes on to say, speaking from professional
experience of the Cumberland Lodge stud, ' No one in my
time can say the horses have been overworked, which must
have been the case if the Master for the time being had
attempted to horse the hunt in the same ratio as would
amply suffice for a fox-hunting establishment.' As I have
said elsewhere, you want a very well bred one for the far side ;
even thoroughbred is not too good to stand the long hours,
the hills, and the ever-lengthening miles home which a good
run means. To my mind it is an economy to have two horses
out for all the men, and I usually had an extra horse out in
case of a casualty — this with two for myself meant nine out
daily, and five-and-twenty miles home was quite an every-
day occurrence. Unfortunately, too, in stag-hunting the
second horses do not always mean any very great saving to
the first horses ; often and often we could not get them at
the right moment to make a difference and in any case the

P

2IO

S TA G- HUN TING RECOLLECTIONS

second horses have had an average day's hunting before they
are requisitioned for active service, having been obliged to keep
going. Nicks and points serve them very little. However, I
do not wish to further load this page with ' the gibberish of
hunting studs,' to borrow a phrase from a puzzled Quarterly
Reviewer of the Delme-Badcliffe day.

I will only again quote Sir Henry Simpson on the very

Hi

■H

Josiah Miles, Stud Groom to the Queen's Hounds,
October 1843 to March 1894

point which led to a deliverance from the Archbishop, that
is, the cruel strain upon the horses. It is always an advantage
to hear both sides, however unevenly matched from the point
of view of knowledge of the subject. It is in no sense a
rejoinder, as it was written in October, long before the Arch-
bishop came to the front. This is what the layman has to
say: 'As regards hunting casualties or illness, the result of a

KEXNELS AND STABLES 211

hard day, I think I may say with safety of the Boyal Hunt,
as I may say of other well-ordered hunting establishments,
that, in proportion to the risks run, the casualties are not
high. Casualties, of course, wTill always occur, but if a hunter
is in condition and fairly ridden, the effect of a severe day's
hunting soon passes off.'

As I have said a little about hunt horses in this and in
other chapters, I must not close it without a few grateful and
affectionate words to the memory of one of the Queen's most
faithful and affectionate servants, Josiah Miles, for very
many years stud-groom at Cumberland Lodge. He died
in the Queen's service after a mercifully short illness in
the second year of my Mastership, greatly regretted and
respected by all who had ever known him. I know my
predecessors felt his loss and appreciated his ability and
devotion to his charges quite as much as I did. Duty was
ever his first thought; and his daughter writes me that
almost his last conscious words to her were to remind
my second horseman of a particular bridle which I had
desired should be used next hunting day. Miles started in
the Queen's service on his wedding day, October 4, 1843, as
second groom under Charles Bryant, and was appointed first
groom on Bryant's death in 1867. In the summer of 1893
the Queen presented him with a medal in honour of his fifty
years' service. I rode over to Cumberland Lodge the same
evening to see and congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Miles, tea and
a talk with Mrs. Miles being one of the many pleasant things
which came with the Mastership of the Queen's Hounds.
They had driven over to Windsor together, and the Queen
had given Miles his medal with her own hands. It was a
most happy tea.

The present stud groom, Beuben Matthews, succeeded
Miles. He has been at Cumberland Lodge for a great
many years ; having been appointed second groom when Miles

p 2

212

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

succeeded Bryant. Thanks to Lord Coventry's kindness, I
hunted two or three times last season with the Queen's
Hounds, and greatly enjoyed myself with my old friends.
I never saw hunt horses looking bigger and better. They
did both the stud groom and the master credit.

Reuben Matthews

213

CHAPTEK XII

ASCOT AFFAIRS
Excussus propriis aliena negotia curat

Every Master of the Buckhounds, I fancy, is urged on his
appointment by some of his racing friends to deal in a states-
manlike way with the stands.

Several people spoke to me seriously on the subject, and
of course they all had ideas of their own as to what should
be done. Some of these were a little difficult to follow.
But one and all had espoused great principles, and separated
themselves — judicially — from all questions of detail. Any
and every objection — such as interference with the high road,
the local authorities, private ownership, the configuration of
the ground, the convenience of the resident population — were
brushed aside. A large outlook was the thing, and all these
puny points would work themselves out. However, during
the time I lived at Ascot I came to the conclusion that, in
principle and indeed in fact, which is a very different thing,
there was quite enough to be said in favour of setting the
stands at an angle to the Straight Mile course to make it
worth careful consideration.

But how was it to be done ? After looking over and over
again at the ground, and the villas, and the high road, and
the possibilities of space, I decided that, for many reasons —
economic and utilitarian — the mountain, that is the stands,
could not go to Mahomet. Mahomet, that is, the course,

214 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

must come to the mountain. The accompanying plan
shows how I thought it could be managed. Some ex-
planatory notes drafted at the time this plan was submitted
to the Jockey Club cited the general grounds upon which
I made the proposal and the particular advantages claimed
for the alteration. I have nothing to add to these notes, so
I give the exact text : ' For some years it has been very
generally objected that the occupants of the stands and
enclosures l on the present alignment are unable to see the
races run over the New Mile course until the horses are
nearly home ; for instance, the line marked A on the plan is
drawn parallel with the front of the Royal stand. It will be
seen that the starting point and the greater part of the
present New Mile course are actually behind the front of
the Royal and other stands and enclosures.

' The Master of the Buckhounds is of opinion that this
objection may be successfully dealt with by an alteration
in the direction of the present New Mile course, and he
would suggest laying out a new Straight Mile as shown on
the annexed plan.

• The whole course would thus be thrown considerably in
front of the stands and enclosures, and their occupants would
literally see each race run out from start to finish.

' Another consideration disposes the Master of the Buck-
hounds to recommend this alteration. The present New
Mile course is just under a mile, and cannot be lengthened on
account of the high road. There is thus no room for fractious
animals to be quieted in, and a consequently increased risk
of false starts. The new course, on the other hand, is
exactly a mile in length, amply sufficient space being provided
behind the starting post to enable a large field of horses
to be conveniently marshalled. This is a very practical

1 Eoyal Stand ; Master of the Buckhounds' Stand ; Jockey Club Stand ;
Iron Stand ; Grand Stand.

216 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

advantage, in view of the fact that the rich stakes at Ascot
attract large fields of horses.

' It is, however, obvious that, if this new course is carried
out, the turn from the present Old Mile course on to the
new course would be an impossible one, and would require
to be altered as shown by the line marked B on the plan.

' The effect of this alteration would be to shorten the
course run over in certain races l by about fourteen yards,
but this will be easily rectified by throwing back the starting
posts that distance.'

Upon the whole the plan found favour, but it was of a
philosophic, not a practical kind. The stewards of the Jockey
Club took up a safe position. ' You offer us, at least so
you tell us, a course where everybody will be able to see
instead of a course where hardly anybody sees. That will
be charming. Pray do so, and we shall all be happy and
grateful ; but it is for you to act in the matter. It is not our
business, and we do not propose to make it our business.'

Then, as always happens when all changes from the
known to the unknown are concerned, the quieta non movere
instinct in human nature came to the alert. It was further
pointed out, and with some force, by my predecessor in
office, that even at Newmarket, in the very heart of the racing
world, fifty per cent, of the people, including most of the
finest judges, will not trouble themselves to leave the July
stand and go down to the first winning post to see a race, and
H.R.H. Prince Christian, a true lover and judge of racing,
objected that any plan by which the horses would be seen
coming all the way would rob him and other racing idealists
of that precious psychological moment when the first cap
comes into sight out of the dip of the straight mile.

1 Gold Vase ; Ascot Stakes ; Visitors' Plate ; Coronation Stakes ; Ascot
Derby ; 36th Ascot Biennial Stakes ; Gold Cup ; St. James's Palace Stakes ;
31st New Biennial Stakes ; Ascot High Weight Plate ; Hardwicke Stakes.

ASCOT AFFAIRS 217

On the other hand, individuals of unimpeachable
authority whom I consulted gave the plan their careful
attention, and wished the alteration might be carried into
effect. However, the writing was already on the wall. It
would have been manifestly unfair to pledge my successor to
a large undertaking and heavy expenditure, in his view of
questionable advantage and necessity, and the Friday of Ascot
week, 1895, terminated my connection with Ascot affairs
and power for good or evil. If the change is ever carried
out, it is clearly one of those departures which must be
taken by mutual and cordial consent of both the ins and the
outs.

Here let me add that I had no personal prepossessions
in the matter. Assuming the terms of the problem to have
been correctly stated, I merely advanced my proposals as a
practical and feasible solution. A fair composition could
have been made — at that time— with the owner of Sunning-
dale Park for the acquisition of the additional land required
for a new Straight Mile course, and for carrying out the plan
in all its details. There were no difficulties in the way as to
gradients, nor as to the laying of the course, which, assuming
the work to have been begun, say, in October 1895, should,
so I was informed by expert opinion, have been in order for
the Ascot races this year, or at all events for next year. In
the meanwhile, whilst the new course was consolidating and
getting a good face of grass, all could have gone on just as at
present. Many people took a kind interest in the matter
from first to last, and I was especially pleased by the hearty
encouragement of Captain Machell, who came down to Ascot
with me one day, and wTent over the ground with the plans
most carefully. Even those who did not agree with me
listened courteously, if with a wandering eye, to all I had
to say on a subject which my readers will agree is not

218 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

particularly entertaining. ' The Captain,' I remember, said a
very characteristic thing the day he came down. I said that
I was disinclined to ask So-and-So's advice. ' Oh ! ' he said,
' I should ; I always ask for advice. One need never take it.'

From time to time great fault is found with the state of
the course at the time of the meeting, and I should like to
say a word or two here about the difficulties which have to
be met.

The soil is sand and gravel ; rain silts away through it like
a filter. Thus racing Ascot is in constant jeopardy from the
dryness and the drying qualities which are the boast of
residential Ascot. Only the deep-rooted grasses can with-
stand the zest of a spring sun, its escort of parching easterly
winds, the dewless nights, the spiteful frosts, and the un-
handsome pranks, from a farmer's point of view, our climate
often plays upon us in April and May. Ascot Heath has
no natural advantages but beauty. The course is regene-
rated common land, and the grass, and especially the New
Mile, is peevish haggard stuff and hardly honest. No better
illustration can be given of its hostility to the best inten-
tions than the fact that sheep have been tried both on the
course and on the lawns, but owing to thinness of the
turf soil and the dry and thirsty subsoil, they did so little
good and stained the land so unbecomingly that much had
to be re-turfed. The fact is that unless you have a wet
spring you cannot expect a really good course, and April
and May are critical and anxious months for Major Clement,
who for many years past has spared himself no trouble to
make each Ascot meeting better and more convenient than
its immediate predecessor. He watches the wTeather with the
strained attention of the prophet Elijah. But Major Clement
is only an experienced and faithful steward of the many
things committed to his charge ; he is not, as some of the

ASCOT AFFAIRS 219

newspapers seem to think, either a magician or a Jehovah,
and he has ungrateful conditions to deal with, which I am
glad to have had the opportunity of stating.

And now I come to a terrible responsibility of the Master
of the Buckhounds. I use the word responsibility advisedly,
for he is annually held accountable not merely for the
enjoyment and safe conduct of fashionable society, but also
for the satisfaction of its progressive desires.1 Far be it from
me to lift the veil which shrouds the excellent mysteries of
the Eoyal Enclosure. Suffice it to say that the most well-
intentioned and upright Master of the Buckhounds must
be guilty of injustice. Clearly, unless he gave his life to
it, he cannot be expected to know everybody ; but setting
this aside, allowance must be made for the pressure of a
Frankenstein-like society, for the wear and tear of his nerves,
for the eccentricities of his digestion. Added to these comes
the strain of a seemingly four-fold multiplication of posts,
a locust horde of telegrams, devoted powdered footmen who
refuse to quit your premises, however uncomfortable, without
an answer, and all the other irritants of his everyday life
from say April 1 till about midday on the Wednesday in
Ascot week, when the well-directed dropping fire of appli-
cations begins to slacken. Nor is this the place to record
the elegant anguish of Worth- and Paquin-dressed disconso-
lates, the dignified remonstrances of their more influential

1 The following figures, which Major Clement has kindly sent me, may
amuse the curious and serve to indicate the present scale of the demands of
an Ascot week.

On the Gold Cup day there were sent from the Ascot offices in 1896, 12,753
telegrams and 46,000 words of Press matter ; and in 1897, 10,500 telegrams
and 45.000 words ; the diminution in the latter case was due to the fact that
hetting on the lawn of the Grand Stand was this year prohibited. For the Grand
Stand luncheons alone, exclusive of the more solid viands, there were cooked
— 1,800 fowls, 1,200 pigeons, 1,700 lbs. of salmon, 1,500 lobsters and 500 quails.
Of such figures as these Pantagruel himself would not have been ashamed.

220 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

relations, and the despair of their admirers. These things are
pitiful, but inevitable, and the Master of the Buckhounds is
often the unconscious executioner of all kinds of agreeable
plans and stimulating hopes. Of course he is abused : if he
happens to be a Liberal any rod is good enough for his back ;
if he happens to be a Tory, he at once becomes a noble of
the type which justified the French Kevolution. But for the
most part he is forgiven freely. Besides, the ' all against all '
character of the scramble comes to his rescue. Lucretia's
many friends have got a little wearied with her account of
her preparations and Paris tryings-on. She cannot, like
Constance, ' instruct her sorrows to be proud,' and they
naturally cannot help being amused at her failure to get her
ticket. There is a general sense of relief that the tiresome
Gracchi have been refused.

In my time one incident occurred of a probably unique
kind, which may here be recorded. I received a message
which demanded very instant attention. It appeared that
an individual with a kodak was loose in the enclosure.
He had commenced operations by several snaps at the Royal
party, and when last seen was actively engaged upon a group
of duchesses. Needless to say that he was described to me
as a complete radical in appearance. Hoping for my own
sake, as well as for that of the Newcastle programme, that
he might not turn out to be an Irish member, I portrayed
him to my green-plush-clad myrmidons, who, assisted by
some good-natured volunteers, at once set off in pursuit.
Owing to the congested state of the enclosure, progress was
difficult, and the chase for some little time eluded them like
a will-o'-the-wisp. He had been seen here, suspected there,
noticed flagrante delicto somewhere else. At last, however,
he was delivered into our hands, and haled into my presence.
It ended rather tamely, for he turned out to be a distinguished
visitor to our shores, accredited by the embassy of one of the

ASCOT AFFAIRS 221

great Powers, and a relative of an ex-crowned head. How-
ever, I administered a wordy reprimand or rather lecture
on the trite thesis of ' autres pays,' &c, and made him
promise to banish the partner of his guilt to the boot of a
distant drag. To this he sadly but courteously consented,
and the incident closed. I only hope I invited him to
luncheon.

222 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE XIII

PREDECESSORS
They shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate

Having regard to the antiquity of our office, it must be
admitted that, with a few distinguished exceptions, Masters
of the Buckhounds have not left a very marked or consecutive
impression upon the pages of constitutional history or the
roll of constructive legislation. The office belongs to the
livery of politics. Its duties and opportunities lie outside
the walls of Parliament. We cannot, for instance, boast
that a Cromwell, or a Pitt, or a Gladstone ever dignified
the couples : at the same time, tried by the most rigorous
tests of proportional representation, we stand out very fairly
well. We can hardly be said to be an insignificant order
when we remember that two of us have been beheaded for
high State reasons — Sir Bernard Brocas, whom Mr. Burrows
has told us all about in his valuable introduction, and Lord
Rochford, Anne Boleyn's gifted brother. Nor can we justly
be said to be undistinguished. Lord Leicester in Queen
Elizabeth's, Sir William Wyndham in Queen Anne's, and
Lord Granville in Queen Victoria's reign, all held high offices
of State. And we can point to a long succession of booted
and spurred, gentle and noble men who have done their
duty more or less picturesquely in the saddles to which

PREDECESSORS 223

Boyal favour or party politics have called them. Upon the
other hand, we have at times been treated with little respect.
In the ' Infernal Marriage ' Pluto promises Cerberus the Buck-
hounds in the event of a change of the Ministry — I am
bound to say his antecedents qualified him to deal with
the Eoyal enclosure. It was the post Lord Marney most
coveted ; and I was told a story the other day which, as it is
wounding to my self-esteem, I shall degrade to a footnote.1

I cannot pretend to having made any exhaustive inquiry
into the subject, but it has occurred to me that with the
exception perhaps of William III. the greatest men have not
been the best riders. As all Masters of the Buckhounds are
presumably first-rate horsemen, this may have something to
do with it ; we may be the victims of our aptitudes.

A distinguished Frenchman — a lover of belles lettres and a
student of Napoleonics — told me the other day that Napoleon
rode ' affreusement mal,' and the slouching seat Meissonier
always gives him is doubtless historically accurate. It is
the seat of a round and short-legged heavy-stomached man,
and the artist hits off exactly the restless poise of the paunch
upon the pummel of the saddle. One ' Nim South ' formed
an equally poor opinion of the Duke of Wellington's horse-
mansnip, as well as of his get-up, when he saw him out with
Sir John Cope's hounds at Hartley Bow Gate in 1831. As
everything about the Duke of Wellington is worth remem-
bering, and as he hunted regularly on the heather and
Hampshire side of the Queen's and Mr. Garth's country,
some of Mr. Xini South's appreciations may here be cited.
After telling the readers of the 'Sporting Magazine' how he
has to wait in a drizzling rain for some little time at the

1 ' Ben ' Stanley, the celebrated Whig Whip, was walking one day with Lords
Bessborough and Granville, both of whom had been Master of the Buckhounds.
A new Administration was in process of formation and one of them asked Mi.
Stanley what Lord So-and-So was likely to have. ' Oh, the Buckhounds, of
course ; the only place for a fellowr like that.'

224 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

turnpike, Mr. South says : ' I saw a red coat winding along
at a snail's pace, the wearer evidently disregarding the
sprinkling. "He is a sportsman," thought I, "and see, he
wears drab breeches — a sure sign of one ! " ' '

As the wearer draws nearer, Mr. South finds to his
surprise that he had mistaken drab fustian trousers for ker-
seymere breeches, the horseman's ' grave and thoughtful
countenance ' making but poor amends for such a shock. The
rest of his costume was disquieting in the extreme. ' His dress
consisted of a plain scarlet frock-coat, a lilac silk waistcoat,
kid gloves, the aforesaid fustians, and boots which we call
Wellingtons ; and certainly they were Wellingtons in every
sense of the word, for the wearer was neither more nor less
than the illustrious Arthur himself. As he advanced my red
coat caught his eye, and at the same moment my eye caught
his undeniable nose. There was no mistaking him, and I
took off my hat to the greatest man of the day.' Needless
to say that the Duke converses with Nim South with all
the urbanity which the interviewer invariably experiences at
the hands of the truly great. ' We had,' Nim goes on to say,
' just the sort of day's sport to please a man like the Duke
of Wellington, who, though mighty in the field of war, cuts
no great figure in the hunting field. Indeed, to do him all
due justice, I have seldom seen a man with less idea of
riding than he has. His seat is unsightly in the extreme,
and few men get more falls in the course of a year than his

1 In spite of Beau Brurnmell's instruction to his tailor, ' Keep continually
sending leather breeches,' itwould appear that at this time cordsand not leathers
were the vogue ; George IV., as we have seen, ordered cords for Dom Miguel's
visit. When the Mr. Tomkinson of the day electrified the Meltonians with his
uncompromising riding to hounds, he was at first classed by Nimrod as ' a slow
one ' on account of his wearing leathers. They soon found out their mistake,
and the Cheshire squire appears to have had much the same effect upon the
mind of Leicestershire as that produced by his gallant descendant some few years
ago on the occasion of his first visit to Melton. Lord Wilton's and Lord George
Bentinck's distinguished appearance in buckskins at Croxton Park races some
two or three years later is said to have brought them into fashion.

PREDECESSORS 22$

Grace. Nevertheless he seemed to enjoy the thing amazingly,
and what with leading over occasionally and his groom's
assistance, he did very well.' The Duke did not mind falls.
He used to relate with evident pleasure how on one occasion
he counted eight pairs of shoes flash over him as he lay cast
in the landing side ditch. This was in England, but the
Duke hunted regularly from Paris after the Peace.1 On one
occasion he rather annoyed Charles X. by saying when the
stag, after ringing about for hours in the forest of Compiegne,
took them out into the open, ' Ah ! this is more the thing ;
it reminds me of the Vale of Aylesbury.' Judging from my
own experiences of les pctits environs and the French open,
the stag must have picked a very exceptional bit of country.
Perhaps it was the unusual look of things which made
Charles X. a little nervous and consequently a little short.
The Duke was a great supporter and a most generous sub-
scriber both to the Vine and the Bramshill hounds. At
one time he gave 400?. a year to the former, and on hearing
that Sir John's hounds had drawn the Strathfieldsaye coverts
blank, he warned all the keepers that a repetition of this
would mean their discharge. One day a well-wisher advised
him to take up his stirrups a couple of holes. Bad advice,
which I hope he did not take, although he appears to have
accepted it in good part. But a more striking example of his
patience in the hunting field is given in the ' History of the
Vyne in Hampshire.' Mr. Chute's hounds were never adver-
tised, and one day in March, 1820, the Duke sent his horses to
darken Green, as he had been told by the huntsman that
the hounds were to meet there that day. They never turned
up, and the Duke spent much time in trying to find them ;

1 A great many Englishmen were in Paris at this time. Lord Pembroke
astonished Parisian society by his fine harness horses and turn-out generally.
He asked his groom one day what he did about exercising horses. The man
replied that he had been twenty times round Wyndham Place, as he called the
Place Vendome. He had evidently made himself thoroughly at home.

Q

226 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

but he only writes to Mr. Chute, ' Not finding or hearing
anything of you I have returned home. I regret this
exceedingly, particularly as I feel you will have waited for me.'
Only a strict disciplinarian would have put up so uncom-
plainingly with such an annoying misunderstanding. A five-
pound subscriber in these days would have at once written
to the papers and asked leave to publish the correspondence.

In spite of some very hunting-like and perceptive stanzas,1
Lord Byron himself was no great horseman. Lady Blessing-
ton gives an amusing account of their first ride together
and of his get-up. Accustomed to the irreproachable ap-
pointments of Count d'Orsay, who always went up to the
front with the best of them in the Harrow country, she was
amazed at the variety of his riding gear — ' trappings, caves-
sons, martingales, and heaven knows what else,' overlaid
the very moderate hack he rode, whose stumbles frequently
discomposed his rider very much. His dress was quite as
unusual as the Duke of Wellington's. A short- waisted
nankeen jacket, much shrunk and very narrow in the back,
embroidered with three rows of buttons ; nankeen gaiters,
a black very narrow stock, and a dark blue velvet cap with
a rich gold braid and a tassel, and blue specs. He gave
Lady Blessington the idea of being an exceedingly timid
rider. Sometimes, she says, the nankeen jacket gave place
to a green tartan tunic.

Although he writes to his sister from Southend in 1834

1 He broke, 'tis true, some statutes of the laws
Of hunting : for the sagest youth is frail.
Eode o'er the hounds it may be now and then,
And once o'er several county gentlemen.

He also had a quality uncommon

To early risers after a long chace,
A quality agreeable to woman

When her soft liquid words run on apace ;
Who likes a listener, whether saint or sinner,
He did not fall asleep just after dinner.

PREDECESSORS 227

of nearly killing an Arabian mare in a run of thirty miles,
which is not to be wondered at, seeing that he adds, ' I
stopped at nothing,' Lord Beaconsfield can hardly be said
to have kept up his riding. Mr. Gladstone's riding was
limited to the observances of the Liver Brigade in Rotten
Row. Mr. Carlyle rode far and fast for pleasure and dys-
pepsia, but there is no reason to think that he was in any
sense a horseman ; like most Scotchmen he speaks and
thinks of them as ' beasts,' although from time to time he
handsomely acknowledges the good care which the ' very
clever creatures ' take of him. Sir Robert Peel was a clumsy
and inelegant rider, and his death is attributed by most of
his biographers to his weak seat, which prevented him
recovering his horse's stumble. But enough of these incon-
sequences, I must get back to the title of this chapter.

As the first Master of the Privy or Household Pack,
George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, Henry VIII. 's Master of
the Buckhounds (1528-1536) is the proper person to begin
with. Lord Rochford had his full share of the prosperity of
his family at Court. One way and another father, mother,
sisters, brother, all made the most of good looks, shrewd
heads, and slender scruples. Sir Thomas and Lady Boleyn
could point with satisfaction to an earldom, the garter, a
rebuilt country house, and fat acquisitions of property :
Mary Boleyn for a time enjoyed the prestige of being the
king's mistress : Anne became his lawful queen : George
Boleyn was given the Buckhounds, and received many other
pleasant and profitable marks of Royal favour. He is a
favourite with most of his biographers. His personal gifts
were of a kind which I hope will always command respect.
He could ride, and shoot, and dance, and make love, and
lead a masquerade better than his neighbours. But his
intellectual attainments appear to have been considerable.
' II a laisse chez ses contemporains,' says M. Bapst, ' une

q 2

228 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

reputation de bon litterateur.' Although he said himself
he could never write decent Latin prose, he had distinguished
himself at Oxford, understood colloquial Latin and Italian,
and spoke and wrote French with ease and correctness.
Mr. Hepworth Dixon pays a high tribute to his elegant
culture, and cites him as a notable member of a progressive
Young England party, and an ardent partisan of liberal learn-
ing. ' Early in life he had begun to toy with verse, a fine
accomplishment of a liberal age, and by his talents he was
helping that revival of English poetry which his playmate
Wyat and his cousin Surrey were to foster into vigorous life.' '
As we can hardly accord to Davis the rank of a poet,
Lord Eochford is the only poet of our order.

Farewell, my Lute, this is the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,

For ended is what we began :
Now is the song both sung and past,

My Lute, be still, for I have done.

This 'farewell to his lute,' said to have been composed
and sung by him the night before his execution, has the
mother-of-pearl refinement which belongs especially to the
poetry of that time.

These pages need have no concern with the truth or
falseness of the charges brought against the brother and
sister. They are matters of history ; but in no way affect the
ethics of stag-hunting. On May 15, 1536, Lord Eochford was
arrested on a complicated charge of treason to his king. He
was tried next day by his peers. Long odds were laid upon
his acquittal. He could not be shaken in cross-examination,
and his defence was ably conducted ; ' he made answare,'
we are told, ' so prudentlie and wisely to all articles layde
against him, that marveil it was to heare.' But Henry VIII.
had by this time persuaded himself that the masterful

1 Hist, of Two Queens, vol. iii. p. 285.

PREDECESSORS 229

Boleyn family compact had become a danger to the State, and
that the public welfare pointed out his duty. Before all, the
king was a man of conscience, and in the words Shakespeare
puts into the mouth of the Duke of Suffolk, his conscience
had again crept near another lady. The Boleyns must
go. Lord Bochforu was found guilty by a large majority.
His friends were kept away ; his enemies gathered together.
Like his sister Anne, and in the fashion of the day, Bochford
was versed in the controversies raised by the Reformation, and
had identified himself actively with the new ideas.

The Catholic peers, led by his own kinsman, the Duke of
Norfolk, who, it is said, had sworn to break him, voted solid.
He was sentenced to be hanged, cut down alive, ripped
up, drawn and quartered. Mindful, perhaps, of the rather
dismal consideration shown by Henry IV. to Sir Bernard
Brocas, who, though beheaded at Tyburn, was excused the
preliminaries of being hanged and drawn, Henry VIII. com-
muted the more savage parts of the sentence, and he was
executed by the headsman on Tower Hill on May 17, 1536.

Lord Leicester we all know a great deal about from
' Kenilworth.' But a letter of Castelnau's to Henry III. of
France describes the sort of hunting which Queen Elizabeth
and Lord Leicester enjoyed together.

After telling his sovereign that he had received a hospit-
able invitation from Lord Leicester, on behalf of the queen,
to come and stay with him and have a hunt at Windsor, he
goes on to relate the pleasures of the actual hunt, which
appears to have consisted in driving a number of deer up and
down inside a netted space in front of a well-screened butt
(feuillade), in which Queen Elizabeth was stationed with her
arblast. The sport then became varied by some coursing.
' Et tout le reste du jour jusques au soir, sortirent des
thoilles (toils), ung, deux, trois, et a diverses fois, plusieurs
grandz cerfs passant par la dicte feuillade, entreprenant deux

230 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

et trois milles de course avec les levriers les meilleurs de ce
roiaulme, desquelz quelquefois ung, deux et trois portoient
un grand cerf par terre ' ' He concludes by a tribute to
Lord Leicester's able management of everything, the satis-
faction of the queen and the company, and the excellence
both of the deer and of the hounds.

The ' levriers,' I fancy, were not greyhounds as we under-
stand the term, but of the same breed which were still pre-
served at Godmersham and Eastwell in Kent a few years ago.
The keepers used them for deer-catching, and I was told that
the strain could be traced back to Elizabethan times. A
good one always pinned a deer by the ear, and this was
a criterion of purity of strain. They were cream or fawn-
coloured with dusky muzzles, with really greyhound speed,
and half greyhound, half mastiff-like heads, long ridgy backs,
loosely coupled, high on the leg and apt to be very crooked,
resembling in appearance the boarhounds in Snyders' and
Velasquez' pictures.

Lord Leicester gave Queen Elizabeth the first watch
bracelet recorded in history ; I suppose for her hunting days.
Once, when she and he went to stay at Berkeley Castle, they
had a day with the toils in the park in Lord Berkeley's
absence, and killed twenty-seven prime stags, again having
resort to screens and arblasts. When he came back and
heard what they had done he was very much annoyed, and
threatened to do away with his park and his deer altogether.
It sounds rather an excessive straining of royal prerogative.
I am sorry to say that one of Lord Leicester's first official
activities after he was appointed Master of the Buckhounds
in 1572 was to fall out with the Archbishop of Canterbury
over some lands. But up to this time the See of Canterbury
and the Queen's Hounds appear to have been on excellent
terms. Under date September 4, 1 564, Lord Leicester writes

1 Cheruel, Marie Stuart et Catherine de Me'dicis, Appendix, p. 227.

PREDECESSORS 231

to ' his singular good Lord ' of Canterbury this considerate
letter : ' The queen's majesty being abroad hunting yesterday
in the forest, and having had very good hap, beside good sport,
she had thought good to remember your grace with part of
her prey, and so commanded me to send you a great fat stag,
killed with her oivn hand ; which, because the weather was
wet, and the deer somewhat chafed and dangerous to be
carried so far without some help, I caused him to he parboiled
for the better preservation of him, which I doubt not will cause
him to come unto you as I would he should. So, having
no other matter at this present to trouble your grace withal,
I will commit you to the Almighty, and with my most
hearty commendation take my leave in haste.'

From the day when he rode down to Hatfield on a milk-
white ' managed ' horse to announce the death of Mary,
the queen's partiality for her Master of the Horse — for Lord
Leicester was a Pluralist and held both offices — seems to
have been a 'secret de Polichinelle ' at Court. When
the Duchess of Suffolk engaged herself to her equerry,
Adrian Stokes, the queen was surprised and indignant.
' What ! ' she said to Cecil, ' marry a horse-keeper ? ' ' Yea,
madam,' he replied, ' and she says you would like to do
the same with yours.' And Sir James Melvill and other
contemporaries relate many public and private indiscre-
tions ; ' great liberties,' as he says, ' to be taken by a lady of
thirty. '

With the people the Leicester alliance seems to have
been popular enough : it was probably preferred to a foreign
match. A contemporary writer,1 after describing the Master
of the Horse's good looks and fine manners, says : ' The
queene had much of her father, for excepting some of her

1 ' The Court of Queen Elizabeth, originally written by Sir Eobert Xaunton
under the title of " Fragmenta Regalia." With considerable biographical addi-
tions by James Caumeld. London, 1814.

232 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

kindred and some few that had handsome wits in crooked
bodies ; she alwaies tooke personages in the Way of election,
for the people hath it to this day, King Henry loved a Man.'
As he advanced in years Lord Leicester lost his complexion ;
became too high-coloured, and a little dull. Having made
away with his first wife, he is described in his latter days
as ' doting upon marriage with a strange fondness.'

In 1684 a Swinley deer led the Duke of York and his suite
a tremendous dance through Beaconsfield and Amersham
right away into Oxfordshire. Very few besides the Duke and
Colpnel James Graham got to the end. Somewhere about
this time Colonel Graham, or Grahm, was appointed Master
of the Buckhounds and Lieutenant of Windsor Forest by
Charles II. There is a tablet in Charlton Church, near
Malmesbury, to his memory. He is set forth as ' a faithful
servant of King Charles and King James II., who lived and
died an unworthy but true member of the Church of England,
faithful to both his masters, and a sincere lover of monarchy.'
From many points of view Colonel Graham's career attracts
me more than any other Master of past days. The every-
day facts of his life, collected by Colonel Josceline Bagot in
his charming little history of Levens, were worthy of Mr.
Stevenson's imagination. He was born in 1649, and married
Miss Dorothy Howard, a niece of the Lord Berkshire of the
day, after a romance in a slow stage coach. This young lady
was maid of honour to Catherine of Braganza. The year
1685 finds Colonel and Mrs. Graham living at Bagshot.
Evelyn stays with them on his way back from Portsmouth,
and describes their housekeeping and the park full of red-
deer, and how one of the children had the small-pox and
Mrs. Graham kept it with the others, because she thought
it better they should all have it at once.

But Colonel Graham's lasting reputation will rest rather
upon his gardens than his stag-hunting. Somewhere about

PREDECESSORS 233

this time he purchased Levens, in Westmoreland, of Mr.
Bellingham, described as ' an ingenious but unfortunate young
gentleman,' who had run through all his money at a very
early age. Fortunately, the gardens which this Master of
the Buckhounds laid out have been preserved to us by the
piety of successive owners of Levens. ' They remain,' says
Lord Stanhope, ' a stately remnant of the old promenoirs
such as the Frenchmen taught our fathers rather, I would
say, to build than plant.' But although Colonel Graham
lived much in the North, pruning the perspective of his
terraces, mystifying his maze, putting annual touches to his
own glossy green silhouette, he also lived up to the very edge
of the ticklish times in which he played a dexterous part.
As well as being Master of the Buckhounds to James II. he
was also Privy Purse. He accompanied the king in his
night to Kochester, and as one of his most trusted and
confidential agents he stayed on in England, watching and
reporting events. James II. wrote a long letter to the
versatile Chiffinch from Kochester. The letter is not remark-
able for orthography, but it is characteristic of the careful-
ness for trifles which seems to beset the average individual in
a great crisis. The King had not quite lost his crown when
he wrote to Chiffinch ; he had thrown the great seal into the
Thames, with the object of gaining time and delaying the
elections. The army was encamped at Salisbury, and so far
had not declared itself ; ' Lillibullero ' had not yet caught on.
There was still a chance. But his letter is all about trifles.
' Those things which you were a-putting up when I came
away ' ; his ' antickes ' watch ; his devotional books ; his
shares in the East India and Guinea Company, and his
cash balances. All these were to be handed over to Colonel
Graham, and he ends up his letter by telling Chiffinch
to bid Graham not to forget to send him the usual returns
of ' the stablishment of my horse ' and all the stable

234 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

news. A sustained cypher correspondence now set in
between England and St. Germains. In this James II. is
Mr. Banks, which was the name of the steward at Levens,
Graham himself being sometimes Sir H. Paulsworth, some-
times Mr. Chapman. In spite, however, of the intrigues
with which he was surrounded, the ci-devant Master of the
Buckhounds was a cautious man, and appears to have kept
his eye upon every shift of circumstances after the deposi-
tion of James. Without actually running with the fox and
hunting with the hounds he so contrived his correspondence
as to give as little handle to his enemies as information
to his friends. Even in cypher his letters read all ways
but a particular way. They were so involved and obscure
that in a letter to Graham the Duke of Hamilton complains
that they put him in mind of the Peace of Ryswick and
the peace of God, in that they passed all understanding.
It is true that in 1691 Luttrell speaks of Colonel Graham
having ' got over ' into France, evidently in a hurry, and
that the next year two proclamations were out against
him. And in 1696 he was thrown into the Fleet for com-
plicity in the Fenwick plot. But still he succeeded marvel-
lously well, in spite of several narrow escapes, in evading any
serious trouble. I dare say through the good offices of Queen
Mary, and very likely with the full assent of James, he made
his peace with William III., and when things settled down
after the Revolution of 1688 Graham returned to Bagshot
and to office as Ranger. Thus, when 108 red-deer were sent
from Germany to William III., the king orders his Master
of the Buckhounds (Baron de Hompesch) to confer with
Graham about the future of the deer ; and we find him
sending fruit and rabbits to Princess Anne from Bagshot,
and promising to send her some char when he gets back to
Levens. Colonel Graham was painted by Sir Peter Lely.
Sir Peter Lely and the flowing wig of the day betwixt them

PREDECESSORS

■53

were terrible levellers of individuality ; but judging from the
photograph this picture has a little more personal character
about it than most of Lely's portraits. The picture is
now at Levens. He was a tall, thin, dark man, and his
conversation is commended by Horace Walpole for its dry
humour. When living at Levens he was particularly fond
of hunting an outlying buck and bringing him back into the
park ; beyond this, however, I know nothing of his hunting
proclivities. His daughter Catherine married Lord Suffolk
and Berkshire, and he died at beautiful Charlton, in the
heart of wild Braydon, in 1730, in his eighty-first year. His
last wishes are expressed in the strong Commonwealth
English — pure as crystal. ' I hope when I die,' he had
written to his daughter in 1729, ' your lord will allow me to
be buried among my little ones at Charlton. If I die there
send to Bath for a leaden coffin. I will have no hearse, but
be carried by my own and your servants. All what is in my
will observe and do it, which is not much. Thank you for
all your goodness to me. God bless you and your lord and
all the children. — Your affectionate father, J. Gbahme.' And
he adds a postscript to this effect : ' Do what you can of
kindness to my servants who have been careful of me.' Here,
at all events, are none of the involutions of the non-committal
letters. But now it was all plain enough sailing. He was
very near the end of his voyage. There were no more earthly
accounts to square.

In the last century the Master of the Buckhounds had a
charming house x in Swinley Forest against the deer paddocks
and he enjoyed, in right of his office, the use of about two
hundred and thirty acres of arable, pasture, and woodland,

1 A very complete and detailed history of Swinley Lodge, traced from the
time when it is first specifically mentioned in Norden's Survey of Windsor
Forest (1(507) down to its final dismantling and sale by auction in 1831, is given
by Mr. Hore in his History of the Buckhounds, chap, xviii.

236

S TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

which went with the Lodge. A faded outline of the pleasure
grounds, the tangled vestiges of the shrubbery may still be
traced. The Master cannot live in his stand on Ascot
Heath, and I think he ought to have a habitation where
he can take shelter after his inevitable sins of omission
and commission as regards the Royal enclosure, that most
thorny field of his later-day patronage. Swinley Lodge
may have been a little shut-in and wanting in view in

Swinley Lodge, the old Eesidexce of the Master of the Buckhounds

winter-time, but the stately limes, the spangled thorns,
the close companionship of the forest and forest sights and
sounds must have made it a perfect summer house. A great
deal of eating and drinking used to go on at Swinley, and
every fourth of June the Master used to give a dinner to
all the farmers and foresters. Twice or thrice the Royalty
drove over from Windsor and watched the dancing on
the green in front of the house. Hunting was expected to

PREDECESSORS 237

be convivial. Mr. Jenison was honoured as a five-bottle
man ; Lord Cornwallis was a great host ; but Lord Bateman,
who held the appointment for twenty-five years, disgusted
everybody by a 'penurious sterility' and 'personal pomposity.'
Lord Jersey put things right again,1 and the public got a
Master to their mind at the fall of the Coalition, when Lord
Sandwich, who used to take a dice-box out hunting with him
and gamble with the Duke of Cumberland in the intervals
of the chase, was appointed. We are told ' the exhilarating
steams ' of roast sirloin and the ' vibrating echo of the cork '
once more inspired the stag-hunter's prowess, and awakened
the long seclusion of Swinley.

And now to come to some of the Masters of more modern
days, and a few odds and ends I have been able to pick up about
them. Lord Maryborough, afterwards Lord Mornington,
was William IV. 's Master of the Buckhounds, and had a
very fine seat on a horse. He and the horse he rode were a
great feature in the Royal procession, and I have seen an
engraving of him leading it on a dappled grey horse which
he bought from Mr. Shard, whose classical stag-hunting
establishment I have already noticed, for 500 guineas. This
is the way to do the thing.

Mr. Charles Greville does not give a good account of
the morals of the Royal procession in William IV.'s time.
' His household is now so ill-managed,' he writes at the end
of the Ascot week of 1833, ' that his grooms were drunk every-
day, and the only man of them who was sober was killed
going home from the races ! ' However, he wrote this in one
of his ' video meliora proboque ' moods, when he had been
eating and drinking too much, sitting up too late, and not

1 No sportsman now was to the mansion led,
No corks were drawn, no social tables spread,
'Twas blank and dull till Jersey's cheerful light
Dispersed the gloom of long incumbent night.

238 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

winning his money. Lord Lichfield, who was appointed
Master of the Buckhounds in 1830, lived at Fernhill, and,
as D'Orsay was a famous likeness-catcher, he must have been
a very good-looking man. His tenure of office was marked
by all the agreeable qualities accorded him by Mr. Greville.
Upon the whole he comes out with flying colours from the
trying ordeal of a special and detailed mention in those fasci-
nating memoirs. ' He is a fine fellow with an excellent dis-
position, liberal, hospitable, frank and gay, quick and intelli-
gent. Without cultivation, extravagant and imprudent, yet
with considerable aptitude for business. Between spending
and speculating , buying property in one place, selling in
another, and declining to sell in a third, he has half-ruined
a noble estate.' The writer of the article in ' Baily,' already
referred to, says that Davis thought less about the horses than
the hounds. Yet some letters of Davis to Lord Lichfield
I have seen went into great detail about the horses which
he himself and the men had ridden, and the way they had
carried them. Lord Lichfield was a great favourite at the
kennels, and he rode to hounds very well himself. On that
account Davis probably made a point when writing to him
of telling him a good deal about the horses.

We now come to some of the Masters of the present
reign. Lord Chesterfield was Master at the time of the
Queen's coronation. It was a sort of Francois Ier period
of stag-hunting. He dressed himself and mounted his men
and his friends sumptuously. He bought many of his horses
of Shirley of Twickenham, the father of the Shirley whose
riding Lord Cork commends m a good gallop in the Harrow
country, and who at that time kept the Catherine Wheel
at Egham. Quite a stud of Lord Chesterfield's horses were
kept at the same place, and sent on from there to the meets
for his many friends to ride. Dr. Croft writes me : ' I seem
to remember a little about him and his appearance, though I

(Oasti/ aA (oA^h^/^e/c^y

PREDECESSORS 239

was quite a small boy at that time. I picture him as about
the average height, rather thick in body, well got up, and so
forth. I remember him coming to the meet at the Horse
Shoes, Warfield, with Count d'Orsay and two others, four
horses with postillions.' Captivated no doubt by Charles
Davis's horsemanship, Lord Chesterfield became over-fond
of standing up in his stirrups. But he overdid it, for it
was said that if you were behind him you could see the ears
of his horse between his legs. However, in one of the
' Songs of the Bel voir Hunt,' this Master plays a worthy
part, and the bard compliments him upon his seat.

See Chesterfield advance with steady hand,
Swish at a rasper and in safety land ;
Who sits his horse so well ? or at a race
Drives four-in-hand with greater skill or grace ?
And when hounds really run, like him can show
How fifteen stone should o'er the county go.

Lord Kinnaird comes into the great Quarterly Bun
and goes well all through it. It is he who ventures the
observation that Dick Christian would be drowned in the
Whissendine. ' But the pace was too good to inquire,' and
on they all go. He was a noted Meltonian. Lord Kinnaird
tried the experiment of giving the deer very little law and
never stopping hounds, as against Davis's plan of sending a
whip on for the first mile or so, to stop hounds at a moment's
need. This did not answer ; the runs were often over in a
few minutes, and the deer being overpressed were often badly
hurt. One very frosty season he hunted in the forest all
through the frost and snow, and had some capital sport. He
lived at Ascot, and was a great man in the kennel as well as
a famous rider.

Lord Bosslyn hunted the Queen's Hounds from the stud
house in Bushey Park ; and he must often have looked at
some of the pictures which have been reproduced in these
pages, many of which were moved some few years ago from

240 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

the Stud house to Cumberland Lodge. He was a fine
horseman, and as great a judge of a horse, or indeed of any
animal, as his greatly missed and lamented successor. In
those days Harry King, who had just come from the Ather-
stone, was only second whip, Freeman, who came I think
from Goodwood, being first whipper-in. Lord Kosslyn
mounted the men admirably as far as appearance went, but
the whips complained that they often had to do their duty
on unmade horses, and that directly they had got them
handy and accomplished they were sold. ' He [Lord Eosslyn]
was,' says Dr. Croft, ' a bit of a dealer,' and his horse-book,
which I have had before me, is full of valuations and sales of
the hunt horses. I remember a capital picture of him at
Dysart, in well-blacked butcher boots, and a blue bird's-eye
old-fashioned neckcloth.'

• The best man of the Hunt ' at this time, 1841 and 1812,
Colonel Anstruther Thomson writes me, ' was Dicky Vyse,
a Captain in the Blues, and Fred Ponsonby, who used to
ride like a demon. His boots and his breeches never met, and
there was always a patch of bare leg between them.' Lord
Clanricarde was another celebrated bruiser with the Queen's
Hounds, but a very fine horseman, with long thin legs and
a nice weight. Mr. Saxty of "Windsor, the accomplished
artist, told me that he once heard Bryant, the stud groom,
tell Lord Clanricarde that the horse he was going to ride,
belonging to Lord Bessborough, then Master of the Buck-
hounds, was not reliable at timber. The first thing Lord
Clanricarde did — Mr. Saxty saw him do it — was to ride him
at a white five-barred gate. They got over somehow.

The first time lever saw Lord Granville out hunting was
with the Pytchley. I remember the incident most distinctly,
and it fully bears out the reputation he left behind him in
the Queen's Country for resolute riding. It was a starving
cold day. Lord Granville was looking ill and suffering from

^

PREDECESSORS 241

gout, and he told nie he had come out against his doctor's,
orders. He had on thick white duffel breeches, and the boots
known, I think, as Napoleons, like those in which Mr. Her-
ring's first-night gentry lead the way. He and I had managed,
with several others, to get thrown out, and we found ourselves
with no visible means of getting to hounds, which were drag-
ging along on a cold line two or three fields away. There
was neither gate nor gap to help us, and a really high stake-
and-bound fence of the type which John Leech drew so well,
between us. A March day was just treating us to an interval
of hail. I was riding a most ungenerous horse who made no
allowance for one's mistakes, and took a serious view of
jumping without hounds. ' I am afraid,' said Lord Granville
with a pale smile, ' we shall have to go ; will you try or shall
I ? ' I felt that for once I should not be justified in following
my leader. So I crammed Marsala at it, with a show of
decision which did not take him in for a moment. Round he
came, and our small party exchanged glances of discourage-
ment. Lord Granville was riding an uncoupled rather
Cleveland-bay-looking horse. He turned him suavely round
at it, and over he went, and piloted his convoy to the haven
where we would be ; Marsala, who luckily did not like being
left alone, at last climbing over somehow.

Eminent horse-dealers, like great painters, have their
styles and manners, and Lord Granville knew and appreciated
them all. I recollect his filling in with a few telling
touches the portrait of the moralist who robs you of your
wits by the integrity of his eye, and the almost sacred
conviction of his utterances ; the oracle who inspires you by
the little he says and the much this little leads you to infer ;
the sophist who can turn an animal's defects to advantage.
How he delighted too in those crude or delicate compliments
— served to taste — to one's riding and judgment, which lead
to so many deals.

R

242 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Lord Granville's stories gained enormously, of course,
by the telling restraint of his ' raconteur ' style, which
had a certain dryness and bouquet not to be surpassed,
so it is perhaps as well that I only remember one of them.
Lord Granville had bought a very expensive horse from
Anderson. Some little time after he met Anderson and said
to him, ' Well, you know the price was quite extravagant, but
I am bound to say the horse is worth it.' Anderson made a
little bow and said, ' I can assure you, my lord, your approval
is our only profit in the transaction.'

In a speech which Lord Granville made many years ago
at a farmers' dinner at Windsor, he went back to the pleasant
days when he hunted the Queen's Hounds, and he told them
that Mr. Disraeli had taunted Lord John Kussell with having
taken a young riding peer all boot and spur and pitched him
into the prosaic office of the Board of Trade. His political
services to his generation and to his party are in no danger
of being forgotten. Speaking from recollection, I think one
of the most persuasive speeches made on our side at the fever
point of the first Home Kule crusade and cleavage was made
by Lord Granville at Manchester. There he was amongst
old friends and brave associations. In 1851, Lord Granville
was sworn in as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a
rapid promotion. Madame de Lieven wrote ' in transports
of joy ' of the appointment. ' Granville,' she writes, 'is very
popular at Manchester and with the Free Traders, which
is a great thing.' In 1855 he became the Leader of the
Liberal Party in the House of Lords, a position which in
the face of hopeless odds he felicitously held for thirty-six
years without interruption. I can speak from grateful experi-
ence of the kindness and encouragement he knew how to
bestow upon those who, like myself, succeeded very young,
and knew very few people. Addison's Tory fox-hunter was of
opinion that being able to talk French was prejudicial to a

PREDECESSORS 243

hunting seat. But he had never met a Lord Granville. At the
Exhibition banquet at the Hotel de Ville in 1851, England,
owing to the ill-health of the Prince Consort, was repre-
sented by Lord Granville. On this occasion he charmed his
hosts by responding for the Commissioners in a French speech
free and flowing and full of telling points. ' Had he been
Demosthenes himself,' Sir Theodore Martin tells us, ' speak-
ing with the purest French accent, he could not have com-
manded more genuine applause.'

The late Lord Hardwicke's popular Mastership was
marked by its debonnair magnificence. It was to some
extent a sort of renaissance of the Chesterfieldian splendours.
Nothing stopped him if it were a question of getting there to
help a deer. Dr. Croft once saw him jump some high iron
hurdles in an emergency of this kind. His recent death will
be regretted by all who knew him in the Queen's Country.

Lord Sumeld has the art of galloping like steam between
his fences and yet jumping the place almost from a stand.
He thus negotiates the trappiest obstacles with safety and
despatch, without upsetting high-couraged and even fractious
animals, and — for this is the real point — without giving spec-
tators the faintest impression of sticky ' come-up ' sort of
riding. This means fine hands. The first time Lord Sumeld
went out with the Duhallow, a country which in the opinion
of the natives is only practicable to those brought up within
a few miles of Cork, they never could catch him for twenty
minutes, a surprised top-sawyer of the Hunt being overheard
thus to exhort his friend : ' For God's sake, Mike, ride at the
man in the beard ! ' Unsurpassed as a judge of a horse or a
hound, and one of the most undeniable cross-country riders
of his day, Lord Coventry brings knowledge and experience
to bear upon every practical detail of his office. The ancient
honour and everyday welfare of the Royal Hunt are in safe
keeping.

r 2

244 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEK XIV

VENERIE AND THE VALOIS

Pour le plaisir des rois je suis donne,

De jour en jour les veneurs me pourchassent ;

Par les forests je suis abandonne

A tous les chiens qui sans cesse me ehassent.

(Bouchet's Complainte du Cerf, 16th century.)

The sixteenth century in France is the Velasquez period of
stag-hunting. It formed the grand style. Woodcraft hugger-
muggered along with poverty and privilege in the provinces,
but Venerie, at once an art and a science, came to Court.
Like some daughter of the gods visiting the sons of men, she
disputed precedence with everybody and everything. Even
the king's mistresses had to reckon with her. Diane de
Poitiers, conscious of the attractions of an enchanting rival,
spent large sums of money in building hunting stables and
mews, and laid out her demesne at Anet to suit hunting.
Meeting gallantry and intrigue on equal terms, hunting
became the instrument of political ambition. It conducted
and controlled the great affairs of state.1 It challenged
diplomacy and plenipotentiaries. The main current of
politics, or what we should call politics in these days,
streamed along the alleys of Fontainebleau and Compiegne
and flooded the level plains of the Loiret and Seine-et-Marne.
Francois I., according to that eminent and polite Hellenist

1 Documents Intdits : Negotiations avec la Toscanc, t. iii, p. 421.

VENERIE AND THE V A LOIS 245

Bude, did a great deal for hunting. In his Treatise on Venerie,1
Bude tells him in the dedication, ' Sire, vous avez tellement
dresse et poli l'exercice de la venerie, qu'elle semble estre
parvenue a sa perfection.' At all events, he put all the gilding
on just as he did to the doors and ceilings of Fontainebleau.
Tornabuoni, the Tuscan ambassador, evidently ' un homme
grave,' writes to the Grand Duke Cosmo I. de' Medicis :
' This Court is not as other Courts are ; here they only think
of hunting, pretty women, entertainments, and change of
scene. The Court only stays in a place as long as the
herons last. They hunt the stag twice, then one day's deer
catching (' aux toiles '), and then on again somewhere else.' 2
Everyday life was one long hunting progress. This is how
he describes the invasion of the country by the scarlet-
clad locusts :

' Quelquefois le roi, outre ses cent pages, ses deux cents
ecuyers, piqueurs ou chevaucheurs, mene avec lui quatre ou
cinq cents gentilshommes, quelquefois il est accompagne de
la reine ou des reines, suivies de leurs nombreuses dames et
filles d'honneur. Alors tous les appartements d'en haut,
toutes les salles d'en bas, tous les etages, tout le chateau,
toute la cour, toute a chevals, toute en habits rouges, semble
au milieu de la campagne trotter, galoper a la suite du roi,
aussi en habit rouge, courant le cerf ou le sanglier.'

This ' to-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new ' way
of going on quite upset all the Venetians.

How swift we go, how softly, ah !
Were life but as the gondola !

It certainly was not so at the Court of France to the
homesick envoys and secretaries.

' Our embassy,' cries this indignant and saddle-sore am-

1 Traite de Venerie de Budi, translated from the Latin, Paris, 1864.

2 Documents Inedits: Negotiations diplomatiqv.es avec la Toscane, t.iii. p. 17.

246 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

bassador, who was presumably little accustomed to horse-
exercise, ' has lasted forty-five months ; during that time we
have never been a fortnight in the same place.' Cavalle,
another Venetian diplomatist, informed his Government
that Francois I.'s hunting expenses amounted to 150,000
ecus a year. But even this unfriendly critic admitted he
got value for his money. ' If,' he adds, ' you could see what
the Court of France means, and what is done for the money,
you wouldn't think it dear.'

Francis II. 's reign was in many ways anxious and un-
comfortable. But the Tuscan ambassador Tornabuoni
writes thus to the Grand Duke Cosmo I. in the thick of a
storm centre : ' 'In the midst of the most serious anxieties
hunting goes on just the same. No one knows where it will
all end, but stag-hunting is the great business of the Court ;
it is the only way apparently of getting things into motion ' ;
and again he writes, ' It would appear that MM. de Guise force
this poor devil of a prince into these amusements. They
wish to see him entirely absorbed in them, as this will mean
that they can keep the direction of affairs in their own
hands.' 2

Early in March 1560 the air was full of disquieting
rumours. Privy conspiracy whispered in the corridors of
Amboise. Any and every night one half of society at Court
expected to wake up with its throat cut next morning by
the other half. Yet nothing was allowed to stand in the
way of hunting. In the middle of it all, when men's hearts
were failing them for fear, both conspirators and conspired
against set out for a week's hunting at Chenonceaux with a
levity worthy of the chorus in ' Madame Angot.' Chantonnay,
a keen observer, writes to his friend Cardinal de Granvelle :
' In three days these people seem to have got rid of all their

1 Documents Iniclits : Negotiations avcc la Toscane, t. iii. p. 421.
- Documents Iiu'dits : Negotiations avec la France, t. iii. p. 421.

V EN ERIE AND THE V ALOIS 247

fears. After having made a great fuss about holding the
castle at all hazards with men at arms, and as many of the
gentlemen of their party as they could get together, here is
the King off hunting and hawking again, and with him as
many of the Court as have got large horses to ride. As for
his own suite, he has only two or three pages mounted on
Spanish horses.' !

Moralists may admonish us of the vanity of human
pleasures, but the composing and helpful influences of sheer
amusement cannot be overrated. Years before Amboise,
as Sir Walter Scott tells us, the strained relations between
Charles the Bold and Louis XI. were eased, and the whole
' trame des affaires ' changed, by the chevy after the Rouge
Sanglier. As the false herald flew for his life in front of the
Snyders-like ' Talbot ' and ' Beaumont,' and doubled here
and twisted there in a manner greatly approved by the spec-
tators, both kings laughed till the cordial tears ran down their
faces, and forgot all about their differences. I dare say that
this is not founded on fact, but Sir Walter Scott always
knows what would have happened, and it is quite as satis-
factory to me as if it had happened.

Evidently from Chantonnay's letter, the Court was short
of horses. Then, as now, hunting was dependent on the
grim qualification, with which all who hunt are conversant,
of having something to ride. In the preceding reign hardly
any seasoned and mettled horses were to be had in France.
In February 1557, a capital hunting month, and, I suppose,
in open weather, the Connetable de Montmorency writes
to M. d'Humieres:2 'I've spoken to the King [Henri II.]

1 Archives de Vienne, Lettres de Chantonnay.

? ' J'ay parle au Roy [Henri II] pour vous dormer ung cheval ; il m'a diet
qu'il vous donnera bien un poulain, mais de cheval fait il n'en a pas; mesmes
des turcs que lui a amenes dernierement Moranges il tie s'en est pas trouve
ung seul de service ' (le 11 fevrier 1557, Biblioth. Imp., Fonds Clerambault
vol. 61).

248 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

about a horse for you. He said he would give you a foal with
pleasure, but that he had not anything like a made horse to
spare ; even the barbs (Turcs) which Moranges brought over
here last were a disappointment. There was not one worth
having in the lot.'

Francis II. and Charles IX. inherited the love of hunting
from both their parents. In spite of her fatness, Catherine
de Medicis was very fond of hunting. Modern and progres-
sive in many of her ideas, she had a soul above the numb
Norman or Flemish ' haquenee,' the Gustave Dore squire,
the brocaded leading rein, and the cushioned pad which
wobbled about on their lusty backs. So she invented a
side-saddle and started ladies riding to hounds. However,
like most inventors, Catherine de Medicis had to put up with
some early rebuffs.

On one occasion she fractured her thigh, and on another fell
with such force on to her head that her skull had to be tre-
panned. Her daughter-in-law, Mary Queen of Scots, was also
unfortunate. Feeling bound, I suppose, to adventure herself
in the new saddle, she got a most disagreeable fall. Writing
to Queen Elizabeth from Blois, December 27, 1559, our
ambassador in Paris, Throckmorton, who was much esteemed
at the French Court. as a ' veneur emerite,' relates in graphic
language and easy-going spelling how this lovely lady was
swept off by the branch of a tree when out stag-hunting.

' The xix. of this present there happened a mervailous
chance and escape to the Frenche Quene ; who riding on
hunting, and following the hart of force, was in her course
cast of her gelding by a boughe of a tree, and with suddeines
of the fall was not hable to call for helpe. And albeit there
dyd followe her diverse gentlemen and ladyes of her chamber,
yet three or foure of them passed over her before she was
espied ; and some of there horses rode so nere her as her
hood was troden of. As sone as she was reised from the

VENERIE AND THE V ALOIS 249

grounde, she spake and said that she felt not hurt ; and her
self begaine to set her heare, and dresse up her head and so
returned to Court ; where she kept her chamber till the King
removed. She feleth no incommodite by her fall ; and yet
she hath determined to chaunge that kind of exercise.' That
the pace was too good to inquire would hardly, in those days,
have constituted a sufficient excuse for such careless be-
haviour. The ' diverse ' gentlemen and ladies of the house-
hold must have been too busy riding or perhaps flirting.

As against the magnificent and picturesque days of Fran-
cois I., Charles IX.'s reign was the literary and thoughtful
period. ■ I have already spoken of Du Fouilloux's book, and a
host of grave treatises now formulated the definitions, postu-
lates, and axioms of an exact science with all the French love
of order and symmetry. Charles IX. himself was the author
of a painstaking text-book. Not a single sentence, however,
begins with I. Thus the want of the personal note makes it
sadly dull. It has not the real spark about it. Unlike Henry
IV., who wrote all about his day both to Gabrielle and to his
Queen — how he got drenched to the skin, how he did not get
back till one in the morning, but took his deer ; how he is short
of shirts, how he has the toothache, but hopes a day's hawk-
ing will put him right, and so on— Charles gives us nothing
of himself except his theory.

However, Charles died before he had finished his book.

Pour aymer trop Diane et Cytheree aussi
L'une et l'autre m'ont mis en ce tombeau icy.

So ran the popular epitaph. It cannot be disputed that
hunting and love-making have always been close friends.
Mrs. Markham will have nothing to do with Cythersea.
When pressed by the intelligent questions of Richard and
George and Mary, she falls back upon the French horn ex-
planation of his death. It is true that Ambroise Pare, Charles'
physician, told Brantome ' qu'il estoit mort par s'etre trop

250 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

fatigue a sonner de la trompe a la chasse du cerf, qui luy
avait trop gate son pauvre corps.' The king's ' trompe,' it
appears, was larger than anybody's, and quite an encumbrance
to his person ; but the note could be distinguished above all
the others, and the temptation to rally and direct the hunt,
says a contemporary authority, was too great for him to
resist.1

However, the hunting literature of the day was not con-
fined to serious prose. The Pleiad deigned to shine upon
the chace ; its poets illuminated its triumphs, hazards, and
delights. Baif extols the feat of his royal patron, who brought
a stag to bay with a single hound, ' sans levriers, sans clabots.'
Konsard immortalised the drive and stoutness of a bitch
hound called Courte and a dog called Beaumont, and bewails
in an elegy Charles IX. 's untimely end. Even the High
Almoner, Gaucher, wTho should have known better and minded
other things, spent much of his time, and indirectly, no doubt,
much of the king's money, in composing bad verses on the
different kinds of hunting.

During his captivity in England, Sir John Chandos made
King John of France a present of a brace of greyhounds.2
There is a curious letter in the British Museum from
Louis XIII. to the King of Aragon, thanking him for the
gift of a white falcon. ' II m'a pint,' he writes, ' tant par la
beaute et l'estrangete qu'aussi il vient de vous.' Boyal per-
sonages have always been great hands at this admirable sort
of intercourse. They have always been willing to receive
such presents from their subjects — sometimes they have

1 I remember hearing Mr. Browning say, in conversation with Mr. Gladstone
upon the particular point whether or not many great men had been great chess
players, that Charles XII. of Sweden was a great chess-player, but spoiled his
game by insisting on always making use of his king, and refusing to recognise
the limits of his possibilities ; and I dare say Charles IX. often played the mis-
chief with what might otherwise have been a good day's sport.

- Notes et Documents relatifs a Jean, Roi de France, et sa captivite en
Angleterre, par S.A.E. le Due d'Aumale. Philobib. Soc.

V EN ERIE AND THE V A LOIS 251

given in return. Thus George III. recognised Arthur Young's
services to agriculture by the gift of a Spanish merino ram.

Indeed, assuming a happy selection of examples, an
interesting chapter might be written on the antiquity and
modernness of this kind of present. From Solomon's Temple
to the stud farm at Sandringham, gifts of this kind and ex-
changes of blood may easily be traced back authentically to the
very earliest times, and can be brought as easily up to date. It
is a note of the inclinations and pursuits of a large section of
human beings in all times. Like playing the trumpet, the
habit has neither gained nor lost by the progress of civilisa-
tion and the frequent reconstruction of human ideas and
societies.

The French hound of high degree to this day claims
descent from the gift of a subject to his sovereign. I am
not sure of the date, but in the latter half of the fifteenth
century a poor country gentleman of Poitou gave a hound
called ' Souillard ' to Louis XL There was nothing remark-
able in the colour. The white St. Huberts were already an
ascertained breed, and although the Duke of Burgundy of
Quentin Durward's time hunted the ' Rouge Sanglier ' with
the mastiff-like hounds I alluded to in the last chapter,
his successor in 1608 kept a strong pack of twenty to
twenty-five couple of notable staghounds. ' Chiens merlants
issus de la variete blanche des chiens de St. Hubert.' '
But this particular hound came to Plessis les Tours with
the reputation of being something quite out of the common.
As Louis XL liked greyhounds better than line hunters, very
little further notice was taken of Souillard. However, he

1 A royal pack of this strain was held in great esteem in Louis XIV.'s time.
Unlike most French hounds, they went a great pace, and were said to bay their
stag in twenty minutes. In 1709 orders were given by the king to M. de la
Rochefoucauld, the Grand Veneur, to slow down the ' grands chiens blancs,'
as they went too fast for him as he got older. (Baron Dunoyer de Noirmont,
Hist, de la Chasse en France.)

252 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

had been noticed and appreciated ; so one day the Seneschal
de Gaston asked the king to let him have the dog. The
king, who was not a cheerful giver, asked why and for whom
he wanted him. The seneschal replied that it was for ' la
plus sage dame ' in the kingdom. Louis, who had a poor
opinion of women, was curious to know who the lady might
be. On hearing that it was his own daughter, Anne of
Bourbon, he only said, ' Dites moins folle que les autres,
car de sage femme il n'y en a point au monde,' and, recom-
pensed by the epigram, made no further objection to Souillard
being drafted to her kennel.

Anne of Bourbon knew what she was about, and a bitch
called Baude was mated with Souillard. Baude's litter by
Souillard vindicated her selection. In France a good tufter
to this day is always supposed to go back to Souillard. He
is Corbet's Trojan and the Beaufort Justice rolled into
one. Souillard should always be pointedly referred to some-
how at the meet, or, better still, at the brisee, by the
intelligent sporting tourist.

In the footnote I have given, with the late Due
d'Aumale's permission, a list of French books on Venerie,
which his Royal Highness very kindly sent me, in his
own handwriting, from Chantilly in December 1895. l The

1 Le plus ancien des traites de venerie est celui de Gaston-Phebus, comte de
Foix, mort en 1390, mon ancetre et celui de tous les veneurs. L'edition
imprimee par Verard a la fin du xv'! siecle n'en donne qu'une faible idee. II
faut se reporter aux manuscrits et surtout aux enluminures qui les decorent.
J'en ai un fort beau. II y en a plusieurs a la Bibliotheque Nationale. — Inte-
ressant.

Presque contemporain, mais moins important, le ' Livre du Roy Nodus etde
la Reyne Racio,' imprime a Chambery en 1486, avec de curieux bois, et plusieurs
fois reimprime depuis. J'en ai un joli manuscrit et la tres rare premiere
edition. — Plus curieux qu'instructif.

Signalons encore le ' Livre des Deduitz,' par Gace de la Buigrre, ecrit en
Angleterre pendant la captivite du roi Jean pour enseigner la venerie et la
fauconnerie au jeune due de Bourgogne. J'en ai un manuscrit original et j'en
ai parle dans un 'Essai' insere au tome II des ' Philobiblon Society's Miscel-
lanies,' tire a part sous le titre ' Notes et Documents relatifs au Roi Jean,' etc.

VENERIE AND THE V A LOIS 253

comments are valuable, backed by his eminent authority not
only as a man of letters, but as a judge of hunting. But a
book which interested me very much is not on this list —
namely, ' Meuttes et Venerie ' of M. Jean de Ligniville, which
was published in 1635, although I do not think the book
enjoys the authority of Du Fouilloux or D'Yanville works.

M. de Ligniville was born in 1580, and became Grand
Veneur to the Duke of Burgundy. Lorraine was in those
days a jealously preserved hunting country. Only the reign-
ing house, the great nobles, and the chief priests hunted and
sported. The clergy, as we understand the term, never
hunted in France. Arthur Young contrasts them favourably
with our parsons in this respect. ' Such advertisements,' he
writes, speaking of the pre-Bevolution clergy, ' were never
seen in France as I have heard of in England — " Wanted, a
living in a good sporting county where the duty is light and
the neighbourhood convivial.'* ' The great ecclesiastics, how-
ever, hunted on a very large scale. ' I am told, Monseigneur,'
said Louis XV. to the Abbe Dillon, Archbishop of Narbonne,
' that you hunt. Is it not a bad example for your clergy? '
He replied : ' Sire, for them it woulri be undoubtedly a
grave fault to go hunting ; for me it is only a taste I have
inherited from my ancestors.' ' The law was express,
and recited its prohibitions with a clearness unknown to
modern parliamentary draftsmen. ' Sauf aux prelats et aux
gentilshommes defense de frequenter aux arquebuses et rouet

La ' Venerie de Jacques du Fouilloux, dediee au roy Charles IX.' Poitiers,
1560. Avec de tres belles figures. Beaucoup plus rapproche de nos precedes
que la date ne le ferait croire. Nous sommes ici dans le vif et presque dans
l'actualite.

Robert de Salnove: 'La Venerie Royale,' 1665. — Classique, mais a vieilli.

Le Verrier de la Conterie : 'Venerie Xormande,' 1778. —Tres complet.

Le comte Desgraviers : ' Essai de Venerie,' 1804. — Bon resume : tres pratique.
Instruction pour chasser a Ermenonville et a Chantilly, pp. 310 a 327.

D'Yanville, premier veneur : ' Traite de Venerie,' Paris, 1788, in 4°. — Le livre
classique par excellence.

1 Jerningham Letters.

254 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

par les bois, forests, tailles et garennes, plaines et campagnes.'
As far back as 1605 a work had been published at Spires in
which the question was discussed, ' Quod sit venatio et
quotuplex ; utrum venatio liceat clericis ' ; the conclusion
being that, though fishing was allowable, hunting was too
expensive and venison too heating a diet for holy men.

When Ligniville was about eighteen he was sent with
letters of introduction to great people by his relative and
patron, the Comte de Vaudemont, to the court of Henry IV.,
to finish his polite, that is, his hunting, education. He
had special instructions to try to learn something of the
woodcraft of M. le Comte de Vitry, who hunted the king's
hounds after the roe-deer in the forest of Fontainebleau ;
the roe-deer being then, as now, in France esteemed by the
great Nimrods to be the most guileful of all the beasts of
chase. His good looks, his gentle birth — for he came from
the most ancient and exclusive chivalry of Lorraine —

Chastelet et Lenoircourt,
Ligniville et Haraucourt,
Grands chevals et chevalliers
De Noblesse sans esgalle,

his fondness for hunting, and a superlative tufter got him
on. He enjoyed himself thoroughly, and writes home to
his people, ' Tantost je vas a la court, un limier a la
main, une autre fois habille en veneur, et selon les occur-
rences vestu en courtisan prepare a aller au bal : le lende-
main dispose a monter a cheval,' &c. This was all very
nice, and M. de Ligniville made such good use of his advan-
tages and ' occurrences,' that on the retirement of Francois
de Beaufort from the post of hereditary Grand Veneur, he was
appointed by Charles III. of Burgundy to the vacant office.
And now for his book. The first thing that made me
like it is that he goes out of his way to tell us that a favourite
hound of his, called Mouille, came ' de la contree de York.'

VENERIE AND THE V ALOIS 255

Mouille was so fond of him that she would leave the niost
ravishing line if she heard his voice ; an amiable peculiarity
which he admits does more credit to her heart than her
perseverance, and which would have profited her nothing
with the late Mr. G. Lane-Fox at Bramham. But I like
the book for its rather particular and unusual style and fla-
vour. It is too long ; most books on sporting subjects, and
especially mine, are. Very often we lose sight of the forest
for the trees. It is too allusive, thanks to a mixed cargo
of classics, ethics, scripture, and philosophy, which the
author carries and unloads at every port, but only to take
in fresh stores. Saints and sages and public characters
of all sorts and sizes are squeezed into his service and into
all sorts of ineligible places. But what gives the book the
particular and unusual quality I have just referred to, is
his treatment of the subject throughout in the spirit — if I
may say so without irreverence — of the hundred and fourth
Psalm.

When Mr. Jorrocks got lost and benighted on the
moor on the Pinch-me-near forest day, the spectacle of
nature caused him a homesick alarm. He could only
think of Betsy and the Torbay soles he had ordered for
dinner. But in similar circumstances M. de Ligniville would
have looked at things very differently.

Nature to him is the splendid nature of Addison's hymn.
I do not say that at times the sylvan piety is not a little
overdone. Every incident of a day's hunting is not sus-
ceptible of being read into a sublime and everlasting context.
A luxury of horror at Nature's frown, an overdone thanks-
giving for her smile, easily become mannerisms, and M. de
Ligniville is not frugal enough of realising his feelings
in type. But, on the whole, the fault is on the right side.
Possibly, the manufacture into words of thoughts about
Nature and her divine message is too sustained. But it is

256 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

the drift which the benefits of Nature should give to the
thoughts of people who hunt and stalk, and shoot and fish.
I only hope he was not a humbug.

M. de Ligniville is quite as fond of hunting as Captain
Doleful declared himself to be when he took his gods to witness
that it was the only thing worth living for. Not to hunt is to
be a miserable fellow, and he is always demolishing the objec-
tions of an hypothetical faineant who is shirking the rigours
of the game. He is much afraid lest the rising generation
whom he admonishes in every page may be led away by
these specious home-loving gentlemen, and he equips his
disciples with suitable retorts for times of temptation. Tell
the faineants straight out, he cries, that hunting is the way
to heaven, and stopping at home to somewhere else. Hunt
six days a week if you can ; blow the expense and the waste
of tissue. Kemember that Xenophon (a prime favourite
and authority with M. de Ligniville) lived till he was ninety,
and that you will have plenty of leisure 10 rest yourselves at
the proper appointed time, where beyond these voices there
is peace.1

M. de Ligniville's appreciation of English hounds,
English hunting, and English ways have been cited in a
preceding chapter. He visited England. He tells us how
he went there to some extent entangled in preconceptions
and prejudices about English hunting, hounds, and hunters.
He returned to France in quite a different frame of mind.

' Cross the Channel,' he says to his chosen audience, the
youth of his nation, ' you smart young gentlemen who think
you know so much about hunting. If you can manage it,
stay in England for a full hunting season. I cannot find
you in wits as well as in counsel ; some people, of course, can

1 ' Respondez hardimcnt aux faineants que pendant la vie vous avez con-
tentement en vostre travail et qu'apres la mort vous reposerez et dormirez du
sommeil de Paix avec Dieu.'

V EN ERIE AND THE V A LOIS 257

neither learn nor forget, but such of you as can do both or
even either will benefit much by following my advice.'

Many things have changed and happened in France since
Louis XVI. entered ' rien ' in his hunting diary on the day
the Bastille was taken. The charming old names like the
Cabinet de Monseigneur, the Route du Vert Galant, the
Bouquet du Roi are only names and memories. Hunting is,
alas ! no longer the occupation of kings or the pastime of
a Court. But a Bourbon prince still hunts the stag at
Chantilly according to the ideas of the sixteenth century.
Gaston-Phebus, his distinguished ancestor, is still the
suzerain of venerie. In this country, less than one hundred
years has revolutionised — speaking broadly — our horses, our
hounds, our methods, and our hunting fashions — least of all,
perhaps, strange to say, our hunting dress. But in France,
to have recourse to a metaphor, the valse seems never to have
ousted the minuet and the pavane.

258 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE XV

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train

In the following pages I only propose to make good some
bird-of-passage impressions of a few days' hunting in the
neighbourhood of Paris. They were most enjoyable days,
and I cannot speak too gratefully of the kindness and
courtesy shown me everywhere and by everybody. I shall
not attempt to establish comparisons between French and
English stag-hunting. They are things to be avoided by
the writer, as, provided he can describe what he has seen,
they may safely be left to the reader. Besides, where out-
door amusements and many other things are concerned,
people should rest satisfied with contrasts. The comparative
method often plays the deuce with one. You can, for
instance, get a great deal of fun out of the Calpe hounds
at Gibraltar, or, as I am told, out of punt fishing in the
Thames. But both must be accepted as things by them-
selves. It will not do to be always comparing the Queen
of Spain's chair to the Burton Flats, or a baited swim
to the Thurso or the Awe. Instinctively, I suppose, a
process of comparison is always going on. You cannot
at will make your mind as blank and virgin as a sensi-
tive plate. What you may have seen and done is always
thrusting its more or less apt impertinences into what you
may be seeing and doing ; but, like Colonel Thornton of

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 259

Thornville Royal in Yorkshire in similar circumstances, I
set out for Calais with the open mind of ' a citizen of the
world,' with nothing English about me except my accent.

The shortness of my stay and the comfort and ease
of modern travelling did not involve the preparations which
Colonel Thornton saw fit to carry into execution in 1801.
The Colonel, it may be remembered by those who have read
of his exploits and appreciations, took a travelling carriage,
six or eight couple of hounds, two valets, a gamekeeper and
a huntsman, a terrier and a pointer, Mrs. T.,1 as he persists
in calling her, her trunks, and her maid, and he was much
incensed with his coach-builder at having to leave behind a
boat and a boat-carriage, owing to these carefully designed
necessaries not being finished. All this was in my case
meagrely represented by a pair of my own stirrup irons unci
long leathers ; but I inspected my hunting wardrobe with
very particular care, inspired my valet with a due sense of
the issues at stake, and, of course, had my hair cut by a
special artist.

French stag-hunting was not new to me ; in a sense I
was about to renew an early and affectionate friendship.
My riding and hunting education began in France. "When
I was about eight years old we went to live at Fontainebleau,
and we lived there a great deal till the war of 1870 drove
us away in a hurry. We only just got through Paris. The
gates were closed a very few days later, and cattle wt re
being driven into the fortified enceinte and were grazing in
the ditches and on the slope of the glacis when we passed

1 There were several quasi-Mrs. Ts, but I fancy this one was the lady
who in 1800 rode a four-mile match on one of the Colonel's horses against a
gentleman whose name I have forgotten on York racecourse. An immense con-
course assembled, and great admiration was expressed at Mrs. Thornton's
riding and the chasteness of her bloomer costume. She made too much play

however with her horse and was easily beaten. Poor Mr. , who probably

could not help himself, was censured by public opinion for his lack of chivalry.

260 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

through ; people used to drive out to see them. Our house
in the Rue Royale was actually tenanted by Prussian officers,
who behaved very well and made a sensible use of every-
thing and of the servants. Fortunately my father prudently
buried a recent consignment of claret in the garden before
he left.

My first pony was black — a mare called Mignonne. She
was bought at Cheris. I don't know how she was bred, but
her shoulders were good enough to permit of her kicking
high. Our groom — who used also to cirer the parquet
floors — was an ex-dragoon, an Alsatian. If the day was
cold, clear, and sunny, he always warned me that Mignonne
might be gate. He was often right about this, and I was
often kicked off. My father did not care much about the
hunting. ' One fool follows another,' he used to say, and
he seldom came out, or if he did went home early, so my
education in venerie was left to Isidore, who prided himself
upon a complete knowledge of its martial observances
and excellent mysteries. We had great fun together, and we
were great friends.

Isidore was not an over-confident rider, but in his shiny
peaked cap, alpaca coat, white duck trousers and straps,
which was his costume on sunny spring days, he circum-
vented an academy canter down an alley as well as his
neighbours. When I first went to school in 1864 Mignonne
was sold. However, I always got out hunting when
I came home for the holidays. I was soon promoted to
independence and an animal called ' Enguerrand,' just
out of training, and after Enguerrand to a three-year-
old called ' Flambeau,' and sometimes I was allowed to hire.
Flambeau had a chequered career. He could ' run a bit '
--an expensive accomplishment — and once managed to win
a match either at Chantilly or Longchamps. Then he
used to go stag and boar hunting, which he liked better

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 261

than the last two or three furlongs. When we all had to
flit, bag and baggage, before the Prussian advance, my father
did not go with us, but rode a clean-bred and most fractious
chestnut mare named Catalina to the coast from Fontaine-
bleau. I think it was to Dieppe. Isidore accompanied him
on Flambeau. It was lovely weather, and both horses had
good legs and feet, so they enjoyed it. Once they were all
but shot at as spies by a zealous franc-tireur from behind a
tree, but explanations were quickly forthcoming from the
startled Isidore. Flambeau was soon after raffled for an
unflattering amount at a bazaar in aid of an organ fund
in Yorkshire. By that time he made a cheerful noise
himself.

The Fontainebleau hirelings were very moderate animals
and suffered from chronic sore backs, but I remember one, a
reputed ' Irlandais,' which was held in high esteem and
request ; and another of the now scarce colour known as
porcelaine — a creamy white with black spots and flecks and
a very pink nose. He was a well-shaped, self-advertising ani-
mal, and made a great show and commotion. Louis XIV.,
who liked pied chargers, would have looked capital on
him, and Loutherbourg or Vander Meulen would have
been pleased with their model. There was plenty of hunt-
ing ; M. M. Aguado hustled the boar about ; the Imperial
Venerie hunted the stag. The late Baron Lambert, as
Lieutenant de la Venerie, was for all practical purposes
Master. He was very kind to me, and I looked up to him
as one upon the pinnacle of human greatness. He invited
me once or twice to the Venerie, took me out for a ride on a
Venerie horse, and gave me a Swaine and Adeney cutting
whip. Speaking from memory, I think he bought nice
horses with plenty of quality for the men, and he always
rode lean-necked, clean-headed, conspicuously coloured
horses himself. I remember in particular a charming white

262 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

fl

PIQUEUR DE LA VEXERIE IMPERIAL]-:
After A. de Dreux

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 263

mare. I would not swear to it, but I think she was called
Regina. The first Latin declension was in great request for
the names of mares in the hunt stables ; the Roman Empire
and the Punic wars being placed under heavy contributions in
the kennels.

Baron Lambert was quite a character and a wit. Lord
Byron never would speak French because he declined to
speak it like a German waiter ; but the Baron had no such
fastidiousness about his English. He spoke it as freely and
graphically as any Mr. Tiptop in Melton, and could slur the
h in horse and hundred, and shunt the g in hunting with
the refined subtlety of a Lord Scamperdale.

He rode about 12 st., a l'Anglaise, in an English pain-flap
saddle, double bridle, and hunting spurs. In those days these
were all looked upon with only half -approval, for haute ecole
riding made her concessions slowly. But Baron Lambert's
English ways were never overdone, and he quite suited the
frame of his circumstances. His legs were perhaps a trifle
short for elegance, but he sat well on his horse, and well-
blacked jack-boots — which looked like having been made
somewhere near the Marble Arch — did wonders for him.
White hair, a clean-shaven actor's face, but as fresh and
ruddy as Simon Lee's or Michael Hardy's, the becoming
venerie dress, and everything put on and worn and held
right. There you have his portrait. He carried an English
horn, but I have no recollection of his using it much ; and he
knew how to catch hold of a horse and balance him on a
long rein as we do here, and as even in these days few know
how to do there. I saw no one like him, when I was over
the other day, tried by the conventions of English hunting
riding form.

Napoleon III. liked the thing to go. His hunting notions
and sympathies were English. So long as hounds ran on
he winked at their having changed their deer, and paid very

264 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

little attention to the moralities and the purists. He would
often gallop like steam for a few minutes along the alleys
as they came in his way — the tuneful operations of the chase
being a matter of no importance— and then, relinquishing
all interest in the proceedings, relapse into conversation
with somebody he liked talking to. Sometimes, however, he
would electrify M. de la Bue, who held a Woods and
Forests appointment under the Second Empire, and has
chronicled its chasses, by asking him where on earth the
hunt had got to. On such occasions M. de la Rue used to
lead the way to the Etang de Sainte-Perrine, a favourite soil,
and hope for the best. On one occasion he was much
annoyed with things having gone wrong, and sent for
Baron Lambert, and found great fault with his arrange-
ments. If it should happen again, he told him in my father's
hearing, ' Je raye la Venerie d'un trait de plume.' I never
saw him out hunting, and he very seldom hunted at
Fontainebleau, but I remember his seat on horseback
perfectly. He sat right down and into his horse, and
looked exceedingly well on horseback. He was probably
not as good a school rider as the Prince Imperial, but I liked
his seat and style better. Of course, as everybody knows, he
rode exceedingly well to hounds over here, and on moderate
horses. On one occasion he showed the whole Queen's
field the way, including, I believe, Charles Davis, for the first
two or three miles from Pole Hill in the Harrow country.

The old school were scandalised by the full-steam-
ahead ways which, under the Second Empire, jostled the
stately and classical proceedings of the Valois and the
Bourbons. Grave fault was found in the loss of music and
the decay of sylvan arts and sciences. England was held to
blame. Fifty or sixty couple of hounds had been got
together in a ' sic volo sic jubeo ' sort of way by Comte
Edgar Ney, the Grand Veneur. A few couple of entered

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 265

hounds came from M. de l'Aigle's pack, but most of them
were draft hounds got together in a hurry from England ; and
entered draft hounds which go to France are sometimes not
good enough to earn their keep in their own country.

As far as I remember, I think the hounds were wanting
in music, but the men did their best to make up for the
deficiency. There was one particular piqueur whom Isidore
held in high esteem, and who was much admired for the
stirring way in which he could wind his horn at full gallop.
On such occasions, M. Eugene, as Isidore and I always called
him (of course we never dared speak to him), would come
through the horsemen and carriages in a crowded carrefour
standing up in his stirrups, and leaning over to the off side
until the bell of his horn was on the level of his right stirrup.
I think M. Eugene seldom knew where he was going, but
we all used to gallop after him. ' Bendez la main, Monsieur
TJiomas ; voild M. Eugene qui sonne,' Isidore usedto say,
getting his own horse well on the bit nd giving him the
full benefit of a muscular calf.

However, I must now relate my more recent experiences,
and say something about the hounds, the horses, and the
men I hunted with last November, and the country they
hunt.

The Channel was kind, and after travelling all night I
arrived at Laversine, a delightful destination, in comfortable
time to devote proper and particular attention to the cere-
monies of boots and breeches. Now for what I saw and
noticed and did.

As compared with those of most travellers and sportsmen
my adventures were insignificant. But I was lucky. In
these large forests it is not often that a stag will face the
open, but the day I hunted at Halatte and the day I hunted
at Fontainebleau we got out. This is, of course, a matter of
general congratulation, and everybody sits down to ride with

266 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

refreshed determination and proper regard for cultivation
and the damage fund. This is the worst of it. The plaine
or open is not good going ; it is very deep, with that pro-
testing deepness of spade cultivation. I do not know how
the land is held, whether in small or large holdings. Of
course it is the sort of thing I ought to have asked and did
not ask ; but the plaine shows the honourable symptoms of
small ownership. Biding over.it gave me the same feeling
of doing unkind damage to poor people's pains as riding
over allotments or cottage gardens would give me. It has
neither the look nor feel of a hunting country. Of course I
am only speaking of what I saw, as I fancy in some parts of
France, notably the Landes and La Sologne, there is plenty
of rough country, although not so wild as in the beginning
of this century, when land was sold au son de la voix and
the stretch of ground reached by a man's voice sold for a
few francs.

I only had four days' hunting. Two in the forest of
Chantilly with the Due de Chartres and the Prince de
Joinville ; one in the forest of Halatte with theHalatte hounds,
kept by M. le Marquis de Valon ; and one at Fontainebleau
with M. M. Lebaudy.

On the Halatte day we had an excellent hunt. It was a
very wet day, but only began to rain about 8 o'clock a.m.,
after several sunny days with white frosts at night. There
was a capital scent, and I was very pleased with the hounds
— the way they were hunted, or rather not hunted, and
their style and character. I was very unlucky in not seeing
M. de Valon hunt his hounds ; he had broken two ribs just
before I arrived. We ran through some beechwoods some-
thing like the birdless grove at Goodwood, and, just as I
have noticed in the Goodwood and the Buckinghamshire
beechwoods of the Queen's country, the hounds ran a great
pace over the thick carpet of wet beech leaves. I do not

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 267

know what sort of point the deer made, but it seemed to me
a long zigzag.

Our stag was harboured in some young oakwood with
thick undergrowth, and at first had several other deer with
him — I mean he was joined by these, or pushed them up,
after the pack was laid on. The compagnie went ringing and
lurching about together in a thinned enceinte with very strong
undercover. I rode with the huntsman through the stuff on
a nice active horse which a kind friend at Laversine, M.
Lambert, had mounted me on, and which would have found
his way through Oustwick Whin or Eanksborough ; and
although, owing to the stubborn undercover, you could not
have ' sheeted ' them, their cry was beautiful, and each hound
hunted the line as if everything depended on his individual
performance. We were often within a few yards of the deer,
who kept turning as short and stupid as rabbits in the
corner of a warren ; and the hounds must have constantly
seen them, but they showed none of the demoralisation of
view. Taking nothing for granted, they stuck to the line
religiously, almost fanatically ; I do not think you could have
lifted them if you had tried. At last they got the stag — an
eight-pointer — away with one nobber, who soon got dropped,
and stuck to him like wax till they forced him over three
or four marshy fields into the Oise and drowned him. I
think we were running about two and a half hours.

M. de Valon never touches hounds ; that is, they get
no assistance of any kind. They have crosses of English
blood ; and, like M. de Chezelles, he is especially fond of the
Duke of Beaufort's blood. But they are essentially French
hounds, and personally I liked them much better in their
work, their appearance, and their style, than any other pack
I hunted with. They are on the long side and a little slab-
sided, but of charming quality and no lumber. Over here
we should not like the colour. There is a great deal of

268 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

black and hardly any tan. But this marks and preserves the
French foundations of the pack. I saw no regular Badmin-
ton badger pie, but several hounds were of a dark mousey
colour, which they call souriot. This means plenty of
Badminton blood, and M. de Valon especially esteems the
souriots. The Halatte kennel is the only one I saw, as I
went to pay the master a visit, and to tell him how much I
had enjoyed my day. 1 went down to look at the young
entry — les chiens M. — as in many French packs the names
of the young entry of each year all begin with some particular
letter of the alphabet. As purists the French would be
more particular than the fox-hunting English Baronet, who,
wishing to name three own brothers in the usual way, called
them Govial, Gowler, and Galloper, but they stick to this
so religiously that some of the names of a large entry do
not strike upon the ear agreeably. It is, however, eminently
practical, and better perhaps than some of our names, which
are quite senseless. I am reminded of a story of a gentleman
who heard his huntsman cheering a hound by the name
of ' Lyman.' ' What,' he asked, ' does Lyman mean ? '
' Lord, sir,' said the huntsman, ' what does anything mean ? '
It was a veiy wet afternoon, but the establishment struck
me as being purpose-like and practical. They do not enter
their young hounds until February, as they usually come in
from the walks in poor condition. I noticed two things
particularly about the Halatte hounds — their ability to gallop
fast with their noses down, and their whip sterns. As to the
latter, I said to myself, here at last are the whip sterns which
were Charles Davis's secret, and which gave the Queen's
hounds their particular distinction in the days of the giants. I
was much disappointed when I found that their racy appear-
ance was the result of scissors and a fortnightly trimming. As
to the other point, I instanced it to a hunting gentleman with
whom I travelled up from Chantilly two or three days later,

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 269

and he said he had observed the very contrary, and that,
thanks to scent lying on the bushes more comfortably than
on the ground, their tendency was to look for it breast high.
I do not know how this may be ; and I dare say he is right
and I am wrong. My preference is to let things strike me
through the eye, and to be satisfied with what I see if the
sight is pleasant. Anyhow, I will not be robbed by my
reason-giving travelling companion of the picture left upon
my memory of the whip-sterned s&uriots and magpies with
their noses to the ground, racing under the high beeches.

At Chantilly we had a good hunting run of about three
hours, and killed. It was a very bright sunny day, and the
scent was moderate. There was a long check at ' la table
du roi,' which carriages, conversation, and luncheon baskets
made very tolerable for many of us. Our hunted stag had
contrived to associate several other deer with his difficulties,
and the horns blew the accompagne from every point of
the compass. However, tactics and venery prevailed. They
managed to cut him out again, and hunted him cheerfully
at a steady pace until he stood to bay. The scent, I
thought, improved in the afternoon, and I hazarded this
rather conventional observation to the head piqueur. He
said ' Au contraire,' and gave reasons which he politely
explained, but which I imperfectly grasped. They certainly
ran with more cry and confidence, but I dare say they were
closer at him. Fortunately there is no inevitable agreement
about scent, people, novels, and sermons.1

Perhaps it may be well to say a word or two here upon

1 H.E.H. the Due de Chartres most kindly sent me the foot of this good
stag beautifully mounted, with a plate bearing the particulars of the day, as
follows :

' Rendezvous a la baraque Nibert ; attaque au trou des Braconniers ; pris au
poteau St. Leonard apres 4 h. de chasse ; laisser courre par Cheri.

27 Nov. 1895.
Les honneurs du pied a Lord Eibblesdale.'

2/0 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

the qualities and defects of French hounds, and the qualities
and defects of English hounds according to French ideas.

French tradition clings to line hunting, drawing and
perseverance. It has little patience with the arrogance
and fling of a foxhound. M. de Chezelles, a high authority,
thinks that a good modern bdtard, which is to all intents
the French hound, hunts more gaiement than an English
hound. He is busier : throws his tongue incessantly, and
wishes everybody to share in his opinions, perplexities, and
triumphs ; and there can be little doubt that a good bdtard
is probably a better hound for forest hunting than a draft
hound from the Holdernesse or the Ted worth. I have
already referred to my predecessor, Colonel Thornton.
The Colonel, although he tells us that his hounds always
outpaced the French hounds — in spite of their rather
confined quarters in the travelling carriage with Mrs. T.'s
trunks and bonnet boxes — and that he himself performed
feats, and exhibited a fertility of resource which made his
hosts stare, acknowledges very handsomely that the French
surpass us in science. Without pausing to inquire whether
or not hunting is a science, be it in France or anywhere
else, I am quite willing to agree with the Colonel that
now as then the French know a great deal about woodland
hunting and woodland hounds. The same candour, how-
ever, compels me to say that they have some strange
prepossessions about English hunting, English hounds, and
English requirements.

As Lord Byron said of the Venetian ladies, the French,
as regards their hounds, have ' awful notions of constancy.'
A hound must stick to a hunted deer like a limpet. They
think that in England a change on to a fresh fox is not only
connived at, but encouraged, and English blood is always
looked upon with suspicion as willing to cheerfully compound
such felonies. Some of the characteristics of English hounds,

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 271

as noted by writers of authority on sporting subjects in France,
are novel and astonishing. According to one authority we care
little for music, or for the way a hound draws, or for his
staunchness on a scent. The foxhound is represented as a
sort of sylvan hedonist. His morals are indifferent, and his
character selfish. Tested by French standards of hound
probity, it appears that he detests thick cover, and under
such circumstances merely follows the ridings, and cuts in
with the other hounds or with the deer when they leave it.
If the deer stays in cover, he often abandons the pursuit
altogether. Bested by slower but more virtuous hounds
which have the knack of straining through the wealth of
bramble and blackthorn and ajoncs which distinguish a
French forest, he makes the most of &debucJier, goes straight
up to the front, stays there, and spanks along at such a pace
that he makes the industrious bdtards, faint but pursuing,
bleed from the nose. He only likes a plain-sailing hunt,
hates a twisting deer and a stale scent ; one boar is quite as
good as another — although it is admitted that his courage
makes him a good boar-hound— and he is useless for roe-
deer hunting. Here is another bit of news about necks and
shoulders : the experience of an expert. It appears that the
English insist upon a hound with a long neck, so that he can
stoop to a scent ; this is a proof, according to the oracle, that
most of our foxhounds have not very good noses. The
Saintonge hound — an ancient and eminent French breed —
hunted with his head up (le nez an rent), without deigning
to stoop. This is still a characteristic of a well-bred hound —
both in pointers and hounds- — but M. de Chabot goes on to
say that he has often remarked slow-looking hounds keep
right up at the lead, and throw their tongues admirably
owing to the way they carried their heads and the way
their heads were put on. In our love of drive and pace
the French think we have sacrificed nose ; and nose has for

272 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

centuries been the bon sang ne petit mentir test in France.

Le Relais Volaxt

Thus M. de Ligniville tells us how' a neighbour of his in
Lorraine had a matin — which I take to be a half-mastiff,

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 273

half-hound or pointer animal — which was a capital tufter ;
hut he goes on to say that he never saw a tufter speak to a
line at three o'clock on a hot afternoon which was not ' a
highly and a nobly ' bred one. The French judges do not
like our catlike feet — a Saintonge hound has a hare's foot —
and the lameness which besets English hounds after four
or five seasons' work in France is attributed to the shape
of our foxhounds' feet. After all, if they get four or five
seasons out of a hound, he owes very little at the price
AVilton sold him ' to go abroad.'

M. de Couteulx is a great believer in the assured future
of the French hound. In his Manuel de Venerie he says :
' Nous commencons a ne plus etre tributaires de l'Angleterre,
et je vois avant peu le moment ou celle-ci pourra bien nous
prendre plus de chiens que nous ne lui en prendrons.' This
is a comfortable and patriotic conjecture, but still in the
region of prophecy.

At Chantilly they still hunt with relays. This leads to
hounds getting scattered, semes as they say, over a wide
area. Like Virgil's seamen, apparent rari, all over the
place and quite unexpectedly, many of them taking but a
partial interest in the chase.

In this country we had given up relays as far back as
the seventeenth century. M. de Ligniville cites this with
approval as a point of acute difference between English and
French hunting principles of his day. At Chantilly they
are rather a pale survival of more splendid Bourbon days,
when relays of hounds with their gaily dressed valets, led
horses with their attendants, gamekeepers and foresters, all
contributed pomp and circumstance, purple and gold to the
scenic display. Under the Empire they were still popular
stage properties. Valets de chiens, in their grey-blue worsted
stockings and buckle shoes ; extra horses, in check cotton
quarter-sheets, for the swells and the hunt-servants, militarv-

T

274 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

looking greenclad gardes, lent colour and animation and
importance to the alleys and carrefours of Fontainebleau or
Compiegne. I remember well the relais volant — it sounds like
an inn sign or the title of a ghost story — that is, the mounted
yeoman pricker, with five or six couple of hounds, theoretically
straining on plaited hair rope but really much embarrassed
by his horse's heels. But the relais volant was always an
exciting apparition, as he hastened hither and thither on the
spur in response to some distant challenge from his compeers
of the horn. To judge by the appearance of the little band,
it was hot work for all parties.

Now that hounds are bred and entered to hunt together,
it is hardly possible to defend the relay system, and its vogue
is very limited. The objections are numerous and obvious.
It is difficult enough under any circumstances to keep fifteen
or eighteen couple of hounds together in varied and extensive
woodlands, even when they are laid on all at one time. It
must be nearly impossible to keep twenty-five or thirty
couple together laid on at different times, and laid on in a
way which must be offensive and disappointing to high-
mettled, painstaking hounds ; for a relay is always laid on, if
possible, with the leading hound as he crosses an alley, and
a clever valet de chiens is the man who can get all his relay
off and on the line at the very head of the hunting pack.

Relays, apart from pageantry, may have had their uses
in old days, before constant crosses of English blood bred
the fast batard of to-day. The old French hounds hunted
all the better for being in great numbers. They were
always uttering speech and certifying knowledge to one
another ; the chain of communication could hardly be too
long. In voice and gesture there was little to choose between
the leading and the tail hounds, and a deer was probably
seldom at the pains of exerting himself. They killed him
very possibly as often, or oftener, than the faster packs of the

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 275

present day, but they killed him by the same means as the
tortoise defeated the hare. His self-confidence led him to
take liberties with their perseverance.

The French are an exact people. You should, I am told,
read high mathematics in French, rather than in English
or in German, because the French language and the French
ingen/wm guarantee a correct nicety of expression. They
are, as we know, in arts and crafts, sticklers for form and
precision. Hunting procedure is no exception. It has a
formidable grammar and a prosody. Even to freeing the horn
from the results of your efforts, there is an ascertained right
and wrong way of doing everything. The late Vicomte H.
de Chezelles, a most competent authority, devotes some
pages of his interesting book to what he calls the grandes
fagons handed down in certain families of professional
huntsmen from generation to generation. M. de Chezelles
instances the Naruurs, Obrys, Duvals, under the Monarchy,
La Trace and La Feuille of the Imperial Venerie, as all
having the grand style, but La Trace is his Charles Davis.
When Napoleon III. reconstituted the Venerie, La Trace
was growing vegetables, and marrying people who wished
to marry, as the mayor of his native town, Dangu. His
country and his Emperor's need called him, like another
Cincinnatus, to higher things. The manner in which he
made his report to the Grand Veneur, the noble simplicity of
his approach, the poise of his whip, the elegant gesture of his
saluting hat, the bow with which he decorated the instruc-
tions he might receive or inspire, were things, M. de Chezelles
tells us, once seen never to be forgotten.

Now, I dare say I may have missed the subtleties of
doffing the lampion, or of the deployment of the whip-lash.
They would appear to be things only to be spiritually
perceived. But there is a certain kind of form which is
quite independent of dress regulations and the classical

T 2

276 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

unities. You will encounter and recognise what I mean
in a stage-coachman, or a shikari in the Himalayas ; in a
cricketer or a waiter ; in a gondolier or in a jockey — some-
thing which distinguishes the individual from his fellow-
craftsmen, which jumps to your eyes and your brain and
makes you say, ' This is the real thing.' I admit it may be
an external, that often, like many ideals, things are not what
they seem. The apparent Crichton breaks down in practice;
the bright particular star gives no better light than the
meaner people of the skies. But I am only laying stress on
externals, and, tried by that test, I saw no La Trace during
my stay in France. The eternal principles of French venerie
— once the pack has settled to a deer — seem to offer but few
opportunities of emerging from a mere character part ; and
the professional huntsmen I saw made none for themselves.
At his best the huntsman appeared to be a mounted and
picturesque master of the ceremonies, the Lord High
Chamberlain of the Forest ; at his worst he is a peasant
or a stableman dressed up in an opera-comique attire.

Although Arthur Young was given a white pony and a
pointer and a gun when he was quite a little boy, and enjoyed
the usual outdoor opportunities of English country life, I do
not think he ever quite liked hunting. Possibly he could
not have loved farming so well had he done so.

When he went to France he was shocked at ' the mis-
chievous animation of a vast hunt ' which the great properties
exhibited, at the sovereignty of the game, and the privileges
of the capitaineries. ' The crop of this country,' he said of
the district round Senlis and Chantilly, ' is princes of the
blood — that is to say, hares, pheasants, deer, and boars.' He
is always noting and regretting the absence of farm buildings
and farming energies. At the expense of his political
economy, a cowhouse at Chanteloup gives him more satis-
faction than Conde's hunting stables at Chantilly with their

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC 277

240 English horses, and the trade they meant to the English
breeder. He calls the cowhouse ' noble,' and he means what
he says ; but all the beauties of Versailles and St. Germains
make no amends for royal and noble indifference to the
complete system of turnip cultivation which he held so near
his heart. But the most utilitarian side of Mr. Morley's
' wise and honest traveller ' would have been gratified by
the forests of to-day. Thrift and forestry have tamed
Chantilly and Halatte, but especially Chantilly, until it is
difficult to trace a vestige of what we understand over here
by natural woodland. Even the Scotch firs are shaven to
the geometrical alignment of the alleys and to the perspective
of a point of sight. I could not help feeling that the deer
were a sort of well-to-do colonists living under an ordered
dispensation and ascertained conditions. Fontainebleau is
different : in spite of economics there are desolations of sand
deserts and heather, confusions of grey rock, splashes of lonely
water, which belong of right to the tall deer, and which still
set at nought the estimates and votes on account of a
department.

I have said little or nothing in this chapter about horses
and riders, and I have confined myself to observations upon
the hounds. In France the hound is the Paramount. In the
next chapters I will try to contrast French and English
ideas of horses and riding, suggested by my own personal
experiences. »

278 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEE XVI

FRENCH HORSEMANSHIP
Jamais bon veneur ne fut mauvais capitaine

Having nothing else to ride, I determined to renew my youth
by riding a hireling at Fontainebleau, and I carried this
sentimental resolution into effect through the telephone of
the Hotel Continental. It is not a modern improvement I
understand, but, after the interchange of many ' Holas,'
' qui est-ce?' ' est-ce vous ? ' the evening before, I had at last
been brought into relations with the local Percival, and ex-
pounded my wants, my inches, and my weight ; a reassuring
' Comptez sur moi ' concluding the transaction.

The next morning broke like a hunting day. Tender
grey clouds brooded low over the Tuileries gardens, and
moved slowly across a spacious rain-washed sky. The Gare
de Lyon was not as animated as Paddington or Euston on a
hunting morning. Well-cleaned — even badly-cleaned — boots
and breeches are an immediate introduction to the platform
of a London terminus and most provincial stations. They
secure at once the particular attention of the guard, the
smartest services of the porters, and a meed of goodwill and
interest all round. But the general public in France have
no part or lot in hunting. It has never been popular in the
Latin sense of the word. The chasse a courre is a' vestige of
privilege which has outstayed the ancient regime. Over here
the public hunts by right. Over there the individual hunts
by invitation.

FRENCH HORSEMANSHIP 279

In this country the varied vicissitudes of the hunting-
field are the playground of anecdote and imagination. Even
if we have not ourselves owned him — and at times most of us
have done so — we are all familiar with the exploits of the
old horse. He has invariably only given his owner one fall ;
even that, poor old chap ! was not his fault. Or worse still
— for in her case the tender grace of a day that is dead
encourages more elaborate sentiment — the old mare ; she
has never turned her head or missed her turn. Indeed, she
often insists upon anticipating it in conversation.

Mr. Disraeli's fine observation told him that something
to do with riding across country and falling on your head
must come into any true picture of English society in the
most national and unrestricted sense of the word society.
What can be better than the steeplechase in ' Coningsby,' the
after-dinner discussion over its impromptu conditions, and
the emergencies of the water-jump ? I do not know whether
people read Mr. Disraeli's novels now. They should. But,
in this particular book, nine Englishmen out of ten will
admit Mr. Guy Flouncey to be a more lifelike figure than
Sidonia, merely because his horse lay across his diaphragm
in the brook. Although upon one occasion he settled the
field on his Arabian — a mare, of course — I cannot suppose
that Mr. Disraeli had any personal experience of steeplechase
riding ; yet his artistic sense enables him, as it were, to ride
a capital race home, and indeed gets him over some little
solecisms, such as the yeoman's white mare making the run-
ning at a severe pace, lying at the time third or fourth — which
would have been fatal to a less gifted writer. All this sort
of thing, which makes the characters breathe, and which
oxygenises the atmosphere in a story of English life, can
contribute nothing to a French novel. So far from that, I
even remember M. Octave Feuillet playing the deuce with
the disturbing conception he had given me of one of his most

280 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

charming heroines, by taking her out riding. After hearing
that she ' bondissait legerernent sur sa selle,' I confess I took
less interest in her perplexed future.

There is no room either for horses in the French novel
heroes, excepting perhaps for the brougham horse who devours
the paved street on his way to an assignation. Provincial
celebrities like the stout yeoman's white mare in ' Coningsby ' ;
character parts like Mr. Sponge's Multum in Parvo or
like Marathon in ' Market Harborough,' can never hope to
emerge into real life from the horse community as they
do here. The French have never had — it is equivalent to
saying that they have never wanted — a AVhyte Melville or a
Surtees. There is never any story in modern French books
about hunting. They discourse of its etiquette and techni-
calities. To warrant his writing at all, a French writer
on sport must write as a scientist, and evolve a text-
book. Nor is this to be wondered at. Kate Coventry, Lord
Scamperdale, the Hon. Crasher, would be unintelligible
marionettes in a French novel. Mr. Sponge would never
have set out upon his tour, Mr. Jorrocks never have left
Great Coram Street. Hunting and all that has to do with
it is popular in England, in the sense of its being in the bone
and sinew of the people at large. In France it is the ex-
clusive amusement of a small class and in no sense national.
Mine. Bovary and M. de Camors, Sappho and Bel Ami did
not hunt. Their tastes and talents lay in other directions.

However, I must remember I have a train to catch.
Three or four gentlemen in moderate boots and velvet caps
were unostentatiously keeping their toes warm on the plat-
form. On the other hand, the observed of all observers, two
sportsmen with high-hammered pin-fire guns en bandouliere,
and a pigeon-toed liver-and- white pointer called Byron, had
gathered around them a knot of well-wishers. Byron mean-
while assiduously quartered the platform in fine style, in spite

FRENCH HORSEMANSHIP 281

of being repeatedly called to heel. I overheard snatches of
an evidently exciting conversation. Notes of an excellent
breeding season were being freely exchanged. ' Chez nous,'
said one, ' ce qu'il y a d'extraordinaire c'est le faisan ' ; in our
part of the world said some one else, ' le lievre est en masse.'
It is true that the arrival of my linen apron created some
little interest in favour of horse and hound, but although
it was quite courteous, I cannot flatter myself that it was
altogether respectful. Even in England, outside a twenty-
mile radius of Melton, the compulsions of leathers in this
matter of aprons are but imperfectly understood.

I arrived at the Hotel de France in ample time for a
capital breakfast. Here things looked more like business,
and the waiter recommended me a Graves which he assured
me was much esteemed by the gentlemen of the hunt. The
meet was at the Belle Croix, within half an hour's ride of
Fontainebleau, and at the telephone-appointed hour I was
informed that my horse was at the door. I have never yet
got over the pleasurable feeling caused by this familiar
announcement — I hope I never shall — so I rushed out full
of curiosity. ' Le cheval de Monsieur ' proved to be a fine
bay Prussian. A brand-new bridle with many buckles
caparisoned his lusty neck ; a glossy ultramarine frontlet
adorned a pensive brow ; a burly saddle surmounted his
thick withers. The manager of the livery stable had cour-
teously ridden round in order to show me the way, and we
looked him over together before mounting. I remarked
with deprecation upon his very German appearance, at the
same time paying a flattering tribute to the nice horses bred
in France. ' Now this horse,' I said, ' was never bred in the
Nivernais ' — this happened to be the only district which
occurred to me at the moment ; ' a heavy horse like this can
only be a Prussian.' I saw at once that I had made a point.
' Qa se voit que Monsieur est connoisseur. Dame, c'est un

282 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

cheval qui vient d'un peu partout.' From that moment the
manager and I understood each other, and we set off together,
excellent friends. The manager himself, who sat as he should,
was riding a gay little brown horse with a cock-tail, all
quality, and quite a stag-hunter. As I watched his gay
movement and the vein tracery starting into relief on his
clean neck, I made up my mind to swop horses, and so to
be quit of the cosmopolitan. After some more slighting
remarks upon the Prussian, I explained within the limits
of my French that he was riding my sort of horse, and that
he ought to have sent him for me instead of the Teuton.
' But,' objected my companion, ' you said you weighed over one
hundred kilos.' This was the telephone guess at my weight
made by my representative at the Continental. ' That is
so,' I admitted, ' but blood and action carry weight. Can you
expect either from "un cheval qui vient d'un peu partout " ? '
He knew quite as well as I did that it was not to be done.
And after loyalty citing the merits of my mount as a
' cheval de retraite,' an equine type that needed explanation,
but which turned out to be a good hack home, he agreed
to change horses at the Belle Cruix after he had shown
the brown horse to a client. The client was not out, so we
changed at once. I had a charming ride, which, as he assured
me the brown horse was ' parfait pour les dames,' was not
to be wondered at.

The Belle Croix stands high and deserves its name, but

I will not depict the landscape. ' D n description ; it is

always disgusting ' — I am sure my readers will agree with
Lord Byron.

After the ceremonies of introduction and compliment,
Monsieur Lebaudy invited me to go with him to see the
stag unharboured. As I was anxious to see his huntsman
Hurvari at work, I very willingly did so. Hurvari, who
was for many years the Due d'Aumale's huntsman at

FREXCH HORSEMANSHIP 283

Chantilly, has the reputation of being a sort of residuary-
legatee of the ' grandes facons ' to which I alluded in the
last chapter. I can offer no opinion on his woodcraft. As
I have already said, the strict ' laissez-faire ' principles of
French hunting and the colourless conditions of riding ' to
hounds in these large forests give little opportunity to the
huntsman of singling himself out, and a stranger is hardly
competent to appreciate the niceties of scientific venery.
Even on an average day, every huntsman in this country
has at least one or two chances of signalising himself by
some cast of daring talent, luck, or folly, or by the successful
liberties which he takes with a clever horse and forbidding
obstacles. Indeed, to professional or amateur alike, the con-
ditions of an English country make a day's hunting a ' carriere
ouverte aux talents.' Thus Snob's plucky horsemanship and
the little bay cocktail get him asked to dinner by the Melton
swells with whom he tries conclusions in the famous pages
of the 'Quarterly.' In the alleys and carrefoursof a French
forest he could not have hoped to enjoy so pleasant a recog-
nition of his performances.

Hurvari wears, I believe, with perfect professional pro-
priety, long and flowing whiskers of the old Piccadilly weeper
sort. His style was decorous to the point of frigidity. He
belongs, I should imagine, to the older school, which looks
upon the horse as a mere means of getting about. Hurvari
was riding the only really well-bred hunt horse I saw ; but the
animal seemed very stale, and they never abandoned a trot.
His mind seemed singularly unclouded by enthusiasm. To
make up for this, M. Lebaudy and one of the piqueux never
stopped galloping from point to point, crossing and recrossing
each other incessantly, M. Lebaudy addressing abrupt inter-

1 I remember reading in a hunting classic of a French huntsman who
told an English visitor, when they arrived together at a bank and ditch, that
it was no part of his bond to jump. Mr. Beckford — for I think it is inhis book
— is highly indignant about it ; but after all we all shrink from the unfamiliar.

284 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

pellations and questions to anybody he happened to encounter.
It is true he never waited for an answer, but this always
looks business-like, and I dare say he lost nothing.

There were very few people out, but within an hour or
so we were joined by a contingent of officers in smart un-
dress uniform, riding flippant horses in plain saddles and
bridles. Several ladies graced the scene, and I was pleased
to recognise a well-preserved specimen of the ' Princesse '
habit of my youth, thought by some to be extinct.

Fontainebleau is a large garrison and school of military
instruction. A great deal has been done in late years to
encourage unprofessional riding in the French army. ' Le
dresseur le plus sage instruit en amusant,' and the French
authorities are of that opinion. Our late Military Attache in
Paris, General the Hon. R. Talbot, who now commands the
Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot, writes to me in this connection :
' The old haute ecole seat, as practised in France, has given
way to a hunting seat modelled upon the English style of
riding in the hunting-field. The man sits back on his horse,
rides with a shorter stirrup, and with a bent instead of a
straight leg. Instead of riding upon the bit with a tight
curb, men are instructed to use both bit and snaffle, the
former being less severe, with a comparatively loose curb.
The man who made a revolution in French riding was
General L'Hotte, who introduced the hunting seat and made
jumping and riding across country take the place of the
manege and haute ecole style of riding. He was backed up
by General de Gallifet and all the best cavalry officers in
France. He altered the whole system of instruction at the
Cavalry School of Saumur, which is now as good a military
school of riding as can be imagined. There are about four to
five hundred thoroughbred horses kept specially for teaching
young officers to ride. Every cavalry officer has to spend
twelve months at Saumur after being a year with his regiment.

FRENCH HORSEMANSHIP

285

During this twelve months' course he has to ride four or
five different horses every day. One horse is a trained
charger of his own ; a second is a young thoroughbred horse
which he has to handle from the first, and break and make into
a charger ; the other two or three horses are varied every
day, and chosen by the instructors. Great attention is given
to jumping and out-of-door training. On all the roads round
Saumur there are jumps along the sidings. Steeplechases

M. DUTECH CLEARING THE GATE AT A LEVEL CROSSING UPON PAPILLON
From ' Le Sport Universel Illustri? December 1, 1896.

are constantly run, prizes given by the Government, and the
officers are allowed to ride Government horses. I consider
that the present generation of cavalry officers below the
rank of colonel ride remarkably well, with graceful easy
seats and light hands as a rule. I do not think that there
are nearly so many really fine riders as in the English
cavalry, but there is more uniformity. Young fellows who
are clumsily built and unlikely to make cavalry soldiers are
not allowed to enter the cavalry, instead of, as with us,

286 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

being eliminated subsequently, often after many years'
service.'

In the English army it is always taken for granted that
the major will know how to ride. Thus some of the mounted
officers of an Infantry Brigade at Aldershot, or rather the
vagaries of their seats and of their chargers, are often exceed-
ingly diverting. I remember occasions when they have
made quite tolerable the interminable pauses and contra-
dictions of a review in the Long Valley or a field-day on
the Fox Hills. We were often grateful to these eccentric
horsemen. Nothing is taken for granted about riding, or
indeed about anything else in France. A mounted officer
must know how to ride his horse. The French cut of booted
over-all rather smothers a plain saddle, and their short-
waisted many-buttoned tunic seems to cock a man too much
up on his horse. Indeed, with the exception of the long
undress frock-coat and close over-all of our own hussars, no
uniform looks really well with civilian saddlery. But I have
no hesitation in saying that the forty or fifty officers I saw
out with Monsieur Lebaudy's hounds rode quite as well
as, mutatis mutandis, the corresponding contingent from
Aldershot do with Mr. Garth or the Queen's.

But to return to my captains and colonels and subalterns
and the glades of Fontainebleau. Uniform out hunting was
not unfamiliar to me. In the old days ' mon capitaine ' or
' mon colonel ' occasionally came out hunting, but his punctilio
was tremendous. I am not at all sure he did not always wear
his sword. At all events he maintained throughout a strictly
barrack-square demeanour, or at the best seemed to be bent
on a reconnaissance. "When we encountered this image of
war, at a carrefour, ' le brave Isidore,' as he was honourably
dubbed at ' Le Cheval Noir ' and other houses of call, used
instinctively to pull himself together, straighten his leg, drop
his heel and right arm, and coerce into an extra curve his left

FRENCH HORSEMANSHIP 287

wrist. All this is changed. I feel certain that had it been
our lot to be translated into a gallop over the Berkshire banks,
the military would have given an excellent account of them-
selves. One young officer in particular, on a sticky, inquisi-
tive, clean-bred chestnut horse, rode the actual line of hounds
ah day, and squeezed him in and out of the man-traps of the
rock-strewn Vallee de la Sole in a way which looked like getting
the very last stride out of a Lanercost at the judge's box.

Xow, a word or two on what I will call secularised French
riding. As far back as 1878, M. Le Jeune, in a pleasant
article in ' Lippincott,' devoted some attention to establishing
the existence of a bruising school of French horsemanship,
and he records almost controversially, in support of his
proposition, several moving incidents by flood and field.
Such, for instance, as a M. de Pully pounding two
Lincolnshire fox-hunters in Le Berri by swimming the
Creuse on a cold November day, and of the same gentleman
— who appears to have been quite a customer — being all but
drowned in a mill-race. And here it may be observed that
the French are almost over-conscious of the fact that a well-
rided forest involves a lack of suitable risk and adventure.
It was evidently supposed that every Englishman is thirst-
ing for a five-barred gate or some equally congenial obstacle.
Most courteous apologies were frequently made to me for the
absence of these luxuries, and as nothing I could say to the
contrary seemed to dispel this flattering hypothesis of my
habits, I at last threw myself into the spirit of the thing,
acquiesced in all sorts of foolhardy desires, and rode over some
enormous places in the course of much conversation. In-
deed, when at last we got out into the open I was quite
relieved at seeing there was nothing to jump.

But to go back to M. Le Jeune's contention. Without
in any way generalising from the signal exploits of indi-
viduals, I feel there can be little doubt that the old school of

288 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

horsemanship, whether military or civilian, has been gradually-
superseded. Early in the sixties hunting dress began to
change, and new dress regulations found their way into the
hunting text-books. Many of the gentlemen who hunted
with the Imperial pack and M. Aguado's boarhounds had at
this time taken to scarlet coats, blue bird's-eye neckcloths,
cords of a horrid ochre hue, and top-boots. Neither they
nor their valets managed very well at that time, and the
result was neither one thing nor the other. They would
not have looked right at Kirby Gate, and somehow they
looked wrong at La Croix du Grand Veneur. Style and
saddlery followed suit — the whip was carried differently, no
longer up like a drawn sword, or poised to a discreet parallel
with your horse's crest and pointing to a future between
his ears. By 1870 the rigour of the game had relaxed.
Haute ecole may still have reigned, but it no longer
governed. Personally I am rather sorry that its glory should
have departed. France used to be its Shiloh. Henri III.,
one of the few Valois who did not hunt, when he heard that
the Duke of Burgundy had accused him of living like a
monk, rode a school horse over a high leaping-bar in the
presence of a gentleman of Burgundy, and bade him go back
and tell his master what he had seen the monk do. The
Duke of Newcastle in his book on manege-riding instances five
French gentlemen ' as the best of his acquaintance and in the
world.' The Connetable Montmorency, he tells us, invented
a bit and spurs which were unrivalled. A school horse com-
manded a higher price in France than anywhere else. The
Due de Guise bid the Duke, then plain Mr. Cavendish, six
hundred pistoles for a grey leaping horse 'who could cut
surpassing caprioles, take the highest and justest leaps with-
out assistance,' and throw himself ' terra a terra ' an incre-
dible number of metres in the riding-school. The main ob-
jection Addison's Tory foxhunter urges against France is
the loss of a man's hunting seat. The whole vocabulary of

FRENCH HORSEMANSHIP 289

the manege is French. As I watched the young officers cram-
ming their horses along in a way which argued complete inde-
pendence of the riding-school and the classics, I wondered
what M. Triboulet, a well remembered figure of my boyhood,
would have said of it all. M. Triboulet was the respected
riding- and fencing-master of the town. He was also versed
in the theory of gymnastics and a shrewd exponent of the
arcana of dumb-bells. These were his gods, and he had
grown old and grey and poor in their service. I am afraid
he never had many pupils. To make up for this he exacted
from himself all the disciplines he would have imposed upon
others, and luckily a clever wife and the popularity of a
little cafe facing the barrack gates helped out the arts and
sciences. The ' Spectator ' would have proposed him for
his club, Daudet in his more clement mood would have in-
troduced him to us, Stevenson must have included him in
his ' Memories and Portraits.' Perhaps, though, Sir Walter
Scott would have understood him best of all, and done justice
to his faithfulness over a few things. Winter and summer
his costume never varied. A black velvet postillion cap with
a very high crown, a short black justaucorps, tight pepper-and-
salt over-alls, square-toed boots, formidable swan-necked spurs,
a long rapier-like cutting whip, grey beaver gloves, a high
1830 black stock admirably tied — for, like Beau Brummell, he
never had a failure — lent suitable dignity to the inflexible
features of an ideal martinet. He lived and thought in cautions,
words of command, and well-imagined affairs of honour.
They were the chosen companions of his leisure. Triboulet
disapproved of hunting, and looked upon the gay company
who swept through the alleys as so many lords and ladies of
misrule ; but he spent much of his time on horseback, and
he never spared himself, or the old milk-white flowing-tailed
Arab, or the streets or the landscape any one of the due
observances of the riding-school.

u

290 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTEK XVII

FRENCH HORSES

Quant a moi, je suis bien asseure, qu'il n'y a rien d'universel dans la
cavalerie, ni aucume autre chose que je schache . . . Mes vctux seront pour les
noble cavallerizzes, a ce qu'ils puissent garder cette profession honorable
exernpte de taches et blemissures, afin de s'attirer l'estime des plus grands
Roys et Princes. — Methode et invention nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux, par
le Prince Guillaume, Marquis et Comte de Newcastle, (fee. (Anvers, 1658.)

M. Le Jeune laments, in the article I have already referred
to, the absence of any hunters of French stock with the
fashionable packs round Paris. Everything, he says — this
was in 1878 — is English. To some extent this is true now.
Just as American ladies must buy their clothes in Paris — it
is an obligation to be applauded by every man of taste who
has not to pay their bills — the cream of Chantilly and Com-
piegne like to have their horses from England. A French-
man quite enjoys telling you that the horse he is riding
distinguished himself at the Dublin Show, or that he was bred
in ' le Yorkshire.' It is a not unpleasing fact, too, that in a
show class of harness or half-bred riding horses, the odds are
still in favour of the pick of the basket being an English horse.
Yet at the same time the average 601. or 101. English horse,
which is sold in Paris at 1201. or 140Z., is not a better
animal, tested by English standards of quality and action,
than the home-bred horse which can be bought for very
much less money in France.

But what does M. Le Jeune mean by French stock ?

FRENCH HORSES 291

When was there such a thing as a distinct French riding
horse ? How far must we go back to find the famous breeds
of Auvergne and the Limousin, of Navarre and Perigord, in
their integrity and vigour ?

These are questions which were scrupulously investigated
by a strong Commission x which went into the whole ques-
tion of horse-breeding and remounts in 1873. The able and
attractive report drawn up by M. Edouard Bocher, who at
that time represented Calvados in the Senat, a great horse-
breeding district, is capital reading. The general conclusion
arrived at is summed up in one sentence of that Report :
' Elles [the famous French strains] n'ont jamais ete que
l'objet de souvenirs et de regrets.' Even in Louis XIII. 's
reign a M. de Charnizay, in his ' Pratique du cavalier,'
anticipates M. Le Jeune and many subsequent writers of
authority, and bewails the absence of French-bred riding
horses. ' Our own best strains,' says M. de Charnizay, ' are
by this time either " abatardies " or lost.' 2

If M. Le Jeune is thinking of a Limousin or a Navarrois
when he sighs the lack of native-born horses, he will find
himself, historically speaking, in the excellent company of
Louis XIV. The Preamble of the ' Arret du Conseil ' of 1665,

1 Commission chargee d'examiner la proposition de loi de M. Delacour sur
les Haras et les Remontes, Assemblee Nationale, annee 1873. The Loi Organique
des Haras, 1874, is based upon the Report of this Commission.

- For what a Yorkshire show catalogue would style ' Road or Field,' we
were at this time little or no better off in England. Racing appears to have
nourished. The satirical writings of Bishop Hall give evidence of a turf
sufficiently scientific to ruin a promising nobleman like the Earl of Cumber-
land. But there are constant anxieties about the scarcity of what we now call
— the phrase rather suggests a treatise on Political Economy — ' general utility '
horses. Coaches were introduced in Elizabeth's reign, and occasioned a sudden
demand for horses. The House of Lords rushed to the rescue, and suitably
debated whether it would be best to bring up the supply of horses to the new
coaches, or to bring down the coaches to the horses. Sir E. Harwood, an
authority in Charles I.'s time, laments the increasing scarcity of ' able ' horses,
and deprecates the growing popularity of racing, and the consequent breeding
of horses for speed and not burthen.

u 2

292 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

which provided for the establishment of Haras throughout
the kingdom, sets forth the urgency of the horse-breeding
question, and the steadfast determination of the king to come
to the rescue of a perishing industry by a large measure of
State aid, ' de telle sorte.' says this « Arret,' ' que les sujets de
sa majeste ne soient pas obliges de porter leurs deniers dans
les pays etrangers pour achats de chevaux.'

Both Louis XIV. and Louis XV. got their horses from
England. Their hackneys came chiefly out of Suffolk, and
their hunters from Yorkshire — the latter were called ' Court-
aults ' from having their ears cropped, and were docked very
short. Eight hundred francs was an average price given
for hunt horses, and if Oudry's pictures are to be trusted, the
royal stud got good value for its money.

The Duke of Newcastle's beautiful book, of which the
still more beautiful MS. is now at Welbeck, was published
in 1667. It is significant that in his vivid descriptions, or
rather narratives, of the various breeds of riding horses, their
qualities and their points, he makes no mention of a distinct
Erench breed, whilst he devotes a separate chapter apiece
to the ways and uses of the Polander, the Swede, and the
Frisian. This is the more significant in view of the ascen-
dency of French horsemanship at the time. As we have
already seen, the Duke of Newcastle makes most special
mention of individual French horsemen and of French riding
generally, but says not a word about French horses. ' Barbs,'
he told Don John of Austria with happy courtesy, when he
was presented to him at Amsterdam, ' are the gentlemen of
horse kind, and Spaniards the Princes.' The Duke also held
the Naples courser in honourable esteem, but for his own
riding he preferred Barbs, Spaniards, and, it sounds strangely
in our ears, Dutch-bred horses.

M. Francois de Guise, Grand Veneur to Francois II. and
Charles IX., agreed with the Duke of Newcastle in liking

FRENCH HORSES 293

Spanish horses best, and they were popular in England.
Don Diego Salgado speaks of them, in a book dedicated to
our Charles II., as ' incomparably nimble and pretty.' The
Spaniard, till, say, 1650 or so, was probably the best animal
to go hunting on. But there are now, and were then,
Spaniards and Spaniards. In spite of the sprightly ballotade
he is throwing, I never quite liked the shoulders of the
animal the magnificent Olivarez is riding so bravely in the
great Velasquez at Madrid ; but Olivarez evidently rode a
great weight, and so had to ride the wrong class of Spaniard.
We may feel certain that Rosinante had plenty of quality,
for Don Quixote tells Sancho that you can always recognise
a gentleman by the smoothness of his seat. This rather
formidable and arbitrary formula depends at least as much
on the breeding of the horse as on the gentility of the man.
It is a Quixotic and therefore attractive way of saying that
well-bred people insisted on well-bred horses. They always
should. Cumberland remarks that there seems a pleonasm
in the manes and tails of Velasquez' horses. There is cer-
tainly a want of shoulders ; but Sir W. Stirling Maxwell
points out that Velasquez was an Andalusian who painted
according to the ideas of Andalusia, not of Newmarket ; and,
speaking of the equestrian portraits of Philip IV. and
Olivarez, he goes on to say that they enable us to judge
accurately of the Spanish horse of the seventeenth century.

The bounding steeds tbey pompously bestride,
Share with their lords the pleasure and the pride.

(Artec, vol. ii. p. 15.)

Odd colours were at this time in great favour : and
the old strain of piebalds and skewbalds still flourishes in
Holland. Utrecht Fair, held on Easter Monday, is the great
market for them, and a great many come over here. They
have many merits, and make capital coach-horses. ' Soupe
de lait,' a sort of cream colour, ' Tigre ' (fleabitten) and

294 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

' porcelaine ' were colours in great request. Louis XIV. him-
self always rode a pied horse on parade or at state ceremonies,
and would give a high price for a really conspicuous charger.

M. Bocher speaks of the system of Haras instituted by
Colbert being maintained with a high hand (' puissamment ')
for over a century. Louis XIV. certainly liked having things
his own way. Yet the measures taken do not appear to have
effected the objects in view. They failed most conspicuously
in making France independent of the foreign supply. In
1717 a State paper,1 after a sonorous prelude to the effect
that a supply of horses sufficient for all its wants is the chief
wealth and honour of a well-governed State, gives practical
reasons for further subsidies to the State Haras. The public
service, runs the text, is still far from being self-supporting ;
1 Ton s'est vu reduit a traiter l'argent a la main avec des
marchands Juifs pour tous les besoins de la cavalerie, des
dragons, de l'artillerie et meme de la maison du roi.'

If the Jews acted as middlemen, I dare say the needs of
the public service were much better supplied in this way
than by the mismanaged Haras, although the objection taken
to the ready-money element by the M. de Calonne type
of Finance Minister is easily understood. But ' Juifs ' here
may only mean exorbitant. Fond as they are of horses and
of riding, I do not think the Jews of Europe have ever
seriously turned their gifted attention to horse-dealing. At
the same time, it was a Jew who sold Ivanhoe the black
horse he did so well with at Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Sir Walter
Scott would never have got the horse into Isaac of York's
hands unless he had some historical authority.

In 1790, State-aided horse-breeding as organised by Sully
and Colbert was done away with. It was swept away in the
catastrophe of institutions, and I imagine it had altogether
failed to justify its existence. Besides, to be powerless for

1 • Memoire du Conseil en dedans du Royaume.'

FRENCH HORSES 295

good at that time in France often meant the same as being
powerful for mischief, and the Haras system was rife with
abuses. The Haras du Roi, which were in theory, at all
events, the equivalent of the present well-managed stallion
depots, should have done well enough. Perhaps they even
tried to do well : at all events, Arthur Young,1 who visited
Pompadour, makes no direct charge against them. So might
the Haras maintained by great noblemen, like the Haras de
Chambord and of Kocroy, which professed to be as advan-
tageously at the service of the public as the State establish-
ments. Their regulations and conditions of service seem
reasonable and well considered. But the ' approuve ' stallion
played the deuce with everything — that is, the stallion
owned by a private gentleman and subsidised by the State
on prescribed conditions of standard and service had become
an intolerable burden and abuse. The conditions were
only nominal — a mere question of filling in forms and
affixing a signature. The advantages to the stallion owner,
on the other hand, wTere distinctly real. The owner of an
' approuve ' or, as he was styled, a ' garde-etalon,' became
at once entitled to considerable remissions of direct and
indirect taxation, and to complete exemption from local
rates. It will be admitted, particularly in these days of agri-
cultural depression, that these were temptations not likely
to be easily resisted.

All the collaterals of the nobles, as well as the nobles

1 Speaking of the Pompadour Haras, A. Young says : ' There are all kinds of
horses, but chiefly Arabian, Turkish, and English. Three years ago four
Arabians were imported which had been procured at the expense of 72,000
louis [£'3, 149]. The price of serving a mare is only three louis to the groom.
The owners are permitted to sell their colts as they please, but if these come
up to the standard height, the King's officers have the preference, provided they
give the price offered by others.' He goes on to say that all the horses had to
be taken up at night on account of wolves, which were so common about Pom-
padour as to be a plague to everybody. On the other hand, he had a very poor
opinion of the Chambord Haras — he speaks of it as an extravagant and wretched
concern, with ' not a tendency but to mischief.'

296 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

themselves, owned stallions, and thereby shifted their rates
and taxes in a seemly way to other people's shoulders. The
effect of the operation is put by M. De la Font Pouloti in a
way which most ratepayers will appreciate, without much
knowledge of French or of the incidence of taxation. ' Les
privileges et exemptions des Garde-E talons sont tres onereux
aux communautes, parce qu'etant presque toujours des
grands proprietaries, le rejet de leurs impositions sur les
autres contribuables cause une augmentation considerable en
retombant sur le peuple.'

This was in 1789. No fewer than 3,300 stallions were
registered, yet horse-breeding for many years prior to that
date had been in a languishing condition. The whole system
was a whited sepulchre. Production annually decreased, yet
the ' approuves ' and ' garde-etalons ' annually multiplied.
Every day, too, some fresh and vexatious restriction upon
private enterprise came to the further assistance of the ' garde-
etalon.' Cunningly drawn regulations, police supervision,
pains and penalties denied to private enterprise the bare neces-
sities of life. It is neither to be wondered at nor regretted
that this ' ensemble de privileges et de rigueurs,' again to quote
M. Bocher's eloquent Report, received short shrift at the
hands of the statesmen and economists of the Revolution.

However, the horse-supply question soon thrust itself
again upon the attention of statesmen. The Haras and the
garde-etalons had been got rid of, but the practical difficulty
of working up a supply of useful horses to an increasing
demand still remained. In the year X. of the Republic,
Huzard, in a minute printed and circulated by order of the
Minister of the Interior, again calls attention to the decadence
of the ancient French breeds. Maledon, in 1803, 1 holds
much the same language, but decorates it with poignant

1 Reflexions sur la Reorganisation des Haras, par M. de Maledon, Paris,
1803.

FRENCH HORSES 297

sentiment. He laments the Limousin in quite a broken-
hearted strain. ' Le coeur saigne quand on pense qu'elle
n'existe plus que dans quelques rejetons 9a et la,' and, with
a burst of patriotism which is worthy of M. Le Jeune, he
goes on to declare that no country in the world can lay
claim to a breed equal to the Limousin, or worthy to be
compared to it for quality, stamina and good looks.

Something had to be done, and in 1806 there was a man
at the head of affairs quite able to do it. That year Napoleon
insisted upon the importation of a large number of Mecklen-
burg, Hessian, and Baden horses. This recollection was
the only thing, indeed, which reconciled me for the moment
to the Prussian I had to mount in front of the Cour des
Adieux, and in view of the long windows of the room in
which he signed his abdication a very few years later. The
direct and personal interest which the Emperor (who knew
little about horses, and was a bad rider) took in the horse
question was from the military, or, rather, the national point
of view. National, that is, in the best sense. His de-
spatches abound in special instructions to his cavalry generals
to make the most of their horses ; to Murat especially, who
had Rupert-like conceptions of possibilities and functions of
cavalry, and the waste of horseflesh in his campaigns was
enormous. Bat the industrial requirements of the country
were evidently also present to him when, in 1806, he appointed
and drew the instructions of a Commission to investigate
and report upon the alleged scarcity of serviceable horses,
the extinction of the ancient strains, and the best means of
reconstructing a State system of horse-breeding.

It is not my intention to pursue the more modern history
of State-aided horse-breeding any further. Suffice it to say
that the recommendations of the Report of 1806 were given
effect to, that they were amplified in 1815, and again in
1820. Between the year 1830 and the year 1863, when the

298 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Haras system was demolished almost as ruthlessly as in
1790, horse-breeding had a good deal to put up with.
According to the Bocher Report, it suffered many things from
incessant changes of Government, from the freaks of depart-
mental administration, and from the absence of any con-
tinuity of policy. At one time its affairs were committed to
the Beaux- Arts, at another to the Minister of ' Marine.'

In 1874 there was another reconstruction based upon the
Report of the Bocher Commission ; and the troop-horse at
Chalons or Saumur to-day is the best test which can be
applied to the soundness of the conclusions then affirmed,
and given effect to by the ' Loi des Haras ' of 1874. He stands
it well. It might not do to ask what he now costs or has
cost the country to bring to good effect since Louis XIII.
instituted a State Haras. But there he is, ' Per varios casus
et tot certamina rerum,' a very different animal to the
'Cheval Xormand ' of Lord Malmesbury's good story.1 At
the same time, I should not say that any of the cavalry
horses I saw out hunting were quite up to the best mark of
picked troop-horses from the ranks of a crack light cavalry
regiment. The conditions of modern warfare have taught

1 ' In 1829, he [Louis Napoleon] used to have several old officers of his
uncle, the emperor, about him — -men who seemed to me to be ready for any-
thing. I recollect one, an old cavalry officer, who had seen the whole Penin-
sular war, relating the following anecdote. One day he was reconnoitring with
three or four troopers when they came suddenly upon a young English officer,
mounted on a superb thoroughbred horse and similarly occupied. Summoned
by the colonel to surrender he quietly cantered away, laughing in the French-
man's face. The dragoon pursued at full gallop of his heavy steed, and when
the Englishman had allowed him to get quite close he kissed his hand, and leav-
ing him behind, shouted, pointing to his horse, "Cheval Xormand, monsieur."
Again the Frenchman pursued, threatening to shoot his enemy if he did not
surrender, and pointed his pistol at him, but the weapon missed fire. With a
roar of laughter, the young officer shouted again, " Fabrique de Versailles,
monsieur," and giving the thoroughbred his head, was seen no more. It was
most amusing to hear the old colonel tell this stcry and describe his rage, add-
ing, however, that he had always felt glad that he had not shot " ce brave
farceur." '

FRENCH HORSES 299

us that a cavalry horse can hardly be too good an animal.
It is true that he has not to jump fences, but he has to carry
a weight which from a hunting point of view would be
restrictive ; and he must possess all the qualities of a fourteen-
stone grass-country hunter, blood, bone, stoutness, action,
and no lumber. To manage his job at all he must be able,
as dealers say, 'to move himself.' Breechloaders have done
away with the shock action of cavalry and the corresponding
advantages of heavy impetus. Job's war-horse, his neck
clothed with thunder, is as much a thing of the past as
the shouting captains he either carried or unhorsed. Lord
Cardigan led the Light Brigade up the Valley of Death on a
chestnut horse which had often cut out the work amongst
the strongly-fenced enclosures of Northamptonshire, and a
hunting man could pick a stud of horses out of, say, any two
squadrons of any Dragoon or Hussar regiment now stationed
at Aldershot, which he might take down to Tarporley or
Market Harborough without any hesitation as regards looks,
quality, or action. I am not sure that he could quite do this
from the troop stables at Chalons, but I should consider the
horses I saw quite up to the average animal. "With one or
two favourable exceptions, like the shifty, long-tailed chest-
nut I mentioned before, they were all of the same type and
class, and there appears to be a reliable supply of well-bred,
native-born horses, with plenty of scope and quality, good
legs and feet, and particularly good backs and middle pieces.
Shoulders throughout perhaps left a little to be desired.
They often do. Indeed, they were so much of one model
that Gericault and Bosa Bonheur, Fromentin and Meissonier
might perhaps complain of individual character being too
much merged in a general type : but I imagine the French
cavalry horse is a better animal now than he has ever been,
and that he would go faster, carry more weight, and stand
the strain of a campaign very much better than the under-

300 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

sized Arabs so much esteemed before the war of 1870, or
the plain-headed trooper M. Detaille draws so admirably.

I really think the nicest horse I saw in France — not
excepting the one I rode at Chantilly, which had won in a
strong four-year-old class at Dublin — was a French-bred
horse. He was the property of a M. Kulb, with whom I rode
home three or four miles after my day with the Halatte hounds
to a village called Fleuriner, where a most excellent refection
was laid out for ' messieurs et mesdames les chasseurs,' hot
spiced claret and noble baked apples being novel and attractive
features of our entertainment. This was a bright chestnut
horse, a little on the leggy side, perhaps, but aristocratic and
mettled enough for the Quorn Hunt stables under their present
sumptuous regime, or to head the Koyal Procession at Ascot
races. M. Kulb told me that ' fond ' was the prime essential of
a French hunter. I do not suppose this can be translated by
what we mean by staying power — that can only be tested
by having to go fast — but rather by cheerful resistance to
long dragging days on springless sand, which must often be
very dull for the horses. You do not have to go fast with
French woodland packs. Most of the hunt horses I saw
must have been as slow as tops. Hurvari, as I have said,
trotted about to his hounds. Unless you happen to make a
mistake or get into the open, a slow canter with the eye cast
well forward, to see if the deer crosses, keeps you comfortably
abreast of the leading hounds. And I was hunting with the
fast packs. The hounds of the Saintonge, or the Vendean,
or the Bleu Gascon breed walk their deer to death. M. de
Carayon Lacour's beautiful pack, which I should much like
to have seen, take five or six hours to bay their stag. A
good walker, says M. Le Jeune, can keep up with them.

In France the field do not, in our sense, compete. The
huntsman or the master sets the pace, usually at a Rotten
Row canter, and the field in Indian file or here and there in

FRENCH HORSES 301

sociable couples follow suit. The only time I saw a hunt-
servant really gallop he did so very much in spite of himself.
I suppose the man had got thrown out, and was rejoining
us from the rear. The procession was at the time ambling
along a narrowish alley, conforming to the painstaking
operations of Hannibal and Nicanor on our right flank, when
the chestnut horse he was riding took matters into his hands
and came through us like a shot out of a bow. Fortunately
we were warned of his irresistible approach by the lusty
shouts of the rider. We found him at the next carrefour,
mopping the honest sweat from his brow, and well satisfied
with his adventure.

An open galloping country makes a fast horse, and a fast
horse makes a fast hound. We have only to look at Stubbs's
and Wootton's and Seymour's pictures ' to see that our fast
half-bred horse had at least a century's start of the same
animal in France. The fox-hunting gentry, like the Osbaldi-
stones in ' Eob Roy,' rode galloping horses long before this
class of animal was realised in France, which is only quite
lately. But the French — witness the cavalry horses I have
just been speaking about, and M. Kulb's conspicuous chest-
nut— are quickly making up for lost time.

1 I have two or three pictures at Gisburne of members of my family on
horseback, coursing and hunting, painted about 1720 or so. The horses are
exceedingly well bred and full of character, but narrowish and not up to more
than twelve stone. They all show much more Eastern blood in their heads
— the bump on the forehead, the full eye, which we only find here and there
in an individual now. They were, of course, much nearer the blends of Arab
and Arabian blood to which we are indebted for everything we prize most in
horseflesh. J. Ward's best horses are quite a different stamp. By that time we
had somehow or other got more substance and size into our breed.

302 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

But I must get back to England and to Berkshire from my
agreeable wanderings across the Channel, and so, as far as
these pages are concerned, I will take my leave of the
Queen's Hounds, and of Her Majesty's lieges who ride to
them. I feel certain that fine runs, a hard-going tireless
pack, and — best of all — the old names year after year in the
deer-paddock, wTill continue to do credit to the keenness and
experience of the Queen's Huntsman and to the smartness
and competence of the whole staff. Nor can I pass by this
opportunity of especially thanking the landowners and tenant-
farmers of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, for their unvary-
ing generosity and goodwill. I bade them all good-bye with
sorrow in the summer of 1895. Now that I have finished
this book, in the same month of June, 1897, and within a
week of the same day, I wish them all prosperity, not only
on my own behalf, but for the sake of my companions,
who, in an unbroken succession, have held the office of
Master of the Buckhounds from the reign of EdwTard III.
until this great and acceptable year of grace, and thank-
fulness, and Jubilee.

APPENDIX

LIST OF MEETING PLACES OF ROYAL HUNT
(See Map)

Berks

1.

Maidenhead Thicket.

10.

Warfield.

2.

Brick Bridge.

11.

White Hart, Winkfield.

3.

Twyford Station (G.W.R.) 12.

Ascot Heath.

4.

White Waltham.

13.

Bracknell.

5.

Shottesbrook Farm

and

14.

Wokingham.

Park.

15.

Swinley.

6.

Hawthorn Hill.

16.

King's Beech.

7.

New Lodge.

17.

South Hill Gate.

8.

Warren House.

18.

Cricketers Inn (Bagshot).

9.

Binfield.

Bucks

19.

High Wycombe.

29.

Farnham Royal.

20.

Holtspur Heath.

30.

Stoke Common.

21.

Beaconsfield.

31.

Iver Heath.

22.

Gerrard's Cross.

32.

Two-Mile Brook.

23.

Red Hill.

33.

Salt Hill.

24.

Denham.

34.

Slough Station (G.W.R.)

25.

Chalfont St. Peter's.

35.

Langley Broom.

26.

Great Marlow.

36.

Horton Manor House.

27.

Wooburn Green.

37.

Richings Park.

28.

Farnham Common.

Middlesex

38.

Uxbridge.

\ 39.
Surrey

Harefield.

40.

Sunningdale Station

42.

Chobham.

(L. & S.-W.R.)

43.

Woking Station (L. (!

41.

Broomhill Hut.

S.-W.R.)

Hampshire

44

Yate

ey Green.

INDEX

Adair, Mr., 27
Addison, 11
Adolphus, Prince, 41
Aguadn, M. M., 261, 288

Aldershot Common, 65

Alfonso XI. of Castile, 7, 8

Althorp, Lord, 8(5

Amboise conspiracy, 240, 247

Ambroise Pare, 249

Anderson, horse-dealer, 67 n, 79, 242

Anet, Diane de Poitiers' estate, 244

Anne, Princess, 234

Anne, Queen, 33, 200

Arabian horses imported into France,
295

Aragon, King of, 250

Army riding in England and France,
284-286, 289

Arnold (' Budge '), 144 ; his death,
145 n

Arscott of Tedeott, his famous fox-
hunt, 120 n

Ascot Heath and Course, 39, 70, 78,
108, 156, 158 ; the position of its
stands, 213-218 ; names of stands,
214 ; and races, 216 ; soil and turf,
218 ; the responsibilities of the
M.B.H. at, 219, 220 ; a curious
incident there, 221, 222

Ascot Kennel. 48, 49, 118, 123, 139,
140 ; established by Queen Anne,
201 ; kennel lameness at, 201, 202 ;
its cure, 202 ; description and
plans of the establishment, 202,
203 ; the Queen's visit to, 203

Ashburton, Lord, 97

Badex horse in France, 297
Badminton, 32

Bagot, Colonel Josceline. 232

Baillie, Billie, 147

'Baily's Magazine,' 60 n, 71. 77,

238
Bapst, M., 227
Barbs, 292
Barraud, 70, 71
Barry, Mr., 121 n
Barrymore, Lord (' Hellgate '), 49
Bartlett, George, 56, 60
Bartlett, Robert, 97, 132
Bartlett, William, 172, 198, 201,

202 -"

Batehelor, valet to George IV., 51
Bateman, Lord, Master of the Buek-

hounds, 237
Beaconsfield, Lord. Sec Disraeli, Mr.
Beam, Vicomtes de, 5
Beaufort, Duke of, 70, 98 n, 207
Beaufort, Francois de, 254
Beaurepaire, 3, 10, 18, 21
Beers, Frank, T* '<
Belle Croix, 282
Bellingham, Mr., 233
Belvoir, 32

Bentinck, Lord George, 224 n
Bentinck, Lord Henry, 140
Beresford, Lord Bill, 151
Berkeley, Lord, 32, 154 n, 230
Berkshire, as a hunting country, 175.

183, 209, 302
Bessborough, Lord, Master of the

Buckhounds, 143, 223 n, 240
Billesden Coplow run, 180
Billingbear, meet at, 41
Blessington, Lady, 226
Bleu Gascon hounds, 300
Blunt, Miss Martha, 42
Bocase stone and tree, 14

306

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

Bocber, M. Edouarcl, 291, 294, 296,
298

Boleyn, Anne, 222, 227, 229

Boleyn, George. See Rochford, Lord

Boleyn, Mary, 227

Boleyn, Sir Thomas, 227

Bonheur, Rosa, 299

Borhunte, Sir John de, 10, 11

Borhnnte, Mary de. See Eoches, Mary

Borhunte, Thomas de, 11, 15

Bourbon, Anne of, 252

Bracknell country, 64, 65

Bramshill hounds, 225

Brantome, 249

Bretigny, Peace of, 7

Brighton, George IV. and, 200, 201

Broad Moor, 65

Brocas family and the hereditary
mastership, 1

Brocas, Comte de, 4 n

Brocas, Ann, 12

Brocas, Anne, 18

Brocas, Bernard, 18

Brocas, Sir Bernard, 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 13,
20, 23, 222, 229

Brocas, Sir Bernard, (II.) 9, 12, 17

Brocas, Edith, 12, 18

Brocas, John, 12

Brocas, John (II.) 12

Brocas, Sir John de, 3, 6, 7

Brocas, Sir Oliver, 7

Brocas, Sir Peter Arnald de, 5

Brocas, Sir Pexall, 12, 19, 20

Brocas, Thomas, 12, 21

Brocas, William (I.) 12, 16

Brocas, William (II.) 12

Brocas, William (III.) 12

Brocas Chantry, 1, 10

Brocas College, 19

' Brocas March,' the, 4

Brocklesby, 32

Bromley Davenport, Mr., 175

Brown (of the Old Berkshire), 199

Browning, Mr., 250 n

Brummell, Beau, 224 n

Brunswick, Duke of, 59 n

Bryant, Charles, 211, 212

Buckhounds, Royal ; hereditary
masters : the Brocas family, 1-21 ;
Mr. Hore's history of, 3 ; list of the
hereditary masters, 11, 12 ; during
the Georgian period, 22-57 ; lemon-
pye v. tan, 56, 57 ; Davis's, manage-
ment of, 59-81 ; the question of
their retention, 82-91 ; masters of,
222-243

Buckinghamshire, hunting in, 172-175,
183, 208, 209, 302

Bude, his treatise on Venerie, 245
Burghersh, Sir Bartholomew, 8
Burgundy, Duke of, 251, 253, 288
Burke, his letters, 36
Burrows, Mr. Edward, his story of the

hereditary masters, 1-21, 23
Burrows, Captain Montagu, his

' Brocas Family,' 1 n, 222
Buscott Reservoir, 198
Butler, Rev. William, and George IV.,

52
Butt-Miller, Mr., 131
Byron, Lord, 226, 263

Canning, Lord, 69

Canterbury, Archbishop of (Dr.

Temple), 88, 210
Canterbury, Archbishop of (Matthew

Parker), and Lord Leicester, 230,

231
Cardigan, Lord, 69
Carlyle, Mr., as a horseman, 227
Caroline, Queen, 27, 38, 39
Carrington, Lord, 127
Carter, George, 137
Castelnau, his letter to Henry III.,

229
Cato, the Prince of Wales's black boy,

49
Cattistock country, 182
Cavalle, on the hunting expenses of

Francois I., 246
Chabot, M. de, 271
Chalon, picture by, 121
Chalons troop stables, 298, 299
Chambord, Haras at, 295, 295 n
Chandos, the Duke of, 155
Chandos, Sir John, 250
Chantilly, 30, 266, 269, 273. 276,

277
Chantonnay, 246, 247
Chapman, Mr., 170, 171
Charles I., 21
Charles II., hunting reminiscences of,

20, 206, 232, 293
Charles III. of Burgundy, 254
Charles IX. of France, 248-250, 292
Charles X. of France, 225
Charles XII. of Sweden, 250 n
Charles the Bold, 247
Charlotte, Queen, 46
Charlton run, 48, 121, 121 n
Charnizay, M. de, 291
Chartres, Due de (Philippe Egalite),

54, 149, 266, 269
Cheruel, quoted, 230

INDEX

307

Chesterfield, Lord, the celebrated, 34,
35, 49

Chesterfield, Lord, Master of the
Buckhounds, 238, 230

Chezelles, M., 270

Chiffinch, James IL's letter to, 233

Chillingham deer, 107

Christian, Dick, 48, 169. 182, 239

Christian, H.R.H. Prince, 216

Chute, Mr., his hounds, 225, 226

Clanricarde, Lord, 240

Clark, Rev. C. (' the Gentleman in
Black '), 71

Clement, Major, 218, 219

Clergyman, hunting, 173, 174

Clergymen, hunting in France, 253,
254

Clermont, Lady, 54 n

Cleveland, Duke of, 174

Clewer-Brocas, 1

Clisson, Oliver de, 8

Coaches, the introduction of, 291 n

Cobden, Mr., tailor to George IV., 55 n,
56 n

Colbert, institutes the system of horse-
breeding in France, 294

Collyns, Dr., 115, 120

Colson, Walter, 153

Colville, Lord, 147-149, 207

Comins,the Queen's Huntsman, 140 n,
167

Common hunt, the, 29, 30

Compton, Mr., 69

Connaught, Duke of, 96, 156

Conyngham, Lady, 52

Conyngham, Lord Albert, 50

Cook, Captain, 164

Cope, Sir John, 65, 162, 223

Cordery, Mr., 63, 63 n, 65, 163

Cork, Lord, Master of the Buckhounds,
112, 134, 143, 145, 147, 149, 151,
185, 199, 202, 238

Cornwallis, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 237

Cosmo I. de Medicis, Grand Duke,
245, 246

Costumes, hunting, 156, 157, 288

Courtaults, 292

Couteulx, M. de, 273

Coventry, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 32 n, 83, 156, 243

Coverley, Sir Roger de, 11

Cox, Mr. F., 1 51

Crane, Will, 121 n

Crecy, 3, 7, 8

Crichel, George IV. at, 52

Croft, Dr., his hunting reminiscences,
59, 63, 72, 79, 101, 171, 239, 240, 243

Cumberland, Duke of (Ernest), 53,

54
Cumberland, Duke of, 237
Cumberland, on Velasquez' pictures,

293
Cumberland Lodge, stabling and

stud-grooms at, 202, 204-207, 209-

212
Cuttenden, Mr., 30

D'Albeet, 5

Daniel, his ' Rural Sports,' 118

Danvers, William, 11

Darby, Mr., 122 n

d'Argenson, Marquis, 54

d'Aumale, Due, 139, 252, 282

Davis, Charles, and the new school of
stag-hunting, 48, 50, 55-58; descrip-
tion of, 59 ; adopts hunting as a
profession, 60 ; letter to Sir John
Halkett, 62, 63 ; Dr. Croft on, 63 ; Mr.
Cordery on, 65 ; some of his experi-
ences as a Queen's Huntsman, 66 n,
67 ; Mr. Bowen May and, 67 ; Colonel
Thomson and, 68 ; '.Fsop's ' anecdote
concerning, 70 ; pictures and en-
gravings of, 70, 71 ; memoir of, in
'Baily's Magazine,' 71, 72; personal
appearance and dress, 72 ; his abste-
miousness, 73 ; disapproval of ladies
in the hunting-field, 73 ; as a disci-
plinarian, 73, 74 ; his racing tastes,
74 ; as a huntsman and horseman,
75-80 ; private character, 80, 81 ;
other hunting reminiscences of, 92,
100, 101, 121, 131, 132, 147, 148
150, 160, 168, 171, 200 n, 201, 202,
238, 239, 264, 268

Deer, things necessary for a successful
run, 92 ; scent and country, 92 ;
methods of noted deer, 92-98, 101,
102, 108, 109 ; the ' run ' the true
sport, 98, 99 ; not to be hunted like
a fox, 99 ; management of deer, 101 ;
tricky deer and how to manage them,
101-104 ; when hounds fail to realise
deer, 103, 104 ; wet ditches and water-
meadows spoil sport, 105 ; young
deer, 105, 106 ; the Swinley herd,
106 ; breed, situation, and other
influences on deer, 107, 108 ; lying
out and its effects, 109 ; some
master deer and their exploits, 109,
110 ; liking for society, 110, 111 ;
luxurious life at Swinley ; the pad-
dock staff, 111-113; exercise, 113

3o8

5 TA G-Hl WTIXG RECOLLECTIONS

Deer, noted :

Bartlett, 93-96, 107 n, 110, 112,
188

Blackback, 96-98, 110, 194, 198,
199

Brainshill, 173

Compton, 39. 45

Guy Fawkes, 102, 110, 186, 188

Harkaway, 112

Hawthorn, 108

Hide and Seek. 162

Highflver. 45

Highlander, 134

Lord Clanwilliam, 100, 108-110

Miss Headington. 154

Moonshine, 45, 40

Princess, 98 n

Richmond Trump, 67. 68

Runaway, 110

Sepoy. 93

Starlight. 45

Sulky, 102

The Miller, 100

Winchelsea, 103
De la Font Pouloti, M„ 296
De la Rue, M„ 264
Deloraine, Lady, 27
Derby, Lord, <;:';
Dessy, the trainer, 77
Detaille, M., 300
Devon and Somerset (Old) Staghounds,

116. 122, 123
d'Humieres. M.. 247
Dillon, Abbe, on hunting, 253
Disraeli, Mr . 36. 227. 2 42. 279, 280
Dixon, Mr. Hepworth, 228
Dom Miguel. 224 n
Don John of Austria. 292
Donovan, Mr. T., 10*
d'Orsay, Count. 226, 238, 239
Drake, Rev. Mr.. 173, 174
' Druid,' the, 44, 48. 77, 79, 93, 107,

183
Dufferin, Lord, 60 n
Du Fouilloux, 111 n, 249. 253
Duhallow hunt. 243
D'Urfey, 29
D'Yanville's works on Venerie, 253

Edward II. and the Brocas family, 2,

4 n, 5
Edward III., 2-8, 23, 302
Edward the Black Prince, 8, 9, 10
Edwards, the trainer and jockey, 74
Egham Heath, meet at, 73
Egremont, Lord, 60
Eleanor of Guienne, 4

Elizabeth, Queen, hunting reminis-
cences of, 18, 19, 21, 29, 229-232,
248, 291 n

Emerson, Mr., 72

Enclosures Acts, their effects on stag-
hunting, 23

English horse in France, 295 n

English hounds, 270, 271

Enguerrand. 260

Epping Forest Hounds, 48, 122 n,
130

Eton College, 3

Evelyn, 232

Exmoor deer, 111

Fernelet, his pictures, 32

I'etherstonhaugh, Sir H., 77 n

Feuillet, M. Octave. 279

' Field,' the, 156

'Finsch. Ned,' 24

Firr, 150

Fitt, Mr., his ' Covert-side Sketches,'
116. 121

Fitzhardinge, Lord. 30

Fitzherbert. Mrs., 52

Flambeau. 260, 261

Fontainebleau, 30, 265, 266, 284, 286

Forest, the, and forest hunting, pre-
liminaries of a days hunting, 158 ;
characteristics of, 158-160 ; Charles
Kingsley and. 160-165 ; ' Ximrod' on
Sir John Cope's country, 162 ; diffi-
culties of riding forest run, 165-
167 ; hounds and horses in the
forest. 167-171

Fowle, Rev. Mr., George III. and,
173

Fox, Charles James. 52

Fox-hounds and fox-hunting, 32, 92,
93, 99, 101. 119, 121, 131, 132, 137,
155. 163, 164, 167, 188

France, England's relations with, in
1734, 38 ; hunting costume of the
Second Empire. 44 ; the English
hound in, 117, 130; the Duke of
Wellington hunting in, 225 ; stag-
hunting in. in the sixteenth century,
244 ; during Francois I.'s reign, 244-
246 ; in the time of Francois II.,
246-249 ; and Charles IX., 248-250 ;
hound-breeding in France, 251, 252 ;
French books on Venerie, 252 n,
253 n; M. de Ligniville, 253-257;
changes since the taking of the
Bastille, 257 ; a few days' hunting
around Paris, 258-277 ; horseman-

IXDEX

309

ship in France, 278-280 ; and horses,
290-301 ; modern hunting in, 300,
301

Francois L, his Court. 244-246

Francois II. and the Guises, 246, 218,
292

Freeman, Professor, 88

Freeman, J., whip to Queen's hounds,
102, 200 re, 240

Freeman, Luke, 60

French horsemanship, 278 ; the French
novel on, 279, 280 ; Hurvari at work,
281-284; military schools of in-
struction in riding, 284-287 ; secu-
larised French riding, 287-289

French horses, M. le Jeune and M.
Ed. Bocher on, 290-292, 296;
English hackney and hunting horses
used by Louis XIV. and XV.. 292 ;
State - aided horse - breeding in
France, 292-298 ; the modern
cavalry horse, 299 ; M. Kulb on
French hunters, 300

French hounds, 251, 267, 268, 270

Froissart, quoted, 5

Fromentin, 299

Froude, Eev. John, 123

Gainsborough, painter, 28

Gallifet, General de, 284

Garth, Mr., 163, 165, 223

Garton, Thomas de. 7

Gaston, the Seneschal de, 252

Gates, Mr., 77

Gaucher, High Almoner, 250

George I., characteristics and reminis-
cences of, 23-25, 33

George II., reminiscences of, 25-27,
31, 33, 38, 39, 53, 121

George III., reminiscences of, 23, 35,
39, 43-45, 48-50, 60, 63, 116, 117,
123, 130, 251

George IV., reminiscences of, 42. 48-
52, 200, 224 n

Georgian stag-hunting. See Stag-
hunting

Gericault, 299

Gilbert, Miss, 73

Gilbev. Sir Walter, 49 n

Gladstone. Mr., 82, 102 n, 227, 250 n

Gohrde, his picture. 24

Goldsmith, Mr., of Kemble. 195

Goodall, Frank, 57, 72. 149, 150, 151,
153, 154, 202, 203

Goodall, Stephen, 51 re

Goodall, William, 135

Goodrich, Sir Harrv, 122

Goodwood. 32

Goodwood hounds. 4*, 49

Gordon Boys' Home, 160

Gosden (yeoman pricker). 40

Gould, Mr. Baring. 120 n

Grafton, Duke of, 26, 32. 44. 54. 180

Graham, Sir Bellingham, 174, 178

Graham, Miss Catherine, 235

Graham, Colonel James, Master of

Charles II. 's Buckhounds, 232-235
Granby, Marquis of, 95
Grant Sir F.. 78, 156, 158
Grantham, Lord, 38
Granvelle, Cardinal de, Chantonnay's

letter to, 247
Granville, Lord, reminiscences of,

68 re, 69, 71, 83 re, 222, 223 re, 240-

243
Great Western Railway Company, 190
Green, Mr. J. B., on George I.. 25
Grenville, Lord, 44
Greville, Mr. Charles, 51, 54. 237
Gronow, Baron, 51
Guest, Mr. Merthyr, 128
Guildford stud, 6
Guilford, Lord, 182
Guise, Dues de. 240. 2s*. 292
Gwyn. Colonel, 45

Halatte, hunting at, 265, 266, 268,
277, 300

Halkett, Sir Arthur, 63 re, 74

Halkett. Sir John, 60, 74, 201

Hall, Bishop, 291 n

Hamilton, Duke of. 234

Hampshire Hunt, the, 52

Hampton Court stud, 24 n, 25 re, 58

Haras system in France, 294-29*

Hardwicke, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 151 re, 154, 243

Hare-hunting in the Georgian times,
32

Hai-greaves, Mr. John. 165 n

Harriers, Boyal, 59

Harrow country, its departed glories,
142 ; reasons for its decline dis-
cussed, 143 ; jumping parties from
Harrow School. 144, 145 ; hunt-
ing during Lord Cork's master-
ship, 145, 147, 149. 151-153 ; Mr.
Higgins's account of a run in the
forties, 146, 147; Lord Colville
overcomes difficulties, 147, 148 ;
his experiences in 1867 and 1868,
149, 150 ; Frank Goodall's testi-
mony, 149, 153-155 ; effect of
railways on hunting, 155, 156 ; the

3io

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

question of costume, 156, 157 ; a
foggy day in, 189-193
Harry's Wood, 13
Harvey, Queen's huntsman, 89, 138,

139, 166, 173, 195, 197, 203
Harwood, Sir E., 291 n
Hayman's Lodge, 205
Hemans, Mrs., Ill
Henri II. of France, 247, 248
Henri III. of France, 229, 288
Henri IV. of France, 249, 254
Henry I., 29
Henry II., 12
Henry IV., 17, 229
Henry VI., 18

Henry VIII., 18, 20, 227-229
Hervey, Lord, 26, 31, 37-39, 53
Hessian horse in France, 297
Heysham, Mr. F. ('^Esop'), 52 v, 57,

70
Higgins, Mr., 146
Hoare, Charles, 179
Holland, Robert, 8
Hollande, Comtesse de, 9 n
Holroyd, Miss Maria, cited, 36
Holtspur Heath, 209
Holyrood Day, 41
Hompesch, Baron de, Master of

William III.'s Buckhounds, 234
Hoppner, his pictures, 53
Horace, 192

Hore, Mr. J. P., his history of the
Koval Buckhounds, 3, 22, 23, 26,
27,^30, 49 n, 235 n
Horse, the cream, 24, 25
Horse-breeding, State-aided in France,

294-298
Horses and forest-hunting, 169-171 ;
thoroughbreds as hunters, 183, 184,
Horses, noted hunting and other : —

Agitator, 169, 192, 193

Bayard, 7

Black Bess, 182

Cardinal, 150, 151 n, 154

Catalina, 261

Chance, 203, 208

Charlie, 207

Clipper. 67

Columbine, 70, 75

Countess, 154

Crusader, 150, 151 n

Curricle, 51

Dartmoor, 124

Dunce, 154

Firefly, 207

Hermit, 70, 75-79

Hobby, 43

Lanercost, 102

Horses — cont.
Lebryt, 7
Lockington, 207
Lottery, 80
Mignonne, 260
Milkmaid, 173
Norman, 151 n
Paddy, 207, 208
Perfection. 43
Pomers, 7
Q. C, 207
Radical, 181, 182
Rib, 121 n
Romeo, 195
Rosslyn, 154, 203
Rural Dean, 207
Stag, 128
Thornton, 207
Tiger, 53

Tobacco Stopper, 53
White Boy, 154

William, 94, 140, 169, 196, 198, 199
Houdemarre, Baron, 105
Hounds, French and English, 267,

268, 270, 271, 273, 274
Hounds, noted, and other dogs : —
Baude, 252
Byron, 280
Cardigan, 137
Charlie, 113
Cheerful, 103, 104
Dash, 122
Falkland, 105, 139
Ganymede, 201
Garland, 134
Glory, 134
Greffier, 122
Hercule>, 164
Hotspur, 166

Luxury, 118, 118 n

Merkin, 118, 121, 122

Minos, 56

Mouille, 254, 255

Nellie, 139

Nemesis, 140

Norman, 151 n

Notion, 104, 198

Needful, 94

Remus, 137

Rhapsody, 133

Rhetoric, 118, 119, 133

Shot, 122

Souillard, 251, 252

Splendour, 172

Wellington, 94

Windsor, 116, 121

Woodman, 139
Howard, Miss Dorothy, 232

INDEX

3ii

Huish, cited, 55

Hunter's Coppice, 13

Hunter's Manor, 10-13, 15

Hurvari, Due d'Aumale's huntsman,

282, 283, 300
Huzard on horse-breeding in France,

296

Isle of Wight, 139

Islington fields, hunting in, 29

' Jacob Omnium,' 30

James L, 19, 21

James II., 200, 232-234

Jenison, Mr. Ealph, Master of the
Buckhounds, 27, 44, 121, 237

Jerningham, Lady, cited, 53

Jersey, Lady, 52

Jersey, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 74, 237

Jews as horse-dealers, 294

Jockey Club and the Hampton Court
stud, 58 ; and the stands at Ascot,
214-216

John, King of France, 8, 250

Johns, Bev. C. A., 160, 161

Johnson, Dr., on Sir Joshua Bey-
nolds, 28 n ; 37, 56 n

Johnson (the King's huntsman), 39,
40

Joinville, Prince de, 266

Jowett, Dr., 22

Kempshot, George IV. at, 51, 52, 57

Kendal, Duchess of, 24

Kennel lameness, 200

Kennels, at Ascot, 200-203

King, Harry, first whip, 77, 78, 81,

148, 149, 202, 207, 240
King, Mr. and Mrs. James, 66 n
King-King, Captain, 63 n
King's Beech, 75
Kingscote, Mr. Henry, 179
Kingscote, Colonel Sir Nigel, 207
Kingsley, Charles, his love of hunting.

160, 161, 163 ; expressed in poetry,

and prose, 163, 164
Kinnaird, Lord, his Mastership, 107,

239
Kintore, Lord, 99, 100
Kulb, M., 300, 301

Lacour, M. de Carayon, his hounds,

300
Lade, Lady, 42, 42 w, 56 n
Lade, Sir John, 56, 56 n

La Feuille, French huntsman, 275

Lambert, Baron, 261, 263, 264, 267

Lansdowne, Lord, 83

La Trace, French huntsman, 275

Leatherhead, stag-hunt at, 44

Lebaudy, M. M., 266, 282, 283

Lecky, Mr., 23

Leicester, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 222, 229-232

Leicestershire horses, 182

Le Jeune, M., on horsemanship and
horses, 287, 290, 297, 300

Lely, Sir Peter, his picture of Col.
Graham, 234, 235

Les Ormes Kennels, 54

Levens, Westmoreland, 232

Levriers, of Queen Elizabeth's time,
230

L'Hotte, General, 284

Lichfield, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 238

Lieven, Madame de, 242

Ligniville, M. Jean de, 120, 132, 253-
257, 272, 273

Limousin, 291, 297

Little Weldon, 12-16, 19-21

Loddon Bridge meets, 209

London, Lord Mayor of, 29

Lonsdale, Lord, 77, 131, 167

Lord's Walk, 13

Lorraine as a hunting country, 253

Louis XL, 247, 251

Louis XIII., 250, 291, 298

Louis XIV., 251 n, 261, 291, 292, 294

Louis XV., 30, 44, 49, 51, 54, 252, 292

Louis XVI., 257

Lovel, John, 11, 12, 14, 15

Lovel, Margaret, 11, 15

Lovel, Osborne, 11, 12

Lovel, William, 11

Lucas, Mr., 122

Luttrell, 234

Machell, Captain, 217, 218

Makepeace, 147

Maledon on horse-breeding in France,
296

Malmesbury, Lord, 69, 298

Mandeville. J., 200 n

Mar, Lady, 42

Markham, Gervase, 120

Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, 206

Martin, Sir Theodore, on Lord Gran-
ville, 243

Mary, Queen, 18, 21, 231

Mary Queen of Sco s, 248

Maryborough, Lord. See Mornington

312

5 TA G-HUN TING RECOLLECTIONS

Mason. Jem, 80, 81, 147, 150, 152, 176

Massy Buckhounds, 116, 120

Master of the Buckhounds, the office
of, considered, 82-92 ; his stand at
Ascot. 214 ; character of the office,
222 ; distinguished men as riders,
223-227 ; particulars concerning
past masters, 227-243

Matthews, Eeuben, 211, 212

Matthews. Mr. Thomas, 194 n

Maxwell. Sir \Y. Stirling. 293

May, Mr. Bowen, 60 re, 63 re, 67. 92,
157. 190

Mecklenburg horse in France, 297

Medicis. Catherine de, 248

Meissonier, 299

Melli-h. Mr.. 48. 122

Melvill. Sir James. 231

Mevnell. Mr., the ' Hunting Jupiter,'
54, 77 re, 121 re, 180

Miles, Josiah, stud groom at Cumber-
land Lodge, 210, 211, 212

Milton, horse-dealer. 53

Montagu, Lady Mary Worthy. 42

Montague. Mr.. 82

Montfort, Earl Simon de, 5

Montmorency. Connetable de, 247, 288

Moore. Joseph. 194, 194 n, 195, 199

Morbeque, Sir Denis de, 8

Mornington, Lord. Master of Buck-
hounds, 50. 66», 167, 237

Morrell, Mr.. 164

Mount Charles, Lord, 50

Murat. Prince. 139

Musters, Mr. Cbaworth, 30

Mjtton, Jack, 177, 178

X.UAKA, 3, 8

Napoleon I., his horsemanship, 223 :

and the importation of horses into

France, 296
Napoleon III., his hunting morals,

263-265 ; reconstitutes the Venerie,

275
National drag-hunt, proposed, 88
Xaunton, Sir Bobert, 231 n
Neeld, Elliot, 144
Negus, Colonel Francis, Master of the

Buckhounds, 26
Nevill, Mr. Benjamin. 124
Nevill. Mr. T.. 98», 115, 124-127. 130
Newcastle, Duke of, 206, 288, 292. 293
New Forest, stag-hunting in the, 68, 69
Nev, Comte Edgar. 2l>4
Nicholls, Colonel, 131
' Nimrod,' 32, 99, 100 n, 122, 123, 130,

162, 174, 178, 224 re

Norden, his Survey of Windsor Forest,

205, 235 n
Norfolk, Duke of, 229
Nottage (yeoman pricker), 40

Odiham stud, 6

Old Berkshire country, a day's stag-
hunting in, 194-HHJ

Olivarez. equestrian portrait of, 293

Oliver, Tom, 80, 81

Orr-Ewing, Master of the Old Berk-
shire, 194, 199

Orthez, 5

Osbaldistone breed of pointer, 122

Osbaldistones. the, in ' Bob Boy,' 32

Oudry's pictures, 292

Pabis, hunting in the neighbourhood

of, 225, 258
Parsons, Alderman Humphrey, 30
Peacocke, Captain, 139
Pecche, John, 4 re, 10
Pedro the Cruel, 8
Peel, Sir Bobert, as a horseman,

227
Pembroke, Lord, 44, 225 n
Penton, Captain, 173
Pepvs, 200
Pexall, Lady, 12
Pexall, Balph, 12, 18
Pexall, Sir Bichard, 12, 18, 19, 20, 21
Philip IV., equestrian portrait of, 293
Philippe Egalite. See Chartres, Due

de, 54
Plantagenet, Lady Joan, 9
Plato on hunting, 90
Pliny on deer, Win
Poitiers, battle of, 3, 7, 8
Poitiers, Diane de, 244
Poland, state of, in 1734, 38
Pompadour, the Haras of, 295, 295 n
Ponsonby, Fred, 240
Pope, 34' 37. 12 ; his 'Essay on Fals

Taste," 155
Porter, Mr., 77 n
Portsmouth, Earl of, 5)8 n
Poyntz. Mr., 53
Prince Consort, 243
Prince Imperial, 154, 264
Pytehley, 14

Qcantock Hii.l deer, 111
Queensberry, Duke of (' Old Q '), 37, 54
Queen's hounds, the, 131-141
Quorn Hunt stable, 300

INDEX

3i3

Radcliffe, Mr. Delme, 155
Railways, their effect on horses and

hunting, 155, 156
Eatford, stud-groom to George IV., 54
Keade. Mr. George, 194 n
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his pictures, 27,

28, 37, 42 7i, 44, 54 n
Rich, Charles and James, 196, 197, 199
Richard II., 2, 11
Richmond, Duke of, 48, 5l7<,67, 118 n,

121
Rivers, Lord, 69
Robinson, Mrs. (' Perdita '), 53
Roche Court, Manor of, 10
Rochefoucauld, M. de la, 251 n
Roches, Mary, 10, 11, 12
Roches, Sir John de, 10, 11
Rochford, Lord, Master of Henrv

VIII.'s Buckhounds, 20, 222, 227-

229
Rockingham, Lord, Master of the

Buckhounds, 12, 20, 21
Rockingham Castle and Forest, 13, 14
Rocroy Haras, 295
Roden, Mr. John, 129, 130
Roe- deer hunting, 139 ; in France,

2-54
Rogers, Samuel, 85
Romans, hunting among the : their

wanton slaughter of animals, 115 n
Ros, Thomas de, 8
Rose, Edmund, 7
Rosey Brook, 194, 195, 199
Rossendale Harriers, 139
Rosslyn, Lord, Master of Buckhounds,

6871, 72, 146,239
Rothschild, Baron Ferdinand de, 155
Russell. Lord John, 36, 242
Russell, Rev. Mr., 123, 124
Rutland, Duke of, 118 n

St. Edjiuxd's Chapel, 4, 11

St. Giles' fields, hunting in, 29

St. Hubert staghounds, 124, 125, 126,
128, 130, 136, 251

Saintonge hound, 271, 273, 300

Salgado, Don Diego, 293

Salisbury, Lady, 43

Salisbury, Marquis of. 88, 154

Salt Hill, the meet at, and objections
to it, 175

Sam ways, Charles, 191, 192, 199

Sanders. Mr., 153

Sandhurst College, 160

Sandpit gate, royal menagerie at, 55

Sandwich, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 39, 237

Sangrado's treatment of deer, 123

Sartorius, his pictures, 120

Sault, 2, 5

Saumur. cavalry school at. 284,
298

Savage, Sir Richard, 12

Saxty, Mr., 240

Schaumberg-Lippe, Prince, 25 n

Scott, Sir Walter. 247

Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, 8

Sehvyn, George, 29, 34, 37

Seymour's pictures, 301

Shackle, Mr., 175

Shard, Mr., 122, 123, 237

Sharpe, George, huntsman. 48, 52, 57,
117, 121, 200-202

Sheffield, Lord, 36

Shelley, Sir Thomas, 17

Sheward, Mr., 153

Shirley (senior), 152, 153

Shirley (junior), 238

Shuldham, Lady, 42

Simmonds, Mr. F., 106 n

Simpson, Sir Henry, 209, 210

Sixteen-String Jack, 42 n

Slough country unsuitable for hunt-
ing, 175

Smith, Mr. Assheton, 69, 70, 133, 140,
141, 180-182

Smith, Mr. Noble, 190

Smith, Tom, 73

Smith, Mr. Thomas, 99, 136, 137

Smyth, Sir R., 37

Snyder's pictures, 230

Somerville, poet, 163 ; and Master of
Hounds, 30, 32 n

South, Mr. Nim, 223, 224

Sowter, Mr., 207

Spanish horses, 292, 293

' Spectator,' 159

Spencer, Lady Charles, 28

' Sporting Gazette,' 129

' Sporting Magazine,' 39, 42, 43, 116,
117, 121, 200, 223

' Sporting Review,' 118 n

Staghound, the, literature of the sub-
ject, 114 ; predecessors of the
modern staghound, 115 ; Lord
YVolverton's and Mr. T. Nevill's
packs, 115, 124, 127 ; the old Devon
and Somerset staghounds, 116 ; the
hound Windsor, 116 ; points of a
modern hound, 117 ; Royal hounds
taken to France by Colonel Thorn-
ton, 117 ; Merkin, Luxury, Roman,
and Rhetoric, 118, 119; the southern
and northern types, 119, 120; the
Yorkshire breed, a foxhound type,

3H

5 TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

120 ; the ' old Goodwood sort,' 121 ;
Colonel Thornton's hounds, 121 ;
the pointer strain, 122 ; Mr. Mellish's
lemon-pyes and the Old Devon and
Somerset hounds, 122, 123 ; Lord
Wolverton's, 127-130 ; the ' pie '
and ' black-and-tan ' varieties, 130 ;
the staghound of the present day :
the Queen's, 131-141. Sec also
Hounds, noted

Staghound of Queen Elizabeth's time,
230 ; the effect of forest-hunting
on, 168

Stag-hunting, Eoyal, 22 ; under George
I., 23-26, 30 ; under George II.,
36-39 ; and George III., 39-50 ; the
new school, George IV.'s interest
in, 48—57 ; William IV.'s experi-
ences, 57, 58 ; breaking up of the
Hampton Court stud, 58 ; Charles
Davis as Huntsman, 59-81 ; the
ethics of the sport, 82-91 ; things
necessary for success, 92 ; a run
from Hawthorn Hill to Stanford
Dingley, 93-95; from Aldershot to
Sutton, 95-98 ; mettle and fettle
a requisite, 98 ; fox-hunting v.
stag-hunting, 99 ; Davis's method,
100, 101, hunting tricky and sulky
deer, 102-106 ; good deer only
should be hunted, 100, 107 ; a run
from Cobham, 109 ; in the Harrow
country, 142-157 ; in the Forest,
158-171 ; the banks and ditches
of Bucks and Berks, 172-188 ;
masters, 222-243 ; hunting in
France : venerie and the Valois,
244-257 ; under the Empire and the
Republic, 258-277

Staines, stag-hunt in, 41

Stanhope, Lord, 233

Stanhope, Mr., 178

Stanhope, Sir John, 20

Stanley, ' Ben,' the Whig Whip, 223 n

Starkie, Colonel Legendre, 122

Stevens, Nancy, 52

Strathavon grouse moor, 122

Strathfieldsaye coverts, 225

Stratton, Rev. Mr., 84, 88-90

Strickland, Charles, 185

Stubbs, his pictures, 42, 70, 120, 122,
301

Sturges, Mr., 196

Suffield, Lord, Master of the Buck-
hounds, 154 n, 243

Suffolk, Duchess of, and Queen Eliza-
beth, 231

Suffolk, Lady, 26

Suffolk and Berkshire, Lord, 235
Sully, organiser of State-aided horse

breeding in France, 294
Sutton. Sir Richard, 71
Swift, 200
Swinley, 45, 93, 131, 235-237, 201 ;

paddocks, 106, 106 n
Sykes, Sir Tatton, 77
Symons, Sir R., 122

Tailby, Mr., 149

Talbot, General the Hon. R., 284

Talbot, Mr., 153

Talbots (hounds), 130

Tankerville, Lord and Lady, 27

Tattersall, Mr., on Black Bess, 182

Tattersall, Mr. Edmund, 79

Thackeray, Mr., 46, 55

Thistlethwaite, Dr., 37

Thomson, Colonel Anstruther, 63 n,

68, 72, 240
Thornton, Colonel, 30, 117, 121, 130,

258, 259, 270
Thrale, Mr. and Mrs., 56 n
Throckmorton. Sir Robert, 68 n, 248
Titian, his ' Charles V.,' 70
Tornabuoni on Francois I., 245, 246
Triboulet, M., 288
Trouttes, Bernard de, 8
Tubb, Mr. John, 126, 127, 157
Turberville on staghounds, 115 «
Turkish horse in France, 295 n
Tuscany, Grand Duke of, 121 n

Utrecht Fair, 293
Uxbridge, the water at, 66 n

Yalon, M. le Marquis de, 266, 267,

268
Vaudemont, Comte de, 254
Vavasour, Agnes, 10
Velasquez, painter, 28, 70, 230, 244,

293
Vendean hounds, 300
Venerie and the Valois, 244-257
Venour, Hamon le, 11, 12
Vernon, Diana, 32
Verulam, Lord, 74
Victoria, Queen, her visit to Ascot

Kennel, 203
Vine hounds, 225
Virginia Water, 40
Vitry, M. le Comte de, 254
Vyner, Mr., 201
Vyse, Captain (Dicky), 147, 240

INDEX

315

Wales, Prince of (Albert Edward),
149, 156, 207

Wales, Prince of (Frederick), 49, 53

Walpole, Horace, 26, 27, 42, 54 n, 82,
235

Walpole, Sir Robert, 26, 27, 31, 35,
38, 39, 53

Waltham Common, meet at, 43

Waltham stud, 6

Ward, Captain Henry, 127

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 36

Warham, George, 12

Warner, Dr., 34, 35 n

Waterer, Mr., his ' Nurseries,' 160

Watson, Sir Lewis. See Rocking-
ham, Lord

Waveney, Lord, 28

Webb, Byron, 79, 182

Weldon. See Little Weldon

Wellington, Duke of, 5, 50, 55, 223-
225

Wellington College, 65

Westminster Abbey, 4, 11

Westminster, Duke of, 208

Weyer, Mr. Van de, 176, 194

White, Captain J., 122

White, Mr. J., 180

Whitfield, Mr. Robert, 194 n

Whvte Melville, Major. 129, 132, 142,
192

William the Conqueror, 3

William of Wykeham, 6, 7

William III., 33, 121 n, 223, 234

William IV., 57, 237

Williamson, Mr., his hunting experi-
ences, 179

Wilson, Mr. Griffin, 41

Wilton, Lord, 224 n

Winchester, Marquis of, 21

Windham, Mr., 56 n

Windsor Castle, 2, 3, 175

Windsor Forest, a Royal hunt in, 40

Windsor Great Park, hunting in. 59 n

Windsor Park, stud in, 6, 7

Woburn deer, 107

Wolverton, Lord, 115, 127, 130

Wolves in France, 295

Woodland Pytchley, 167

Woodstock stud, 6

Wootton, his pictures, 49, 120, 301

Wraxall, his description of George
IV., 53

Wyattville, Sir Jeffry, 206

Wycherley, Mr., 34

Wyndham, Sir William, Master of the
Bnckhounds, 35, 222

Xexophon, 114 n, 161, 256

York, Duke of, 74, 232
Yorkshire breed of hound, 120
Young, Arthur, 54, 251, 253, 276,
295

Zoological Gardens. 57

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