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FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND
PEAIRIE
BY
CAPTAIN PENNELL ELMHIRST
("BROOKSBY")
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ILLUSTRATED BY
J. STURGESS
AXD
J. MARSHMAN
(LIEUT. -COLONEL LATE 28TH KEGT.)
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, Limited
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
GLASGOW, MANCHESTER, AND NEW YORK
1892
■ r\
London :
bradbury, agnew, & co. limd., printers, w1utekriars.
TO
ERNEST CHAPLIN
(LATE OP BROOKSBY HALL, LEICESTERSHIRE),
IN MEMORY OF MANY DAYS OF SPOUT
AND MANY EVENINGS OF GOOD FKLLOWSHIP.
THIS VOLUME
is
&ffcctionat*lg §hbicatcb.
October, 1891.
INTRODUCTION.
To those who, like myself, look to active, outdoor
sport as the chief means of lightening and brightening
life — or even as constituting its best enjoyment — I offer
these reminiscences. They will serve their purpose if,
with the aid of the spirited sketches that give point to
man}' of the scenes, they enable some few men and
womeii of like vein of thought to find an occasional
half-hour's amusement.
To my old and kindly friends of the " Field," and to
the Editors of the several other papers from which these
jottings are culled, I tender my best thanks.
E. PENNELL ELMHIRST.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
MY EARLIEST SHIKAR.
A Two Months' Leave in the Malay Peninsula . . 1
THE PRINCE OF WALES AT MADRAS, 1875 . . . . 18
With the Madras Hounds 28
A LEICESTERSHIRE SEASON, 1882-83 37
October before the Wire 37
The Initial Burst 43
Kneedeep Already 46
Its Kirby Gate 49
The Three Packs 56
Catch 'em who Can 61
A Recess 63
Onlooker Abroad and at Home 69
Boyhood 76
Crippled 79
Convalescent 82
Dear Dirty February 86
Deeper and Deeper 92
Climax of Dirt and Sport 97
Rouge et Noir 101
A Mixed March 105
Saddle or Salmon 109
The Farmers' Benevolent Ill
xii CONTENTS.
PAGE
A LEICESTERSHIRE SEASON, 1882-83— continued.
.Scraptoft Hall at Tea-time for Max and Fox . . 112
A Cool, Quick, Penultimate 118
A Choking Finish 123
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1876 . . 126
THE SOUTHERN MIDLANDS, Season 1885-86 . . .140
Fawsley, a First, and Notable, Experience . . . . 14a
A Bursting Fall 149
LEICESTERSHIRE 151
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1877 . . 155
The Ootacamuxd Hounds 155
GRASS COUNTRIES, Season 1886-87 171
Shooting Coats 171
A First Taste of the Open 175
The Galloping Whip 177
Preliminary Canters 178
Fox-Hunting in Earnest 183
A Rough Week 190
A Huntsman's Diary, and Mine 194
How we Fall — and How Prevent it . . . - . . 199
From "Welsh Road Gorse with the Warwickshire . . 203
Saint Valentine 207
March Moments 212
Weedon Barracks the Centre 214
From Braunston Gorse at Last — A Tale of the Brook . 216
THE WILD STAG ON EXMOOR 222
The Quantocks 234
ROEBUCK SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE . 248
CONTENTS. Xlll
PAGE
GRASS COUNTRIES, Season 1887-88 261
Grafton 2(54
Grafton Again — that Useless Railway .... 269
And More Grafton • • 274
Pytchley 279
A Scratch Day from: Town 282
Scattering the Gloom 285
Mr. Lort Philips • • 288
Crick and Kilworth 290
Atherstone 295
Hemplow in the Snow 300
The Warwickshire 302
The Braunston Gallop of the Pytchley .... 306
The Blue Covert Burst 314
The Staverton Run • 318
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS 32.3
HUNTING A CHRISTMAS DINNER 350
GRASS COUNTRIES, Season 188S-89 361
Breaking the Ice 365
An Early Week 308
Pace and Blood 372
A Run Lost 376
A Broken Leg 379
A Broken Record 37!)
Wafted from Afar 386
Wheels on the Hilltop 388
Wheels within Wheels 390
A Rough Day with the Grafton 393
The Run of the Season on Hearsay 397
Saddle Again 3D!)
Cross Country Once More 403
The Boddington Gallop 400
xiv CONTENTS.
P \GE
PRAIRIE LIFE 414
THE NEW FOREST IN SPRING 423
Fox-hunting 423
Hunting the Wild Fallow Deer . . . . . . 431
*
GRASS COUNTRIES, Season 1889-90 445
A Flutter from Alford Thorns 445
Grief with the Grafton . 446
The White Trout 449
The Black Fox of Berrydale 454
A Remarkable Week 457
Merry Christmas 465
The Place where the Old Horse Died .... 468
The Battle Ground of Naseby 470
Cold and Warmth 473
A Cure for Infiuenza 477
Snatched in the Snow 482
Great Run of the Pytchley from Knightley Wood . . 487
Bedridden 492
Hack-Hunting 494
THE ROAD 500
A First Stage by Sea 500
THE NEW FOREST IN AUGUST 508
A Gallop 512
GRASS COUNTRIES, Season 1890-91 517
Late Autumn 517
A First Rainy Day 521
A Week with Six Packs 530
Muggy Mornings 542
A Medley at Lilbourne 544
CONTENTS. XV
PAGE
GRASS COUNTRIES, Season 1890-91 -continued.
A Check before its Time 549
Beginning the Week 552
A Bridge of Sighs 555
To and Fro beneath Shuckburgh 558
Whiffs of the Week 562
The Pytchley 563
The North Warwickshire 567
Contrasts 568
Stimulating Experiences 572
Boots and Breeches 578
Chimnied and Cornered .... ... 581
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.
Then Spread Out tu Gallop and to Jump . . . Frontispiece
We Both Fired at the same Instant . . . To face -page 10
The Miserable Mud-stream was poll as a Wash-pit at
Sheep-shearing To fun pagt 22]
The Stag has Taken to the Sea To fact page 232
FOX-HOUND, FOBEST, AND
PEAIEIE.
MY EARLIEST SHIKAR/
A TWO MONTHS' LEAVE IN THE MALAY
PENINSULA.
Singapore, August 27. — Capt. C. (a brother officer of the 9th)
and I with two months' leave, have come down here to try for
some shooting in the Malay Peninsula. We had a passage
given us in one of Messrs. Jardine's steamers, or could not
well have managed it. Leaving Hong Kong on the 17th, we
reached Singapore on the 25th. An eight days' voyage seems
rather a long one to undertake for the sake of shooting, but
it is not so much for the shooting only, as to get away from
Hong Kong for a time. We are going up country with Tuanko
Solong, a Malay chief, and I believe, a great sportsman in his
way, and who happens to be just about to return to his own
country for the elephant shooting. I must tell you the
elephants come down from the hills at this time of the year,
to feed on the corn and fruits in the plains, and there is more
chance of bagging them now than at any other time. We
have been obliged to spend a few days here to get things in
readiness, buy provisions, &c, for our trip, in case game should
be scarce.
* I prefer to offer the following as jotted day by day into a pocket-diary, and
thence copied as a private letter to England, rather than at this lapse of time to
clothe the bare outline with further details or in more complete language.
B
2 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
August 30. — We start at daylight to-morrow morning ; and
have to go about eighty miles up the west coast to reach the
mouth of the Moar river, which flows into the sea close to
Malacca. We then turn up the river to get to our shooting
ground, so shall not be able to begin work till Sept. 2 or 3,
instead of the 1st, as I should have liked. We have hired a
big boat of about 11 tons, called a tongkong, for our expedition.
This requires five men, and will either sail or can be rowed.
Her cost is a dollar a day. We shall have lots of room in her,
which will be a great comfort, as we shall have to live almost
entirely on board. I am taking my Chinese boy to cook for us,
and C. has engaged a Malay servant who can act as interpreter,
for Mr. Tuanko speaks nothing but his native gibberish. We
have had a good deal to do in the way of getting steel tips made
for bullets, and a thousand and one little necessaries. Our
battery consists of C.'s double smoothbore gun, of 12-bore, and
his double breech-loading rifle, also 12-bore ; the last is a
beautiful weapon, carrying steel-tipped bullets, 2 oz. in weight.
Thanks to the kindness of friends, I am pretty well off for
weapons. I have brought my 14-bore (smooth) with me, and a
civilian at Hong Kong lent me a very fine double 8-bore
(smooth), by Holland ; it will carry a ball of about 2 oz., which,
hardened with a mixture of quicksilver, and propelled by four
or five drachms of powder, would make a tolerable hole in any-
thing. Lastly, though I ought almost to have mentioned it
first, I have been lucky enough to get a double 10-bore muzzle-
loading rifle, lent me by a man here, who has shot elephants
with it himself. It is just the sort of rifle wanted for this work,
and a bullet of 1\ oz. weight, with a steel tip, should stop any
elephant. Singapore is a most delightful place. Instead of
the eternal brown barren hills as at Hong Kong, everything
looks fresh and green. There are capital roads all over the
island, which is nearly flat, and about fifteen miles long, and as
you drive along you may almost fancy yourself amongst the
green lanes at home. The heat, too, is not nearly so oppressive
as in Hong Kong ; the sun has nothing like the same power,
A TWO MONTHS' LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 3
though within one degree of the Line ; and the nights are
deliriously cool, the mornings almost cold. We are going into
a very good game country, and certainly ought to get sport of
some kind, either in the shape of elephant, buffalo, or deer,
though it will be a great chance if we get a shot at a tiger
in that part of the peninsula.
September 6. — We left Singapore on the 31st August in the
tongkong, our party consisting of Capt. C. and myself, Tuanko
Solong, the young Rajah of Johor — a great swell in his own
country, five Malay boatmen, two gun carriers, both well tried
fellows, and my Chinese boy as cook, &c. We had part of the
boat covered over with mats, and secured ourselves a dry
•sleeping place in all weathers. JVJoving along the west coast of
Johor, for about eighty miles, we reached the mouth of the
Moar River on Sunday, Sept. 3. The scenery among the
islands in the Straits of Malacca is very beautiful ; the land
is covered with splendid green forest reaching down to the very
edge of the water. The next day we moved a few miles up the
river, which is about 500 yards across in this part ; secured
two guides, old hands at elephant tracking ; landed, and went
out for an hour or two. Here we had our first experience of
what the Malay jungle is to move through. The whole
country is much the same, being one huge forest, with a dense
undergrowth of thorny jungle of different kinds ; and, gene-
rally speaking, a knee- deep swamp under foot, with the
pleasure of floundering up to your fork occasionally in the
holes made by the elephants' feet. It is necessary always to
have a man in front to clear the way with his parang (heavy
knife). Of course, this first day we found ourselves terribly out
of condition, and returned to the boat about two o'clock
regularly beat, and without having seen anything, though we
heard that five elephants had been close to the huts of the
natives, on the bank of the river, during the previous night.
The people brought us some fowls, wild honey, and sugarcane
for sale.
Before going any further, I must tell you our daily routine
B 2
4 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
during the trip. Up at daylight ; buckets of water poured over
us on deck ; a light breakfast, consisting of a cup of coffee and
a biscuit, with a glass of sherry and quinine to keep off jungle
fever (which I am glad to say it did from both of us during the
whole five weeks we spent in the jangle) ; land and work till
between twelve and two p.m. ; then return to the boat, wash,
change, clean our guns, and sit down to the meal of the day
with an enormous appetite ; this over about three generally, we
smoke, talk, and loll about till dark (unless we go on shore
again) ; then some soup, &c. ; after that a smoke, put up mosquito
curtains, and turn in about eight o'clock.
I need not describe each day's work, for the blank days were
the rule rather than the exception. For four days we worked
hard and saw nothing but a couple of sambur deer (the largest
kind of deer in the East), but did not get a shot at them,
chiefly owing to the stupidity of the guides in front. I began
to think this rather slow work, and a poor reward for having
one's blood sucked all day by leeches (of which there were any
number in the swamps), and by mosquitoes all night, and
sleeping on a mat with a couple of bags of shot for a pillow.
September 8. — Yesterday, however, our luck began to change
a little. In the evening previous we had shot some pigeons as
they flew over the boat to roost ; and in the night we heard
elephants roaring at no great distance from the river. We were
up before dawn, and landed in search of them. After moving
for about half an hour through forest with thickish jungle, the
guide suddenly stopped, whispering " gaja " (elephants) ; and
Tuanko Solong, as the old hand of the party, led up to them.
We got within twenty-five yards without, I think, their being
aware of our approach, and creeping up with Tuanko (C. close
behind), I could just make out the huge head of an elephant facing
us, and apparently watching us. I put up the big 10-bore
rifle, and blazed quickly at his right temple, Tuanko firing at
the same time. A tremendous row ensued, hardly anything
being for some time visible for the smoke, which always hangs
a great deal in the thick jungle. Three elephants made off to
A TWO MONTHS' LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 5
the right, it being too thick to fire at them. One charged
straight towards us, but was turned by a shot from C, and
went away to the left badly hit. The elephant fired at by
myself and Tuanko had dropped on his knees stone dead, the
two shots being within three inches of each other, and both
having penetrated the brain. After loading, we followed the
three, which turned out to be a tusker, a cow, and a calf.
Twice, as we followed them, they charged down to within
twenty yards of us, though we could not see them, the covert
was so dense. After a time, we unfortunately got separated,
Tuanko and myself losing the track. C, with the tracker,
came up with the elephants twice, but, though he fired both at
the tusker and the cow, he did not get a front shot.
While he was still after them, a sambur got up and looked at
him at about forty yards off, so C. had no difficulty in knocking
him over. He then gave up the pursuit of the elephants, cut
up the deer, and came back towards the boat, bringing the
skin and some 'tit-bits.' We sent some of the men for the
rest of the venison ; and two of them managed to lose themselves,
and were out all night. Tuanko and I returned to the dead
elephant after losing the track ; and cutting out the tushes, and
taking one of his great ears, we returned to the tongkong. At
4'30 p.m. we had combined breakfast and dinner, consisting
of fried venison (with currant jelly !), elephant's tongue (awfully
hard) and marrow, and roast pigeons, all the produce of the
gun, and the first day it found us a dinner.
Saturday, September 9. — Set off early to look for the lost
sheep, and found them very shortly ; they had luckily stuck to
the venison through the night. They had passed the night in a
tree, under which, they said, five elephants had kept up a
chorus. Worked till 11*30, but came across nothing but a pig,
which we could not see to shoot, though not twenty yards off.
September 10th, being Sunday, we determined to give our-
selves a rest, so did not get up as early as usual. During the
afternoon, however, I made up my mind, as there would be a
good moon about ten o'clock, to go and watch for elephants, on
G FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the chance of getting a shot on Monday morning ; so, taking
with me one gunbearer and a guide, I set out to some trees we
had noticed as much used for rubbing posts by the " gajas " on
their way to feed. I was told it was " rather rot," and that I
should be eaten by mosquitoes ; but that if not dead by the
morning, I should be met by C. and Tuanko, who would bring
me some tea, &c. Just as I had arrived at the spot where I
had intended to make a night of it, I heard elephants roaring
some distance to the right, and as there was about an hour of
daylight left, I thought I might as well try for a shot. Going
about 800 yards through the forest we came upon an open
swampy plain, some 300 yards across, and one or two miles
long, with a few clumps of bushes here and there. We moved
in the direction of the roaring, skirting the edge of the forest
for about a mile. The sounds which had been kept up occasion-
ally now ceased altogether, and we could make nothing of the
whereabouts of the game, till, when we had gone nearly the
length of the plain, we suddenly came in sight of the herd of
from six to ten elephants, feeding quite in the open, and about
200 yards from us. There was not a single bush between me
and them, so it was impossible to stalk, and going up to them
in the open would have entailed an immediate stampede. It
was a splendid sight to see the huge brutes feeding, their great
forms moving about like perambulating houses, and the young
ones, of which there were two or three (one no larger than a
donkey) frisking round, hitting each other with their trunks,
and screaming in their play. I watched them for about a
quarter of an hour in hopes of some of them feeding towards
me ; but finding this fail, and the sun being nearly down, I
sent off the tracker to get round them, and, if possible, drive
them in my direction. However, just as he left me, they all
turned and moved into a kind of promontory running out of the
forest, consisting of high bushes, long grass, with a tree here
and there. The ground between them and us was quite open,
but as there was a single tree at the nearest edge of the covert,
I made for this, in hopes of getting across without being per-
A TWO MONTHS' LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 7
ceived. I fortunately managed to reach it, and found the
elephants were quite close, the nearest not being more than ten
or fifteen yards off in the thick covert. Rounding a bush, I
found myself right among them ; but, though I could see two or
three, I could not get a front shot at any. There was now only
about a quarter of an hour of daylight left, so, fearing to lose
the chance altogether, I let fly behind the ear of the nearest
elephant, and in a slanting direction for his brain. (The brain,
it would seem, is the only really proper place to shoot for ; an
elephant seems not even to be inconvenienced by a shot in any
other part.) He was not more than fifteen yards from me, and
dropped to the shot. The left barrel of the rifle went off at the
same moment, either from the heavy charge of powder, or be-
cause I touched both triggers in the excitement of the moment.
Taking my other gun from the gunbearer, I ran towards the
elephant, which had fallen, and which lay right between me
and the others I wished to get at. I fired over him at two
others moving across. The first fellow took no notice of the shot,
but the second " got it hot " behind the ear, stopped, staggered,
but recovered himself and bundled off.
The whole herd were now on foot, and all about me, no
doubt confused by the firing right among them, for they ran
about yelling and trumpeting, without either charging or flying.
I loaded my guns as quickly as I could behind a tree, when
I found the wounded elephant trying to recover his legs.
Thinking to give him a finisher, I fired both barrels of the rifle
into his head ; but this seemed merely to awake him, for he
regained his legs and was shuffling off, when I snatched the
smoothbore (8) from Houssan, ran round, and met him. I let
him come on till his trunk, which he was stretching out towards
me, nearly touched the muzzle of the gun, when I gave him a
shot just over the eye, and down he came with a crash on his
side like a dead horse.
It was now very nearly dark, so I could not follow the
elephants, though, had another hour of daylight remained, I
have no doubt I could have bagged another or two, for they
8 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
were scattered in all directions. Of course we had to give up
all idea of watching now, and as it was impossible to return
through the jungle in the dark, made up our minds to camp
out. It took us an hour to make a fire, for, though I had a
flint and steel for my pipe, we could not manage to raise a
flame. At last a bright idea struck me — I tore the pockets out
of my unmentionables, and, sprinkling a little powder on the
rag, applied it to the tinder, and all three blowing at once Ave
managed to get a blaze.
We were now pretty comfortable, for I had some cold venison
and biscuit, and a flask of brandy in my pocket, and the guide
had a lot of rice, so we did not go supperless to bed. Expect-
ing, too, to be out all night, and knowing the swampy nature of
the ground, I had brought with me a change of clothes and a
mackintosh ; so that, if the mosquitoes had not been so un-
remitting in their 'attentions, I should really have enjoyed the
novelty of the thing. The next morning Tuanko appeared, and
we went over a good deal of ground, in hopes of coming across
some of the elephants of the night before, which we had heard
trumpeting occasionally till about the middle of the night. We
heard a tiger roaring in the jungle at no great distance from us,
which Tuanko, imitating the sound wonderfully, drew to within
thirty yards ; but he must have scented us, for he could not be
persuaded to show himself, and at last retired without giving us
a chance of making further acquaintance with him.
We worked hard for the next five days without getting a
shot, and only seeing an odd pig or deer now and then ; but on
Saturday, Sept. 16, we had our best day. Leaving the tong-
kong between six and seven in the morning, we landed at a
small village, but hearing that elephants had not been seen for
three days, had but small hopes of finding them. We struck
straight away from the river, through a dense jungle, for about
three-quarters of an hour, when we came into a rather more
open forest. Proceeding through this for another half-hour, we
suddenly heard a kind of low rumbling noise to our left, which
we at length made out to be elephants, and moving in the
A TWO MONTHS* LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 9
direction of the sound for about two hundred yards, found
ourselves in a narrow open glade, with high grass and a few
bushes scattered over it. Elephants had evidently just passed
along this, and following the track cautiously, we found them
just within the forest, and about four hundred yards from where
we had first heard them. There were only two, and being
perfectly unconscious of our approach we might have got within
fifteen or twenty yards of them, and ought certainly to have
bagged them both as they stood ; but no sooner did Tuanko
see them than, without waiting for any one, or considering the
distance (some fifty yards), he let drive at the nearest. This, of
course, obliged us both to fire too, and all shooting at the same
elephant, he was very badly hit in the head, but managed to
follow his companion who had bolted. We followed imme-
diately, the track being very plain, and sprinkled with blood,
with here and there large lumps of bloody froth from the
wounded " gaja."
For two hours they led us a dance through the forest, the
jungle getting thicker, and the trees fewer every minute, till at
last the jungle was so dense, that, excepting in the road made
by the elephants rushing through it, you could not see more
than a yard or so on any side. We were now close behind
them, and the wounded beast being " very wicked," as Tuanko
expressed it, they were disinclined to run much further, and we
could hear their angry roaring within a very short distance.
We worked them through this sort of stuff for some time, they
every now and then stopping, and, as we neared them, rushing
•on again for a hundred yards or so. We found, too, that they
had now joined the remainder of the herd, thus making about
five altogether. This also seemed to give them confidence, and
in proportion as their pluck increased that of our tracker
diminished, for he now refused to go any further, and knuckled
up a tree. Tuanko had lagged behind, his feet, he said, being
full of thorns ; so C. and I, with our two gunbearers, went on
alone.
We could not mistake the track, for it was impossible to
10 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
move in the jungle except along the lane made by the
elephants, who were at this time about fifty yards from us,
keeping up an infernal chorus of growling, trumpeting, and
roaring. We hurried aloDg as fast as we could over the deep
ground ; but two or three times, as we were close to them, they
crashed off again for a short distance, and again stood awaiting
us. At last they made up their minds to be bullied no longer,
and, letting us approach to within twenty yards, charged down
upon us with an awful crash, the dense thicket yielding like
straw before them. We could now only wait for them and
take our chance ; the jungle like a wall on each side of us, and
not a tree near to serve as shelter on an emergency. They
came on till within about ten yards of us, before we could see
the two leading elephants. C, taking the left-hand one, gave
him a front shot, which stopped and turned but did not kill
him, and he floundered off to the left, with as much lead in his
head as he could carry with any degree of comfort. The other
leader turned a little to the left at C.'s shot, and I was able to
give him one between the eye and ear, which made him turn
completely round, like a dog after his tail, blundering on and
off his knees, and C. finished him with his left barrel behind
the ear. The rest of the herd declined coming on when the
two leaders were stopped ; and perhaps it was as well for us
that they did. We loaded as quickly as possible, and walked
up to the dead elephant, but not being sure of the whereabouts
of the others, kept our eyes about us. It was fortunate for us
that we did not go up carelessly, for all at once we made out
the head of an elephant, with ears cocked and ready for a rush,
not five yards from his deceased relative. We both fired at the
same instant, and he sank quietly down on his knees as dead as
a herring. This was, no doubt, the leader of the party, who
had quietly hidden himself, meaning to come down on us when
we should be unprepared. There is generally one of these
brutes in a herd — the most cunning and dangerous of the lot.
Neither of the dead elephants turned out to be the one fired at
at first ; but we were pretty tired out, so were glad to give up.
A TWO MONTHS' LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 11
A who- whoop brought up our valiant guide and the rest of the
party, who had deemed discretion the better part of valour.
The elephants had most obligingly led us round towards the
river during our three hours' run, and we now found ourselves
about half a mile from the boat, and not sorry to be saved a
long game of " hunting heel " — our general way of getting back
to our starting-point.
For the next three days we moved up the river with every
flood-tide, in order to reach Tuauko's territory, where, we were
told, we were certain to kill buffalo. Sunday we did not go
ashore, but during the ebb we landed for an hour or two on
Monday (Sept. 18), and came across the haunts of the jungle-
men. Their houses — by which title the interpreter dignified
the few leaves and branches thrown over a horizontal pole —
were littered with ovster shells, remains of roots, fruit, &c. We
tried hard to find some of the individuals themselves, but did
not succeed. These jungle-men are most extraordinary crea-
tures ; and it is still a disputed point as to whether they are
really men or monkeys. They certainly have these huts, and
are generally followed by a lot of dogs ; they will also eat the
flesh of the dead elephants. As far as we could make out from
the Malays, they always avoid men if possible ; but the natives do
not fear coming in contact with them; they call them "orang
outang," but that only means " wild man " in Malay, though it
would represent monkey to our ideas.*
During the next night, and while lying at anchor, we heard
something moving on shore close to the bank of the river,
which we supposed to be either an elephant or buffalo. We
went on shore at daylight, and found it to have been a
rhinoceros by the tracks, which we followed up for some hours ;
but, unfortunately, getting separated, had to give up the pur-
suit, though at one time we must have been within one minute
of him, for the mud rubbed on to the grass from his feet had
not had time to dry.
* Written some years before the attention of the public was called to the wild
men by Miss Bird, in her " Golden Chersonese."
12 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
For some days we worked hard after the buffalo ; but
though we burnt a large tract of grass (the only plain we saw
in the country), and watched night and morning by its edges
three or four days after, in hopes of catchiog the buffalo coming
out to feed on the new grass, which in that climate springs up
almost in a night, we did not get a shot. Certainly their
tracks were plentiful in the jungle, but they are very shy
brutes, and difficult to find.
On Saturday, Sept. 23rd, I had a very hard fight by myself.
We had been out for some hours during the morning without
success, and made up our minds to a blank week ; we even
thought of going back immediately to the mouth of the river,
where we had seen most signs of elephants. In the evening I
took my shot-gun with me along the edge of the burnt plain,
in hopes of killing a few pigeons, accompanied by Houssan
(my gun-bearer) with the 10-rifle and a few bullets, in case we
should come across anything big, which I thought a most un-
likely contingency, after the way we had worked every yard of
the ground about.
After walking a mile or two and sitting down for a time, I
turned back along the edge of the forest, having had one shot
and killed an immense crane which got up close to me, when,
coming suddenly round a corner, I found myself face to face
with an elephant. He was standing feeding about fifty yards
from me, in a kind of swampy creek, fifteen or twenty yards
across, which bordered the edge of the jungle. I turned directly
to exchange my gun for my rifle, but before I could get it from
Houssan, who was some ten yards behind, the elephant had
caught sight of me, and was retreating into the wood. I ran
forward a few yards, and blazed both barrels at his ear. He
was evidently struck, and, reaching the jungle, faced about,
more than half inclined to charge. Fortunately he thought
about it long enough to give me time to load, and by the time
I had finished he had moved along some distance just inside
the trees. I then ran back round the corner the way I had
come, and met him just as he was leaving the forest. Not
A TWO MONTHS' LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 13
being more than sixty yards from him, and the ground beino-
perfectly open where we had burnt it two days previously, he
saw me directly, and charged down forty miles an hour, his ears
cocked and tail high in the air, looking " beastly ugly." There
was no cover of any sort, and I had no spare gun, so I reserved
my fire till he was within fifteen yards, when I took a steady
aim at his temple, and fired. He collapsed in a moment, his
ears and tail drooped, and, wheeling round, he was stago-erino-
off, when I gave him the other barrel behind the ear. He just
managed to gain the high rushes at the edge of the juno-le
before he fell ; he lay there struggling and unable to rise, and I
of course thought that to all intents and purposes he was a
dead elephant ; so, after loading leisurely, I waded across to
give him his quietus. It was now just getting dusk, and the
sky dark and thundery, so objects in the forest were very
indistinct, and I made an absurd mistake, which lost me my
elephant. The only part of him I could see in the thick
rushes was what I took to be his trunk and the outline of his
forehead, so, calculating the position of the brain, I gave him
the benefit of a steel-tipped bullet and 6 dr. of powder at five
yards' distance. To my amazement I found I had fired into
the side of his rump ; his right hind leg as he lay I had mis-
taken for his trunk. The shot seemed merely to act as a
strong stimulant, for it brought him on his legs as strong as
ever. The smoke hung a great deal, and in trying to get clear
of it my feet stuck in the swamp and I fell all my length
almost under him. I thought it best not to move, but lay
quiet with my rifle ready, expecting every moment to have the
great brute on me ; luckily, he had had enough of it, and
instead of smashing me he made off into the jungle, and I
never saw him again. But it was intensely disgusting losino-
him, after I had made sure of him.
September 24. — We did not like to give up the chance of
finding the wounded elephant, so set off early to try and track
him up. We followed him up for about an hour and a half,
sometimes with ease and sometimes with the greatest difficulty,
14
FOX-HOUXD, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
over the harder parts of the forest, till we finally lost all trace
of him on some dry hilly ground. Thinking, however, that he
might have crossed this and entered some fine swampy jungle
on the other si'cle, we skirted the rising ground, and soon hit off
a very fresh track leading into the jungle, and which we supposed
to be that of our friend of the night before. We had not followed
this up for more than 100 yards before we heard an elephant
close in front of us, and a few yards further brought C. in sight
of him. At this time 1 was about ten yards on his left, trying
to get a view through the thick mass of thorns and rushes. C.
whispered to me, "Here he is," but before I could join him the
gaja had heard or scented us and was moving off, which obliged
C. to fire as quick as he could. The ball, striking him on the
side of the head and passing round, was, we found afterwards,
left sticking in the skin, just below the opposite eye. He was
a royal brute, and round he came to the shot, charging right
into us, till every moment I expected to see his huge head
within a yard from out of the wall of thick rushes, fee., which
surrounded us ; but missing us he came right out on my gun-
bearer, who, instead of being close behind me, as he ought to
A TWO MONTHS1 LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 15
have been, was some five paces to my left. The moment he
appeared, Houssan, contrary to his instructions — though perhaps
in this instance it saved his life, for the elephant was almost
over him — fired a barrel of my 14-bore into his temple. C.
caught sight of him, and fired almost at the same moment, the
ball fortunately reaching his brain and closing his account at
once. I never even got a glimpse of this elephant till he was
in the act of falling, after receiving the finishing shot. He, or
rather she (for it was a cow) was a fresh one, but had an old
bullet wound in her stern, which accounted for her being so
determinedly vicious, though the solitary elephants are always
more or less dangerous. In this case I could probe the wound
almost to the length of my steel ramrod, and eventually we cut
out a small round brass bullet. We now tried for some time to
regain the track of the wounded elephant, but in vain, and
returned to the tongkong, seeing on the way numerous prints of
buffalo, those of a rhinoceros and of a tiger, the latter very
fresh, but we could not carry it far.
The next morning (Sept. 25) we made a final attempt at
getting a shot at a buffalo — again no success. We then moved
down the river, landing each morning, and working hard ; but
we saw nothing in the way of elephants till
September 30. — Landed on the left bank of the river, in-
tending to cross a neck of land where the winding of the river
made a kind of peninsula. After half an hour's walk we came
across the fresh track of a single elephant, and another half-
hour brought us up to him. He winded us, however, and was
off before we could get a shot at him, starting with a roar and
a grunt like a pig. We followed as quick as we could, but it
took two hours' hard going to get near him, for he was deter-
mined to bolt, and not to fight. When we did come up to him
he was trying to force his way through a thick clump of youn^
trees ; but as soon as he became aware of our approach, he o-ave
up the attempt, and was rushing round them, when we o-ave
him two longish shots, in hopes of stopping him, or inducino-
him to fight. He was a splendid bull elephant, or elephant
16 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
man, as Tuanko called him. He bad tusks, though they were
very small ones considering his immense size. I should say he
must have stood fully 10 or 11 feet at the shoulder, two feet
more than the ordinary size ; but he must have been a thorough
cur, for he only made off the faster for the shots ; and though
we tracked him for six hours more, and a great part of the time
through thick rattan jungle, where he had plenty of opportunity
for making a stand if he had chosen, we never got near him
again. Just as we fired at him I got right over a nest of wasps
or some little brutes even more venomous than wasps, who set
upon me unmercifully, closing one of my eyes, and stinging
my face and neck awfully. In trying to beat them away, my
helmet came off, and as I should have had to wait some time
before I could have ventured to pick it up. and I was in a hurry
to follow the elephant, I was obliged to go without it, leaving
one of the men to bring it on. The fellow did not catch us up
for three or four hours ; but as I had kept wetting my head as
I went along, I did not feel any ill effects from being without
the hat. We did not get back to the boat or get our breakfast
till half-past six that evening. We were a good deal tired, but
much more disappointed at having lost a chance of getting
some ivory, for none of the elephants we had shot were tuskers.
Indeed, it is only occasionally you come across a tusker in the
Malay Peninsula,
We saw no more elephants before we left, though we stayed
in the river till Thursday, Oct. 5, and reached Singapore
Oct. 8.
After escaping all dangers in the Malay Peninsula, we
had a very narrow escape on our way down from the Moar
river. We left it on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 4, and
o-o-t along pretty well for two days on our homeward voyage,
but on Thursday night we were caught in a squall about
twelve o'clock, when six or seven miles from shore. Our mast
and sail were blown out of the boat, the rudder broke, and
we drifted about, at the mercy of wind and water. We got
broadside on to the wind and tide, and the sea breaking
A TWO MONTHS' LEAVE IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 17
over us, were at one time in considerable danger. Fortunately
the boat Avas very solidly built and the wind, instead of in-
creasing, soon lulled a little, and we were able to let go the
anchor, which, with the cable, we had insisted on being new
before hiring the tongkong. For a long time it did not hold,
but at last something caught it when we had drifted to within
half a mile of the shore ; and keeping our head to the wind
we were able to ride out the storm. At daylight it had ceased,
and we contrived to rig up some sort of sail and coast along
towards Singapore, which, the wind being fair, we reached
yesterday. So ends our two months' leave to the Malay
Peninsula; a pleasant exchange for the heat and fever of
Hong Kong.
THE PEINCE OF WALES AT MADRAS, 1875.
I.
Each item of his Royal Highness's progress and doings was
no doubt, before the public, as the next morning they skimmed
the telegrams over their breakfast. Later on they would read
more fully from the letters of the " specials " how the Prince
shot antelope, rode to pig, and witnessed the black buck run
down by cheetahs at Baroda; and how, under an equatorial sun,
he stood up to elephant in the jungle, and walked snipe in the
paddy fields of Ceylon. I will speak only of what his Royal
Highness saw and did of sport in Madras.
Nor must readers expect the orthodox Indian type, either of
fact or narrative, in what I have to tell ; for, as far as scene and
circumstances would allow and British sympathies could con-
trive, the facts bore a marked English outline, while I promise
the story shall be as free from embellishment as if it came not
from the gorgeous East.
The long-and-much-desired trip to the Annamully Hills had
to be abandoned, as the whole country from Mysore southwards
across the Neilgherries to this fine hunting ground was marked
and reported as cholera-stricken. So it was, to the same extent
that any and every village and portion of India where natives
do congregate in their crowd and filth irredeemable has its
cholera cases at one time or another of the year. However, let
this be as it may, his Royal Highness was obliged to give up his
promised excursion against ibex, bison, and sambur, and to take
his amusement in what the city of Madras could offer him,
THE PRINCE OF WALES AT MADRAS, 1875. 19
embodied in the shape of racing, steeplechasing, and jackal
hunting.
The first two, you may say, he might see much better at
home. Granted, so he might ; but that he saw much that was
novel and much that was interesting in them here I will
endeavour to show, and that he extracted much amusement
out of all three I am prepared to assert. Take my assertion
for what it is worth, but grant me a fair hearing.
One of the Prince's most conscientiously kept maxims would
appear to be to " do at Rome as the Romans do," if we may
judge in any way by the facility with which he at once assi-
milated himself to the ideas and customs of the good people
of Madras. Without shirking one jot or tittle of the cere-
monial connected with his visit, nor even after a day's toil
allowing himself the luxury of a single yawn during the
delivery of the dullest of addresses, he entered with hearty
and most unmistakable enjoyment into all that was provided
for him (whatever shape it took) ; stayed up with the latest,
rose with the earliest, and ever appeared the freshest and
halest of all.
So, on the second or third day of his arrival, 6.15 A.M. saw
him at the racecourse, where, for some time previous to each
meeting the whole sporting population of Madras daily adjourn
at early dawn.
And now there was indeed to be a meeting, for was it not
yclept " the Prince of Wales'," and was it not to eclipse every
previous effort of its kind ? A morning's racing was to be
provided, wherein should be put before him the game gallantry
of the Arab, the slashing stride of the ungainly Waler, and,
still more remarkable, the power of these latter to race over
four feet walls, in spite of shoulders that would make Mr.
Thomas shudder, and heads that would convulse a Croydon
crowd.
The Madras racecourse is situated some five miles out of the
said city — though why it was ever allowed to place itself there,
I have yet come across no white man of sufficient information
c 2
20 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
or imagination to explain to me. Each house in Madras is
built in a compound of sufficient size to give it half a claim to
the title of park, and all the racecourses in India might find
intra-mural accommodation here without removing a brick, or
interfering with any part of the road labyrinth of the municipal
council. As the case stands, however, the racecourse, training
ground, and centre-of-gossip remain a couple of leagues away ;
and to be present at the morning meeting, men — aye, and fair
women too — are content to rise at 4.30, and drive out in the
black night, wearied, apparently unwashed, and obviously un-
adorned. There is a refreshing balm, though, in the grey dawn,
a reviving sweetness in the vista of foliage that daylight opens
out ; and when the bright verdant plain, backed by the green
mount of St. Thomas, and by countless clusters of palms and
banyan trees, gradually stands forth out of the darkness, you
almost forget the self-hatred that animated you as you shuffled
limp and half unconscious, into your clothes, nor waste a thought
on the weary weight that the coming day will too surely cast
upon your illused eyelids. Grouped on the stand or in the
inclosure, knots of men are anxiously watching the gallops, as
horse after horse is brought from the bamboo-built stables within
the circle of the course, and goes by at his allotted speed. Many
of these keen observers hold stop-watches in their hands, for
Anglo-Indians believe strongly in the time test. Whether they
are justified in their fixed belief is a matter of argument often
revived ; but surely if a horse can be made to exert himself
with the regular exactitude of a machine, mark that fiery little
bay Arab, Chieftain, now tearing along over the sand track as
if he revelled in showing his muscle to the Prince. And here
I may remark that he does make such an impression on his
Royal Highness that eventually Chieftain took passage in the
Serapis. The little horse deserves a word of description. He
is barely fourteen hands, but compact and muscular as a hunter,
with legs that are hard and smooth as steel, though he has run
over thirty races and won more than twenty, and with a head
and Deck as clean shaped as a duchess's. As a specimen of
THE PRINCE OF WALES AT MADRAS, 1875.
21
the blood from which our own grand racehorses have sprung
and as a miniature model of what they should be even now,
Chieftain is well worth the thousand pounds that has started
him on his way to England.
Next look at those two most unmistakable Australian speci-
mens just finishing their two miles through the deep sand (for
the grass track is always reserved solely for the races), their
two great ugly heads bobbing up and down together, and their
ragged tails switching simultaneously. These are Artaxerxes
and Red Deer respectively, and they will finish nearly together
when the Sandringham Steeplechase is run. The gallant owner
of the former has been fortunate in his nomenclature, but it is
allowable to suppose that the proprietor of the latter must, in his
fondness, have intended a compliment to his steed rather than
to the beauteous denizen of the forest, for assuredly no red
deer would ever face his shadow in a crystal pool with such
a figure-head. But when Capt. Bullen is asked to oblige
the Prince by taking the horse over a few items of the
steeplechase course (which forms an inner circle to the race-
course) it is easy to see from the performance that Red Deer
22 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
has a better title to his name from his capabilities than from
his appearance.
Nor is the course itself much more akin to that of Rugby,
still less of Liverpool, than is the Indian chaser to his English
confrere. A solid mud wall, or rather bank, over four feet
high, is nothing much for a hunter to jump, but it is scarcely,
one would suppose, adapted for a cluster of ten horses to race
over almost at the start. The next jump, however, is pleasanter
at a racing pace than at cooler speed, being a bank of the same
height, but five feet broad on the top, and with a ditch on
either side. Sixteen feet of clear water forms the next obstacle,
and it may be given as no small proof of the jumping powers of
the Australian that in the steeplechase in question not a horse
fell or refused at any one of these three. Still, I would urge,
courses of this description are in themselves sufficient to account
for the comparative ill-success of steeple-chasing in India. You
never ride over such country under other conditions ; conse-
quently but few horses are really taught to jump. Owners are
afraid to risk valuable horses when a jostle may entail a broken
back ; and small fields and a lamentable scarcity of cross-
country jockeys (for you can't afford to fall in India as fre-
quently as on the soft turf at home) are the almost invariable
result.
But it is now past seven o'clock ; the sun is hinting none too
delicately that we are in the tropics and not at Newmarket ;
the Prince visits some of the leading favourites in their stables,
chats for a time under the shelter of the stand, where Madras
turfites are now indulging in coffee ; and when he moves off the
assemblage breaks up.
I may pass on to another and equally congenial task, and tell
how the Prince and his staff went hunting the jackal. But
prithee, gentle reader, let me first turn aside but a brief space
to touch upon one or two other incidents of this week of
tumultuous festivity.
Of all the grand doings that convulsed and fluttered Madras,
was not the Club Ball the greatest, the most fondly anticipated
THE PRINCE OF WALES AT MADRAS, 1375. 23
of them all ? Had not the P. and 0. steamers arrived week
after week laden with little else than ball dresses ? Had not
the club loungers been ousted from their most comfortable
corners — nav, almost condemned to starvation for months be-
forehand ? Had not a solid masonry staircase of fabulous
breadth and terrific cost been erected, to be trodden only by
the patent Wellington of royalty, then to be pulled down rather
than be degraded by any less worthy footfall ? Had not tall
palm trees been brought in alive and whole to throw their
sheltering branches over couples dancing and sitting ? Had
not a special room for H.E.H. been furnished in a style that
put every palace of the Arabian Nights into the shade ? And
to preside over the refreshment department of this had not the
managers advertised for weeks past in the Madras papers for a
" respectable young woman " — and alas, alas ! none was forth-
coming ! Had not an enormous canvas banqueting-hall been
erected, and a supper spread whereat a hermit must have
feasted, or even the men of Madras found that they were
thirsty ? And had not every flat roof of the building been
turned for the nonce into happy loitering grounds, mid flowers
and shrubs, and Chinese lanterns thick as the sand on the sea-
shore, to shed light and propriety on every nook and sofa?
And was not the ball-room itself a scene " to be imagined "
(a phrase we scribblers by literary license adopt when de-
scription fails us) ? Thousands of crystal lights, hundreds of
bright eyes, half that number of brilliant dresses, jewels,
uniforms, glances, and smiles, the whole one blaze of light and
glittering mirth.
The Prince arrived to find all in readiness to welcome him ;
and after he had run the gauntlet of a double row of beauty —
close-packed so as to leave the narrowest of alleys for his
passage — he led Mrs. Shaw Stewart, the wife of the president
of the club, to a quadrille, and the ball began in earnest. Oh
that his Royal Highness could have cut his dances into tiny
slices, and distributed to each fair hungerer her little portion !
Would not much heart-burning have been saved ? Would not
24 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
that sharp weapon with which all the sex are gifted, have been
wielded with less bitter force then and until now ? Think you,
would the dresses of one or two fair sisters have been pro-
nounced so positively unbecoming? "Would it have been so
difficult a task to " imagine what anyone could possibly see in
them ? " Would their present and previous lives have been
thought worthy of so much amiable criticism had not the royal
command fallen upon them that they were to dance with their
future King ?
But every woman in the moment of triumph is a queen.
She loses at once all sense of fear, all self-consciousness, all that
mistrust of her own powers that the rougher sex are seldom
able entirely to overcome on finding themselves suddenly in the
presence of superiors. The sense of successful rivalry is alone
enough to nerve her. She asks for no sympathy ; she cares for
no congratulation ; it is enough for her that victory is hers.
She will hold her head erect, appear as unembarrassed and
engaging as in everyday intimacy — to all appearance uncon-
scious of the buzz of personalities of which she is the object ; or
she may glance once proudly round with a look that says as
plain as words, " Have I not conquered, oh my rivals ? " How-
ever, as minnows may disport themselves in a salmon pool, the
smaller fry made the most of their opportunity, and his Royal
Highness was not the only one who enjoyed himself that night.
Ladies in foreign Britain, it has been often remarked, ever
dance with greater zest than even in merrie England. In
their maiden beauty they find themselves more sought after ;
in matronhood they are not bound, Andromeda-like, by the
chain of matrimony to the ball-room wall ; while even in the
sere and yellow leaf they may gambol sportively in the land of
curry and rice.
So the Madras Club Ball went off happily that Thursday
night.
On Friday the programme arranged for his Royal Highness
comprised as much as would suffice at any ordinary time and
Avith any ordinary mortal for a whole week's work. After
THE PRINCE OF WALES AT MADRAS, 1875. 25
driving at three o'clock (and verily Madras is hot at three
o'clock, even in December) to see some thousands of school
children stuffed to repletion in his honour, and to have his ears
tortured by the musical blessing they had prepared for his
welcome, he reviewed the troops in garrison (a ceremony that
admits of little variation except in degree of excellence, and
this, I am told, was very excellent). He then met all the
soldier-chieftains at dinner at the Commander-in-Chief's, and,
with the banquet scarcely ended, was whisked off once more to
witness the illumination of the surf, and afterwards the Pandal
or native entertainment. The former was, in its way, quite the
most striking and successful feature of the whole week's festival,
and my humble pen must do its little all to convey anything
like a fair idea of it to your readers.
The whole route along which the Prince proceeded on his
after-dinner drive was illuminated to the best of Madras. The
chief buildings all stood out in a blaze of light, every house and
office had made its effort for the occasion, while Fort St. George
was outlined on a scale that must have cost Thomas Atkins and
his captain many a day's pay to effect. A rocket proclaimed
the coming of the royal carriage, and immediately there blazed
up from the ships at anchor a quick succession of gorgeous fire-
works. The entrance to the pier was lit up with red and blue
lights, while its whole length was gay with coloured lanterns
and bright decorations. A car, somewhat similar in shape and
ornamentation to those of a merry-go-round at a fair, was in
waiting on the tramway, and forthwith the Prince and party
were wheeled down the pier to the point where the surf broke
exactly beneath them. There is always more or less sea rolling
in from the open roadstead here, for, marvellous as it may seem,
Madras has gone on flourishing for generation after generation
without a harbour or breakwater of any description. To-night
there was a glorious sea, and the surf burst in grandly and
noisily, roller after roller, though the heavens were clear as
glass. Boats had been moored just beyond the breakers, and
their line of flaming torches cast a weird brilliancy on the foam-
26 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
ing waters. The beach, too, was light as day, and for a mile
was crowded as even Epsom was never crowded. Thousands
upon thousands of upturned dusky faces absolutely shone out
in the glare, contrasting so vividly with the mass of white
drapery that not even the cloud of many-coloured turbans
served to suppress them.
Soon the order was given for the catamaran races to begin ;
and two by two they dashed past through the surf from the
shore to the line of boats and back again to the beach. At the
same time balls of Greek fire were launched on to the open
space which constituted the arena, and gave a wild, unearthly
appearance to the canoes and their extraordinary occupants.
The Madras catamaran boasts not of the outrigger balance-pole
that floats alongside that of Ceylon and prevents it upsetting.
Here it is apparently but a hollowed log of wood, manned (if
the term may be applied to such uncanny amphibious bipeds)
by naked kneeling savages, who are satisfied if but a part of
their journey is performed in their frail craft. Yelling, scream-
ing, and struggling, they strove, pair against pair, amid the roar
of the breakers and the sulphurous foaming of the surf, and
dashed straight at the huge boiling waves ; now overwhelmed,
but emerging, still seated on their rickety craft ; now knocked
over and separated, one or both, from their boat ; now scattered
far on either side, and content to make their way on shore,
there to await the drifting up of their property. Sometimes a
more than usually cunning or plucky couple would meet an
insurmountable breaker by racing at it with all their might ;
then, just as it towered over their heads, and they seemed on
the point of being demolished, plunge out of their places and
dive, canoe in hand, through the heart of the resistless monster
— rising again amid the Greek fire, and discernible only by the
shower of green flame they appeared to shake from their heads,
and resuming their wild career towards the goal and the victor's
rupee. Often there would be two or three catamarans over-
turned almost together, and as many couple of occupants at one
time struggling in the waves ; but they were struggling only
THE PRINCE OF WALES AT MADRAS, 1875. 27
to regain their chance of the prizes, though to lookers-on they
mi^ht have been battling for their lives. As well try to drown
a walrus as a Madras boatman.
If I am right in saying the illumination of the surf was one
of the most interesting sights of the week, I may venture the
opinion that the entertainment at the Pandal (or Paundal) was
one of the dullest. Curious it was certainly, especially for one
new to the country ; but it was neither exciting in itself nor
calculated to give one an elevated idea of the manner in which
the natives take their pleasure. Possibly, though, their im-
pressions might be somewhat similar with regard to us were
they taken to see one of our favourite burlesques ; so perhaps
the less we say on this head the better. They did their best,
and they showed their loyalty bravely.
But when the Prince had taken his seat on the raised platform
prepared for him (the golden fans set waving over his head),
and the nautch at last began, it was certainly more calculated
to soothe the weary spectators off into peaceful slumbers than to
rouse them from the state of lethargy already produced by the heat
and crowded room. Nothing could be more monotonous than
the slow dancing of the nautch girls, as, holding in their hands
coloured ropes suspended from the ceiling, they revolved round
and round, and in and out, plaiting the ropes into a pattern in
the course of their evolutions. The music which accompanied
this performance reminded one forcibly of a fair at home : a
feeble violin and one or two penny trumpets squeaked through
a seemingly endless repetition of "Bonnie Dundee" till the
dance was concluded. Then came forward a premiere danseuse
in gorgeous garments and much-bejewelled nose and ears, to
execute a pas seul. To the uninitiated she appeared to be
suffering from a succession of fits, throwing herself down first
on one side, then on the other, and indulging in a series of
jerks and shivers that were anything but graceful to witness.
However, so pleased was she with her own performance that it
was somewhat difficult to induce her to stop, and the Prince was
obliged to take refuge in the supper room for a short interval
28 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
of respite from the dancing. There was some singing (?) and
more dancing on his return to the scene of action ; and, after
his departure from the Pandal, I believe the entertainment
went on far into the small hours, as natives are never tired of
enjoying this their favourite recreation. The Pandal — which
in this instance consisted of part of the Royapoorum Railway
station, fitted up especially for the occasion — was decorated
with gold and coloured cloth, arranged in intricate patterns on
the walls and ceiling. Garlands of yellow and white flowers —
never absent from native entertainments — also adorned the
great building.
II.
WITH THE MADRAS HOUNDS.
The hunt is up, the hunt is up,
And it is well-nigh day ;
And our future king
Has gone a hunting
To chase the jackal grey.
Old Ballad (Madrasified).
And so, in spite of all the exertion, fatigue, and late hours of
the preceding and many previous evenings, the Prince held to
his intention of hunting with the Madras hounds at daylight on
the morning of Saturday, Dec. 18, and for this object was up
and dressed by 5.15. By some accident he had to wait
another half-hour for the brake that was to carry him and his
staff to the rendezvous, so we may presume to take advantage
of the delay to get on thither before him. The meet was at
The Mount, the head-quarters of the Artillery, and some six or
seven miles from Government House ; and there, as daylight
broke, were to be seen Mr. Lodwick, Master of the Madras
Hunt ; Squires, huntsman of the same, and the pack. Of the
first named we need say little more than that his soul is in
hunting the "jack," and that under his leadership the sport
flourishes amain. Squires is a little fined down perhaps from
the jovial personage we used to see " yoicking " the Pytchley
WITH THE MADRAS HOUNDS. 29
od from Crick Covert, and hustling happily over the wide
double ditches up to Lilbourne Gorse. A chequered career has
been his. The Prince remembered him carrying his horn in
Norfolk ; afterwards he handled a pack at St. Petersburgh ;
then he donned the white collar during Mr. Nay] or s Pytchley
regime; next he took service under Prince Esterhazy ; and
now he has pitched his bungalow alongside the kennels of the
Madras Hunt. The success and steadiness that have accom-
panied him here should do much towards setting him once
again at the head of a good pack at home.
Now let us turn to the hounds. Reader, there is a book
that I have no hesitation in saying has long been common food
for you and me — at least, if you are a member of that wide
class of enthusiasts held in bondage glorious by the devouring
mania of the Chase. If you are not, please turn aside at once
to other pages ; for here you will read of hunting to the end
of my chapter ; and you will only vote me a blatant nuisance
if your sympathies lie not with me. Well, given that you
understand by what current of feeling one in exile can revert
at any odd moment to " Jorrocks," and from him imbibe deep
draughts of consolation and refreshment, then I may safely
ask you to recall Mr. Bugginson's contribution of hounds to the
Handley Cross Hunt. Strange, but true, here is friend
Jorrocks close at hand ; and it is no difficult matter to dive
among the well-thumbed pages and turn up any passage
required. Mr. Pigg observed with much truth, on receipt of
the precious cargo, " He was warned they'd be good for nout, or
they wadna ha' parted wi 'em at that time o' year ; " and the
substance of his remark can scarcely fail to apply in some
degree to a pack imported complete, and at such a date, from a
firm whose stock-in-trade is entirely dependent on cast-offs.
Thus readers will not be surprised, nor I trust will the Madras
Hunt be scandalised, when they see the term " miscellaneous"
applied to the pack under notice. Mr. Bugginson's draft are
described summarily as being made up of "skirters, mute
runners, and noisy ones, besides a few worn-out old devils that
30 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
could do nothing but eat." It would be as untrue as un-
gracious to write this of the Madras hounds — they are not, and
cannot be, immaculate ; they have their vices and they have
their virtues, both being beautifully various. Of their vices
the last on the above list is perhaps the most prominent. But
then, if rope is cheap in India, hounds are not to be landed
in the country under ,£16 a couple ; and so an M. F. H. in the
gorgeous East can afford to part with nothing that can be
coaxed or carried to the covert side. Breeding and crossing
have been tried, but with little success; so the whole question
of supply resolves itself into — first, how long you can succeed
in keeping your hounds alive ; secondly, how often you can
afford to send home for more.
But among those now before us there are many couple of
good appearance, and, as the event proves, several of sterling
performance. Many of the dogs are fine, upstanding hounds ;
and some of the ladies look quite neat enough to go over a
grass country.
By six o'clock a field of about fifty strong has assembled in
readiness for the Prince's arrival, the master and two others
alone sporting the orthodox pink ; but the gay familiar colour
looks depressingly out of place when, as in these two instances,
surmounted by the necessary solar topi, without which the ride
home might be a journey to a sick bed. Even the fair sports-
women who have joined this early chase feel themselves (except
in one or two rash cases) obliged to submit to this unbecoming
headdress. Most of the men are arrayed in serviceable butcher-
boots, and anything that will tuck into them ; but variety is
here again the most palpable charm, as it is also in the matter
of steeds, which comprise Walers, Arabs, Persians, country-
breds, and nondescripts " of sorts " (as the term is hereabouts).
For the use of his Royal Highness and staff a number of troop
horses have been requisitioned, and, as cross-country work
forms a leading portion of a cavalry horse's education in India,
they may be considered as excellent mounts.
Soon the brake containing the royal party dashes up at a
WITH THE MADRAS HOUNDS. 31
gallop, the distance out of town having been covered at some-
thing a trifle under racing time, to make up for the precious
moments lost in waiting for the conveyance. The Prince
barely stays for a cup of coffee before getting astride the
powerful grey to whom the responsibility is entrusted ; and the
staff scramble up at haphazard on to the hussar horses, the
biggest men apparently coming in for the weakliest animals.
The point of costume having been touched upon, I may add
that the regular Indian untanned leather boots are the
dominant feature of the dress of the Prince and his followers,
though the exigency of the moment compels one gallant lord,
whom I have oft seen riding out of Melton the smartest of the
smart, to limit his riding gear to a piece of string tied below
the knee of each trowser.
But now to business. We are all wide awake by this time,
though many of us reached the meet with half-closed eyes.
Oh, dear ! this early rising is the most hateful portion of
Eastern life — at all events, till you have been long enough
abroad to subvert your whole system of living (natural and
acquired), and feel comfortable upon the operation. Could we
adopt the principle at home, think you, as our forefathers are
said to have done ? I fancy not — certainly for nothing short
of foxhunting, and even for that I wist that the crowds of
Leicestershire would exist no longer. However, whether you
are a man whose habits were formed on a model of method
and steadiness, whether you love your bed with the love of
natural indolence, or even whether you are on the eve of
getting a board of doctors to agree that your state of health
calls for six months' recreation in the mother country — in any
case loyalty demands that for this week you should burn the
candle of your powers at both ends, should actively testify your
enthusiasm all day, make merry all night, and, if need be, die
contentedly when all is over.
But, though 'twere the last little spark in our souls,
We must light it up now on our Prince's day.
32 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
And to judge by appearances on this the last day of the week,
the Prince himself is likely to be the only survivor ; for while
others, to a man — or woman — look haggard and worn with their
round of dissipation, his countenance is as fresh and hearty as
if ten o'clock had nightly seen him commencing to sleep the
clock round.
To seek the wily jackal the pack are first trotted off to what
is known as the " Old Covert," at the back of the Mount, and
the field follow after, looking more like a party of African
explorers on the march than a company such as the term field
would usually imply. A cheer from Squires, and some guttural
exclamations from his black whipper-in, proclaim a find almost
before stirrup-leathers are adjusted or hatstrings tied — the
ungainly sun-hats requiring to be positively strapped on to
keep them in their places. Through the rough scrub and over
the gravelly flat beyond, even a jackal does not leave a burning
scent ; and by the time he has reached the paddy fields a mile
further, he has gained ground enough to double twice upon his
track amid the rich green growth, and our first experience of
riding over, or rather through, paddy commences. Please
accept paddy, English reader, as synonymous with rice, and you
will then need but little further explanation. Perhaps some
few, though, may have been lucky enough never to find occa-
sion for wandering far enough from their native land to be
initiated into the system of rice cultivation. For these I may
add that rice is grown, so to speak, under water, by means of
flooding the low ground from the tanks formed on a higher
level. Each little quarter-acre field is banked round, so as to
be more or less independent of its neighbours. Mud and water
keep the roots of the plant cool, while the stems grow to about
two feet in height. In this we are accustomed to wade about
after snipe, as long as our livers will allow us the charming
sport ; and now, forsooth, we are riding to hounds through it.
Kneedeep we flounder on ; but after all it is not as holding
as steam plough, and horses soon learn to stride through it at
WITH THE MADE AS HOUNDS. 33
a hand-gallop, and to lift themselves over the intermediate
banks without treating one to a mud bath.
Emerging again from this we start upon an even worse
specimen of a hunting country — to wit, a plain of slippery clay,
with holes as numerous as those of a sieve, and a foot deep in
water. Over this hounds really settle to run both straight and
fast, and we have to struggle and blunder after them as best we
may ; but, though an English horse would probably break his
back in about a hundred yards of this sort of ground, the
Walers, Arabs, and nondescripts aforesaid get over it in a
marvellous way. There are few falls, and three or four ladies
are pushing along in the van. Of course the pack soon
forge ahead, but at length some good galloping ground puts
the field on better terms again. Now they are running
like steam, carrying a noisy head that makes one's heart re-
bound to the dear familiar music. To some eyes — ay, and
to more than one pair that are already beginning to sparkle
gladly — there is nothing in art or nature that can give half
the unalloyed delight of the sight of hounds running hard.
To many minds — perhaps to yours as well as mine, reader —
there is nothing in life so ecstatic as the chase in full swing,
whether we are racing over a grass country, popping in and
out of stone walls, or even ploughing the deep of the Madras
paddy fields. Ye gods, but it is jolly to be at the game once
more, and we kick along joyously through the green rice, with
the pack crashing and splashing just ahead. " Yonder he
goes," from Lord Carrington, who has chosen his line a little
to the right, and who now gains a view of our almost brush-
less game, lobbing along to a well-known haunt behiud a
palm-covered village. Master Jack has had the ringing chorus
in his ears for the last twenty minutes ; but, though dis-
daiuing still to hurry, he is by no means within reach as
yet. Just on the right of the hounds come three other greys,
viz., those of Lord Charles Beresford, Squires, and Mr.
Symonds, while close up on the left are riding Miss Craw-
furd, Lord Sufheld, Lord Aylesford, and the Master. Merrily
D
34 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
on to the cluster of huts, round which our quarry has often
roamed, and where he hopes now to shake off his stubborn
pursuers. But quickly he is pushed again into the open,
though only to cross a mile of rugged plain, and gain a rocky
hill beyond. Some forty minutes of hunting and galloping
has brought us here, and all who know the spot declare that
jackal was never yet known to break hence, and we must
fain be satisfied with the sport already seen. But surely our
gallant friend knows well the Prince is out, and now he will
show him how an Indian jackal can run, and fight, and die.
The hounds have turned him two or three times about the
rocks, their speckled bodies glancing brightly among the dull
brown boulders, and the hillside re-echoing with their eager
voices, when Tally-ho ! the great gaunt loping form bounds
stealthily past behind the knot of horsemen ; and, with a dis-
dainful grin over his shoulder and a whisk of his meagre brush,
our jackal strikes boldly over the open once more. There is no
covert nearer than that bushy hill four miles away ; and between
it and here lies as fine a stretch of riding ground as is to be
found in the Presidency — early paddy fields that have been
harvested and dried, and through which run numberless water-
courses varying from 1 ft. to 10 ft. in width. It takes a minute
or two to get the pack out upon the line, for no one can " put
'em round " on this granite hill, while, as for the black whipper-
in, he is apparently kept chiefly for ornament, as may be patent
when I mention the fact that at the forthcoming Christmas
tree, to be given to the school children of Madras, he is likely
to figure as a giant merry-thought penwiper, having been
fashioned and clothed exactly on the model of these ingenious
toys.
But soon hounds are away again on a fiery scent, running as
if they meant business — and blood. A quarter of a mile brings
us to a river that owns no bridge and apparently no ford. For
the glory of the navy, though, Lord Charles Beresford fathoms
its depth, and half swimming, half plunging, gets to the right
side without his helmet, for which he has to return and fish.
WITH THE MADRAS HOUNDS. 35
His brother A.D.C. finds a better place more to the left, and
quickly the bulk of the field are pursuing the now flying pack.
For twenty minutes the pace is glorious. The country wants
only a handy horse that will keep his hind legs under him for
the quick recurring little jumps. Grief becomes frequent, and
even the pick of the horses begin to sob. Broken girths put
down one of the leaders on to a soft black bed ; and the Waler,
under the strange sensation of a saddle clinging to him only by
a martingale, is buck-jumping round the field after the manner
of his race. "Hold up, old horse, you're a borrowed one and a
good one. Don't carry a muddy face home to disgrace us
both ! " This can't last much longer, or jackals must indeed be
of diabolic origin. Hounds are now tailing, tailing, till, like a
comet, their head diminishes to a point. No amount of cheer-
ing to the cry will make up for unavoidable want of condition
and assortment ; but there is such a scent that the three lead-
ing hounds are straining every nerve ; and soon the fastest of
the trio forges ahead and tears along the line alone. Now we
are once more in growing paddy ; the pack close up a little
more as the foremost hounds make a track for those behind.
Now we are within a hundred yards of the sheltering rocks and
trees, and our plucky jackal must have proved too stout for us.
But when close upon the stronghold the leading hounds sud-
denly throw up their heads, the earliest of the scattered field
pull up their blowing staggering horses to cluster about — loudly
praising the charms of the run, which they assumed to have
resulted in a clear victory for Jack, when from their very midst
up jumps the gallant quarry, mud-stained and stiff, but game
to the last. Round and round the pack chase him with mad-
dened chorus. Now he gains ten yards in a high patch of the
green paddy, now they are all but on him, but he whisks round
a bush with a fresh start for his life. Now he feels he is all
but penned, his limbs are failing him, and his head is dizzy
with fatigue, so he turns round with the desperation of death
upon his hated persecutors, and his instantaneous end is as
gallant as the last hour of his life. "Who-whoop! who-whoop!"
36 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
How hoarse it made one to yell forth the now unaccustomed
sound of wildest triumph once more ! " Who-whoop ! " What
a happy finish to a week of fun and excitement !
And it would have been a good run anywhere — for was it not
a nine-mile point, and the line as straight as a hunting crop,
the time one hour and a quarter, and the last twenty-five
minutes a burster ? The Prince was up to see the brush
handed to Miss Rideout, and to pay a welcome testimony to
her gallant riding. The Master reserved the head, that, when
mounted, the members of the Madras Hunt might have the
honour of presenting it to his Ro}ral Highness. Among the
group who were up to see the good finish were, besides all
those with whose names I have already taken liberties, Mr.
Turner, Capt. Aylmer, Mr. Hunter-Blair, Mr. Shepherd, Mrs.
Kenney-Herbert, and some others whom I, being a stranger in
the land, did not know, or, having been told, have forgotten.
This I do know but too well, that more than one rider had to
walk back to where carriages and hospitality were awaiting
them at the Mount, and that three horses succumbed that night
to the severity of the run and the depth of the paddy fields.
A LEICESTERSHIRE SEASON, 1882-1883,
WET AND WONDERFUL.
OCTOBER BEFORE THE WIRE.
Kneedeep everywhere in grass — its hedges gigantic and dark
— its ditches vague as the future and deep as destiny — Leices-
tershire wakes into life, in a month that knows no frost, no
crowd, no toilette, but only a six months' vista of sport and
hearty exercise. Fox hunting on the flags may have summer
charms — to a few. Fewer still, beyond Masters, huntsmen, and
specials, will made an occupation of it. Long pedigrees and
straight legs, fashion and symmetry — all sink into insignificance
against fling and drive, tongue and staunchness. The dash of
the foxhound in the open, his rush through strong covert, and
the force with which he strikes the keynote of a stirring chorus,
are better a hundred times than the most seductive of
kennel-parades. The one is action and life ; the other little
more than a reverie — a study of interest, perhaps — but owing
its main attraction to association, memory, and hope. But,
whether we have looked at hounds through the summer or not,
whether we have worked or idled, whether we have been play-
ing the Sybarite in London or the active rustic in our own hay
field, whether in recent weeks our limbs and lungs have been
stretched over the heather, or cramped in a gloomy office till
partners should return from their holiday and our own turn come
— we all revel heartily in the first fresh morning in the saddle,
rise to enthusiam as again we hear a foxhound, and welcome
greedily any little scrap of sport that may be dealt out to us.
Hunting men seldom find themselves entirely out of exercise.
38
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
The chances are they have been brought up on fresh air and out-
door work, and they find they cannot exist without them. So
they are not likely to appear at the covertside in a condition
altogether soft and unmuscular. But summer occupations, how-
W'V -'■''■<■' M'.'/w
a ^
^#g«t^to
ever vigorous, may have been altogether apart from riding, and
induced a muscular development that is altogether out of keep-
ing with the saddle. The day following the first gallop of only
twenty minutes, their backs may very likely ache nearly as
much, the joints be as stiff, and their skin be as freely chafed,
as if they had summered in absolute idleness. Much better,
then, to begin gradually in October than to plunge into a
martyrdom of six long days in early November. To wait till the
season is in full swing, and then suddenly to rush into daily
hunting — with sinews unprepared and legs too big for your boots
— is to start in discomfort and proceed in misery. Men who
have established a pied a terre — on however small a scale — in
Leicestershire, generally begin work in good time, and are
accustomed to look for some very pleasant breathers before the
full-dress parades commence. Visitors would appear to be
OCTOBER BEFORE THE WIRE. 39
swayed a good deal by fashion ; and, like beauty entering a
ball-room, prefer to appear rather after than before their
acquaintances. "Well, the country is terribly blind ; already
fences have to be jumped — and, without daring to proffer
ungracious advice, I would yet remind them that more than one
Insurance Company provides liberally against hunting acci-
dents ; also that one of the great charms of October lies in
the fact that everybody does not come. If they did, it would be
altogether impossible for us and them to get over the country
at all — and the delight of uncrowded gateways would at once be
lost.
The grass was surely never so long, so thick and universal as
now. It has beat the bullocks everywhere ; where the scythe
has been at work, the edishes have sprung up again to mowing
height : and the fences are half smothered in it. The farmers
have at last had a good summer — and even venture to own it ;
stipulating, however, in many instances the want of funds pre-
vented their making full use of their opportunity. But they all
look much more cheerful ; speak hopefully and encouragingly on
the subject of fox-hunting ; and many who have lately been
absent from the covert side will be able once more to take the
place there to which they have so strong and honest a right.
If Melton Mowbray is to be the centre of fashion and the
metropolis of the Chase — if even it is to pay its way — its patrons
must show themselves as soon as possible. No one appears yet
to have declared himself coming ; none of the houses that pass
from hand to hand by the season have yet been taken, and the
hotel keepers have not had a nibble. The church bells are
chiming Home, Sweet Home day and night, and The Butcher in
blue is ready to kill his fatted calf or turn a somersault over
any stile strong enough for the job. But no one comes ; and
even the blithesome printer of cards of the meets has a haunted
hungry look. It cannot be said nowadays that Melton is not
accessible. It has railways to it from every direction, and four
different routes to London — while, for fear it should lose touch
of Leicester, the Great Northern last week opened a new con-
40 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
necting line thither, giving inquisitive travellers a passing-
glimpse of such classic localities as John O'Gaunt, The Coplow,
and Scraptoft Holt.
The Quorn had their maiden scurry on Monday, Oct. 2, from
Gartree Hill, which a month hence will be resplendent with fair
company and fine clothing for our gala day. It was scarcely so
this morning — at least there was little of the resplendent about
the select assemblage clustered there an hour before shaving-
time. Six autumn captains waited on the Master, and saw just
a fox apiece break away. Hounds were loosed upon the last
fugitive ; and fox hunting again became a reality. So the early
birds sped over three fields, and opened as many gates, to Bur-
dett's Covert. An old fox took up the cue — and the fun began.
The Great Dalby parish is fascinating ground at any time. But
fascination and fear may be associated ; and the latter was by
far the dominant sensation now. So everyone stuck manfully
to the road for five minutes, and let hounds get half a mile start
of them, before conceiving the idea that fences were only put
into Leicestershire to make it pleasant riding. Coming to their
right minds, they suddenly set to work to follow. But there was
a curious novelty in the moving scene as the pack came down
the vale from Dalby Windmill, heading for Melton. Old and
bold Reynard was wrell in front — and so, contrary to all accepted
usage, were hounds, with regard to their field. The young entry,
however, had scarcely yet dropped into the spirit of the thing ;
had failed to get quick enough through Burdett's Covert, and
were now bustling on in keen curiosity after the two redcoated
figures representing huntsman and whip. At a long interval
half a dozen darkly clad horsemen straggled after ; but over the
Dalby and Gartree Hill road the pack had it all their own way ;
while the little coterie behind them mounted the hillside in a
kind of dazed bewilderment as to what new experience might
overtake them next. Their horses were lathering and blowing
already ! they had accomplished a fence or two, it is true, but
how and in what fashion they themselves wTould have been
puzzled to tell — except that the place looked green and looked
OCTOBER BEFORE THE WIRE. 41
possible, that the horse jumped extraordinarily big, and that they
had landed safely. And now they rode with confidence, if with
a certain amount of cunning — choosing always a sturdy place
&t which a horse must rise, and avoiding any gap where a ditch
might be hidden under the dense matting of grass and leafy
thorn. The pastures and meadows are velvet — the former wavy-
brown, the latter a brilliant green, but both with a yielding turf
under their luxuriant covering. Providence helps us so far — if
horses are fat and unfit, the ground is a springboard. The half-
forgotten sensation of sweeping a flying fence sets the heart
aglow, and makes the brain almost whirl. You catch your
breath with a gasp, as the free-jumping horse drops lightly on
the greensward — all the old charm comes back again, and life
once more wears its brightest aspect.
This first twenty minutes fun — over the great Dalby slopes to
Burton Lazars — was very refreshing, very invigorating. Arrived
at this point, it was decided to leave the old fox to go his way,
and to return after the scattered cubs — one of whom was soon
served up on the altar of education.
It would be impossible to dissociate Gartree Hill from the
memory of the late Capt. Edward Hartopp — the news of whose
-death came so sadly and suddenly upon us only a few weeks ago.
For the last two seasons he had been absent from the Dalby
Hall, while holding the Mastership of the Kilkenny Hounds ;
and it was mainly to his personal popularity that that pack was
enabled to continue in the field while others were everywhere
compelled to yield to the pressure of Irish agitation. In
Leicestershire he not only had never an enemy ; but every hunt-
ing man — as during his army career every soldier — who came
across him learned to think and speak of him as a genial, kindly-
hearted companion, an enthusiastic and thorough sportsman.
No man was more widely known ; no man could be more widely
and truly regretted. His memory will be sorrowfully cherished
while our generation survives.
42 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
That love of hunting is still a very strong feature of the city of
Leicester and its immediate vicinity, will readily be believed.
Birth, tradition and education combine to maintain the feeling,
in spite of the business instincts and vast manufacturing growth
developed by the county-town during the last ten or fifteen
years. Previous to that, Leicester was, if not a hunting-centre,
nothing at all. Lord Gardiner and his comrades made the Bell
at Leicester almost as well-known as the Old Club at Melton.
Now, people who live there hunt — though they are by no means
invariably the men whose income is of Leicester-make or
Leicester-proportion. But no one any longer comes there for
the pure object of fox hunting — any more than fifty years ago
they would have come to make a fortune by means of elastic
web. Teiwpora mutantur — but it is not a bad sign that a score
or so of men can turn out at dawn, and wend their way through
miles of houses to join the Quorn before breakfast hour. Thus
on Friday, Oct. 6th, there was quite a field — to see the prelimin-
ary cub killed at the Barkby Hall Spinnies, and to join in the
after-fun, though visiting sportsmen, like the woodcock, seldom
appear in any quantity till after the first north-east wind in
November.
Barkby Thorpe Spinney is only a mile or so away, forming
one of a series of little copses. Under recent management and
improvement it has now arrived at about three acres of densest
covert ; and, what is better, has become the nest of a numerous
and promising family. Holloa-away and tallyho-back — the
changes rung and repeated — foxes out and foxes still in. The
latter form the chief employment in October — if a goodly
November is to be provided. But hounds shortly dashed out
and away with a third one — while other frightened cubs still
ran here and there, barely escaping destruction at the mouths
of the stragglers hurrying up to the cry. Twixt Barkby Village
and Barkby Holt are small grass fields and strong fences every
hundred yards. To be among these in February would be a
pleasant excitement — in October there was all the excitement,
with the pleasure discounted fifty per cent, by the demon that
THE INITIAL BURST. 43
was incorporated by the Greeks as Phobos — that the Latins
deemed a satellite of Mars (a jackal, as it were, to the lion) —
and that classic Englishmen term "funk." The instinct of
self preservation is, whether actively or passively shown, an agent
altogether too potent in the directiou of man's adventure. It
baulks him often when he might be almost brilliant, it checks
him when he would soar, it takes nothing for granted — and least
of all does it encourage a leap in the dai-k. A strong or enthu-
siastic spirit, or a powerful ambition, may help him to assault
and overcome a patent source of terror — or, let us bring the
abstract down to technical reality, might brace a coward (and
are we not all more or less cowards — too often the former
degree ?) to face a sturdy fence perfectly hateful in its aspect,
yet plain and measurable to the eye. But the instinct asserts
itself at once with tremendous force, if asked to sanction a charge
against a tall screen of green leaf — with a ditch lurking some-
where on the near side, and perhaps a pond, possibly an oxrail,
on the other. Oh no — not unless somebody has gone first.
Then proh-puclor ! I'm a gallant man at once. It's only a
shallow wall of twigs.
For a bare ten minutes lasted the trial between anxiety and
resolution — the fight between ardour and discrimination. Men
helped each other on somehow ; and the music of the constantly
vanishing pack lent a strong stimulus. The big little places
were all jumped in safety ; and the party, after a semicircle of
vague but rapid wandering, regained the park of Barkby Hall.
THE INITIAL BURST.
The first gallop of the Quorn season was on Friday, Oct. 6 —
an hour's run over the grass — a good pace — and a point of
five miles over a perfect country. The morning was damp,
dull, and autumnal ; the two previous days had been given to
unceasing rain ; and ground was wet as pulp on the top, though
still firm and sound under the turf.
Quenby Hall is this year a deserted mansion — Lord
44 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Manners being quartered in Ireland, and no one else having
yet come forward to take it. (By the way, the fine old Hall is
no longer isolated from civilisation — for the Great Northern
have planted a station within half a mile of its door.) Below
the great quaint building slopes its park, and along the bottom
of the park runs a narrow plantation. It was no cub that now
dashed through the pack and darted along the hedgeside of the
spinney (as if steering for Lord Moreton's Covert) — but a fine
old fox, whose clean bushy plumage was finished off with a
lusty white tag. The ladies were soon bustling on his track —
for a little schooling in the open now — and the field of fifty set
off to ride alongside, by the way they had come. Two wide
ridge-and-furrow pastures — the furrows scarcely distinguishable
amid the waving grass. Rabbit holes there were known to be,
or supposed to be — and imagination is very vivid in the first
few minutes of a run. Hardihood is not a natural plant — but
the warmth of action forces it with a mushroom orowth.
Imaginary perils safely passed will often imbue courage to face
others that are almost real. A half-mile rough gallop and a
little rail and ditch were an encouraging introduction to all
that was to follow. The whip had turned the fox over the
hillside ; and gaily, noisily, the pack passed out after him
through the eastern gate of Quenby Park. Some moments of
indecision then ensued, as to who should bell the cat, and
break a way through the bullfinch bordering the road — before
the country was fairly entered and a sharp quick course struck
for Loseby Hall. Hounds well in front ; and plenty of gates
for which to diverge and scheme. Now we are all blocked in
a corner — and 'tis almost a satisfaction to find that even all the
thrusters of early spring time could not have found a way out
here — through plantation, oxer, and ravine. So back by the
previous gate, and round in follow-my-leader style again. "All
right, sir — it's only a drop. Look like a deep bottom " — but a
horse jumping to clear every leaf is scarcely going in form for
a drop, and it seems a week before he lands with a clatter of
hind against fore shoe.
THE INITIAL BURST. 45
At Loseby Spinney the old fox changed his mind ; and
turned abruptly back across our faces — fox, field and pack
being again in the same meadow. Back to Quenby Park and
Spinney almost by the same line, then out at once towards The
Coplow. Headed from this, he bore to the right towards
Ingarsby, and now made his mind up for a point in Sir Bache
Cunard's country. The ground — if not actually severe — was
fully deep for the month of October, and for horses only just
from the clipping machine. But Leicestershire has this
advantage {among others, on which it arrogantly hugs itself),
that rain runs off its hills and undulations almost as it falls,
and it is one of the last countries to become really heavy. So,
though foam gathered and pipes played loudly, horses were
still able to gallop and jump freely — and a sudden turn gave
them two minutes of invaluable breathing time. As Mr.
Carver's Spinney was passed, bold Reynard was to be viewed
across the next valley — stealing up a hedgerow, with his head
turned over his shoulder and his brush drooping low. The
pack had to make a detour, while horsemen could stand still
and welcome the delay. Over the hill towards Houghton — two
ploughed fields (almost the only ones in the run) causing a
momentary drag — five and thirty minutes now since the start.
The Uppingham turnpike was crossed close to Houohton
Village. " He can't travel very fast," said the shepherd, as he
unlocked a gate off the road and ushered us on to the cream
of Sir Bache's territory. Stiff enough at any time, it offered a
prospect less than tempting after forty minutes' fast going in
October. " Don't think we can get over this country now :
my horse is half-beat already," quoth the one man from whom
hounds never run away (the Widmerpool instance of last
season save and excepted). But he did get over it ; so did the
Master ; so did Captain O'Neal (who has resuscitated with
unbroken nerve and a new stud) ; and so did Mr. Martin,
Mr. J. Cradock, Mr. Johnson of Leicester, and one or two
others — while Mr. Carver and his mare, an evergreen pair,
worked round and about, and seemed ever present at each
46 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
point of the run. The fences were blind, no doubt — very
blind. But they were big and fair, and horses rose at them to
jump as far as they could. In reality they were always very
much smaller than they appeared. They looked like green
walls, where often they were weak impositions — and if they
now and then happened to be the contrary, no strong binders
were visible to the timid eye. There was no real check till
near the Houghton Spinnies, when the pack suddenly found
themselves surrounded and baffled by herds of cattle. The run
had then lasted exactly an hour ; and the old fox beat them —
probability pointing strongly to his having hidden himself in
one of the wide overgrown ditches.
KNEEDEEP ALREADY.
Friday, October 20th, brought out a glaring sunshine to
succeed days of gloom and wet ; and gathered a throng —
almost a field — to see the Quorn work Barkby Holt. Not one
fox, but a dozen or more furnished occupation in turn. Hounds
stole away Avith the first flier, and drove him for some minutes
across the grass for Scraptoft, before they were stopped. After
this, each fresh-found member of the community was sent on
his way ; and finally the last one was fairly worked to death in
covert in the interests of education. Barkby Holt is a square
wood of just such a size and make as a fox-covert should be —
some fifty acres of brambly undergrowth, warm and dry. It is
big enough to prevent even a Leicestershire field from entirely
surrounding it ; while yet a huntsman can stand in the middle
and keep every corner within earshot. He is not likely to be
troubled with much company as he pounds about the inner
rides ; for they are almost knee-deep in yellow clay, and, if
avoided while men are clad in the neutral tints of October,
what will they be when the leaves are off and leathers are on ?
Far be it, though, from me to hint that any thought of appear-
ance will, after the rendezvous-parade has once been dismissed,
KNEEDEEP ALREADY. 47
weigh with — well, more than two of the three hundred sports-
men usually composing a field in the Shires. They will all
brave mud and dishevelment, when they are obliged. But not
a little of that acumen which enables them to be left behind
three times out of four at Bark by Holt and similar deep-rided
coverts, is due less to their estimate of probabilities or their
knowledge of woodcraft than to the fact that they don't see the
fun of being splashed and bedaubed before a fox is even found.
Why should they ? Not for my pleasure nor for yours do they
■go a' foxhunting. Not every one of them gnashes his teeth, or
makes himself unpleasant for the day to all with whom he
comes in contact, because he has thus been left behind. If a run
has been enacted, it does not leave him on one verge or other
of insanity — either rabid with delight over what he has seen
and shared, or frantic with rage and shame in that he has
missed the chance. No, he maintains " a sane mind in a whole
body " by abstaining from rash endeavours or undue excitement.
He enjoys every moment of the day — or goes home as soon as
it begins to bore him — has an amiable smile and a good story
for everybody (especially, I notice, just as hounds find their
fox), is a pleasanter companion at dinner — and can give a much
more reliable account of the day's sport — than young Thruster,
who is incoherent with sparkling delight over having " cut out
the work," or who is striving dismally to drown the memory of
having taken a wrong turn and been thrown " clean out of
it." Wisdom and complacency — or a strong mania and a hot
enthusiasm. Which should be a foxhunter's birthright ?
Which are embodied in Mr. Bromley-Davenport's stirring lines,
0 glory of youth, consolation of age !
Sublimest of ecstasies under the sun !
On Tuesday and Wednesday of the present week Leicester-
shire may be said to have lived under water. Every ditch was
a flooded stream, every grassy furrow was like a snipe marsh,
every valley was a lake. Snow fell heavily on Tuesday ; and
was still to be seen lying crisp under the green hedges, when
48 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the Quorn came to Ashby Pastures on Thursday (Oct. 20).
Cold frosty nights have bidden the comet welcome ; but, even
with the help of snow and rain, have done little to crush the
grass in the ditches or the leaf on the thorn. The excessive
blindness of the country becomes more apparent every time one
rides — and is certainly brought more full}' home by every
cropper that falls to one's share. Old horses are apt to be
"too clever by half;" young ones are rash and careless when
they think there is little to jump — and yet, we who steer them,
obeying an instinct that grows more powerful year by year,
invariably ride for the weakest — now the most dangerous —
part of the fence. A large majority of our erst companions
would seem to solve the difficulty by staying at home or
staying away. But if they wait till the fences are as they, and
we, could wish them, they will remain away till Christmas, so
abnormal and overwhelming has been the growth of grass and
weed and bramble during the summer past. Ample opportunity
was given us to-day of verifying this, as we scrambled through
a little gallop from Ashby Pastures. The hounds had been
nearly an hour behind time (a van having to be employed in
conveying them through the flood near the Kennels) ; and then
they had toiled hard amid the tangled undergrowth of The
Pastures for nearly two hours more — foxes in all directions, but
scent never sufficient for five minutes' strong pressure. The
field meanwhile sunned themselves in the road ; or in a few
instances plunged and floundered about the wet rides, till their
horses had done nearly a day's work. But when at length a
start was achieved, the muddy ones had the best chance of
seeing the ball rolling — as it did rather cheerily for the first
dozen minutes. From the Pastures to Kirby Village was the
line — a straight and pretty one of some twenty minutes in all.
The hedges were mostly weak and low ; and grass, growing-
through the thorn and on either bank of the ditch, left the
diameter so vague and incomprehensible that one's only prayer
was that the beast bestridden would take off well before he
reached the fence apparent and then jump as far as he could.
ITS KB! BY GATE. 49
We quickened his apprehension with cold steel ; and we
appealed to his after-feelings with hot words and a lusty
malacca. But, for all that, he would hold to the delusion that
grass meant turf, and that apparent substance need never
represent empty space. In several instances the actual void
made room for solid horseflesh ; and in a small multitude of
cases the hidden ditch only revealed itself when probed in
unwilling discovery. But when the pace serves, a struggle
counts for nothing : an escape is a triumph. It is only when a
crowd comes up for single execution in turn that real timidity
asserts itself in its most hideous shape. Teeth drawn one by
one is the onby equivalent to fall after fall while you wait your
turn. They are the truly brave, the iron-nerved, who can
submit to this always. With many — truer cowards may be — ■
their hair would grow grey and all their joy and fun be gone,
had they watched the peril every day instead of, when possible,
leaving at least some of it behind them. In this brief gallop
Leicester and agriculture did most to lessen all terrors by a
jaunty example and contempt — and the chief samplers were
Mr. Hicks on a bobtailed chestnut, Mr. Wade on his smart
brown, and Mr. Black on a five-year-old. The subject of the
riding, and its cloudy, imaginary, difficulties dismissed, it has
only to be added that in the midst of Kirby Village this fox hid
himself in some nook above or underground.
ITS KIRBY GATE.
As time goes, each Kirby Gate may perhaps, be reckoned as
one more wrinkle on the forehead, an extra-crop of grey hair,
another stride towards age and another step from youth. Writer
and reader never suppose each other old — the former because
he finds youth indulgent, the latter because the topic of all
light literature is almost always associated with youth. We
are all young. Let us be young — as we are when toasting fox-
hunting after Kirby Gate. Gout is for the morrow, low spirits
E
50 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
are for old age ; and failing nerve shows itself only in the
morning. We have seen another Kirby Gate ; and old
friends looked pleasant — and young. The same ceremony has,
doubtless, been enacted at many an opening meet elsewhere
during the past and present week — and a man never feels so
youthful and capable as when he grips hands that have been
open and unchangeable to him through years gone by.
" The rolling seasons pass away ;
And Time, untiring, waves his wing."
******
" What fears, what anxious hopes attend the chase !
Ah, happy days ! too happy to endure."
Who was there ? is invariably the leading question in
reference to Kirby Gate. Below is a rough list of gentle names,
in reply. Who was not there ? is always the next query — to be
answered in sadness and regret. The kindly old Earl and
Capt. Hartopp (the friend and boon companion of all of us) are
the names that rise first on the lips. Beside these there were
many other absentees ; but, though we could wish them present,
no melancholy fate has prevented or postponed their coming.
Mr. Little-Gilmour does not often miss the opening meet. But
neither he nor Col. Forester (the two oldest Meltonians) put in
an appearance to-day. The octogenarian of the field was the Rev.
Mr. Bullen of Eastwell — looking as firm and happy in his saddle
as ever. If I mistake not, his years already number eighty-
seven ; he began hunting eighty years ago ; and he broke his
collarbone when fourteen. Had his well-known contemporary,
the Rev. John Russell of Devonshire, been also present — as was,
till a few days ago, expected — the meeting of two such pillars
of our old established church would in itself have been an event
worth witnessing.
The following represent some portion of the field assembled :
Mr. Coupland, the Duke of Portland, Lord Newark, Count
Kinsky, Sir Frederick Fowke, Mr. and Mrs. Adair, Capt. and
Mrs. Molyneux, Capt. and Mrs. Ashton, Mrs. Sloane Stanley, Mr.
and Miss Chaplin, Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Clifford Chaplin,
ITS KIRBY GATE. 51
Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Story, Mrs. Langmore, Major and Miss
Starkie, Mr. and Mrs. Whitworth, Col. Chippendall, Major
Stirling, Major Robertson, Capts. Boyce, Barclay, Hill Trevor,
Grimston, Stephen, Campbell, Whitraore, Goodchild, O'Neal,
Jacobson ; Revs. Bullen and Trower ; Messrs. Farnham (2),
A. Brocklehurst, Desehamps (2), Hume, Martin (2), Kuowles,
Praed, Lubbock, Parker, Brand, H. Campbell, Ernest Chaplin,
A. C. Barclay, H. T. Barclay, J. Cradock, Cheney, Peake, L.
Duncan, Pennington, O. Paget, Fletcher, Bankart, Custance,
Winter Johuson, Morley, Black (2), Moule, Fox, Gleadovv, and
the Butcher in Blue.
No falling off, certainly, was there in the matter of carriages,
and vehicles of all sorts imaginable and unimaginable. They
come by the score to make the scene what it is year by year —
a crowd at the meet (a quarter admirable, three-quarters
admissible) ; a big procession from Kirby Gate to Gartree Hill,
and a gradual dispersion to luncheon and the four winds. It
is with the men and women who came to hunt that Ave
have to do. At the last moment they dropped in — in many
cases as mere pleasing afterthoughts, unexpected and heartily
welcomed. Some from Ireland ; some from Norfolk ; more
from London — most of them intending to work out six
days hunting on a frame unprepared and a skin uninured.
Will they do it? "How will they do it?" And this for
pleasure !
Hearty greetings exchanged, new coats admired, new horses
extolled by owners and approved by amiable friends — away to
Gartree Hill. One cheer in covert, and then the unwelcome
rumble o'er a fox killed asleep. Next a fox away, over the
same meadow on the Burton side that year by year brings us
forth for our first formal splutter. Now comes our chance of
trying our new mounts — three hundred guineas in the dealer's
books, or fifty pound ready out of the plough. New coats, new
bats, new saddles — croppers a certainty. The last purchase is
a clinker — up to now. Unpleasant discoveries develope them-
selves fence after fence, as we struggle onwards to Burton
e 2
52
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE,
Lazars — the fences big and blind, and the plough as deep as
high farming and recent rains can make it. The local Marquis
of Carabas has added a second ditch to many fences that were
already quite wide enough for our requirements — and the said
new purchases are soon galloping about riderless in all directions.
Jr
^M^fe
»»,>..%
fir '"*&*&'
Thus for five minutes ; and in ten more back to Gartree Hill,
where the throng on the h illside is shouting heartily, and the
" scarlet runner " hurrying down to meet the huntsman. " Was
his head towards the covert when you saw him, Pat ? " " Well,
not aperiently, Misther Firr," replied our well known Chief of
the Intelligence Department, scratching his own round nob
thoughtfully — and with this lucid information the huntsman
had to be content. In covert however, the latter got on to his
fox, or another ; and soon pushed him out for little Dalby. All
who have hunted here — weighing over ten stone — know pretty
well the sprightliness of cantering a fat horse up this picturesque
slope ; so I need not descant upon that.
But it was a trifle light as air compared with the ascent of
ITS KIRBY GATE. 53
Burrough Hill immediately beyond. Hounds had just pierced
the contents of, and were leaving the Punchbowl as we reached
the summit — in a state of heat, redness, and suffocation such as
only a jump from summer clothing into full cold-and-
air-proof hunting kit can engender, when aided by a warm
still day and a hot horse. Fine weather nearly always
attends on Kirby Gate ; and so, nine times out of ten,
does a run. And, whether as a matter of temperature or of
want of condition, there is invariably more distress then ap-
parent among horses and men than on any other day before
March. Plenty of breathing-time could however be seized by
those who chose to stand aloof, while the chase wended an
intricate and dilatory way round Leesthorpe Hall and the
ploughs beyond. But it was quite a different thing when the
little spinnies of Whissendine were reached. Men, who for the
previous half hour had been leisurely watching from the road,
now suddenly woke to the fact that a new stimulus had been
given to the proceedings ; and buckled to for a ride. Whether
a fresh fox, or a freshening scent, caused the change, it is im-
possible to say; but there was a forward rush at once. The
Quorn lady pack had for long been puzzling out the line. Now
they handed over all difficulties to their followers, bidding them
keep pace if they could. In the valley below Ranksboro' there
was breaking of timber and rolling about — enough for a week's
sport. But in one unfortunate instance only did any serious
damage accrue. This was in the case of Mr. Herbert Praed,
whose ill-luck brought him the broken collarbone that annually
and inevitably stigmatises a Kirby Gate day. Deep ground,
and an hour and a half's work had besrun to tell their tale : and
hounds were considerably to the good as they rose the hill
overlooking Oakham — though a dozen men, well-mounted and
well be-spurred, were hard in pursuit. The riding honours of the
day, 1 do not hesitate to assert, belong fairly to the Rector of
Stonesby — a new comer and a true addition to Leicestershire.
He would be, and was, with hounds throughout the day ; and
whenever a Gordian knot had to be cut, his was the ready knife
to do it. The final half-hour of this long run was quite the
54 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
quickest and best of it; and, with a sweep to the right, brought
us to Orton Park Wood. When it is added that, in the turnip
field immediately adjoining the wood, no less than three fresh
foxes jumped up almost among the pack — it will easily be
believed that the run ended in confusion. Still, a two-hours'
hunt and a six-mile point make no unworthy beginning to a
Melton season.
But on Saturday, Nov. 4, the field in front of Leesthorpe
Hall was gay as a garden in June, with the sheen of scarlet
and the dazzle of snowy buckskin. It was truly a show meet
of the Cottesmore : a bright scene and a charming ofatherin^ —
bringing home vividly the pleasant fact that another season was
fairly before us. Dalb}7 Hall looked beautifully picturesque
amid the particoloured foliage of the plantation surrounding it.
Yellow oak leaf and dark green fir blended gorgeously with red
and russet and every autumn tint — which even the recent gales
have failed to destroy. Once more we stood on the Punchbowl
rim ; and once more we all dashed away over the top, aglow
with the same merry mixture of excitement, flurry and fear.
But a start effected is at once as soothing to excited hearts as
placing a kettle on the hob is to the seething waters within.
They may continue to flutter and fizz for a little while ; but
almost immediately settle down to and maintain a hot but
steady temperature. Many an ardent spirit may be seen
quaking in his leathers when a fox is first found, apparently
as fearful of what may be coming, as when The Doctor's lictor
used to warn him — Jones minimus — for the dread presence
after morning school. But once settled in his stirrups after the
first fence, the tremor disappears, the wild excitement gives
place to staid, determined delight ; and anxiety is neither on
his face nor in his thoughts again for the day.
In a blustering wind we rode round and below the Punch-
bowl, and watched one of its many foxes killed. By the way,
he who should have been chief executioner on such an occasion
was absent through a curious accident. The new first whip, it
seems, in an evil moment tried the experiment of tying a fox's
head, wrong way uppermost, to his saddle. As he swung him-
ITS KIRBY GATE. 00
self to descend, the dead fox's tusk laid his leg open from knee
to thigh — necessitating a sewing operation, and the irksome
possibility of being a month in kennel. There he is at present,
to the loss of his master and the Hunt, and to his own mental
and physical pain.
And on Saturday, the 11th, the Belvoir met at Goadby with
a view to Melton Spinney — breaking the journey to that covert
with a short ring from Old Hills, when the intensity which the
technical term " blindness " can assume was not only vividly
embodied in the rough fences between plough and plough, but
was amply illustrated by horses madly carrying empty saddles
they knew not whither, and swallowtails legging it ungracefully
in pursuit. Assheton Smith once made the sweeping and un-
feeling remark that " a man never looks such a fool as when
running after his horse, and shouting to other people to catch
him." Had he said " never feels such a fool," I might be with
him. But, as a matter of fact, most of us are only too glad to
roll away as far and fast as we can, when a young one knees a
top binder or chances stiff timber. And, happily, men are
always found courteous and kind enough to slip a whip through
the runaway's reins, without enforcing the obligation upon the
panting owner by an allusion to the absurdity of his position.
For might not their own turn come at any moment ? Truly,
give-and-take is a precept as heartily practised as it is all need-
ful amid the ups-and-downs of foxhunting. It so happens —
accountably enough, too, under the circumstances of new or
renovated studs and a country exceptionally blind — that falls
have been particularly plentiful during the week past. Since
the one accident alluded to in my last, these tumbles on to soft
ground have served the purpose of renewing courage and reviv-
ing confidence rather than taken the form of catastrophe or
hurt. Thus, when the evening of Saturday last arrived, there
were few to complain of bruises or even stiffness — though a
week's sudden and severe work had left palpable marks of
weariness and over-exertion on many an usually bright eye and
many a naturally rosy cheek.
5Q FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
THE THREE PACKS.
In chequered weather variable sport — a brilliant scent now
and then ; often again none at all. If on two days we could
only saunter about livid and shivering in the cold, on three we
had sport and warmth and exercise — leaving the balance well
on our side. The ground gets deeper and more rotten day by
day ; but Leicestershire is no worse treated in this respect than
many of its neighbours. It pleads guilty to some little plough
here and there ; and the rain has deeply soaked its valleys.
But it is not all plough ; it is not all vale ; and it meekly folds
its hands in gratitude.
Material enough for a column of its own was furnished by
the Quorn Friday of Nov. 17 — in a fine gallop of three-quarters
of an hour, followed by two more hours of almost incessant
running. The day was cold, clear, and bright, in keeping with
a coming frost ; and some of the nicest riding ground in the
Quorn country was the scene of the sport. The first run was
straight enough for all requirements, and the earlier half of it
quite brilliant. The second event was a double ring ; but a ring
sufficiently wide and good to deserve the appreciation which it
obviously met. In fact, Friday was the best day for scent and
sport that the winter of '82 has yet produced, in the Melton
district.
The meet at Rearsby, and a find at noon. Brooksby Spinney
— a humble concoction of a few dead sticks and artificial earth
' — supplied the latter. The Master sent a whip on to crack his
lash beside the little covert ; and a big yellow fox was well afoot
before he could be surrounded by the bustling pack. A Novem-
ber field is not a large one — even in the Leicester district. But
the two little handgates below the spinney were scarcely enough
for the flood that pressed them to choking, as the halloa-away
cut through the crisp, keen air. Over the rough wide pasture
above, where the shepherd was waving his hat and pointing in
a direction which has no strong covert and scarcely a ploughed
field for miles. None too readily did the hounds seem to grip
THE THREE PACKS. bi
the line in the first few hundred yards. But it was excitement
only — not " a want of scent," as a dozen pair of lips at once
framed it. For in the second field the pack buckled to their
work, and could drive their fox as fast as they could get over
the grass and through the fences. To the right of Gaddesby
village is the prettiest going. Every hedge has its easy places ;
and easy swinging gates also help to speed the galloper. Below
the village is the Gaddesby Brook — a stream that is more easily
forded than jumped. As hounds and field rushed down upon
its bank, a fresh fox rushed through their very midst, and caused
the contretemps of the day. Half the pack jumped at him as
he passed, and went away to the left at his brush. The other
half bore to the right — down-stream; at the same moment Firr
caught a view of their fox before them, and verified him as the
one with which they had started. But the division took place
so instantly, and was so little realised that, unless you happened
to be pinning all your faith, and looking for guidance, to the
huntsman's cap, it was mere accident which section of the pack
caught your eye. " A cub, no doubt, and they've run him into
view " — was the obvious argument which carried off the Master,
with such good attendants as Messrs. W. Gosling, B. Lubbock,
Parker, Peake, Hume, the Duke of Portland, Mr. and Mrs.
Adair, Mrs. F. Sloane-Stanley, Col. Chippindall, Capt. Grim-
stone, O'Neal, and others. In the huntsman's train rode Capts.
Smith, Barclay, Starkie, Goodchild, Hill-Trevor, and Henry,
Miss Constable, Count Kinsky, Mons. Deschamps, Messrs. A.
Brocklehurst, Cecil Chaplin, Behrens, H. T. Barclay, Mr. H.,
with Mrs. and Miss Story, &c, while Capt. Boyce, at first
jumping over the fence to the left, immediately discovered and
rectified his mistake. (I hope I may be pardoned for making
a more than ordinary free use of names to adorn my little tale?)
The former party galloped heartily up to South Croxton village ;
and only discovered the situation when, at the end of what their
spokesman afterwards described as a capital twenty — to twenty-
five — minutes' burst, they found themselves at a check, in the
poor allotments. The others were able to make a much better
58 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
story out of their adventures and achievements, and they told
it somehow thus — that, after fording the Gaddesby Brook, they
were called upon to ride the country foot-path that leads to
Queniboro' ; that such foot-paths, with their greasy stiles, are
best avoided, but that the high strong hedges on either hand
left them no choice. Yet the worthy sportsman whose four-
year-old rolled over a rabbit hole, leaving him to take the whole
succession on foot, and in orthodoxy, negotiated them with no
more comfort than did his comrades. The four-year-old alone ex-
tracted boundless fun out of them, taking each in irreproachable
form, seizing his turn without jostling, though resolutely declin-
ing to be caught for miles. Bv that time weight carriers were
beginning to pant and tire ; and narrator assured me it was
only excess of delicacy and a superhuman effort of self control
that prevented his claiming the runaway, and in exchange
leaving his own pumped-out machine tied to a gateway. I
leave it to the public to determine if he would have been right.
The end would surely have justified the deed, would it not ?
But then, as the opportunity came only just before the Queni-
boro' Brook, would he have dared to ride the runaway at the
water, and risked the fate of Mr. Brocklehurst and Mr. V. H.
Barclay — or, meeting it, to have awaited the coming of the
strong stranger in boots ? The maxim of riding your friend's
horse as you would your own might scarcely have been found
to apply, if the friend — totally unprepared — had come upon the
apple of his eye cast in the rushes, or only held up from drown-
ing by his new bridle. The Queniboro' Brook is another of
those deep-cut and erratic streams that ruin our waterjumping
in Leicestershire. Here was an instance in point. Capt. Smith
struck it where the most resolute of chesnuts that ever looked
through a combination of bridles could not possibly have got
half way over ; Count Kinsky swept it in a big place ; Mons.
Deschamps glided blandly over an extravagant one — the rest
trotted through, a few yards away. Fences continued thickly
for a quarter of a mile ; then gave way to gates and gaps till
three-and-twenty minutes had been scored, and near Barkby
THE THREE PACKS. 59
Grange a momentary, very welcome, check was reached. Then
round Barkby Holt — a single field beyond the covert — and to
ground at Baggrave. Forty-seven minutes from the start.
The joined forces had just time to warm over their compara-
tive stories and to cool in the north-easterly breeze, before a find
at Queniboro' Spinney set them going again, and bade them
jump and gallop in company to their hearts' content. I will
not weary with detail of all that was done during the next two
hours. A double ring, fast and full of incident, took them over
much of the ground of the morning — and even led to jumping
some few fences for a third time in the day. It led also to the
discovery that many of the Queniboro' fences are beyond not
only the heart of man but the power of horse : and in the first
quarter of an hour a hardriding field was more than once
utterly tied up. After working clear of this uncompromising
region, the pack made capital of a sterling scent to drive twice
through Barkby Holt, and to work a wide detour over country
where riding was all a pleasure. Mr. Cecil Chaplin, whose eye
to hounds is happily by no means dimmed by recent illness,
was seeking new strength in the genial warmth of the chase.
The Count,* ably emulated by a fellow spirit in close attendance,
was striving hard to find a fence big; enough for the smartest of
his smart chesnuts— and at length took the measure of one that
Avould nearly do. The Quorn hounds never shone to brighter,
more admirable, advantage — and altogether everybody enjoyed
himself and herself (Miss Constable will, I trust, pardon my
taking her as a type of the latter for the day). Even the
huntsman — to whom it must have been a sore trial to find a
fresh fox in front of hounds at South Croxton village, just
as they seemed running for blood — apparently sank all his dis-
appointment, in the knowledge of the sport, of which it is no
flattery to say that, by his faultless handling, he had been the
chief promoter.
On Tuesday, Nov. 21, the Cottesmore were at Knossington ;
and, after running round and about Ranksboro' all morning,
* Count C. Kinsley.
00 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
marked the afternoon with a half-hour's burst of tremendous
pace. It was a gallop of a character altogether different to
that of Friday above, or of Wednesday (with the Belvoir) to
follow—the three runs being very characteristic of their respec-
tive countries. The Cottesmore after the first five minutes
(from Lady Wood), released themselves from small inclosures
and the interference of sheep and bullocks — then went like
wildfire over their great sweeping hills and wide well-gated grass
fields till they had burst their fox and horses too. At Braunston
Village they turned so short to the left that nine-tenths of their
hard-riding followers overshot the mark and could never get to
them again. Mr. Baird and Mr. Tailby were well on the inside ;
riding in a position suitable to their status and antecedents.
On the right flank were the huntsman with Downs, Mr. Beau-
mont, Col. Gosling, and one or two others — and so thus, with
hounds well in front, they went past the left of Oakham to the
rough rushy hillside above Langham, known I believe as Lang-
ham Pasture. Here their fox was so blown (twenty minutes
from the start) that he turned back almost in their face, and
crept into a willow-strip in the outskirts of Oakham town — the
pack at his very brush. There was actually, even in such a
spot, a fresh fox to relieve him ; and, as luck would have it,
they went on with the new comer, so losing the blood they had
fairly earned. Much of the ground over which they ran has
been recently drained, and showed a wonderful improvement
upon previous years. There were out to-day Mr. W. Baird, Sir
Bache and the Misses Cunard, Capt. and Mrs. Blair, Mr. and
Mrs. G. Baird, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Chaplin, Col. and Miss Palmer,
Capt. and Miss Starkie, Mrs. F. Sloane-Stanley, Mrs. Clayton,
the Misses Hopwood, Duke of Portland, Mr. Tailby, Colonels
Gosling and Percy, Capts. Ashton, Boyce, Jacobson, Smith,
Featherstonhaugh, Stephen, Messrs. Westley-Richards, Tryon
Dawson, Fludyer, W. Finch, F. and W. Gosling, Cochrane,
Marshall, S. Hunt, Hanbury, Newton, Beaumont, Peake, Adair,
Parker, Lubbock, Behrens, Custance, Whitworth — and twice as
many more.
CATCH 'EM WHO CAX. Gl
CATCH 'EM WHO CAX.
The Hoby lordship again — to a merry tune, if not a lengthy
one — and this on the afternoon of Monday last, November 27,
a brief and pleasant prelude to the wild tempest that closed the
day. The Quorn had met at RatclifT-on-the-Wreake, and had
already hugely edified and amused a strong concourse of cotton-
spinners, shoemakers and men of like profession who dearly love
a day on foot with the home pack — running a fox for an hour-
and a half round Cossington Gorse, and killing him in the
village of Thrussington. In proof of the preference of foxes for
a quiet corner in the open, as against the recognized insecurity
of a covert regularly visited by hounds, Cossington Gorse had
been drawn blank, when a fox was turned out of his usual
kennel in a hayrick close by. And again, when an hour later
they brought him back to the covert, no less than three foxes
had now congregated there. Little scent had there been ; but
of this little the most was made. The dog pack worked hard
— and so did the footpeople as useful skirmishers.
When Thrussington Gorse was reached about 2.30 in the
afternoon, prospects were anything but bright. The clear sky
of the morning was now overcast with black scudding clouds ;
the wind blew half a gale ; and we could not but remember
that the Gorse thus far in the season had been blank. But we
did not all know that the earths in the Hoby pastures hard by,
where Mr. Barford-Henton and his good neighbours had so
carefullv guarded two litters of cubs during the summer, had
now been smoked and stopped, and the occupants driven off to
the coverts. Let me suppose you do not all happen to be as
intimate with the neighbourhood as the writer. Thrussington
New Covert, as it is still called — though I see by an old map
that it existed even in Sir Harry Goodrich's time, under the
title of the Manor Covert — stands by the side of the old Fosse
Road a quarter of a mile from the crossroads of Six Hills, and
has the wood of Thrussington Wolds to back it up a field away.
The gorse is still only kneedeep after the double treatment of
62 IOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
fire and frost : and Firr was soon able to spot a fox dodging
about it. A quiet tallyho brought hounds into play in a
moment ; and immediately afterwards the huntsman was in
the Fosse, viewing his fox away to Six Hills. The whips were
guarding other quarters of the covert ; and he had to depend
on his own exertions to stop the one couple which alone came
down the wind on the line. Riding back to the covertside, he
yet found no response to horn or voice ; it was obvious at once
that something must be amiss ; and without loss of a moment
Master and man set to work to solve the enigma by cutting in
between the gorse and the wood. A whip came galloping up
to tell what already seemed a horrid certainty — viz., that the
body of the pack were away on another fox. A bystander con-
firmed the news, pointing towards the Wolds — but neither one
nor the other informant was ready with more than the vaguest
information. A plunge in the dark into the depths of even
fifty acres of woodland clay would have been a rash move on
such hypotheses. Better by far to make safe the grass side,
and at least ensure not missing a chance of the best direction.
A little bridle gate that would hold a field for a quarter of an
hour was an easy patent slip to half a dozen men bent on help-
ing each other. Now, where are hounds? Big D, little D,
Saxon tongue and Leicestershire lingo; pretty manners and
shocking mutterings. There they go! A quarter of a mile
away — and not a sinner with them — as, I pledge my spurs, I
have viewed them time after time disappearing from Thrussing-
ton Wolds. But is it not splendid ground over which to catch
them — where you have only to drop into one field to find a way
out directly before you, where a horse wants but a turn of speed
and to have been taught to jump a hurdle ? The Ragdale
fences are meet for a galloping hack ; though, stretching down
to the lower level of the Wreake, come the rich feeding grounds
and sturdy fences of the Hoby Lordship. Passing to the right
of Ragdale Hall, it was riding all in the dark— one hedgerow
closely masking the next, and only the instinct of direction,
.and the desperate necessity of the situation, giving men any
A RECESS. 63
clue in their blind ride. Hounds must be somewhere ; and the
earliest gallopers were now in a position to scan the slope in
front and to the left. Not the white gleam of a hound's
back, nor the wave of a stern, to catch the straining eye.
Bending to the right, the horsemen crossed the brow — and
there, immediately beneath them, was the pack, just recovering
from an entanglement with a frightened herd of bullocks.
Two farmers, Mr. Marshall and Mr. Henton, jun., were the first
to reach the hounds, and the closest to keep with them — as
they sped over the good grazing farm whereon the fox, and the
latter gentleman, were both bred, and were both now doino-
credit to themselves. Nor was familiarity with the fields and
gates of any great assistance to ease the way — for the line of
the chase was by no means one the rider would choose in a
quiet morning's shepherding. Reynard, having found his birth-
place closed against him, and having journeyed so far down a
strong breeze, had nothing for it but to go on whether lie liked
or not. For, though there might be no point for him in front,
his foes were too close to him upon the wind to allow of his
turning back. So, as with the Walton Thorns fox, in the final
run of last season and over the same ground, he held forward
over the open country in a purposeless fashion past the left of
Hoby. To the clump of trees that form so prominent a land-
mark between that village and Ashfordby, was twenty minutes.
And here came the first delay, under rain and rainbow — followed
ten minutes later, as they neared Ashfordby, by a complete
collapse, in a storm of hail and snow and wind that nearly
swept men from their saddles. But for this wild tempest, the
run might have taken high rank — for hounds were on capital
terms with their fox, and he was already driven far from any
shelter.
A RECESS.
Tuesday, December 5. — We woke to find the vale of the
Wrreake white with snow ; but thought but little of it as from
64? FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the breakfast table we watched the green grass slowly reappear-
in"- to view. The Cottesmore had advertised for Owston Wood :
and well as we know that those deep deep rides were this
season more fathomless than ever, we had looked forward only
too hopefully to this, the best fixture — for the best field — of the
week. Snow had quickly come and gone before ; was going
rapidly now ; and hope was still well alive when the galloping
hack had shivered his ten customary minutes at the door.
Gaily he splashed southward, while we glanced complacently at
the powdered greensward, and carelessly at the black storm
clouds gathering northward. Not for a moment did it recur,
to a mind too shallow to assimilate a perspective deeper than
optimism, that Owston belonged to the same lofty level as
Burrough and Somerby — places bearing about the same rela-
tive temperature to Leicester and Melton as the hill quarters of
Simla and Ootacamund to Calcutta and Madras. The Qnorn
plains were now barely streaked with white ; the Burton Flat
was almost warm ; the Stapleford neighbourhood was absolutely
green. But we rose to Somerby to find the snow balling"
perilously in horses' feet, the turf covered three inches deep
— and a cold misty atmosphere welcoming us heavenward.
Underfoot and overhead matters grew worse and worse as we
neared Owston Wood — sauntering leisurely under the thought
that if hunting was to take place at all, it must be on the lower
ground or after midday. But, punctual to their destiny, hounds
were already in the wood ; and presently were to be met work-
ing their way from west to east — while a very limited and chilled
escort skirmished parallel with them, ploughing through the
great dark covert, or slipping about like cats on walnutshells
in the snow outside. A cold wet drizzle gradually systematised
itself into a dark driving snowstorm ; and the miserable aspect
of the sky found its reflex on faces that had hitherto contrived
to maintain much of their brightness and bravery. The better
sex came far more creditably through the ordeal. Men looked
blue with cold, black with misery, and stayed on till all hope
and feeling was gone. Women grew pinker, and to all appear-
A RECESS. 65
ance merrier, under the pelting storm, for a while — then turned
and galloped off home, leaving their lords to suffer on principle,
to be miserable out of choice.
A holloa came back from the heart of the wood ; and thither
we plunged, and there we roamed for an hour and a half. "The
merrie green wood for me ! " How it sucked, and splashed and
held ! How the poor horse was now on his head, and now
pulled on his haunches — his hocks fast under mud and water !
Tell me, how was Robin Hood shod, think you, in a winter like
this ? We can scarcely give him credit for either porpoise-hide
or fishing waders ; and sandals, besides being but indifferent
protection against stubbs and thorns, would probably be found
even less conducive to warmth than the top boots out of which
we painfully wriggle our numbed feet at each return from
hunting. Woollen stockings or silk ; loose boots or natty ones ;
long limbs or short — it seems all the same this chilly unsport-
ing winter. Daily have we listened to multiplied groanings on
the subject, from Spartan youths too who would put up almost
unmurmuringly with a fox gnawing at their vitals — were it
only in furtherance of sport — but who are plaintive nearly
to tears over the biting cold at their toes. Perhaps a kindly
reader will contribute a remedy in the Query and Answer
column of the Field and mitigate the misery of half-frozen
foxhunters. Or is the only alternative to remove the cause —
leathers tight beneath the knee, tops pressing close upon them,
and no chance given to circulation ? I am told, again, that
ankle muffatees are the newest fashionable, and comfortable,
item of masculine garb.
But nothing less than an Esquimaux's furs and leggings
could have preserved any particle of warmth in the drenched
frames that attempted to battle with the elements on Tuesday.
At one o'clock it was thoroughly realised that hounds — appa-
rently unable to run at all — were quite unlikely to meet the
storm, or indeed move in any direction but towards the other
woodlands, and accordingly the " Melton side " finally dispersed.
All but half a dozen of the most determined, and interested, of
6<0 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the Hunt had already done so ; and if the two or three who
still persevered were rewarded with anything approaching a
run — they fully deserved it.
Dec. 12tJi, 1882. — Frost. After a dozen winters' penmanship
on the same congenial subject, there is at least no novelty in
heading a hunting letter thus in the midst of snow and frost.
Whether the common trial is easier to bear, the imprisonment
less irksome, depends with all of us conversely upon how the
individual has stood wear-and-tear, and, directly, how the
ordeal finds him circumstanced at the moment. Some tempera-
ments are like old silver — bright and fresh to the end. Others
are plated with a thin veneer, that stands no knocking about,
before laying bare the unsuitable metal within. The latter
may stand a certain number of seasons, and even glitter quite
as smartly as the solid material ; but it is not made for rough-
and-tumble. Thus, if nerve and zest show any signs of wear
and decay, it is astounding to mark the placidity with which
the once keen foxhunter will accept the inevitable, and resign
himself to a frost. He falls back at once with absolute pleasure
upon a store of occupation which has accumulated while he
wasted day after day in the pursuit of a mere duty at the
covertside. On the other hand, it is not to be expected of the
most impressionable disposition that any man, more than a
two-season hunter, or dependent upon regimental first or second
leave, should succumb to a frost as if such a calamity had been
reserved only for the being born under an unlucky star. Most
of us have something else to do — or make pretence of having.
If it be pleasant, here's the chance. If distasteful, let us get it
over.
Our horses have done so little real work as yet, that the
stoppage is not likely to be welcomed as a benefit to any
stable — unless that stable be in a state of transition, or only
very newly formed. The demand for hunters has been so
strained and universal during the past two months, that to fill
A RECESS. 67
up vacancies has been found a matter of almost insurmountable
•difficulty ; and hence many new purchases have scarcely issued
from the initiatory course of treatment to which grooms deem
it invariably necessary to subject a fresh comer before he may
be put to the test of the covert side. Up to present date the
snow — arriving as it did, before the frost — has at least retained
us the privilege of keeping horses in work ; so you may get on
the fresh comer's back and send him round the grass fields to
your heart's content and his advantage. For the turf is well
protected ; and the snow serves not only to shield the ground
from frost, but to bring every muscle of your horse into play as
he gallops. Thus, a morning might be more unprofitably — and
far less pleasantly — spent, than in opening in person the pipes
and pores of your horses, that otherwise would only be doing
their sheeted and hooded drudgery — at an hour when your own
chief care is to keep your nose sufficiently under the bedclothes
to avoid frost-bite. The strong sharp exercise arouses a sjunpa-
thetic warmth of body and spirit, for which you will seek in
vain from the sensation columns of the daily papers, or from an
undue and ill-deserved luncheon. There is a keenness about
the fog, as you rush through it, that sends a glow into veins
declining to flow freely under inspiration of mere food and
warmth : there is lively sympathy to be got — if startling and
trying — from a new saddle and a horse that from sheer high
spirits would gladly flick out of his skin.
Melton is of course virtually empty during this indefinite
recess. Even in its gayest days it ever became so immediately
hunting was stopped. That it has lost much of its greatness
is evidenced by its society being less than half its old propor-
tions. Consequently emptiness is much more readily and
•easily arrived at now than then. Why its attraction should
fail to be as powerful now, is not easy to say. Melton is
equally a concentric point for the best country of three notable
packs of hounds as it was then, and as it is also now for the
junction of the three great railways of the north. But if Ave
look round we shall find that the other towns also entirely fail
F 2
68 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
to draw together a community, though to a certain extent they
may attract individuals. Melton has a dozen hunting boxes to
let, though quite an average number of men have been flitting:
backwards and forwards to the hotels — and these hunting
boxes, if they ever recoup their sanguine owners at all, will
probably have to do so through the medium of the town's-
increased commercial rather than sporting prosperity. But if
Melton falls short of what it was, Market Harboro' shows a
deficiency still more marked. Oakham has grown more
popular, and Grantham in no degree depreciated ; but both
these have to go outside the town walls for most of their
society. Rugby, again, is a come-and-go quarter making no-
world of its own ; and the same may be said of Weedon or any
other town you may name, where foxhunting constitutes the
sole object of visitors or settlers. And yet the hunting-fields
of the Shires show no attenuation. On the contrary, they are
lustier, and more redolent of life and money, every year.
Whence then does everybody come ? The explanation seems
to me to point in the direction of increased domesticity on the
part of the present generation. They are no less fond of
hunting ; but they are more attached to their own hearth.
Perhaps they marry younger, and have been brought up on
improved lines ? As a matter of fact, they prefer to establish
their Lares and Penates in a tamely way where there exists
just one fellow-sportsman with whom to jog home at night,
where chickens and an Alderney cow are the most exciting
channels of dissipation, and where the grey-haired rector
is the riskiest of company within hail. Has Melton ever
done anything that it should be thus comparatively ostra-
cised ? And how is it that such a change has come over
the method of men and women that now each hamlet has a
dove's nest, while the big pigeoncote of former days is well-nigh
empty.
Ah, there is comfort in hunting from home, luxury in un-
trammelled hours, and freedom in following your own bent,
that, though tending possibly to selfishness and leading to old-
ONLOOKER ABROAD AND AT HOME. 69
fogeyism, are ten times more in keeping with true enjoyment
of sport and the maintenance of nerve and verve than all the
pleasant excitement of competitive dinners and delightful
company. And this is an opinion that would seem to be
gaining ground day by day.
ONLOOKER ABROAD AND AT HOME.
The Bicester country was new and pleasant ground that
Brooksby essayed to break in company with former comrades
and fresh acquaintance. But a pinion that is no use in the
work of flight is not likely to bring any but a draggled quill to
do its part with fact or fancy. As it happened, the sport,
though very enjoyable, was scarcely that of a sample day, any
more than the country crossed was the pick of the Bicester.
Onlooker saw enough to bear out all he had heard. He could
not but be struck with the effect so obviously produced by the
last two seasons' prominent success. The light of sport can
never be hid under a bushel ; and the Bicester Hunt has
acquired a fame that brings its own reward — in a field that
rivals Leicestershire or Cheshire. Sixty or seventy horsemen
were, I am told, wont to compose the field when the Bicester
hounds were stealing their way into a stream of sport— and
fame. Now the computation must be made in hundreds
Bicester, Buckingham, Brackley, Banbury, Winslow, each is
becoming a little metropolis. The characteristics of a country
are not to be acquired in a day, or even in a week ; but I think
I am right in saying that there is far more room for a crowd
with the Bicester than there is with either Quorn, Cottesmore,
or Pytchley. For with the first, though the fences are often
strong they are seldom totally unjumpable in all but a single
place ; and the flood of horsemen is not nearly so often pent in
at gap or gate. I take it too — subject to all correction — that
though you may be called upon to fall quite as often (up to
Christmas twice as often) in the Bicester as in the other
70 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
countries named, you are likely to fall with much less disagree-
able result to yourself and beast, for the reason that in very few
districts are the blackthorn binders as strong or timber as stout
and frequent. Add to these considerations that the grass of
the Bicester generally carries a rare scent, and that the Hunt
under present management (the Mastership of Lord Yalentia)
is in a rich vein of sport — it is little to be wondered at that a
stream of popularity now flows sturdily in this direction. Fox-
hunting indeed must be at the present day — do not let us say
at its zenith, for that might infer an approaching decline — but
in huge and universal favour ; for no diversion or increase in
any new direction would seem to affect in the slightest degree
the stability or proportion of crowds where already established.
No good pack, and no good country, can in fact limit itself
nowadays to edifying the small circle of its original supporters.
Every pack is looked upon as public property, every country as
a public playground — and I fear the newspaper correspondents —
whose name is now legion — have no little to answer for, that
such is the case.
Well, Onlooker who went for a day's holiday with the
Bicester (much, possibly, as a playactor invariably takes his
recreation at a theatre), very quickly — and not altogether
unnaturally — came to the conclusion that the Bicester grass
rode a trifle deep ; and, looking about him, he soon discovered
that the natives and habitues also had evidently found that
out, and had mounted themselves accordingly — for their horses,
as a rule, were remarkable for strength and breeding. He
noticed, too, that the hounds looked like going, and working,
all day ; for the lady pack was full of bone and power. He
saw enough to verify for himself the widespread reports of
Stovin, the huntsman's, patient and sterling capabilities ; and
he could not but be struck with the quick sharp system with
which the whole staff helped hounds out of covert on their fox.
The charming plurality of the habited fair was as evident as
their prominence in pursuit. Allah be praised ! — and yet it
was said that fewer ladies than usual graced the field. That
ONLOOKER ABROAD AND AT HOME. 71
they could amply hold their own, in this sphere, as in all
others, with the rougher sex, was patent to-day and on the
morrow. Two other, more abstract, points engraved themselves
on the none too impressionable plate of Onlooker's under-
standing, to be reproduced for what they are worth — first, that
" form will be served," or, in other words, that in a " dart " over
a country the proved men of a Hunt invariably come to the
front ; secondly (and T must be allowed to say it without
offence), that when the country is easy, and a field is once
roused, even the combination of a popular and determined
Master and a quick huntsman will not suffice to keep the field
off a pack of hounds — any more here than in certain other
grass countries, to which over-riding hounds is supposed to be a
special attribute. To illustrate the first, it is merely necessary
to allude to the early scramble of the day from Poodle Gorse ;
whence Mr. George Drake and Mr. Harter went to the front
like rockets. To prove the second, we have only to take the
main run of the day — some forty-five minutes from Frinckford
over and round the " Bicester Flat." The latter is, perhaps,
held the poorest section of the Bicester country — being chiefly
light plough with very easy fences (exactly similar, in fact, to
the Heath district of the Belvoir). With an indifferent, or at
least broken-hearted, fox, there was more than a fair scent —
and the public rode. A hundred men and women (and who
shall blame them ?) were all as well to the front as each other
or the hounds — or more so. Yet it was a clay of constant
interest and amusement. And now, having ventured these, a
stranger's comments, I need scarcely go back so far for further
details of little interest.
While Tuesday was in every sense a perfect hunting day,
Wednesday, Dec. 20, found the Duke of Grafton's meeting at
Wicken in a cold thick fog. But, after trotting through it for a
couple of miles, hounds were thrown into what, in the semi-
darkness, may or may not have been an osier bed, close to the
village of Deanshanger. So dense, indeed, was the mist that
Onlooker only realised he was by a covertside at all, through
72 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
his inability to find the pack among the horsemen clustering in
the meadow. Suspicions once roused were soon verified by the
sharp twang of Frank Beers' horn, and by the sudden flashing
off into the darkness of the huntsman himself. From so tiny a
covert there could be no need in waiting for every hound to be
out — or the leading couples might slip away altogether in the
fog. So, with horn going lustily, the huntsman drove along
close to the head — every hound straining to be there. As the
chesnut disappeared through the first tall bullfinch, there was
at once a rush to reach the gap and to keep the pilot in sight.
No easy matter, either, were it not for the tail-hounds hurrying
on the line. For vision was limited to less than a hundred
yards ; and the pack, close on its fox, was racing furiously.
Twixt river and canal — over a line of strongly fenced meadows —
they were running towards Buckingham. Now a gate, then a
flying fence — horses in their stride — hounds flickering in ghostly
swiftness just ahead — your blood fully warmed — and the object
of your life not to be unsighted or left behind. Two rustic
forms suddenly looming in the darkness — waving and shouting
as if to warn from a stone quarry. " Bear to your left ! To
your left ! " Why ? what ? where ? Strain as you will to
pierce the fog, there is nothing to break the impalpable plain.
Yes, now it is to be seen ! A brook — its banks as level as the
borders of a garden walk ! It is only fifty yards in front.
Horses are speeding along well in hand — and of course every
horse in the county of Buckingham jumps water. Neither
man nor horse can possibly stop now. And this is the sort of
brook for which in other countries we so often yearn — flat, fair,
and jumpable anywhere. Another second, and we shall be
skying away across yonder field, singing under the breath, " He
shook his lean head as he heard them go flop." Oh, you
brute ! May you some day die of thirst ! Here we are, a
merry crew — five drenched and crestfallen competitors toiling
up the opposite bank, and tugging their faithless steeds after
them. The huntsman, meanwhile, has skimmed from bank to
bank — Mr. H. Bourke on his strong white horse landing side
ONLOOKER ABROAD AXD AT HOME.
i O
by side with him. Mr. Gerald Paget is over in their tracks ;
•and so, if I mistake not, is the Master (Hon. G. Douglas
Pennant), with scarce half a dozen more — among whom I must
be allowed to name Mrs. Wiseman and Mrs. Byass. These are
now in the thick of the fun and the thick of the fog. Hounds
are scarcely discernible half a field away, as they speed at best
pace over the deep grass.
Their fox being headed in a road, and driven back almost
among them, puts them on still better terms — and with hackles
up they set to work even thus early to race for his blood. Now
he is to be seen toiling across the stubble field they have just
entered ; and it is easy now to mark poor Reynard as a certain
victim to the repletion and excess of the recent frost. A nicely
trimmed hedge, slightly uphill. Of course fast at it, with
hounds running into their fox. The last stride, both spurs well
in — " Canal '. Canal ! " This time you may thank Heaven, sir,
that your good mount will not face water ! He sticks his toes
into the bank as he lands on the towing path. Cling to his
mane and wriggle back into the saddle — for the water is deep,
and cold as this Christmas week. Oh dear, this is a very
74 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
perilous country ! — and Onlooker felt heartily grateful that his
lot was only to depict such dangerous scenes. By the help of a
road running close parallel, he was able to be there at the
finish, as quick as others ; to witness a fat fox pulled down in
his tracks after only thirteen bursting minutes. If the rest of
the day was comparatively barren, Onlooker had still enough
to carry away with him — not only in the memory of the
morning's incidents, but in appreciation of hounds, men, and
material. It would only be repeating what has been said and
written so constantly of late years, if he were to make mark of
the neat and workmanlike appearance of the staff and their
mounts. The hounds had long been an object on which
Onlooker had hoped to cast eyes. The ladies of the pack were
out to-day, and more than fulfilled all his expectations —
founded though they were on the encomiums of far better
judges than himself. They are truly remarkable for fashion
and in their work ; and under Beers are as handy as spaniels,
keen as terriers.
For the Friday immediately preceding Christmas the Quorn
appointed Brooksby Hall — bringing thither a gathering typical
and topical, of season and scene. By no means a good day's
sport, there still was amusement for the multitude — and, truly,
as one who loitered behind to see all, while doing as little as he
could, narrator never witnessed more enthusiastic riding. The
fences appeared not to be built that could prevent someone
from putting them to the test, or others from following the
lead till the whole strength of each impediment was levelled.
Onlooker had often and often from sheer cowardice awaited
such a consummation on previous occasions. Then it was with
a sense of shame — a feeling possibly of nameless dread such as
Moore alluded to —
There's something strange, I know not what,
Come o'er me.
Some phan com I've for ever got
Before me.
Now, on the contrary, he was able to hide all thought and
(>X LOOK EH ABROAD ANT) AT HOME. 75
appearance of fear under the necessities of the situation ; and
adapted himself to it very comfortably — succeeding generally in
at length being able, without disgrace, to walk through a fence
which others had broken down at the risk of their bones. He
saw many feats of gallantry enacted — some under the spur of
ambition, some under that of joj'ous lightheadedness, and a few
under the impulse of necessity. But, whatever the motive
power which actuated the leader of the movement, followers
were sure to be found — and his place was forthwith made that
of the ruck behind. Now it has always seemed to Onlooker
that the most stringent test of nerve of all is to feel called upon
to follow a man over a place he has chosen, which is much
bigger than one you would have picked for yourself. You are
no longer a voluntary agent. You have to run a risk merely
because some bolder spirit than }Tourself lays it out for you. If
he had not gone there, it would never have occurred to yourself
or others that you showed the white feather. Now he has
removed all chance of escape ; and out of respect for your self-
esteem or your character you must needs follow. So it was
with a sympathetic thrill that Onlooker constantly saw the
example set, and saw it followed to distress by men in no way
mounted for such feats. Gay Scatterbills would lark over
" owdacious " timber faced by a deep wide ditch ; and his
three-hundred guineas' worth from a fashionable dealer would
make light of the task. Young Gileson, on a four-year-old
whose only education has been acquired in the steady routine
of shepherding and whose woolly coat has scarcely been off a
month, is impelled by a heart quite as large as the aristocrat's
to do likewise. If the four-year-old rolls one way, and he the
other, it is the best luck he can expect. And even if the
timber stands this trial, Gileson's nearest neighbour, or perhaps
a debutant on a hireling, is sure to come forward to complete
the task — and sooner or later a waggon might be driven
through. Verily, if sheep were more noble animals and the
suggested comparison were not likely to offend, I would ask if
vou had ever noticed the obstinate determination of a whole
76 FOX- HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
flock to follow a single one that, probably for no reason what-
ever, has thought fit to shove himself through a gate or even a
thick fence. Whatever may be the difficulties in the way,
every one of those sheep will soon be after him.
May the New Year be one of Happiness to Foxhunters and
to all but their enemies !
BOYHOOD.
Friday, Dec. 29. — The Quorn made Keyham their rendez-
vous, to complete the Old Year in their grass country. Keyham
is eminently close to Leicester ; and so there was a handsome
contingent of vehicles — about enough perhaps to have carried
the commissariat of a small army corps. Indeed this was a
function that, judging by many palpable evidences of efficiency
in the art of provisioning, they could very admirably have
fulfilled. Certainly their household cavalry of to-day ran no
risk whatever of lengthened deprivation of food and drink.
But besides these, there were two other elements — much more
welcome, if I may be allowed to say it — largely represented in
the concourse of the day, viz., the farmers and the schoolboys.
The presence of the former in greatly improved numbers,
points to better times, and to a relief from the pressure of ill-
luck that has so long weighed them down. (Surely, if any
class has its proper place in the hunting field, it is the farmers.
They find the land, the subscribers find the money ; and thus,
by mutual assistance and goodwill, is the truest of English
sports maintained for a common advantage ; and the men
whose interests are most likely to be identical have the best
and pleasantest opportunity of meeting.) The presence of the
latter in their exuberant enjoyment is in itself a fillip to
natures more matured, that are perhaps a trifle rusted, too
often a little crabbed. Every day's hunting is bliss to boyhood.
Boyhood never goes home to growl about bad foxes or bad
scent. Each day with hounds is to it a dip into the vista of
manhood, independence, and holiday — privileges whose acquire-
BOYHOOD. 77
ment we too often allow ourselves to value less day by day, year
by year.
Monday's run with the same pack made a curious beginning
to the New Year. Wartnaby Hall had been the meet, after
just such a stormy night as had caused the last anniversary to
reckon as the only blank day of a decade with the Quorn. The
morning, however, wore a far pleasanter aspect, and I fancy no
one will gainsay there was a scent. On the other hand, every
second furrow was a canal, every other ditch an overflowing
stream. Hoi well Mouth and Welby Fishpond were both, alas !
drawn blank ; and a sorry pilgrimage went on till after midday.
One funny little incident there happened by the way, sufficient,
if not to divert the hungry mind, at least to tickle it for the
moment. I have already noted that at this season boys are
rife. This was a big boy ; though the pony was very small.
The former, though imbued with the most creditable ambition
and courage, was yet as guileless of experience as his face was
full of merriment, or as his harness was void of pretence. His
saddle relied chiefly on its crupper to maintain it in place ;
while a rusty bridoon bit served to pull the rider along at such
a pace and in such a direction as the pony might choose. A
streamlet flowed through a dip in the grass field beside Cant's
Thorns. Big boy and little pony made for this by common
consent — not at the sober rate which suited other couples, but
at a fierce gallop which brought them at once prominently to
the front. The boy sat well forward as they raced at the
rivulet ; and they flew it simultaneously. The boy, however,
had more way on than the pony ; and so went on by himself
some time before the pony had recovered from the effort. But
this was not all. The pony was soon captured, and again set
under his now muddy, but well gratified, rider — while the field
clustered in a corner and the pony proceeded to roam about
among them like a dog seeking his master. Wriggling under
one horse, biting the tail of another, he made the acquaintance
of each in turn — his master meanwhile grinning gaily upwards
with a naive delight that was positively killing. Now the pair
78 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
edged in between the Master and the gate, and ousted him out
of that ; that they might wade up and down the rill of water
that crossed the gateway. Expostulation was altogether lost on
the beaming boy, who had no more voice in the matter than his
victims — by this time in a general roar, and wondering eagerly
what would come next. It soon came. The single yellow girth
which circled the pony's shaggy ribs suddenby snapped in two.
The rosy rider bethought him he had best dismount — but for
the life of him knew not how to effect it. First one les: he
drew over the saddle till he had carried that stirrup to the
crupper — the while he lay wriggling with his waistcoat glued to
the mane and his arms round the rough hairy neck. Finding
this of no avail, he tried hard to bring the other leg and stirrup
over behind him. Round went the old saddle-pad ; and full
length under the shallow water went the beaming youth — his
merry upturned face responding delightedly to a shout of
laughter that might have been heard at Melton. The Master
rode on with a smile of amusement not unmixed with relief —
and proceeded to post all comers where they could do no harm
while Welby Fishpond was drawn. But scarcely had he taken
up his own position than with a rattle through the crowd came
the irrepressible boy ; to dash right across the covert at a pace
that outdid pursuit, to disappear in the distance, and to leave a
vision of a laughing face and a flying fugitive to make one's
very dreams amusing that night.
But of the run — which was from Saxelby Wood, and which,
with a little more luck, might have taken a much higher class
than was destined for it. A fox that slipped away as he chose,
not as he was bidden, set forth through the adjacent gorse of
Grimston, and over the hill to the left of Old Dalby Wood — the
scent apparently as fierce as the customers who were to be seen
riding hotly in the wake of him, and almost in thai of hounds.
A nice country, level and easy to ride, lay in front ; and pros-
pects never looked better. But a good man who had sown his
wheat declined Reynard his passage, shouted at, and turned him
down among the steep broken gullies between the wood and
( 'RIPPLED. 79
village of Old Dalby. The pack were able to push over these
rather faster than men and horses ; and so came over the hill
again virtually unaccompanied. Thus, when pursuers reached
the higher ground once more, they were at a loss where to ride,
and spread hither and thither in search. A few of them sud-
denly discovered that a single hound was running hard in the
distance — parallel to the road they were on, and which leads to
Widmerpool or Willoughby — and that another couple or so
were following close behind him. " Surely the body of the
pack must be in front," they argued ; and on this hypothesis
set forward to gallop the road till they might chime in at the
head. These three or four hounds dashed on beautifully over
the best of grass and fences ; but as the view opened no sign
appeared of other hounds in front. " Another fox, no doubt—
and of course we can't go on ! " was the conclusion forced on
their unwilling minds when they had gone a mile. And back
they turned to find their comrades and the other hounds. Soon
down the wind came the crash of music and all the sound and
panoply of the chase in motion. Parallel with the road, some
•sixteen couple were running briskly — a dozen men competing
in hot haste at their backs, revelling in the good ground and
the fresh, sharp scent it carried. This was the very line from
which our returning friends had whipped themselves off some
ten minutes before ! So at least there was a scent.
In the end they got on though slowly to the Curate ; there
they learned that their fox had gone on with a single houn.l
close after him — and sure enough, half a dozen fields awa}-,
came up to this hound baying over his half-killed fox in an
orchard, and completed the task.
( RIPPLED.
You may see something from wheels, or even on foot — and
certainly a start from Gartree Hill is a panorama worth wit-
nessing, and fully accounts for the partiality always evinced by
80 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
a clustering crowd on the hilltop. Well, perhaps it was some-
thing to be spared the squeeze through the little double hand-
gates of the plantation below — something not to be called on to
scale the height of Dalby or the steep side of the Punchbowl —
but 'twould need the calculating soul of a money-lender to
derive comfort from such gains as these, on a hunting morning
that might have been made to order. Of course hounds have
run of late, and every day. Has not the glass been rising
steadily, slowly, for more than a week ? Has not the air been
still and, generally, warm ? Has not the sky been dull and
quiet ? and is not the ground as full of water as good drainage
•will allow ? After a certain point the grass will hold no more.
It lies in puddles on the surface ; and a horse splashes through
it far more easily than when the turf was only half-soaked.
Thus, with every requirement arranged in favour of sport, for-
tune has thrown in her help, foxes have travelled, hounds have
had every opportunity — and opportunities have been fully
seized. The Quorn had been by no means in the best of luck
up to this ; but on Friday afternoon the tide fairly turned.
The lane by Thorpe Trussels was so closely packed that it
seemed impossible for all to find an outlet when the signal to
Go came dimly up the breeze from the Melton end of the
covert. But the chase spread like a charge of shot from a gun-
barrel, as it issued from the lane — and, ere wheels could rattle
down to the corner of the covert, the mass of horsemen were
already scattered thickly over the next half-mile to the railway
below. Very evenly they seemed to be riding ; and as the pack
wavered a moment the riders closed up into an almost solid
line — while the whip galloped up with stray hounds ; the
second horseman, finding the direction was in many cases nearly
homewards, hurried forward with the morning horses to see
something of the fun ; and steady folk pounded along the road,
or skirted for a nick. No province is it of mine to spy upon
the habits, tastes, peculiarities or subterfuges of others, who
ride for their own enjoyment, or at least of their own freewill
and in their own way. Upon wheels one may see many situa-
CRIPPLED. 81
tions that never come before one who is riding — but these are
as much the property of the actors as is their own home life.
A mere passing statement, however, is quite admissible, to
wit, Under no other circumstances is the conviction brought so
forcibly home, that by no means every man who goes out hunt-
ing is a foxhunting enthusiast — while it becomes equally appa-
rent that a certain number don't care about foxhunting at all.
If such people had only a fair share of moral courage, they
would surely consult their own pleasure most — and attain all
their ends — if they rode home directly Reynard is afoot, and
when the mere social preliminaries of the day are at an end.
All after that must be to them a constant battle with self, a
prolonged mental trial — to be renewed next day and the day
after. Apart from these good people, another prominent
(though, perhaps, again not very novel) fact pushes itself before
the straining, longing eyes of the involuntary idler. Two or
three hundred people ride where hounds have gone, or some-
where in that direction. How many of these see a hound at
all, when hounds are really running ? Not twenty. Often not
five. The rest — bar a few thwarted competitors — have been
" well in it," for have they not been close at hand as the pack
threw up, and were they not ready to play follow-my-leader
again at a moment's notice ? This is one of the boons that a
strongly-fenced country confers on its patrons. Their minds
find so many distractions in the task set them, that they can
.afford to sink many considerations (elsewhere essential), in the
struggle to keep their heads above water. They are for the
most part content to cut and thrust, as the blade of a fugleman
flashes before them. The carvers belong to one of two classes —
the ambitious novice or the skilled bruiser. The former goes
through the mill either to emerge as a failure, or to tone down
to a grade that mingles daring with experience. Another, a
bastard carver, there is too ; who can ride a line of gates " at
the top o' the hunt," and square his elbows at a gap as fiercely
as a gendarme points his moustaches.
But our business lies up the road, beyond the railway station
G
82 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
of Great Dalby. A high slope gives us a point of vantage and
a two-mile view. Even now we are in good company — though
the fray is melting in the distance. A single rider is still set-
ting a mulish horse at a flight of rails that a hundred hoofs
have rattled and left. A single hound (poor fellow, I'm ten
times more sorry for you !) is driving and zigzagging across the
valley — desperately intent on regaining his comrades, if he can
but make out their line. Road and lanes are besprinkled with
galloping, or loitering, skirmishers, in each possible and im-
possible direction ; and forrard up the next hillside goes the
fast-vanishing struggle. Oh, what a scent ! Oh, what a
country ! Misty it is now ; and the rain is falling. But you
ought to see better than this, though you were born of woman.
Blow your nose, fool ; and stand up on the cushions ! How
wide fellows ride, when the pace is good ! There's a field's
difference between those on the right, and the lot on the left ;
and they bend and sway with each other like squadrons on
parade. Past Guadaloupe and over the hill, with the spire of
Melton Church beckoning them on. God speed you, gallant
gentlemen : You will tell us the tale to-morrow ! " Twenty
and odd minutes to Melton — the best of fun. On by Wicklow
Lodge and across the railway to Wyfordby. Firr got a view ;
and pushed him back round Burbage's Covert to Burton.
There hounds and fox were in the same field ; and he was done
to a turn. But directly afterwards they seemed to get on to
the old line, put up their heads, and lost him at the very spot
where he had passed Wicklow Lodge before. But it was a
sporting run, even without a finish."
CONVALESCENT.
" Riding to covert in Leicestershire is better fun than hunt-
ing in any other country," says Whyte Melville.
Tuesday, Jan. 23rd, was a bright beautiful day, with the
sun shining gaily, but with a crisp cold feeling in the air that
CON VA LESCENT. S3 1
scoffed at any thought of a coming spring. Just the day for,
the Tilton Hills, just the day for an onlooker seeking informa-
tion, but shirking his share in the fray- — for a post on any one
of the prominent eminences hereabouts gave a birdseye view
that was distinctly and sharply marked up to the most distant
horizon. Horses and hounds two miles away looked as if re-
duced from life-size by photography, and with none of their
outline lost or even blurred in the far perspective. But, while
men of conscience and capacity had worked out the early part
in the day in travelling on a cold scent well nigh to the Coplow
— and to all appearance had fallen freely by the way — your
recorder was pursuing only the result of circumstances and an
instinct which pointed down wind, to Owston Wood. To reach
this from Brooksby's castellated mansion involves a ride along
what he has learned, in his more or less limited experience, to
look upon as the most fascinating bridle-xoad in the Midlands —
to wit, that by the brookside from Twyford to Owston. Its
charms have been, of course, enhanced, almost sanctified, by
association with the Great Ranksboro' Run of 1875, of which
this vale formed the chief scene. But, apart from this, it has
a beauty that cannot but appeal to the eye and heart of any
man who loves a grass country. For, from either bank of the
tempting Twyford Brook, miles of old and roughly-fenced turf
slope gently upward to the higher levels of Burrough or Tilton
with never a cottage, scarcely a tree, to break the wild expanse.
Here Reynard is little likely to encounter anybody or anything
to turn him from his path,: here hounds can travel quickly if
they can travel anywhere ; and here a rider need never fear but
that a bold horse and a bold heart can carry him whither he
may choose.
The keen clear air of Tuesday allowed the eye full play and
the imagination full scope, bidding them wander at their will
into the far distance, or travel again over well-recognized scenes.
The quiet southerly breeze (which might at any moment bear
upon it the clamour of the approaching chase) only fanned the
midday cigar, aiding pleasant reverie, and inciting to happy.
g 2
84 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
fancy. The very reverse of poetry had been the earlier part of
the ride. A horse specially chosen for his placid disposition
and peaceful ways had recklessly ignored the trust reposed,
had turned traitor out of pure inconsiderateness, and made the
first three miles in merry sunshine a hateful and bone-shaking
experience by his silly pranks. At each village and every road-
side cot the beauty of the day had been turned to practical use
by the gudewives ; who, after spending the morning over their
washtubs, had now utilised the afternoon by hanging every
conceivable form of undergarment to flop in the breeze, and to
scare horse and rider out of their wits.
So much (too much) of the late comer by the way. Owston
Village was reached at last ; and the long vista of the northern
edge of the Wood eagerly scanned. No sign of hounds — nor
sound, till a chance shepherd heard them in the distance,
beyond Robin-a-Tiptoe's ponderous slope. Then — with the
suddenness with which a Hunt and its surroundings always
break into sight — here they were, only a single field away, and
about to enter Owston Wood at its western end. Not the first
time by many was it that we had dipped into the great wood
— and in very much the same good and ever-persevering
company as now. But never has the deep clay of its rides
seemed half so difficult to traverse. To keep within hearing of
hounds and huntsmen as they worked hither and thither,
demanded a labour and a determination worthy of any cause —
and what better can there be than foxhunting? In ordinary
years we have at least been able to trot about. Now we could
only crawl and wallow — little by little. Horses were constantly
up to their very girths ; and frequently had to stop progress
altogether while they pulled their feet out with laborious
plunges. Before long, hounds were holloaed away on the
Withcote side, where the chief cross ride cuts the wood ; and
for the next five-and-thirty minutes they ran hard.
"To-morrow at 11.30, gentlemen !" was the kindly decision
worded by the Duke of Rutland, when on Wednesday (Jan. 24)
it was found impossible for his hounds to throw oft* at Croxton
CONVALESCENT. 85
Park. And in honest gratitude will his Grace's health be
toasted to-night (Thursday, 25th) at many a dinner-table 'twixt
Melton and Grantham. Eight-and-tJiirty minutes without a
check, and a hunting run requiring another hour and a-half to
complete, sums up the result of the indulgence. It has come
on post-day ; and a long ride home has narrowed the available
margin still more. But as far as time will allow, and as
far as the assistance of a kind friend's confidential (a sort of
invalid chair on four galloping legsj enabled me to see it,
I will set down the outline of this — the latest of the many
good things enjoyed by the Belvoir this season. Even at
twelve o'clock the roads were so hard and glassy that it was
difficult and terrifying to ride to Croxton Park from Melton, or
elsewhere. But, shortly after noon, Gillard moved off upon the
five miles of mud that intervene between the meet and Coston
Covert — a bright sun meanwhile doing its best to dispel the
lingering frost. A fox had been killed in covert here within
the fortnight ; but another stout venturer had taken his place,
and in the next ten minutes he was away, with horn and cheer
ringing close to his ears. The village of Coston seemed the
earliest point ; but in the second or third field, fox left the
plough, and turned right down the wind in the direction of
Woodwell Head. Thus he passed again within half a mile of
the covert he had left ; and with a capital scent the beautiful
" middle pack " of the Belvoir set to work upon the grass. An
early and ugly bit of timber was promptly scattered by Mr.
Hutchinson, who on a neat and well-bred bay was riding
brilliantly throughout the run. Beyond Wymondham the
cream of the gallop ensued.
Their fox, with his head again up the wind, had skirted the
right of the village, as was delightfully testified by yokels of
every degree, and he was going for his life. Once clear of the
outskirts of Wymondham (i.e., of the two or three small wheat-
fields immediately touching it) he was again on excellent grass.
How wonderfully firm and sound it rode — even in this deep
wet winter ! The fences were chiefly timber-mended gaps in
86 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
high bullfinches, or else fair stake-and-bounds ; and all were
such as a Leicestershire horse should cover with comfort and
pleasure. The pace brought its usual complement of grief;
'and I even heard a vague rumour of somebody having doubled
a fallen horse and rider in a style worthy of The Lamb in his
second Liverpool. But when chance gave me the opportunity of
taking stock of the flying scene as it passed, I saw some twenty
good sportsmen going their best and straightest, with a dozen
spots in each fence to divide between them. Mr. H. T. Barclay
and Mr. Alfred Brocklehurst were level with the staff in office
— while immediately close rode Count Kaunitz, Capts. Ashton,
Boyce, Molyneux, and Pennington. Mrs. F. Sloane-Stanley
was well with hounds, and the Rector of Stonesby set an
example that all might follow — who could. " Oh, for a forty-
parson power ! " But this was only a flash of the changing
light. 'Twas thus they n eared and touched Saxby, to carry their
flight in varied order past Freeby to the plantation beyond —
Day's Spinney is, I believe, the title of a modern construction.
A double back to the churchyard of Freeby — and thirty-eight
minutes (a computation by average) brought a first slight
check — to be succeeded by a possible change by Freeby Wood,
many circles round about Newman's Gorse, &c, &c, and a fait
accompli in a fox to ground by Stonesby Village. But those
straight four miles upwind were Leicestershire— and post
demands epitome even after a real scenting day.
DEAR DIRTY FEBRUARY.
To the Bel voir belong most of the honours so far, into the
Melton season '82-83. Week after week they have placed
something handsome to their credit — and not only, I believe,
in this neighbourhood, but in every quarter of the Duke of
Rutland's still extensive country. Their run of Wednesday —
the last day of January — was delightful. Not only did it come
iafter a broken period of several days, in which storm and
DEAR DIRTY FEBRUARY. 87
tempest reigned paramount, and sport was but the shuttlecock
of fate and weather ; but it was both a hound-run and a riding
run — enjoyable from all points of view. With every advantage
of country and distance, it could be seen by everyone, while at
the same time no one who would jump and ride could say that
he lacked scope or opportunity. If it had not quite the dash
of the gallop of the Thursday previous (from Coston Covert), it
covered more and equally good. ground ; and, if possible, hounds
were seen to-day at better advantage, for from find to finish
there was scarcely occasion to touch them.
Exactly the same morning as on that Thursday — cold, quiet,
and so frosty that hardly a horse was started from Melton, on
his five miles' journey to Croxton Park, at eleven o'clock. It
was about 12.30 before it was deemed advisable to move off
from the Park, and then the five miles were done over again —
a feu de joie from a party of gunners saluting the cavalcade as
it passed the Brentingby Spinneys, on its way to Mr. Burbage's
Covert. But the secrecy of the visit was all in vain. Melton
town did not mean to be defrauded of its civic rights ; had
turned out in strength at an early hour, and, in so doing, had
disturbed a brace of foxes. So when Gillard got there, the
eovert was bare — and emptiness again awaited him at Melton
Spinney.
But on the opposite hillside, and beyond the Melton Brook,
is a little ash copse — Scalford Spinney — from which several
smart gallops have, in the last season or two, had their source.
And hence, before half the stragglers had collected, a fox was
viewed away towards Old Hills, and the huntsman and hounds
were hurrying up to the little lane which bounds it. A
momentary difference of opinion led to more than a momentary
loss of time ; but in three fields more hounds had swung across
the fugitive's line, and went into it with a vigour that at once
pronounced a scent. What a hurry we were all in ! As well
might a freshdrawn cork be replaced in a bottle of " The Boy,"
and keep back the froth, as that a Leicestershire field once
started should quiet itself forthwith into dull sobriety. And
88 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
now it wanted but a quarter to three, on a short January day.
No one over-rode the hounds, 'tis true ; for no one could —
inasmuch as a line of railway stood almost immediately in their
path. Perhaps no one would have done. But it was a hard
good field, of mettle as keen as ever rode to the Belvoir.
The wooded basin of Old Hills was left just to the right ;
and the ironwork-railway crossed. At the Nottingham road, a
curious turn of the fox was quickly and cleverly unravelled by
the huntsman ; the hounds were set on their way in a second
over strong grass fields, and their followers had to work in their
wake amid locked gates and almost unmanageable fences as
best they could. Over the hill-side the pack were quite shut
out from view by the tall and quickly-recurring bullfinches ;
but, as they neared the Quorn covert of Cant's Thorns, a
second shooting party was encountered. Reynard slightly
turned in his path, and held up towards Wartnaby. It was
marvellous now to note the wide development to which know-
ledge of locality can be brought, by dint of study and instinct
of self-preservation. No sooner was the valley in sight, down
which runs the Wartnaby and Saxelby Bottom, than, with the
same accord that moves a flock of starlings, the whole field
bore to the right for the narrow part where the fence is
jumpable — swooping down upon it as if beckoned by one
common beacon. The only, and luckless, exception was in the
person of a fine rider and good sportsman who hails from a
strange countrie ; and who, in the honest belief that Leicester-
shire should at least be as sound ground as Yorkshire,* rode
straight forward, to find himself embedded in a deep black bog.
By some happy management, however, he reappeared upon the
scene within half an hour, and with no worse injury than a loss-
of appearance and half his reins.
On over fine grass, that even in this season of deluge is at
least rideable — in comfort and at a gallop — while the little
ladies of Belvoir sped merrily forward, and fences came clean
* The late Mr. E. Leathnm, " in tiuth a gallant gentleman."
DEAR DIRTY FEBRUARY. 89
and freely. There is seldom a giant field with the Belvoir ;
but that of to-day included many faces besides those regularly
in attendance. Mrs. Candy was renewing pleasant memories
in a gallop over familiar ground, and riding with zest and
talent as pronounced as ever. Nor was hers the only habit
distinguishable — or distinguished — in the first flight of the run.
Mrs. F. Sloane-Stanley never missed a needful fence wherever
hounds led ; and Mrs. Pennington rode the line with equal,
success. Then had not Capt. J. Brocklehurst reappeared on
the scene, with his old talent for crossing a country no whit the
less bright for his sojourn in the land of Egypt ? Mr. George
Lambton was there from Buckinghamshire : Mr. Husrh Owen
from Gloucestershire ; Mr. E. Leatham from Yorkshire ; and
Mr. Fletcher from Sussex. The men of Oakham have taken
most kindly to the Belvoir Wednesdays ; and were represented
to-day by Col. and Mr. Fred. Gosling, and Mr. Beaumont—
Avhile from Melton and round about came Lord Wilton, Col.
Forester, Capts. Smith, Boyce, Ashton, Pennington, Counts
Kinsky and Kaunitz, Messrs. A. Brocklehurst, H. Barclay, &c.
— with Capt. Longstaff, Messrs. Drummond, J. Welby, Burdett-
Coutts, from the home country. And the above, with several
others, were all riding right up to hounds throughout.
Soon the chase had reached Saxelby Wood, passed through
that covert, touched Grimston Gorse, and skirted Old Dalby
Wood. Now they were at last on plough — only two fields of
it, but enough to bring forth a spirit of thankfulness for that
ours is in the main a grass country. Close at their fox, hounds
made light of the arable ; and racing past Lord Aylesford's
Gorse (scarcely a field away) dived down into Shoby Scoles —
while riders galloped parallel on the grassy ridge above. Forty
minutes to here. Surely we must get up to him now ! There
he is ! See his brown form crawling over the slope. And the
galloping horsemen pull up on the brow — while the pack work
noisily up to them.
In brief, the hunt went forward — whether with a fresh fox
or a tired one is a matter of conjecture. If a fresh one, he
90 FOX-HOUND, IOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
seemed strangely abroad in his own country. If tired, he
must have been marvellously stout. With the scent as good
as ever, they pressed him over grass and occasional plough
round Ragdale ; past the back of Six Hills towards Wimeswold.
Without assistance they hunted fast over this district, bent
back to the right to recross the Fosse, and lost him suddenly
and inexplicably as he dodged the hedgerows about a mile from
Old Dalby Wood. For an hour and seventeen minutes they had
been running continuously, and generally hard — the extreme
points (from Scalford Spinney into the barren region beyond
Six Hills) quite seven miles and a half apart.
Every evil element was brought into play on Friday and
Saturday (Jan. 26 and 27) — snow, hail, wind, and rain, and
the vilest of them all was the wind. No one needs to be
reminded that a rampant gale was blowing on both those days.
It mattered little or nothing that it scattered your tiles and
chimney j^ots ; for you were either snugly indoors, or foolishly
out hunting. Friday was wind and sunshine — a fixture rather
more pleasant than the tempest and downpour of the Saturday.
It took two hands and a facile horse to open a gate on Friday.
Saturday called for an amiable mind, and the most artful of
clothing, to withstand the rushing rain and the piercing cold,
that assailed one at the door and bullied one incessantly till
the same shelter was regained. Pleasure — duty — or want of
moral courage : which was the impelling power that forced so
many frail forms to the covertside on that wild wet Saturday
with the Cottesmore ? Pleasure could certainly not have been
the agent, unless in its falsest phase, anticipation. Duty is a
force that has its weight with some ; but is by no means an
universal or even a fashionable influence in this latter half of
the nineteenth century — and in this instance was likely to
sway only the Hunt officials, and perhaps some wretched
correspondent. So Want of Moral Courage — the dread of
omitting to do what others would probably venture — is the
DEAR DIRTY FEBRUARY. 91
remaining alternative, which will account, I presume to think,
in a great measure for the discomfort voluntarily and freely
self-inflicted.
As for the existing grievance of soil and weather, it merely
ranks among the petty causes that induce an Englishman to
maintain his privilege never so freely as in reference to fox-
hunting. He will grumble when rain falls freely ; he mutters
when the sun shines brightly. He uses deplorable language
when he is blown about by a gale of wind ; and he cries aloud
when frost brings fine weather. He hates a crowd ; and he
won't hunt in the provinces while he can afford himself place
in the tumult of the Shires. He rebels loudly against a "ring-
ing " fox ; yet it is not invariably " his day " when it happens
that a straight good point is achieved. Then, as to his mounts,
well, he seldom says much against them — for who knows when
they may be on offer ? But in his heart he has probably a
vivid grievance against every, unit of perfection in an expensive
stud. Such grievances are hidden, and accumulative — too
often in direct proportion to the age and purse-capacity of the
grievance-owner. At any rate, they won't bear analysis.
Altogether, methinks, foxhunting is a most fascinating and
enviable pursuit in the abstract. But in the practical form of
everyday experience it would seem to be beset with so many
difficulties, annoyances, shortcomings and drawbacks, that it is
a wonder so many men are found still guileless enough to
embark upon and cling to it.
On Saturday the Cottesmore could not leave the kennels for
frOst, till another hour of rain had softened the roads. That
rain continued to pelt pitilessly till late in the afternoon. But
if driven disagreeably home to the feelings of the majority, it
proved more or less of a mercy to a hardworking official — for
the latter had got over all the disagreeable sensations of cold
water long before he encountered the shock of finding himself
in a deep pond. In common with several others he had
jumped a stile beneath a tree ; but, intent oh his hounds, saw
nothing of what the others had dodged away from, as one by
92 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
one they had landed on its brink. Or at the most it only
caught his eye as one of the many puddles flooding the
meadows — till, with a wild bound the mare landed him, or
rather soused him, into the deep muddy water. The splasb
came loud and suddenly; the black water went up to heaven —
and all was for a moment still. Then up rose a horse's head —
but nothing for some seconds to show that a rider, too, was
immersed. Up it came at last, like a Jack-in-the-Box — or like
an apple in a bucket at a school feast. Nor hat nor cap betrayed
its identity — but who shall make fun of that honest face, albeit
it wore a very comic aspect then ? Anxiety for his safety
checked every inclination to laugh at the time. Why go back
to it now ? A true good servant was not drowned ; but was
soon in the saddle again.
DEEPER AND DEEPER.
The best day during the next week was Friday, February 2nd.
We have seen no better scenting day this season ; and if the
Quorn hounds failed to kill a fox, it was no fault of theirs — for
they ran as if in view nearly all day. Their first fox has to-
thank the development of Melton into a great railway centre
for his escape ; for he beat them at the junction-point of four
different lines of rail, and then only because the river Wreake
also stepped in to help him. After this they struck off a fox on
the move, and bundled him round the country till one and then
another substitute took up the running. Thus they went
furiously for about an hour and a half — the last five-and-
twenty minutes bringing a beaten fox, and many very beaten
horses, to the main earth at Melton Spinney, in the Duke's
country. It is curious how it falls to the lot of certain localities,
to be trodden for a while almost day by day — till the tide
moves elsewhere and another district comes in for its turn.
For the last week Old Hills and Wartnaby have been the-
rallying points for both Quorn and Belvoir ; and every field and
DEEPER AND DEEPER. 93
-every fence within hail of them have more than once felt the
rush of the passing chase. Wednesday, Friday, and Monday
.ao-ain, hounds ran fast over the same area, Firr duce or Gillard
.consule.
Friday was rainy from start to finish — but very different from
the many wet days of the present season, for the rain fell soft
and warm, and covert coats were gladly thrown aside before
work began — the disclosures (I speak as one of the many on
whom the impeachment may rest) showing that comfort, as very
•distinct from either ornament or even respectability, had been
ithe aim of the toilette. Some men will maintain a smart
;appearance under almost any difficulties, out of a very proper
respect for themselves and an innate appreciation of the regard
of others — and a certain number of these were doing their duty
to-day, in pink and beaver. At the meet and at the early
covertside they stood out in marked superiority, a credit to
their tenets and their Hunt ; while the ill-dressed ones shuffled
-uneasily in their saddles, standing as far aloof as possible from
-criticism, and shunning all society save that of their fellow
.sinners. But, a very little while of the water and slush, that
■throughout the day reigned paramount around and underfoot,
'reduced elegance and shabbiness, the spendthrift and the
•economist, to the same muddy level — making the bright flower
faded and bedraggled, and hiding the modest weed under a
■ cloak that covered all his shortcomings.
Thorpe Satchville Hall being the meet, the Master arranged
to visit Gartree Hill to commence with, and thus secured for
Mr. Hartopp's fine covert, for once, a freedom from footpeople,
.and a fair chance. Even under these circumstances the foxes
were fully alive ; and a brace broke away over the Burton Flat
directly hounds were in covert. Though a cold wet fallow met
the lar.ter as they emerged, the pack showed at once what the
scent was to be ; and in a few seconds more they were together
.and away over the grass. A locked gate and a bullfinch of
twenty years' growth then stood in the path, to damp ambition
.and ardour just bursting into flame. Here it was, I fancy, that
94 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
horse and man — both steeplechase heroes of renown — fell
victims to the uncompromising timber. We seldom jump gates
in Leicestershire — never, if we can help it — for the double
reason that most of us have long ago learned to be afraid of
them ; and, secondly, that we go through so many every day that
our horses get altogether out of the way of looking upon them
as jumpable fabric. So, when the horse of the country is.
suddenly called upon to negotiate one as a fence, he is only too-
likely to imagine some mistake has been made — and so omits-
to rise in time to avoid making another himself. The conse-
quences are generally unpleasant, as the gate seldom fails to-
resent the liberty, and the gateway is too often paved with
brick ends and rough blocks of stone. Nor was the example
in point the only instance of the day to illustrate the in-
advisability of such essays ; for, in addition to the downfall of
the pair that have borne the grenade so gallantly, a worse-
disaster overtook Mr. Pryor in the loss of his grand and
venerable chestnut. The latter injured himself so severely over
another gate in the course of the day, that orders were given for
his destruction. How many seasons the old horse had carried
his master I am unable to say ; but he was at least " of age,'"
and an association commenced at Oxford has concluded witli
some ten seasons at Melton.
But of the run just commenced. — A dive through the ash
plantation to the left, a wriggle through close-growing trees,,
and a scramble over others recently cut — were the outcome of
despair and the renewal of hope half crushed. Hounds swung
leftward, too ; and the half-field lost was easily to be recovered,
by horses fresh and fit. That Burton Flat is lovely riding, when
a fox keeps to the grass and the scent is hot. The fences,
unless my craven soul misguides me, took a great deal of
covering. One's own spurs are as a rule well sharpened ; the-
order to " drive him at his fences " was executed as well as a
long pair of legs and a very pronounced dread of a fall can
effect ; Confidence (chestnut gelding, pedigree unknown, not for
sale) is a lengthy horse and a powerful jumper. Yet the ditch
DEEPER AND DEEPER.
95
on the farther side was more than once cut a foot wider into the
field than either Confidence or Cowardice had calculated ; and
a moment of struggling suspense added yet another grey hair
to locks that a score of seasons had already streaked with silver
and fear. But, even with the water splashing upward from
every furrow, the turf over which the Grand National Hunt is
this year to disport, was sound enough to carry a horse fairly up
to his jumps, and to send him easily from its surface as he rose
at timber or topbinder. The Melton and Oakham road was
jumped into and out of, close to the Cottesmore meet of Wild's
Lodge. The fox then bore leftward from Berry Gorse, made
straight for Mr. Burbage's Covert, and in so doing brought his
field over the Burton Brook — that will figure in the steeple-
chases to come. It has its full quantum of horseflesh in its-
waters now ; for, of the leaders who rode over or in, none
recked of the ford ten yards away, on the other side the
hedge ! (And this fact, my gay comrades, is given you gleefully
%■ i
m
r
m
III a .
by the one you baited unmercifully the week before, for riding-
at the Saltby Brook in the Belvoir gallop, when shallow water
was to be discovered close at hand.) This difficulty got over or
through, it was easy and cheery to gallop on to Burbage's
96 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Covert ; and to pull up hot and excited, as the hounds swam
the swollen current of the Wreake, and gained the covert
fbeyond. Half swimming, half wading, wholly wet, the field
followed through what is generally a ford. Men tucked their
legs on to their horses' necks. Fair ladies allowed the muddy
water to touch only such portion of their apparel as they
nowadays purchase from Peel and Tautz. But neither sex was
spared by the yellow flood, which tried hard to sweep them
fbodily down-stream. And their perils and difficulties had only
just begun — when five-and-tvventy minutes from the start.
Now they found that Reynard had played them the unhandsome
trick of recrossing the river immediately beyond the covert ;
and, as soon as a crawling puffing luggage train allowed them,
they had to avail themselves of the railway and its bridge, in
order to get back over the stream. By this time hounds had
disappeared somewhere in the direction of Melton: and, though
riders made all haste to double out of the railway, over a heap
of sleepers and the thorn fence at the foot of the embankment,
the next mile or two was only a gallop on guess.
They got news, but no sight, as they passed by Wyndham
Lodge aud the outskirts of the town ; but it was several minutes
more before they found the pack hunting busily among the
lines of railway that converge into Melton from the west.
Their fox had rounded the town, and now sought refuge in
•confusion. Already there was a babel of sound and signal.
Porters, platelayers, and signalmen flocked forth from every
side to shout and help. Red flags were waved to protect the
pack ; green ones to attract the huntsman whither the fox had
gone. White gates were thrown open for the passage of all
who could cross the first iron way, to venture into the most
•curious labyrinth that ever foxhunting entered. Queer excava-
tions had to be jumped ; bits of old thorn or timber fences still
blocked the way between embankments and cuttings ; and at
•every few yards it seemed as if the Hunt was fairly entrapped.
Now came a lofty banked line which for the moment threatened
■to put an end to all further progress ; till someone discovered a
CLIMAX OF DIRT AND SPORT. 97
brick archway some seventeen hands high. Knights and
squires, dames and damsels, were all off their horses in a jiffy ;
and it was found that pommels could just scrape under the
brickwork, to emerge in safety beyond the embankment. But
another well-fenced railway again stared them in the face ;
while the river flowed by on the other flank, deep, dark, and
wide. Hounds feathered on the water's edge ; and it was
quite certain Reynard must have crossed somewhere. So there
was nothing for Firr to do, but make the best of his way into
and through the town of Melton, getting round to the other
side of Egerton Lodge as quick as he could. But he was able
to do no more towards picking up a well-earned fox. Rumour
had it that the gardener had seen him enter Lord Wilton's
garden — where the Cottesmore fox of October found refuge.
CLIMAX OF DIRT AND SPORT.
Alternate days of storm and calm — the former in the ascen-
dant with reference to hunting, as the latter scored the one day
on which men and horses should be at rest. Thus has the week
been passed. Gales and flood you have all experienced and read
of elsewhere. We have had our full portion — meted out at the
most unfitting moments. Others may have made their hay
while the sun shone ; but our lot, except on Friday as below,
has been amid storm and tempest unutterable.
Friday, February 9th — with the Quorn at Queniborough —
was noticeable for more people, more mud, and more croppers
than any day of the present season. No one was informed
of the rendezvous until the day previous. What would the crowd
have been under advertisement ? We have seen many Quorn
Fridays still more densely attended — but even this was thickly
packed enough to have made a stranger gasp, or tremble. And
in the goodly day's sport provided, there seemed room enough
for all to see as much as their individual power and prowess
would prompt. As to the mud, it made itself patent long before
H
98 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the falls began — and they came freely enough as soon as the
ball was really set a rolling. The authority of the oldest fox-
hunter — of course the Rev. John Bullen, now riding his
eightieth season — goes to bear out the assertion that Leicester-
shire was never so wet and deep as now. Horses may splash and
flounder over the surface for a half-hour's burst even yet ; for
the saturated ground will take in no more moisture, and they
slip out as readily as they slip in. Besides, horses that still
have legs to go upon are twice as fit as in the earlier months.
But when once their first vigour is exhausted, and the impetus
of pace no longer exists — when, instead of rushing over their
fences as they reach them, the}' are called upon to pull up
and gather themselves afresh for a strong effort at each
deep trodden gap, as must be when a large field is finding its
way over a wet country in a slow hunting run — then the depth
of the ground finds them out, and sets its stamp in the shape
of falls innumerable. Fences of which a pony would have
made light in November, now constantly effect the downfall of
accomplished hunters. They jump into bogs where a bog never
existed before ; they slide into ditches, and slip up to timber ;
and they fall from exhaustion when in ordinaiy times their
strength would have been scarcely taxed. Men who would con-
tinue to ride to hounds have learnt to accept their tumbles
cheerfully by the brace ; esteem one per diem as of no account,
making of a cropper no bones, as they never seem to break any.
Hatters and tailors are having a pressure put upon them that
is far more cheerfully borne than is the strain that has devolved
upon the gentlemen of the wardrobe at home. The latter have
at last encountered the bugbear of work, in its most serious
form ; and in some cases have only been withheld from throwing
up the sponge by an appeal to their finer feelings of self
interest. The grooms have still more to bear — and they bear
it in sorrow that is not always silent. Having by this time
exhausted every nostrum that bears upon blows, bangs and
strains, they have had to fall back — wherever the material of
mastership is sufficiently pliable or solvent — on a requisition
CLIMAX OF DIRT AND SPORT. 99
for reinforcement, and have packed their employers off to the
scene of every sale in the kingdom. Hunting men who are
sadly alive to the limit of their income or their credit — or, is
it possible in any case, of the sum they consider the game is
worth ? — have already grown querulous over the state of the
country, avowing that hunting is " no pleasure under such cir-
cumstances." Ye gods, have we not known too many frost-
bound Februavies ? Here they have not lost a day since early
December — and who shall say how many open seasons he has
before him ?
Friday was a day they all appreciated — though, as I have
said, it was the muddiest, so far, of the winter (to be outdone
in that respect — beaten out of memory almost — by the fol-
lowing Saturday and Monday). From Queniborough Village
to Bark by Holt was a clever flank march that at once shook
off half the camp following of such a corps d'armee as had
mustered to hunt. The Gorse alongside the Holt is an ex-
cellent starting point for a fox, when the field has been duly
marshalled — as it was on this perfect hunting-morning. A
good fox meant to go straight; but the disappointed following
of cobblers, factory-hands and what-nots, that had left Leices-
ter and their work behind for a share in the national pas-
time, were posted along the opposite hillside, by Queniborough
Spinney — an almost impassable chain across Reynard's path.
He got in among them, and was chased hither and thither —
like a stray hare amid the battalions of an Aldershot field
day — for some minutes, while huntsman and pack and field
bore down in hot haste upon him. By some miracle he then
burst through the throng, shot through one of Mr. Cheney's
Spinneys, and made the direction he wanted. From Gaddesby
Old Mill to Ashby Pastures could not have been more than
another quarter of an hour's galloping — but the effect at the
latter covert-side was apparent in a most marked degree.
Two noble riders bore black and deeplaid, but fortunately,
not serious traces of a simultaneous roll, achieved at a new
made drain. Another of gentle blood had been under his
h 2
100 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
horse in a ditch ; but the bottom of the cutting being too
narrow to admit of the horse and himself occupying it at
same time, he had been able to compound for a release with
the loss of spurs, hat and whip. A fourth proclaimed a dis-
astrous failure at timber with a thick plastering not only of
his own well-dressed form, but of every square inch of the
graceless quadruped that had served him such a trick. And
ere the da}r was out these four were but ordinary samples of
forty.
Saturday, February 10th, came in rotation as another wild,
wet, day. The Cottesmore were at Leesthorpe, and the first
move was in search of a fox said to be quartered in a tree
by the riverside about opposite Wyfordby. The huntsman,
rode right under the tree (an ordinary ash, if I remember
right) and there, stretched flat along a branch, lay the gentle-
man in question — his eyes twinkling at the intruders, aud
his yellow fur in prominent contrast to the dark bough on
which he reclined, some ten feet above the ground. Down
he came when called upon. Little enough law was given
him though, and jumping as far as he could, he lit almost
among the pack — splash into the shallow wet ditch. I fancy
they scarcely realised at first what was among them ; for
he was able to roll out, and, drenched as he was, to get
out of their way before they could seize him. Doubling a
first hedgerow, he saved his life — though he had many narrow
escapes before he was clear of their jaws. A fresh fox, except
in infancy, is generally quicker than hounds, if he has a hedge-
row to help him ; for they seem to get in each other's way
in their impetuous excitement. Meanwhile, as they started
in chase, a second fox leaped down behind them and slipped
off in safety — a third one preferring to remain ensconced on
the same branch. A single fox in a tree used to be held
almost a phenomenon. To have verified three in one tree is
a fact to be noted.
There was not scent enough to kill — scarcely enough to
bother — the one they pursued.
ROUGE ET NOW. 101
The state of the country — yes, even of this country, off
which the water rushes almost as it falls — is the one topic
on which men harp, and on which they will continue to harp
until suddenly they wake to find themselves amid the dust of
March.
ROUGE ET NOIR.
Another giant meet of the Quorn was Friday, February
16th, this time at South Croxton, and on a hot bright day
that offered an early and unwelcome foretaste of spring. I
need not descant on the crowd. Every one who had attended
at Queniborough the week before was without fail at South
Croxton, — and had brought his cousins and friends with him
besides. The Quorn Hunt funds should be in a very flourish-
ing condition, if half of those who come out with the hounds
contribute their mite. Do they, Mr. Secretary ?
About a warm sunny morning with a sharp rime frost still
lingering under the hedgerows, there are theories diverse and
abstruse in connection with scent. Most of these are opposed
to it. But have not the Belvoir cast such to the winds on
various mornings this winter? The opposition scored this
morning, however ; for the fox from Barkby Holt had it all his
own way from the very start. No one could complain of the
crowd in this slow pursuit to Scraptoft ; for not half a dozen
people got away with the hounds, or even joined them before
the end of their first check — only three fields away. And why ?
Because the rides were deep, and they had posted themselves
where they thought, or wished, Beynard should break. Strange
to say, he determined otherwise, and broke in a direction
diametrically opposed to the one appointed — a freak that
seldom fails to produce a result of like disaster.
All that was noteworthy in the next half-hour was written in
black and scarlet on the chief actors. The soil of Leicester-
shire is an ink that clings in proportion to its meed of water.
102 FOX-HOUNJ), FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
It is in splendid writing order now ; and students dip heartily
in it, to inscribe themselves on the scroll of notoriety, The
rides of Barkby Holt alone form an inkpot to confer a day's
immortality on the plunger (" ex uno disced qui coatitm scarlet
habebeit" — vide Grammar Rugbiensis, p. 83), English and
Irish classics may have been on the decline ; but Gallic rose
briskly as ever, after a thrice-repeated check. (Typical
Developments illustration suggested, Two Quorn Fridays — Mr.
Sturgess, please note ! ) But the subject for an artist — artist,
let us presume, being mounted sufficiently well to laugh at
a blind ditch and to take out his pencil as he flew an oxer
— was the most gallant of all gallant men, who rode the
whitest of all white horses (and rode him with the longest
of spurs and heartiest of hearts). Superlative knew all about
it — the white horse knew nothing. Can you wonder then
that Superlative legged it across two ploughed fields to start
with ? Accept this, and believe that Superlative cut out the
work through the first fence following the early check, cleaned
out the ditch and levelled the hedge that had the imperti-
nence to present itself next ? A bridge, a ford ! Pshaw I
Keep these for non-hunting countries ! Give me a milk-
white steed with his head on the bank and his rowelled flanks
laved in mid-stream. A bold good man, though. May we
soon see him on a better horse !
But the run of Friday was from Scraptoft Gorse. The
pack had worked through its bare remnant, and were being
carried on to the Holt beyond — when a single old hound
ferreted a fox out of a thorn bush. At this time there were
horses and people enough to fill half a mile of the lane leading
from Hall to Holt ; and now they had to spread in pursuit
as best they might. Most of them, it must be allowed, at
once got inextricably involved in their own numbers. But, as
usual, the few leading ready spirits of the year slipped to the
front as if by magic. Capt. Smith was half across the first
field before anyone else was out of the lane : then half a
dozen others broke loose at once from different points — and
ROUGE ET NO III. 103
the tide surged on towards Thurnby. Almost immediately,
however, it swept round to the right, and cut the lane near
Scraptoft Hall. Into the lane was awkward enough — with
its wide straggling hedge and deep blind ditch — and we of
the road found it no easy task to ride clear of falling horses
and rolling men. But out of the lane presented a difficulty
still less fascinating, in the form of a strong oxer, to be taken
at a stand. The leaders rattled the far rail gaily ; and sat
in all sorts of queer postures as they wriggled over. But it
seemed a long long time ere any one made the timber give —
and meanwhile the hounds were flying down the slope for
Key ham as if their fox was still in view.
Why is it that year by year your penman has only some half-
dozen names with which to ring the changes, with any special
pack ? Is it fair upon the scribbler that, with every craving
for variety of material, he finds that each season a certain few
men single themselves out as keener and quicker than others
in each Hunt, though the test comes day after day ? Thus it
was heart-breaking in that first bruising ten minutes to look
ahead in vain for fresh food. (The printer's devil, in fact,
seeking whom he might devour.) I believe I am safe in
asserting that I can tell the back of every thruster of the Quorn,
a good field away. Mr. Leatham's sturdy figure was unmis-
takably forward on the bay ; Capt, Smith and Downs were
alongside him (these two never fall out of the prominent
few — or certainly never have since I began hunting) ; while
Count Kinsky, with Messrs. Brocklehurst and Barclay, again
went to represent the flower of Melton (all of them, by the
way, buds of very recent years). Lord Manners had lost scarce
any ground by his fall, and was with hounds again in two fields.
But several others lost all their chance just now, by jumping a
fence to the right and condemning themselves to two fields of
deep steam-plough. How cheering it is, when a bullfinch frowns
unbroken and apparently impenetrable between you and hounds,
to see two sharp quick men flash through it in turn — leaving it
all easy and open for the next anxious comer! So argued he,
104
FOX- HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
hugging himself and squeezing his horse joyously. But the
good beast had an eye farther forward than his master ; had
marked the other two horsemen turn at once down the hedge-
side after their jump — and forthwith he cut the corner. The
pair came through ; but came through in ribbons. Tis mar-
vellous what the weight of a galloping horse (one with substance
enough to carry 14 stone over wet Leicestershire) will burst
through. But, oh, how the face and apparel of the hapless
rider suffer, is eloquently told by bleeding features, torn hat,
and general aspect of piteous discomfiture ! At the road into
Keyham the van closed up ; the hounds took a moment
to make their swing forward ; and then the rush went on,
straight over the grass to Barkby Holt. The remainder of
the eighteen minutes thither might be ridden either by gate or
fence ; for the hounds ran close to the bridle-road throughout.
They who rode most honestly found plenty of jumping ; and
even fell foul of the Beeby stream on their way — arriving at
the covert almost simultaneously with the less venturesome.
Hounds rattled through the wood and through the gorse at
A MIXED MAECK. lO-i
once — but did not leave the latter readily. A fox had gone on,
and the natural assumption was in favour of his being the
hunted one. But pace had disappeared : and the remaining
hour of the run was pretty hunting, but by Gaddesby Spinney
along the brookside to Queniborongh Village — on the outskirts
of which they were forced to confess themselves beaten.
A MIXED MARCH.
Its first week was illustrative of March in the completest
manner — its mildest and its wildest phases alike represented.
At its best the week has been perfect for hunting; at its worst
it has been admirable for farming — and who shall grudge the
farmers all they want? Certainly not foxhunters. Already
they have dust almost as much as they can need ; already the
fallows are fit for breaking ; and already the ridges of turf will
bear a cart wheel without suffering. The gateways have in
many instances arrived at their summer rugged ness ; the
ground rattles where its surface is bare, though the furrows
tread deep and wet, and sheltered grass grasps the hoof with
distressing tenacity.
Friday, March 2. — The Quorn at Lowesby Hall — the most
picturesque of lawn-meets, and, as it happened, the most superb
of hunting days. We think a great deal more of such a day in
this final month than we ever did in November, or in the hey-
day of the season. One of the last meals of a condemned man,
one of the final holidays of grandeur and senility at Cannes —
are these inapt comparisons ? We are never so inordinately
fond of foxhunting as in its last weeks (gauge the fact by
number !), when foxhunting is on the flicker, brighter than ever
now and then, but struggling hard to live. A " perfect hunting
day " may carry a varied definition. It defined itself on Friday
cold, clear, and quiet — the wind nor'-easterly, sun dormant, and
the whole to play upon ground improved by ten days' warmth
and one shower. In fact, if ever there could, and should, be a
106 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
scent, it was on Friday. That there was a scent was amply
proved by the way the Quorn ladies burst their quarry in forty
minutes ; that they had not a great run was due only to the
fact that they did not find a straight fox. The coverts that
usually follow as a matter of routine upon a meet at Lowesby
had unfortunately sustained a visit only the week before — some
of them, indeed, had been within sound and touch of Sir Bache
Cunard's hounds only two days previously. So John u' Gaunt
failed for the first time, though Lord Moreton's Gorse came to
the rescue. Firr galloped hounds across the railway that now
cuts this fair valley to pieces, and laid them on beside the line
before a quarter of the field had descended the steep hill on
which the covert is situated. Then it became a matter of
doubt as to which side of the line to ride — whether keeping to
the left for the Coplow or to the right for Quenby. Cunning
prompted the former course ; the pack pointed the latter — and
we know, from frequent and bitter experience, which is the
better indicator. Be this as it may, not a dozen of that large
field were in the position of riding to hounds after they passed
Quenby Hall and crossed the valley for Ingarsby. The stream
at the bottom is not a terrific jump ; but it holds a certain
depth of muddy water, and its aspect is not made more attrac-
tive to timid horseflesh by a dead-thorn fence on the landing
side. Besides, there had already been ten minutes' severe
galloping over chopping ridge-and-furrow and ground like
putty. So horse after horse scotched and slipped and landed
clumsily upon the thorns ; and none jumped clean and cleverly.
Among the small number of riders near hounds were at least
four ladies ; and these, whether by accident or by tribute of
place aux dames, issued from the high fence preceding the
brook in a string, to charge the stream in like order. No. 1
got over best of the whole party ; No. 2 landed with a struggle,
and in safety ; but No. 3, as well mounted and accomplished,
remained poised so long — with horse's forefeet on the far bank
and hindlegs planted on nothing — that no alternative remained
but a faint scream, and a too audible splash. Oh, Mr. Editor,
A MIXED MARCH.
107
why was it not my close-cropped and unworthy head that
dipped backward into that cool-running stream ? The sun was
warm, but the water and the breeze were terribly cold — and I
am no longer young nor fair.
But the railway, more than the rivulet, furnished the cord of
the hunt. It baffled the field, and may have influenced a faint
hearted fox, though it put no impediment in the way of hounds.
" Your blessed, crabbed railways spoil your Quorn country ! "
quoth a well-known optimist of the adjoining Hunt. But he
omitted, from some accident of memory, to emphasize the fact
that he and the railway and the hounds had all been playing at
cross purposes throughout. So on his own hypothesis he was
doubtless right ; but this did not prevent a quick pack from
doubling back with their fox from Keyham and killing him
right handsomely close to where he had first got up — all horses
beat, and never a check from the find.
This was only the beginning ; for the sun wTent down, and
hope sprung up. But it was the end also, for ne'er another fox
was to be found, and the afternoon ended in a roadside gallop
108 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
home. A pleasing point in the day was the return to Melton
of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Paget. One swallow may not make a
summer, but the earlier birds herald the approaching flock ;
and so, from this and other signs that reach us, it seems reason-
able to hope for the speedy return of many Meltonians that
have been beguiled to hunt elsewhere. It is safe to assert that
they have not all profited by their change of quarters ; and,
though none of us wish to see Leicestershire fields any larger
than at present, I venture to ask — not of a single season's merit
— but if in a term of ten years a higher average of good and
pleasurable hunting is to be had anywhere else ? If the answer
be Yes, pray let the scene be pointed out, and the country that
is at least good enough from year to year be thinned for our
comfort. Speaking of absentees, though, brings one's thoughts
at once to Mr. Little-Gilmour, the oldest by far of those whose
names are linked with Melton. His kindly face and pleasant
courteous greeting have been absent from the covert-side all
this season ; and it is quite doubtful whether the hardest rider,
and gentlest man, of his generation will ever take the saddle
again.
Cruel indeed is it to have lost, through frost and snow,
several days out of the final month of hunting. Better March
dust than March debility, on the part of a season hitherto
so hearty and vigorous. That snow should have stood in the
way of Great Dalby on Friday and Pick well on Saturday
— that frost should have prevented Six Hills on Monday and
Launde Abbey on Tuesday — is hard upon unphilosophic minds
pinning all their faith to a pursuit that, after all, is frivolously
dependent upon mere details of weather. March is the month
of all others in which we least care to see hunters standing idle
in the stable. From other causes — the hundred and one acci-
dents of the hunting field — there are only too likely to be some
taking a rest already. And singularly unappetising do these
look — their coats disfigured with all sorts of queer patches
/
SADDLE OR SALMON. 109
and scratches, their legs in all manner of shapes, and their corn
bills perhaps unpaid. We see none of this, and think nothing
of it, if only we can get out hunting on something else, till
the time comes for closing the season — and paying up. Now
we can just achieve a daily canter in a sunny field, and thus
keep circulation and digestion going in spite of the north wind
and mid-day luncheons. Thus, too, we keep the residue of the
stable ready for the day when the snowdrifts shall have melted
and frost lost its hold where the hedgerows shelter. And what
then ? Three weeks, perhaps, with good luck, and a generous
management. Well, we have seen many a good gallop in March,
even in April. Why should we not again ?
SADDLE OR SALMON.
Wednesday, March 14. — Welcome is a day's hunting after
a week of abstinence and many many hours of grumbling.
The Belvoir came to Croxton Park, though the hillsides were
streaked with snow, and though it was still matter for a council
of war as to where hunting might be most possible. The
younger half of Melton had put themselves under the leader-
ship of science and maturity, and had gone off to the Quorn
and Donnington Hunt Steeplechases — as if the hunting season
was all before them. A sage majority preferred to swallow the
north wind with the help of saddle and sandwiches, rather than
of salmon and champagne, with, perhaps, the loss of various
tenners — and a run. " My clear fellow, Coston Covert to Gunby
Gorse ! what more do you want ? " This the minority had to
face on their return ; and were made to take in as much of it
as they would. For all their Avell-fed incredulity, it was true
— as far as the point (some five miles) was concerned — and all
praise to Gillard and the Belvoir pack that it was so. Little
scent, but a good fox, made the distance. The ploughs were
clotty ; and the grass was rotten in its half-thawed state. The
former carried no scent at all ; but the latter did its duty by
110 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
hounds fairly — if it be remembered that when the grass came
the fox had gone far ahead. We started in a snow storm, and
rode upwards to more and more snow and ice as if ascending a
mountain-side. But many others, from the Cottesmore, the
Quorn, and home country, did the same — and the whole were
assembled under the auspices of the Duke (alas, only in his
carriage) before one o'clock. Two o'clock found us, and the
fox, at Coston Covert — and there was once aoain the same
hurried, splashing start. It came to nothing, though, but a five
fields' ring back to covert. A second rather wider ring was in
progress, when another fox in view set the whole field in a glow
— and this was the traveller. He nearly slipped them at
Wymondham by running a road ; but perseverance, and a
knowledge of the whereabouts of Woodweli Head, put this
all right, and his line was carried briskly on. But I have to
confess to the racegoers that, well worked and indefatigable
as was the onward progress, this was rnot a great occasion
missed. We should all have been in at the death, had there
been one — and that there was not, was mainly due to the
day. In Ireland it would have been described as a " moighty
conversational hunt." Like harriers, we fling our tongues most
on a cold scent. On a hot one, we have little to say beyond
whispering soft nothings to heedless steeds — and (have you ever
had occasion to notice ?) men always come at a big fence with
a set expression, always with their mouths open, and generally
with every feature awry. We jumped no big fences to-day —
though we hunted for nearly two hours. But everybody jumped
little ones and as many as he or she could.
A little field, but a field of class and talent — churchmen,
soldiers, civilians, and farmers — rode the run, welcomed all that
Avas put before them, and under some special care came to no
serious grief in snowdriftor on frostedbank — though deep ground
and hard ground gave its evidence at every fence during the
second hour.
THE FARMERS' BENEVOLENT. Ill
THE FARMERS' BENEVOLENT.
Once again let me call the attention of hunting men to the
Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution and its object. The
association has been created with a view to assisting farmers,
or their widows, on their attaining sixty years of age — should
circumstances have left them in destitution and their charac-
ter be unimpeached. The cases demanding such help must
constantly be cropping up, must be only too patent to every-
one who has had the opportunity of watching farming and its
vicissitudes in recent years ; and to no class should such dis-
tress appeal more strongly than to us who take our pleasure
through the good feeling and true English sympathies of the
farmers. We shall soon be making up our accounts for the
season past. In that reckoning the addition of a guinea will
make no difference to anyone who can afford to hunt at all.
That guinea ma}^ mean a week's living to the man (or his wife),
who, for the good "custom of the country" has cheered you on
to his farm, built up his gaps without a grumble and mended
Ibis rails gladly — because he himself had taken his turn with
hounds as long as he could, and, when he couldn't, still loved
to see the hunt about.
May I put it thus ? You who ride over Leicestershire to
" compete " (not, I mean, in any spirit of mere personal rivalry,
but that from day to day you may see hounds as well as your
comrades), you like the sound of cracking timber, and are
quietly delighted that you were first to carry away the oxer for
your hesitating friends. You never yet cut out the work for ten
minutes, without }^our career having left its mark on the wood-
work of some good-natured farmer.
We, again, who " go round " whenever we can — have we not
trodden a shameful amount of unnecessary ground ; have we
always left gates as we found them ; have we not sometimes
even stooped to the iniquity of pulling down a gap, because it
was stiffer than our craven hearts desired 1 And for all this
you and I have ever been greeted and welcomed — as forming
112 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
part and parcel of a merry sport and a happy institution that the
farmers take pride in maintaining. No one whose pleasure is
thus earned should, or will, in return grudge support to their
institution. " A pound a minute " we often, in the heyday of
our youth, say that a run is worth. Give a minute or two,
gentlemen, to the old age of those who help you to it !
SCRAPTOFT HALL AT TEA-TIME FOR MAN
AND FOX.
On Friday, March 16th, Barkby Gorse was drawn in a heavy
snowstorm, that had slackened but little before hounds opened
in the Holt adjoining. But in spite of this comfortless inter-
ference, the next half-hour was better fun than we have had
since this Siberian spring first set in. The old happy ground
between Barkby Holt and Scraptoft was to be traversed ; and
much of it was done in the hurry that we have learned to
look upon as so vitally essential to a run over good country.
(Lest the term may read wrong, understand that speed, not
haste, is inferred by hurry.) The pack were at one end of
the little wood, when fox went away at the other : so he had
all the best of the start. But this gave everyone a position
in the run — and a position that each and all seemed deter-
mined to maintain. They rode all the harder that they
scarcely saw where they were going. Big fences (and even,
I am told, a deep and dirty pond) looked feasible through the
driving snow. I am happy to say I witnessed no such casualty
as that of the pond — nor am I, after two days' scrutiny, inclined
to give credit to the story, for few wardrobes in March can boast
of two really presentable pinks. I did notice, however, that the
most keen of all and forward as any in the run were clad neither
in scarlet nor buckskin, but were a knot of hard-riding farmers,
with Mr. Simpkin of Hoby their leader on his merits as on
his age. So the run went a fast hunting pace over a sweet
country till Humberstone Village was reached. After this
SCRAPTOFT HALL AT TEA-TIME FOR MAN AND FOX. 113
nothing more could be made of it, till as hounds were home-
ward bound it was told that their hunted fox was in the laurels
of Scraptoft Hall. There he was left, and there he lay till
morning.
On Saturday, 17th, so much snow lay on the ground at the
breakfast time of reasonably early people, that the meets of both
Quorn and Belvoir were dependent entirely upon those who
make no plans till the day is fairly entered upon. The latter
found themselves in leathers at the regulation hour for a twelve
o'clock meet, they only took the subject of snow into considera-
tion about the time it began to solve itself, and when the earlier
people had already counter-ordered their horses — condemning
them to water and exercise. The Quorn were at Wimeswold,
with half a dozen followers — Wimeswold being a point on the
neutral zone separating (may I say it inoffensively ?) fashion from
forest. I mean that it is a meet balancing between a rough
country and the grass — and, if to-day's experience pointed right,
bigotry alone keeps the gay grasshoppers away. For a prettier
line could scarce be chosen than that taken by the bold (or
frightened) fox of the afternoon ; viz., from Bunny Park to
Willoughby. The same Master, pack, and huntsmen tracked
him, unencumbered by a Friday mob. They could not guaran-
tee a scent ; but they showed half the line of their great Oakley
Wood run of the previous week, and we were forced to jump
half the fences of that day. So perhaps it was a happy occur-
rence that no fox turned up till two o'clock — by which time all
material trace of snow had disappeared. Stanford Park failed
for a first time ; and Hoton New Spinney evolved nothing of
more interest than the gambol of an old carriage horse. The
latter had of late descended from his high degree to take his place
between humbler shafts ; but had fallen by good luck into the
hands of one who owned an heirloom in the shape of a saddle, a
snaffle bridle, and a sturdy sporting heart. So the old horse was
improvised into a hunter. The situation might be novel ; but
was at all events less irksome to him than pulling manure. So
he resigned himself to it with complacence if not with absolute
i
114 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND FRAIRIE.
enthusiasm ; and took his part with the others in parading a
muddy lane while strange sounds betokened a covert being
drawn. But this over, he was told to wade into and through a
deep banked bottom below the spinney, and to lift his master
some twelve feet up the boggy ascent out of the rivulet. This
to the untutored mind was no mere pleasant variation of labour,
far less a recreation — nay, it was an insult to education and pro-
fession that even knotted whipcord had never implied. And he
resented it ; down went his aged head ; up went his venerable
back — and the wicked perverter of destiny was shot comfortably
back into the bog from which he had just been carried.
In this country, if a poor man catches our horse, we always
give a coin if we've got it, a courteous blessing if we haven't. I
got only the last ; but with it a hearty mutual laugh, and an
explanation. " He's a trickey old dog, he is. He's served me
this way afore when I've took him hunting. You see I ain't got
much of a bridle, and he catches me unawares-like."
Monday, March 19, with the Quorn fixing Great Dalby in
place of a meet north of the "Wreake, gave Gartree Hill for the
morning, and Barkby Holt for the afternoon — the distant com-
bination resulting in a day's sport nearly first-rate. A trifle
more scent would have raised it to quite that standard ; for
foxes were found readily, travelled readily, and in the main chose
a good country. The wind still hailed from somewhere in the
north, with a piercing venom that declared itself most on the
way home. But the frost of previous nights had waned away —
or confined itself to the higher ground of Til ton, &c, which just
came within a day's doings. Of course there can be little morn-
ing, when you are called to the meet at 12 — and when nobody
turns up till 12.30 — but the first run is always dubbed the morn-
ing event. To-day it began at once, with a vixen and two others
setting off in close company up the Little Dalby Hill — and all
plainly to be seen squatting and hesitating as they met the
populace on the hill top. Result, some confusion and no little
delay. For in his career — whether as the cause or effect of
his shortcoming — Reynard was continually running his head
SCRAPTOFT HALL AT TEA-TIME FOR MAN AND FOX. 115
against some new agent of danger. Now it was carriages or
second horsemen, then it was a shepherd, and next, and worst
— it was a shepherd's dog with a turn of speed quite on a par
■with that possessed by poor Reynard himself. In the two former
cases he was turned easily within the huntsman's keen range of
vision ; and hounds were of course clapped mercilessly on to his
brush. In the last instance he underwent a most severe course
under the eyes of the whole body of pursuers, being turned at
least three times in one field and hotly pursued into the far
distance, by a black sheepdog who apparently meant to wreak
full vengeance on poor pug for sporting a brush while he had
none. However, pug scored on that very point ; for a whisk
of his heavy brush brought him round far quicker than could
the two inches of stump owned by his opponent. Then a
fierce succession of hills and valleys cleared the Punchbowl and
led between Burrough and Somerby — and now a run was a
certainty, for a fox could scarcely double back against a field
that had gathered from the four winds and — a close chain, at
least a mile broad — were sweeping him before them. The
pace, in and out of these grassy dips, was all that horses
could do. And so three fields of plough, carrying not even a
suspicion of scent, were very welcome to three-fourths of those
interested. Then came a sudden infusion of vigour — and then,
after a couple of miles of easy grass luxury, the Twyford Brook.
This ought to have been a luxury, too ; in many cases may have
been so. But the miserable instinct that would seem to paralyse
Leicestershire horses on such occasions was only too rampant
here. A hundred of them achieved the feat of jumping twelve
feet of space, and six or seven feet of gurgling water. Thirty
others dipped in, rolled in, and disgraced themselves, because they
did not care to jump at all. I know the taste of that Twyford
water well — and it is quite as nasty as other waters. But my
chief abhorrence to it, applicable equally, perhaps, to all other
water, is that it ought never to be tasted at all. It is no river
of Damascus, but, except in time of flood, is a meagre stream that
a three-pound trout would despise. Yet there have been more
i 2
116 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
stirrup leathers, more flasks, and more reputations lost in that
easy flowing stream (one of the very few honest bank-to-bank
water jumps that Leicestershire owns) than all the brooks of
Aylesbury could account for.
To-day's was a lovely picture. 'Twould be too personal by
far for me to set on paper. A painter might have made of it a
canvas-subject to include as many portraits as foregather in the
well-known Bond-street picture of the Four-in-Hand Meet (and
have stood a very good chance of getting his head punched
afterwards for liberties taken and truisms conveyed). On right
side or wrong, writer hurried from a scene, of which white
breeches planted on the bank, and snorting horses declining to*
be rescued were the leading features. But the water was shal-
low— and those who got in so readily emerged with almost equal
facility, weighing possibly an extra twenty pounds of mud and
water. A check on the hillside beyond formed the field into two-
parties (no one for the moment looked at the hounds), represent-
ing respectively the pride of success and the humility of failure.
The upper ten looked back with highly unbecoming merriment
on the confusion below, and greeted each fresh comer with un-
seemly chaff on what should have been matter for anxious
condolence. But that black mud was sadly against appearance
or dignity, and entirely set aside any vain attempt at maintain-
ing either. Fortunately, hounds quickly started on again, and
the two sections (the elated and the humiliated) again merged
into a common body, to meet the still smaller brook at MarfiekL
To this, I fancy, we were all equal. But soon afterwards John
o' Gaunt was passed ; and beyond Tilton Village nothing could
be done — if we except the proved possibility of slipping up on
the icy hillsides by Lord Moreton's (no, I learn it is properly
Lord Aberdour's) Covert.
The Master then left the half-frozen neighbourhood of Billes-
don Coplow, and ordered Barkby Holt as the next point of
appeal. The old traveller of Friday was back already ; and
this afternoon they made him stride along to a more sprightly
tune than before. He left covert along the bordering lane ;
SCRAPTOFT HALL AT TEA-TIME FOR MAN AND FOX. 117
and, with ninety-nine hundredths of the field drawn up at the
farthest corner of the holt, he might have run his course with no
other followers than the pack and its staff. But with gallant
courtesy he went at once to the left, to meet the hurrying
throng; and so fifty men were enabled to take up the challenge
and ride to his lead. Fence for fence and gap for gap he
took them, by Barkby Thorpe Spinney, to Humberstone Village
— the difference in the direction of his start counter-balancing
the extra pace, and leaving the time the same as on the previous
occasion. Again he virtually beat them in half an hour — this
time mainly through the intervention of what the daily forecast
had set down mildly as a " cold shower," which in fact meant a
bitterly drenching rain from the north-east. '
But the huntsman did not fail to remember how his fox had
laid up to laugh in his brush after the hunt of Friday ; so set
to work at once to make good the laurels and then the gorse at
Scraptoft. Nothing apparently came of the search ; and other
memories acting upon the hungry and thirsty, many of these
trooped as before into the hospitable portals of the Hall. In
the middle of the comforting process which was to fortify them
for a long wet journey — in most cases up the piercing wind —
came a simultaneous rush to the window, with a snatching-up of
hats, whips, and half-finished glasses. Reynard was stealing
across the lawn, his tongue out and his head turned over his
shoulder. The whole party issued to scream and holloa ; while
the terriers took up the line and dashed into the shrubs. A
moment more, and out he came again — Snap and Pincher close
at his brush, having run their game into a cul de sac formed by
iron railings and wire netting. The luncheon-eaters hurried to
the stables, to jump into their saddles and gallop forth, with
girths still loose and faces beaming in justice to the good things
within. Hounds, just turning homeward, were quickly brought
up by the babel of sound, and almost met their fox as he crossed
the road from the shrubberies. For three fields they scurried
after him ; but in three more the driving storm completely
choked them off — and the Barkby Holt fox again slept in safety.
118 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Happy they who rode home down the same high wind and
not against it — and happy we who can now, within four good
walls and outside one fair bottle, listen complacently to as-
searching a blast as ever found out the fractures of seasons past.
" Newmarket sweaters " are a garment now accepted both in
name and practice by the most gentle authority ; and their value
to-day was as pronounced and universal as their colouring.
A COOL, QUICK, PENULTIMATE.
Cold nights and drying winds seemed to have brought fox-
hunting almost to its end, but for southerly wind of the date.
Far better have been a volunteer marching to Brighton
than a foxhunter frozen out of his Easter holiday. The
cold that stirs the one to activity condemns the other to
grumbling idleness when he can least afford it. Look at the
date ! March 24th. Where shall you all be on April 24th ?
You will each go your way — though the ways of many
may lie in the least healthful, if not fascinating, direction of all,
a London season. Recklessly, wastefully, many of us throw
away a week in November, a day in December — yet cling to-
every hour that is now slipping out of grasp. Foxhunting after
all is but a type — a vivid and tolerably guileless type — of man-
hood's experience. If manhood counted no worse temptations,
no worse thoughts, than are contained in hunting six days a
week, there would be but little wilful evil perpetrated — and
suffered wrongs would be much less hotly felt than now. Fox-
hunting is selfish, they say. Is money-making unselfish ? The
devotee in each case spends the bulk of his time, and the main
of his energy, apart, in his own fashion and in pursuance of his
own object. In which does he do his fellow-labourer least harm ?
Which sends him home with a clearer conscience, with plea-
santer thought of the day or with more appreciativeness of
home — a home that would probably have thanked him but little
for his idle presence throughout the day.
A COOL, QUICK, PENULTIMATE. 119
But Leicestershire should be the head of no sermon. It is
merely the heading of a daily record.
Sunshine and snow made up half of Monday, March 26, with
the Quorn. Sunshine, a rattling scent, and a brilliant scurry
completed the day. Ellars Gorse, as I will tell, made the even-
ing what it was. Lodge on the Wolds gave the meet, and the
earlier and rougher play. Easter Monday broke with a bright
cold glare that should have done credit to Brighton. It lit us on
our distant road to Lodge on the Wolds (distant from every-
where, but this season generally the most fortunate of meets).
The old Fosse Road forms here the last joint of the telescope to
all who look from Leicestershire ; and it focussed a queer scene
at somewhere about 12.30 to-day. The broad green boggy lane
stretched onwards from Widmerpool, far as the eye could reach.
The far distance had a cloud background of inky darkness, while
against this the scarlet and sunlit figures of late comers abso-
lutely sparkled. We had been frozen in for days. Now there
was a sudden break-up in snowstorm and sun. The work of to-
day had hardly begun ere the flakes dropped so heavily that in
half an hour the landscape was white as in typical winter, men
and trees and soil draped thickly in a chilly shroud. In weal
often and in woe occasionally, I have hunted before on this
quasi-neutral territory between the shires of Leicester and
Nottingham. But Lodge on the Wolds has got up its name ;
and never has it been my lot to witness such a goodly gathering
as on this Easter Monday. A list of names is not as a rule
instructive. In this instance — however incomplete — it will go
to show how easily is appreciativeness begotten, and expectancy
aroused, by recent events. Not only had all the Quorn trooped
in ; but the South Nottinghamshire had apparently agreed with
one accord not to let slip such a chance. There were, I remem-
ber, among many others — and in addition to the Master and his
son — Lord Belper and Miss Strutt, Major and Mrs. Robertson, Mr.
and Mrs. Gerald Paget, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Chaplin, Cols. Forester,
Chippindall, and Percy, Major Robertson, Capts. Ashton, Boyce,
Smith, Messrs Behrens, Brooks of Whatton, Cradock, W. and
120 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
E. Chaplin, Cecil Chaplin, Charlton, Martin, O. Paget, Pen-
nington, Pryor, Story, Whitworth, Black, Brewster, Marshall,
Simpkin, Smith, &c, with many more from over the border.
Owthorpe Borders has lately been a common and frequent
playground for the men of both counties. Now again there
was a fox ready to hand. Mr. Coupland set things in motion
without regard to the carpet of snow that might well have
frightened him to delay ; and the usual local merry-go-round
ensued. With a scent almost inappreciable, Firr and his pack
worked away ; while the field hovered quietly on the hill-tops,
and awaited the turn of events. The turn did not come at the
Curate ; for the only inmate of the gorse was a heavy vixen.
Then upon Ellars Gorse — with its recent histories and achieve-
ments fresh in memory — hung the fate and merit of the day.
Hounds were this time thrown into the little covert on its
brookside or north-eastern edsre ; and so Revnard was cut off
altogether from his former course toward the Vale of Belvoir.
An even sixpence they don't find him : a guinea to a sixpence
they dust him if they do. Hounds already three parts through
the sprouting gorse and low-levelled thorn — never a sound —
and the odds on the former point rapidly, dismally, rising. For,
Ellars Gorse a blank, where are they to draw, with a
reasonable chance of finding ? But hold, what has become of
the whip at the top corner ? See, his upheld cap is glancing
above the fence, as he dashes across the upper end of the
covert ! Now for it ! ! The snowstorms have travelled on, the
evening sky is clear, and the northerly breeze is cool but quiet.
Hounds are out of covert almost before their fox is over the
little meadow above, while in feverish eagerness men rush
round to be with them. It is the old, old story — the familiar
exciting scene — a dash for a start, a loose-off of pent-up eager-
ness, a draught of excitement that we have drunk so often, and
that we hope to quaff many and many a time again. On this
occasion the rush is not that of numbers — as of a crowd com-
peting for freedom from a burning theatre (or to be more
material, from Barkby Holt through a handgate) — but to get
A COOL, QUICK, PENULTIMATE.
121
forward fast enough, with no difficulties to encounter but the
pace. Firr's horn sends out one shrill blast as he gallops up
the meadow with the tail hounds — and a dozen riders swing
•over the two fences to join him as he issues on to the wide-
grassed road above. The pack dash down the roadside towards
Willoughby ; then, in a couple of hundred yards glide through
the side fence, and seem to slip out of grasp at once. Indeed
for the next five-and-twenty minutes the best-mounted and
r
r:
' S*^r*8?*
~%m&'*
~c;^h^> F?«-
w^ xzx*3m&
most determined of enemies could not jump on their backs ; for
they made all their own running, and won in a canter at Shoby
Scoles. Having started close at their fox, he never got away
from them, till he popped underground just before them.
Over grass and over plough alike they raced — turning and
twisting as they went, whether in the open field or as their fox
dodged up a hedgerow. The pace and the short quick turns
threw out many men who would, and perhaps should, have been
with them. For instance, that first broad road carried several
over the mark, at the moment when — attended closely by the
huntsman, Capt. Smith, and Mr. Cecil Chaplin — the pack
struck off to the left, to race over a field or two of grass and
deep fresh-sown pieces of plough. Over the latter hounds could
.go much faster than horses ; and they were well in front when,
122 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
as they neared the village of Wymesfold, a second sharp left-
ward turn (hidden by a high black bullfinch) served to throw
off some more of the van. But the same turn helped others —
as it struck into a second road — and so the number with hounds
at once increased rather than diminished. This road led direct
to Six Hills ; and had men chosen to stick to it, would have
led them to Six Hills as quickly as hounds did. But the latter
took them at once across into capital riding ground ; and, at
the best pace they could raise, the leaders reached the gorse
field at the cross roads of Six Hills only just within hail.
Darting at once through the narrow plantation that stretches
thence to the wood of Thrussington Wolds, and leaving that
covert to the right, hounds held on still over the open. A
labourer pointed not only to the line of the fox, but to his
fleeting form, as he could still see him only a field ahead. At
this point Mr. Black, a hard rider and good sportsman, who
farms land near Great Dalb}^ took up the running in pursuit of
the pack, closely followed by Capt. Boyce, Mr. Cecil Chaplin,
and the huntsman. To Mr. Chaplin, indeed, and to his roan,
belong the honours of as sharp and trying a ride as has been
seen this season. For, with no slight disadvantage in point of
weight, he saw more of the gallop than all the lighter men — a
knowledge and faculty of pace, and (a still more invaluable
talent) a quick eye to hounds, preventing his either blowing
his horse or making a single wrong turn. Others too were yet
well in the run, as it left Ragdale Hall and village to the right,.
and went parallel to the Six Hills and Melton Road — some of
the earliest of these being Major "Robertson, Messrs. Whitworth,
Pennington, Cradock, Story, and Colonel Chippindall. But the
attendance was but a small one when hounds, dashing right up
to the open earth, brought this bright gallop to a sudden close.
Twenty-seven minutes to ground, and not a check, nor even a
moment's falter, by the way — the ground in beautiful order,
and the fences easy. The extreme points of the burst (from,
near Wymeswold to Shobby Scoles) were not quite four miles ^
but the way hounds went must have been fully six.
A CHOKING FINISH. 123
A CHOKING FINISH.
Dusty, oppressive, and hot as was Monday, April 2nd, it
credited the month with a run that would have graced any
part of the season's calendar. It had opened with a meet of
the Quorn at Egerton Lodge, Lord Wilton's picturesque
hunting box at the entrance to Melton Mowbray ; and Melton
being now the junction point of so many railways, it is not to
be wondered at that visitors trooped in from distant quarters
for this, the final, and almost annual, show meet of the Quorn,
Yet, for all that the season is so nearly over, there was no giant
muster of riders — the reason probably being that the rapidly
hardening ground has been putting stables to a sorer trial than
all the deep going of the past winter. And among those who
came out there came a summery, jaunty style of dress and de-
portment altogether out of keeping with the serious occupation
of foxhunting as it absorbs us in midwinter. Light tweed coats-
had in many cases taken the place of pink, and thin cord did
the work of buckskin. Faces flushed hotly under the burning-
sun, even during the easy saunter to a noonday meet ; and the
rosebud of spring fashion became a full-blown flower ere the
buttonhole had carried it half the day. Men talked of a New-
market future rather than a Melton present ; and steeplechasing,
not unnaturally, was a still more general topic. For had we-
not among us to-day — for the second year in immediate suc-
cession—a Leicestershire hunting-man, the rider and owner of
the winner in the greatest of steeplechasers 1 Last year it was
Lord Manners ; while this year, Count Kinsky, who owes all his
quickness over a country to his Melton experience, had returned
to undergo, at the hands of his fellow comrades, a shower of con-
gratulations as hearty — and probably as welcome — as any his
well- won victory will have called forth. Among the townsfolk
of Melton, who to a man, woman, or child had turned out to the
meet, the hero of The Liverpool was an object of quite as
general an interest as even the hounds. So crowded was the-
main street and the paddock opposite Egerton Lodge, that it
124 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
was difficult to believe a meet of foxhounds and not a race
meeting had called us thither. Indeed, the progress of Firr and
Iris satellite, as in scarlet array they rode down the lane of
people, was suggestive of nothing less than the pomp of Ascot.
But, soon after one o'clock and after a hot dusty ride along
what is known as Sandy Lane, the field were marshalled on
iGartree Hill, " with the bustling pack at their feet " in the
covert below. Then, after various alarms, they scattered in
pursuit for a broiling quarter of an hour after what may, or may
not, have been a vixen, but which at all events meant to go no
further than it could help. This fox to ground, the same covert
was called on for another. While it was being drawn, the
needful animal suddenly came from the open country, ran
amuck through the mass of shouting horsemen, and insisted on
making his way into the covert. It took ten minutes more to
persuade him that this was no quiet sanctuary, and then he
took his way over the opposite hill, between the village and
hall of Little Dalby. Of course we all knew the outer geography
of Little Dalby ; so at once took the road round, avoiding
garden complications, and met the pack with heads up in the
field next the Punchbowl.
On happy information Firr acted at once ; and to his quick
and pushing readiness the run was owing. He bored his way
into that wire-kempt field, so familiar and hateful, that bars
Little Dalby from Leesthorpe ; and immediately the play
altered, the scene changed, and vigour succeeded tameness.
Hounds dropped their noses to some purpose ; and sped over
the grass at a rate we could scarcely equal on the road — which,
for sin or stupidity, we had nearly all preferred, for moments
meant, for minutes compelled. A most useful agent is a road,
and never more so than in a quick run (if the eye too be quick
enough to cut the indulgence short at the right second) ; but a
road in dust and heat and crowd forms an exasperating, de-
moralising, lowering situation that degrades foxhunting to the
level of — cart and aniseed. But so it was now for a clatter-
ing half mile ; so it was again after the two fields of bridleroad
A CHOKING FINISH. 125>
had been set to the good. And then the landmark of the Noel
Arms (once a pothouse on the Melton and Oakham Road) was
reached. Oh, how hot we were ! Oh, how we hated macadam ! t
Oh, how mean seemed those last ten minutes ! ! ! But here we
were with, hounds — and very few honest men before us. Two-
ploughed fields, instead of bringing respite to Reynard, had
brought him across the scufner and the drill. (Alas, 'twas but
yesterday we leaped barley stooks after the early cubs), and the
huntsman could cut a corner almost on to his back. Once over
the Oakham road, the half assured run was made a certainty.
Only grass in front ; and quite scent enough — for hounds were
close at their game, and the fences sufficiently strong and close-
to forbid any over-riding. Passing just short of Whissendine
Village, it was easy to recognize many a wide-set difficulty that
had oftentime made its impress on shallow courage, as we
shirked it with the Cottesmore. Now we found ourselves
crossing the Stapleford and Whissendine road ; and so we
n eared Stapleford, gasping much, delighted more, but wonder-
ing most — that a gallop was given us to-day. Firr pushed up
the road ; the pack drove hard up the grass field alongside ;
and the plantations of Stapleford Park were looming across the
valley. But a wide dry fallow led down the slope towards the
brook (that we so often misterm The "Whissendine). How
could hounds keep up their pace over the scentless dust ?
There's the answer — bold Reynard, beaten and blown, barely
crawling over the clods ! Tally ho ! tallyho ! ! He had little
chance now. The pack were clapped on to him before he-
reached the water ; and chased him up to the narrow spinney
bordering the Park. Here he dodged wearily about for some
two or three minutes after the huntsman and his followers,,
having forded the brook, had come up for the final scene. Then
— about five and forty minutes from the time his race began —
the big brown fox was stretched, an unsightly fragment, on
the greensward. This was the hottest, most choking, run I
remember to have seen in Leicestershire.
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES,
1876.
First, my readers, learn — if you do not know already — that
the Blue Mountains are to Southern India what the Himalayas
are to the North ; and that hither, when the hot months of
early summer approach, flee Military and Civilians to the
utmost extent that the exigencies of duty will allow. Govern-
ment, as represented by the head of the Madras Presidency
and his satellites, move up to Ootacamund in a body, bringing
with them their office clerks, papers, and peons, and ruling the
•country comfortably from their cool perch — after the example
:set them by their seniors in Bengal, whose summer seat is Simla.
The editors of local papers in the plains take no small excep-
tion to this course ; but it should be remembered that their
virtuous indignation is fanned by the very hottest of breezes,
and that they find it impossible to move their type and talents
and join in the general exodus. Deprived of this privilege,
•they are much prone at this season to cast such missiles as their
pens afford them against — and so, in one sense at least, to
•" make it hot " for — those who sit in office on a higher and
rpleasanter level. Not that your correspondent is a government
• official. No such luck ! There are but two other kinds of men
in India — the military man and the merchant. The former
makes no rupees, while the latter absolutely loses them ;
whereas the " civilian " lives on the fat of the land while out
here, returning home at forty or thereabouts to enjoy the
"fruits of his labour" in the shape of a pension that will make
him almost as much a man of mark at Cheltenham or Clifton
.as he was at Calcutta or Madras.
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1876. 127
So his Grace the Governor betakes himself and adherents to
Ootacamund, where, seven thousand five hundred feet above
the sea, Fashion has chosen her summer resort. His Excellency
the Commander-in-Chief does the same, and smaller fry of
every degree follow suit — all alike rejoicing to breathe more
freely as they emerge from the sweltering plains below. Thus
.a varied and pleasant society is formed at Ootacamund and
Coonoor (which nestle some twelve miles apart) ; and here
people endeavour to forget they are in India. Even many of
the time-honoured idiosyncrasies of Indian society are left
behind, and men and women become more English-like and
less colonial. The quaint and fantastic exactions of the world
■a Vlndienne being more or less laid aside, we are able to move
and live more as we were wont in Lesser Britain, ignoring the
fungus laws of custom, nor even bending as we have been
taught at the pretentious shrine of the god Rupee.
Where Indian crotchets and Indian idleness are at a dis-
count, and the climate is almost English, it is scarcely to be
wondered at that a body of Englishmen, assembled avowedly
in search of recreation and health, should seek their amusement
in accordance with their native tastes; and, accordingly, nothing
■could be more natural than that the grass-covered slopes of
these undulating tablelands should prove suggestive of the
ihound and the hoi'n.
Thus is it that hunting has come about on the summits of
the Neilgherries, where, eighty years ago, Tippoo Sultan was
the only individual who could boast of a summer residence on
these charming highlands ; and the sambur and the bison had
no worse enemy than the cheetah and the tiger. Now, and for
years past, a railway brings us to the very foot of the hills ; and
.a day's scramble (on pony back, or borne in a tonjon by coolies)
brings us to a completely different sphere, but one peopled for
the time by scores of our late perspiring and emaciated friends.
The roar of the tiger is now seldom heard within twenty
miles of Ootacamund ; the bison has chosen other ranges
whereon to pick the sweet spring grasses ; the sambur stags are
128 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
now scarcely numerous enough to allow of the picnics a Ice
chasse so popular here : but the jackal remains in wondrous
stoutness and abundance, and merrily and happily do the hill-
sides ring in his honour. There is no fairer turf on any of the
clowns of the old country. Tilton or Burrough (believe me, my
well-loved friends of High Leicestershire) carry no such con-
sistent blaze of scent ; and Owston Wood never bred a stouter
varmint than we have on the Neilgherries. Yes, and we have
a decent pack of hounds besides — more than decent for India —
thirty-two couple, well bred, and in working order, beautifully
various as to size and shape, and representing almost eveiy
kennel in the United Kingdom. Yet among them we can pick
out some sixteen couple that might be trotted to covert any-
where, or with whom we might even offer a provincial M.F.H.
the questionable luxury of " a day on the flags " (provided
always he arrived in time to lunch and brown sherry with us-
first). We should first draw for him our five couple from the
Quorn, and show him, with no little pride, how nobly Mr.
Coupland could treat his friends at a distance. We should bore
him with a yarn of little point of how we had seen that badger-
pied bitch lead the Meltonians slowly on, on into the ploughs of
Nottinghamshire, when but for her nose they would have been
on their way to try for a second fox on the grass ; and we would
assure him how nothing but her colour had exiled her from
Quorndon. We should dilate on the symmetry of these Mid-
land ladies as they coquet to his greeting ; while with folded
arms we should leave to his common sense the expression of
praise on these grand dogs, in each wistful eye of whom is
written as plain as words, " Oh, why was I sent to Asia — / who
was walked at Barkby, and first tasted fox from the Coplow ? "
We should then show him the ten couple selected from the
late Madras pack, refer all his questions on their merits to
Veerasawmy, our black kennel huntsman, who is ready, as
opportunity offers, to declare the wildest or mutest of them
all " that best hound ever come Madras side, sare." Next we
should produce the three couple of home-bred ones, and tell
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1876. 129
him, in all veracity, that these were found to hunt with more
drive, and to stand the climate infinitely better than any of the
imported ones. Ugly and ill-shaped as they are, they are
certainly little demons to dash along on a scent ; but then,
unfortunately, it has been found almost impossible to rear them
anywhere but in the hills, and difficult even there. Well, after
proving to him that we have a smart-looking bitch from the
Pytchley, a neat one from the Cottesmere, and endeavouring
continually to " force " him with our specimen cards, we pass
hurriedly over the last arrivals, who have been hunting at
Calcutta — and show it ; and the state of whose skins still
necessitates separate lodging. This concluded, we should ask
him whether to be called at five o'clock A.M. would give him
time to dress for our opening meet ; and eventually, with his
concurrence and yours, reader, we would all three appear on
the lawn in front of the residence of his Grace the Duke of
Buckingham at 6.15 A.M. on Friday, April 7.
We love our beds dearly ; but we love sport still better, and
so are compelled to this miserably early hour by considerations
of sun and scent. The air on the Neilgherries is at all times
cool. At dawn it is thoroughly chilly ; but for all that we are
not too many degrees from the equator, and the sun will remind
us of this before nine o'clock. The dew will have disappeared
by then, too, and scarcely six showera have fallen in the last six
months. Still we know the mossy turf will ride soft and safe,
and so we are willing to pin our trust to the glistening dew-drops.
The meet is not a lengthy proceeding. There are no dandies
here, alas ! to bring their specimens of snowy white and spot-
less pink into competition. No ; toilettes are unambitious —
scarcely workmanlike, while at such an hour the voice of gossip
is still, and even the lips of beauty part not, save it be in a
sleepy request for coffee. A table is laid for all who desire
stimulant or refreshment ; but there are no big fences here-
abouts, so there is little call upon the former, and the power
that can " nerve the enervate, make the dastard bold," may lie
dormant so far as our fenceless downs are concerned.
K
130
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Now we move on to draw, not a snug square of blackthorn or
privet, but the bare hill sides, where haply we may light upon
Master Jack returning from his midnight prowl. This is how
we find our jackals — at least, this is how we get our runs ; for,
if we can hit upon him thus, we start close upon our game, and
he will make his way straight as an arrow, and well nigh as
swift, to his point among those wooded rocks in the distance.
You may draw these sholahs, as the thickly-timbered glens that
run up the mountain sides are termed ; but they are too dense
to give hounds a chance, and once in them you are likely to
remain there till time to go home again.
On our way we may just try this gorse-fringed valley that we
pass, but chiefly for the sake of seeing the familiar yellow flower
shake as the pack thread the bushes. We are not disappointed
at failing to find here, but keep our eyes vigilantly open as we
rise the opposite hill, on which the damp and mossy turf is
r->
glittering like silver in the rising sun. A find on this open
ground is almost necessarily a view, for Jack ever moves leisurely
homewards, and, though he leaves a screaming scent behind him,
every vestige of it will die away in a few brief minutes. " There
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1376. 131
he goes, there he goes ! " Hold up your hat, sir, and for good-
ness sake don't holloa ; for, renowned a pack as are the Ootaca-
mund Hounds, they are but mortal after all. It is no slight
luck that they dash across the line at once, catch it up with a
swing, and are off with a noise and sparkle that do them credit.
Indeed, they start with an undeniable head ; though, as with
many of superior degree, it must be confessed they are a little
apt to lose it under difficulties. So they stream away right
merrily down the sloping ground, the horse hoofs scarcely
sounding on the springy grass as we fairly struggle behind them.
Along the road it is, at a pace that makes the dust fly as in a
gallop-past over the Bangalore maidan. Yet on they go for a
mile at the best pace every hound can muster. Surely it must
be " flash ! " No scent could lie here ! But yes, they turn off
suddenly at top speed, and rattle on unhesitatingly, testifying
loudly to the sweet savour of jackal. Crooktail is leading them
noisily, his twisted stern waving in frantic efforts to improve the
pace. Crooktail, I must tell you, was bred and born on the
Neilgherries, and consequently thinks he knows more about
thern than anybody else. He is not altogether a model of form,
but he can travel like a steam engine, and is as faultless of nose
as he is guileless of all sense of discipline. Let him lead along
a line, he bears himself bravely ; but no " second riddle " for
him. The cry of other hounds is to him the signal for seeking
elsewhere on his own account ; and on his return to kennel he
will indulge in the most pronounced bad language to all who
approach him.
However, Crooktail is in a good humour now ; and though
the 0. H. are rather backward in condition, each member is
straining to live with him — on a scent that they must be able
to see, for there is no stooping to smell. We cheer them
lustily and ceaselessly (for our new hounds have as yet been
scarcely entered to jack), and for two or three miles the head is
no whit diminished. A jump ! ye gods, and this on the Neil-
gherries ! It is only a deep bush-hidden nullah, but there is a
pleasant tickle to the soul in "setting him at it," and leaning
k 2
132 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
right back in the saddle once again. " Forrard ! forrard ! "
We must scream, for the good of our half-taught pack and a
vent to our own enthusiasm. You might cover the first ten
couple " with a sheet " — given that the sheet be large enough —
as they dip down to the Segore Brook, a stony rocky streamlet,
Avith a pretentious pool here and there. Hounds rise the other
side, with the jackal not fifty yards before them ; but don't
imagine he is beat or even slow. It is merely a nonchalant
way of his. He can make that fifty yards a hundred at any
moment he chooses ; and to toy with his annoyers appears to
be but a pleasant pastime to this sinewy traveller. Now is the
time to ride and cheer them on ; but this brook will puzzle
you, whether we have mounted you on our best, or you depend
on the hireling of Ootacamund. In the former case, dismount
and lead over the half-covered boulders. In the latter, you
may, if you like, join the gallant Lancer, who is already
swimming about the deepest pool, and congratulating himself
on the pleasant change from the burning heat of Secunderabad.
Now is the time for riding to catch 'em ; and catch 'em you
can't, for they can stream up a hill (at least a certain number
of them) much quicker than you can mount it, work your
elbows and use your spurs never so wisely or well. If you can
keep the leading hounds in sight you must be riding a well-
bred one — as Walers go — for, let who likes say the contrary, I
venture the opinion that no Arab can live the pace, when
hounds really settle to work over this hilly grass. So struggle
on with the tail as best you can ; hustle up to each brow, and
push down each declivity ; skirt the bogs in the valleys, or
mark carefully the bullock crossings. We have been running
half-an-hour (if a watch that has been a few months in India
is to be depended on) ; but there is no slackening of speed —
i.e., horses and hounds have been throughout at their utmost,
and rather more, when we enter a green sholah again in view
of our jack. Gather your few couple together, and try and
push him to death in covert. He has fairly beaten you and
yours over the open. Well, if you can't do this, mark him to
JACKAL HUNTING ON TEE NEILGEERRIES, 1876. 133
ground amid the rocks within. Veerasawmy ! where is now
your cunning ? Can you not tell us where there is a hole over
which to shout " Who- whoop ! " if but our noisy Harmony will
speak. "Hark, holloa!" Our jack has been seen stretched
gasping on the turf not a hundred yards ahead ; but, tired as
he is, he can still stretch on in front of half-conditioned hounds ;
and, though Dalesman of the Quorn is heaving along at his
brush, the hound is absolutely too tired to seize, and Jack pops
into a welcome earth under his very nose.
This was our opening day. The second was much alike,
though hounds ran fast for forty-five minutes instead of thirty,
with the same result in favour of Jack. We hope that condi-
tion will put us on an equality in a week or two ; but, happen
what will, this is a wild sporting country in which English fox-
hounds are not wasted, where game is plentiful, and the problem
of scent is (locally) solved. To gallop over this virgin turf is a
delight, and the sport is genuine and constant.
" Twenty-five minutes, with a kill in the open, all over
grass," sounds well enough almost for Leicestershire ? At any
rate, it has brought on such an attack of cacoethes that there is
no holding me away from pen and paper, and the following
must be received as a let-off to my feelings. Seven days in
close succession, with a rattling gallop on each, have been
crowned and climaxed by the above ; and so you will grant
there is at least excuse, if not occasion, for an outbreak of this
kind.
At 6.30 this morning sixteen couples from the kennels above-
mentioned were slowly perambulating the grassy slopes in the
neighbourhood of Ootacamund — every nose in the air, every
pair of eyes looking anxiously round for excuse to riot, and each
individual only kept from breaking away to romp and revel by
the black looks and ready whipcord of Mr. Veerasawmy. I
think 1 have already had the pleasure of introducing this man
of talent to your readers. Suffice it now to repeat that he
134 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
combines the offices of second whip and kennel huntsman to
the Ooty Hunt. In the former capacity he may be said to be
almost purely ornamental, his physical capabilities scarcely
sufficing to enable him to retain his saddle and to attend
to hounds at the same time, unless it be, as now, for the
comparatively peaceful period preceding a find. In the latter
role, however, he shines — if I may speak figuratively — like
patent varnish, and is verily the most wondrous nigger that
ever ate rice. He does not drink ! His lies are absolutely
white beside those of his brethren ! The proof of the pudding
being in the eating, his system of kennel is admirable — his
hounds carrying coats like satin (and this in India too ! ), and
being capable of a hot morning's work without a stern drooping
or an appetite failing. His method of pronunciation furnishes
a second complete nomenclature for the pack, which it would
puzzle any stranger to identify with our own ; and he relies
for his medicines entirely on some half-dozen prescriptions
picked up during his seventeen years of service. The in-
gredients and action of these are of course entirely unknown to
him ; but, as he appears to have learned the occasions for their
use, and has not poisoned a hound lately, we are quite content
to repose upon the result of his management, and to con-
gratulate ourselves on the fact that ours are about the only
hounds in India that can lay claim to their proper portion of
hair and health. Indeed, since the commencement of our
season, some ten weeks ago, there has not been an ailing hound
in kennel, save an occasional sufferer from cut or bruise : so at
least Mr. Veerasawmy may lay claim to the superior talent of
prevention.
But to return to the pack, now slowly following a bee line
across the open downs. The " fast pack " are out this morning .
for, as drafting head and tail is quite out of the question in a
country where a foxhound is worth his weight in rupees — aye,
and more in these days of depreciation of silver and growing
appreciation of sport, two causes strongly affecting us Anglo-
Indians — the Master has adopted the expedient of dividing his
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1876. 135
numbers into a fast pack and a slow one. This, of course, has
to be done in total disregard of appearance, size, and sex ; but
a nearer approach to uniformity in work is reached, and, by
dint of leaving at home the fleetest member of the fast pack,
and the two or three slowest of the slow, a very respectable
result is attained. Both packs are now in the best of wind and
condition ; they can carry an " elegant " head, and each hound
can feel that he is taking his part in the work. Nor are they a
very wild or intractable lot, though this constant drawing in the
open for their game might make the steadiest old southerners
■somewhat flighty and skittish at starting. They are eager and
excited already, no doubt ; for do they not know as well as we
do that a skulking jackal may jump up at any moment under
their noses ?
So, keeping them well closed up together, we search the hill-
sides, scouts being sent on to each eminence, as if in an enemy's
country. We give all coverts a wide berth, for in them we
always fight at a disadvantage with our wily foe. The only
divergence from a straight line is to the neighbourhood of a
dead horse — that should be a sure find in the early morning ;
But no, though his jack-enticing aroma scents the breeze to a
horrible extent, and his ghastly sides show the recent ravages of
the noble scavenger, we must move on still, and the sooner we
do so the better.
But what is that brown spot meandering along the green
brow half a mile away % By all that's holy in sport, it's a jack !
Close up, gentlemen, but don't hurry the hounds now ! He's
just over the hill and out of sight. But he's sure to wait for
us. " Steady, hounds, steady ! " they know " the little game "
thoroughly. Everyone of them is roused almost as quickly as
we are ; but they haven't caught a view, so can only look to us
for the signal. Cantering slowly up the ascent, we get their
noses down near the line. Yo-o-i ! yo-oi ! They fling them-
selves round, catch a sweet sudden whiff, to which they swing
as if magnetised, then, with every tongue at its loudest, bluster
noisily over the hilltop. True enough, Mr. Jack has waited for
136 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
us. He saw no pursuit and knew of no danger till he woke to
the roar of the torrent pouring down upon him. In sheer
amazement he waits till a bare twenty yards divides him from
their noisy throats, when, seeing that these are no playful
pariahs with whom to trifle or temporise, he sticks his con-
temptible brush out behind him, and lays his gaunt muscular
form desperately along the sward. But he is playing a down-
hill game now in its fullest sense. Those great leathering
giants that have been used to stretch over the wide Quorn
pastures can cover more ground in their stride than he can ;
and though, with his wondrous back and loins, he could leave
them easily up a hillside, he has to strain every nerve and
sinew now to keep clear of their hungry jaws. Oh, that he had
not done such justice to the good grey horse that Providence —
or the Madras Carrying Company — had put in his way ! How
little had he realised, as he whetted his fangs over those
succulent ribs, that he was preparing himself to point the moral
and adorn a tale of self-indulgence.
No occasion for cheering them on, or giving a signal to your
field now ; but we give the former a scream and the latter a
blast as we settle down to scurry our very fastest in pursuit.
Ah, worshipful masters of England, this country has its advan-
tages after all ! No riding over hounds when they are running
here ! No scuttling forward to gates, and cutting off the pack
as they turn under a hedgerow ! Not the wildest citizen that
ever migrated to Melton, to stick one more thorn into the
already lacerated sides of Firr or Gillard, could work much
mischief here. There is always a scent; and, as hounds most
often start close at their game, it is all that the stoutest of
Waler blood, sent along by the keenest and youngest of spurs,
can do to live with them. Fences there are none, and this
may be an advantage too, though few of us would be ingenuous
enough to say so as honestly as did a youthful planter after our
gallop to-day. " Dear me," quoth he, " this is my last day's
hunting, for I'm off to England to-morrow ! " " But you'll see
ten times better hunting there," we answered b}' way of re-
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1876. 137
assuring him. " How can that be ? " returned young Nimrod ;
" aren't there a lot of fences continually in the way to spoil
it ? " Tell me, truthful reader, who have just pulled the first
grey hair from your upper lip, would you or I, who are only
now beginning to fancy that one of our stud suits us better
than another — would ive dare give utterance to a sentiment
approaching this, even in the society of others older and more
timorous than ourselves ? Methinks there is not a mahogany
in the Midlands that would droop its damask over our heretical
legs thereafter ; so let me not be so boldly craven as to write
it. This absence of fences is not an advantage ; nay, ofttimes
we sorely long for blackthorn and ash-rail. After dinner, we
sometimes think we could yet meet the combinatiou without
flinching, and take our chance at an oxer as in our hottest
moments of youth and temerity.
But now we have nothing to stop us but a broken-banked
brook in the bottom, which, however, swallows up all but the
turban of " Dick Turpin," a joyous native princeling who
accompanies the young Maharajah of Mysore. The Rajah is
most regular at the sport, and Dick and Georgey are the most
determined of his followers, ready to act as extra whips as
occasion offers, and always on the look-out to race their ponies
round a straying hound. Dick's steed has just now got a trifle
the better of him, and submersion is the consequence ; his zeal
being apparently as much wetted as anything else in the pro-
cess. Now we struggle up the rising ground in front, the van
composed of some three or four hard-riding coffee planters —
men who will gallop best pace over rocks or holes, and who
ever "stick by the ship " till hounds return to kennel — by half-
a-dozen soldiers who have been well entered to the game at
home, and by (we beg their pardons) some three or four ladies
who fly along till they and their steeds are ready to drop. For
let me tell you that to nurse a horse up hill here, and hustle
him clown, require muscle and sinew such as our wives and
daughters need scarcely possess — at least so long as our national
prejudices do not call upon them to do the rougher handiwork
138 FOX-HOUND, F011EST, AND PRAIRIE.
of life, or to defend themselves and their rights in matrimonial
combat.
Hounds are heading straight upwards for the thick sholah,
that clothes many an acre of the highest hillside. Jack made
a sore mistake in not struggling on for it, for he has the best of
the game just now, and is well out of view of the leading
hound. But his evil genius has turned him from it. The pack
wheel off to the left; so do we most gladly (for we are dropping
slowly, surely behind), and, with hounds sparkling gaily and
noisily above, we kick along at our utmost round the circular
hill. The springy turf helps us on, and there is little effort
bej'ond a smooth swift gallop now. We are just near enough to
see which hounds are racing to the head, and to cheer the
laggards to their leaders. Of a sudden they swoop towards us
like a flock of pigeons, and we just reach them as they pass.
For two or three miles in front the grassy slope stretches
gradually downwards ; and yet, though we have as good a pair
of shoulders under us as Australia can produce, hounds are
beating us every yard. As they reach the dip their game is to
be seen not more than fifty yards in front of them — tongue out
and brush down. His strong propelling muscles are no good to
him now. In two hundred yards more they are on his back, and
the fierce rumbling of a kill (you know the welcome sound,
reader, if my English is inadequate to express it) reaches us as
we struggle and spur to the spot. A fine dog jackal, or " plenty
big man jackal," as Mr. Veerasawmy terms him when five
minutes later he arrives, grinning and glistening, to perform the
last attentions to the dead. Jack has to be sliced in two or
three directions (without which the pack will scarcely tear
through his thick offensive skin) ; then we gather up what
breath we have left for a few final screams, and soon all that
remains of our stout quarry is the brush at a lady's bridle, the
head at Veerasawmy's saddle, and a hind leg upon which old
Clinker is still exercising his massive jaws.
A fortnight ago three of the big dog hounds from Quorndon
(Dalesman, Chauntev, and Auditor) tore & -porcupine to pieces.
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHEIUUES, 1876. 139
Hounds had followed, as we thought, a jackal to ground in a
natural drain, the two openings some fifteen yards apart. Veera-
sawmy made an opening, rescued the hounds, and pushed a long-
bamboo up the drain. First whip stood at the other end, when
right at him flew a huge porcupine, buzzing open his quills as a
peacock does his tail, scored both his tops deep with his sharp
spears, then dashed straight at Chaunter, driving a quill three
inches home. In frantic anxiety we yelled and trumpeted to
call hounds in an opposite direction ; but Dalesman, Auditor,
and the startled Chaunter were on him in a moment, and in
another he was in pieces, though the mouth of the first-named
was bristling with the quills, and Auditor was impaled through
the leg, to be lame till date. Last year a hound was killed, and
others maimed, in a similar encounter.
THE SOUTHEKN MIDLANDS.
SEASON 1885—86.
FAWSLEY, A FIRST, AND NOTABLE,
EXPERIENCE.
Fawsley, of whose manor and characteristics I have written
elsewhere. — A mile consists usually of three bullock pastures and
three double hedgerows. Of the latter, one may offer pretty
practice — pop in and pop out, over low stake-and-bound and
ditch. No horse could well do wrong with it, and each of us
might fairly imagine, as we left it behind, that at last we were
riding something " quite out of the common." But the next
two, like a river to swim, may be comparatively easy to get into,
but puzzling indeed to get out of. The process of imprison-
ment midway is not altogether a term of happiness. It may
mean a thorn in your eye, a hat off, a stirrup lost, your horse
veering hard a-starboard and steering at full speed up mid-
stream, or all these pleasing contretemps happening together.
Then we wish ourselves at home, or at least, that we had not
been so ambitious. " Take a lead and keep it," is a text upon
which the right sermon has never to my knowledge been built.
The only fit and proper expounding should be — Follow a safe
man, but only so close at his heels as will ensure three things —
(1) That he shall have no excuse for turning round and shouting
savagely, " Room, Sir, room, if you please ! " (2) If he be too
gentle to protest on his own behalf, that his widow should have
no claim upon you if he falls and you alight on his ribs. (3)
That you have time to turn aside and choose another safe man,
if the first one jumps a too big or too hazardous place. In
other words, the text should read, " Take a safe pilot, and
follow him as long as your calculations as to personal peril
FAWSLEY, A FIRST, AND NOTABLE, EXPERIENCE. 141
will allow ! Never seek danger till you have somebody else's
word for it that it does not exist " (this latter part of the maxim
more especially intended for Irish use). And, as for a double
fence in Northamptonshire, you may make it a useful maxim,
" Not to plunge in at the front door until you have seen some-
one else make his way out at the back."
The vein of sport struck by each and every pack in the
Midlands during the ten days preceding Christmas was again
hit by the Grafton on Monday, December 21st. The same dark
fog in every sense wrapped the day in gloom to the greater por-
tion of a large and excellent field. Fortune's favours vary
wildly and inscrutably ; and the dog who in fox-hunting snatches
one lucky day has assuredly either drawn his blanks very lately
or they are ready for him in the immediate future. In each
recent misty day of high-class sport there have been a certain
number who could congratulate themselves that they were in
luck, but a far larger number who were altogether out of it.
The morrow would shuffle them round again, and the very men
who for sheer vexation scarcely looked at their dinner one
evening, returned home almost in rhapsodies the next. Over-
night they had moaned out a sulky resolve to " sell every horse
in the stable," go abroad, perhaps even take to fishing. To-
night the game would be " the only thing worth living for " —
"just one more glass, my dear fellow, to Fox-hunting." "By
Jove, but my new grey is a real clinker I You'd like a mount
on him one of these days, eh ? " And so, no doubt, you would ;
but unless you are sharp enough to book date and occasion at
once, you are not very likely to find yourself astride that same
grey. In vino Veritas happens to be a motto that has little
application to such promises as a mount on the best horse in the
stable. In vino is a very liberal fellow, with no thought but
extending to the friend of his heart the feeling of intense satis-
faction in which he himself is revelling ; but Veritas is a colder-
blooded individual who walks in next morning with a strong
thirst upon him, and possibly with the slightest suspicion of a
headache. No benevolence is for the moment so profound as
142 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
that of the recipient of recent blessings. Do you remember
Gerard Ainslie (was it not ?), who, a gentleman born and
nourished in luxury, had by stress of fortune for some time
been forced to do his own cooking and clothes-mending at the
gold diggings, and who suddenly, by the death of a lamented
aunt, found himself in a position of positive affluence ? He
felt so generous, " he felt so good." A chapter on his state of
mind would not have conveyed so much as that one little
sentence thus expressed by one of our best modern judges of
men and women.
But this is all very much by the way. I'll give you one of
my usual mounts on Pegasus with pleasure, and I'll borrow for
you a pair of spectacles that shall help you peer into the foggy
darkness of Monday. Take the old horse on trust, that's all —
give him credit for such wind and condition as you want, turn
his head loose if you will, but don't call him to account if he
fails to keep it all the while exactly straight — for Pegasus
affects not to compete with an ordnance map, nor will he
" assume a virtue if he hath it not." " No, sirree, cooking is a
thing as I despise," said the only unemployed man of a Western
hunting-party, when asked to turn his attention to preparing
the midday meal. Incivility he held to be no sin. Admitted
ignorance is gross crime in that country of universal self-suffi-
ciency. And, unlike most of his fellows, he had never learned
to cook. So, though no actual idler, he preferred independence
or even rudeness, to such a shameful confession as inability7.
Pegasus, on the same lines, is loth to admit that his geography
lesson is not yet thoroughly learned. How should it be, when
on at least three occasions out of four in the late great series
of runs, both the country and much of the day's doings have
been shrouded in almost impenetrable mist. In a fog the
Grafton called together, at Preston Capes, the best and biggest
field it has been my fortune to see in the Southern Midlands ;
in a fog they drew the two woods immediately below the place
of meeting, and in a fog they followed a stale line for half a mile
up to Fawsley House. Almost in darkness they moved on a
FAWSLEY, A FIRST, AND NOTABLE, EXPERIENCE. 143
little way to try some outlying plantations ; and, when the
bitches all but jumped upon a fox springing up in their midst,
they disappeared from sight together the very moment they left
the narrow belt of trees among which they found him. A sorry
handgate was a poor outlet, under such conditions and for such
a field ; but the quickest kept a grip on the hounds, and in
feverish hurry the rest followed one another, clinging to the
hope that those in front had, at least, something tangible to
guide them. One or two horsemen must have been moving up
the outer side of the thin spinney ; for the next gate was on the
swing, and full thirty people were immediately afterwards
flying a stake-and-bound almost in line.
A few hundred yards further, and they were upon a breast-
work that spread them right and left, as a breakwater checks a
surging billow. A regular Fawsley Double stopped the way ;
and its two tall hedges loomed black and forbidding through
the enveloping mist. Mr. Peel alone was equal to coping
readily with the difficulty. Leaping on to the bank, at the
weakest point he could find, he turned his well-trained horse up
the thorny lane, till, reaching a spot at which the second hedge
could be bored, he handled him with an adroitness quite mar-
vellous in one who has but a single arm. Even to him only a
fleeting and doubtful glimpse of a tail hound could have been
his guide across the two next great pastures. The pack had
started actually with their fox, and were still straining at his
very brush — the few hounds who happened at first to be behind
their comrades unable to make up a yard of ground— thus
serving as the only beacon to the few horsemen in near pursuit.
A second great double, a second despairing glance up and down,
a moment's hesitation, another plunge forward into the darkness,
and Smith (first whip and acting huntsman) now led a still
slenderer number across the great grassfields, in rapid but indis-
tinct pursuit. The fences hereabouts are strong — too strong
when mist is hiding the gates and hounds fly as now. They
bind the big branches so deftly and stoutly ; they dig the ditches
so wide and deep ; and they often leave the late-cut thorns to
144
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
form a second parapet on the ditch side. But if the lingering
nightmare of that foggy ride has any vestige of truth in its dim
outline, still before my eyes, the leaders dwelt not in their
frenzied career, but cleared, or crashed through, two or three of
these at almost half-mile intervals. A roadside plantation came
next, and the hedgecutter was still at work strewing his thorns
alongside his wall of binders, as hounds dived into and through
the little wood. " Up to the top-end, and you'll catch 'em at
the bridle-gate ! " sung out the knight of the bill-hook. But
either deaf to the advice, or in despair at the rapidity with
which the pack were again vanishing, the recipient of the
caution chanced thorns and new cut hedge in his headlong
gallop — entering the wood with a thud and a crash that should
have sounded as a useful fog-signal to those behind. Mean-
while the two whips and Mrs. Bunbury (who alone of the field
saw the whole of this curious run) had hit the bridle-gate, and
followed by Mrs. Jones and Captain Riddell, shortly reached
the wood of Mantel's Heath — after as quick and disastrous a
twenty minutes as hounds ever ran. The famous Belvoir
bitches, I swear it, never travelled faster.
FAJFSLEY, A FIRST, AND NOTABLE, EXPERIENCE. 145
Tom Smith and Mrs. Bunbury plunged into the wood, while
the others galloped round its edge. Hounds were through the
covert at once, bore quickly to the right into the grassy vale,
running nearly as fast as ever — while the whip and the lady
alone accompanied them. Gates and gaps made the line easy
for another rapid quarter of an hour; then a small detachment,
headed by Mr. Goodman the farmer (always an excellent rider
to hounds, but now only on a rough cob), with Major Water-
house, Captain Fawcett, and one other gentleman from the
Banbury district, struck in ; and the chase went back till Pres-
ton Wood was nearly reached. Some carts in a road apparently
turned the fox from that covert, for again he swung to the right,
and, with two couple and a half of hounds hard on his line,
crossed his former track (as was evidenced by handgates easily
recognized even in the dim light as lately passed), pointing for
Everdon. Smith soon became aware that some of his hounds
were forward, and hunting these up as quickly as he could
through and beyond Everdon Stubbs, came up to them at length
somewhere near the village of Everdon. A cluster of boys, for
once comparable to cherubs from the clouds, suddenly opened
tongue with " tally-ho," averring that the fox had crossed the
Everdon Brook a quarter of an hour since. For men painfully
alive to the fact that their horses were all more or less blown,
it was quite pardonable to conclude that the information merely
covered a ruse for procuring the rustics some little fun at the
brook — till hounds took up the line, and the water-jump became
inevitable. It was not very big — most fortunately grass to
grass, and the banks level — and one and all of the five riders
got over by persistent degrees, repeating the same feat half-a-
mile farther on, where the brook had made a loop in its course.
Now the chase held on towards Dodford, and across the Daventry
turnpike. By this time (quite an hour and a half from the find)
horses were all distinctly and emphatically protesting " Enough."
The scramble up the bank on to the road was, for instance, a
sight almost pitiable. A low, thorny gap alone made the fence ;
but horse after horse stopped helplessly, with head stretched
146 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
through and feet out-planted. Beyond Dodford Holt Edward
(the second whip) came up, with about a dozen horsemen and a
few couple of hounds from Mantel's Heath. Information as to
this long-travelling fox was again forthcoming, but with the
extraordinary breadth of discrepancy that attaches itself to this
more than to any known subject. " Not long," of course ; but
the difference between "Well, may be twenty minutes," and "I
don't know as he's got across that there next field," was so wide
that only an inquirer long intimate with the newly-enfran-
chised Northamptonshire labourer could possibly believe that
the two answers so divergent were intended to convey one and
the same fact.
The huntsman, pro tern., however, not only refused to
be daunted by the first reply, but with a thrill of hope
accepted the second, jammed spurs into his jaded mare,
viewed his beaten fox crawling up the next hedgerow, and three
minutes later had the delight of taking him away from hounds.
One hour and fifty -Jive minutes, they made it — and never was
a fox better earned or more deservedly handled. Poor Beers,
though ! was he not more to be pitied on his bed of pain (with
a broken leg) at that moment than even the scores of good
sportsmen still wandering sadly over the fog-laden country ?
An hour's search for the second horses proving of no avail,
hounds were ordered home, and the day ended. But that
draggled little brush in Mrs. Bunbury's possession should be
held a proud trophy through many a year to come — carrying
memory back to a triumphant Merry Christmastide, 1885.
That hounds were in full cry next day I happen to know
through the fact of 1113^ horses meeting them on the road, much
to the tribulation of the man in charge, who appears to have
seen, thanks to a watering bridle and " the gaffer's best 'oss," a
good deal more of the chase than he desired. Of its incidents I
could not learn much, as his narration was confined purely to
his own unwilling adventures and to the perils encountered by
FAWSLEY, A FIRST, AND NOTABLE, EXPERIENCE. 14-7
my treasured stead. On the latter point it is needless to say
I was full of sympathy as he could possibly desire — though on
what grounds he should have expected me to be responsive to
reiterated allusions to his " wife and four children " I am at a
loss to conceive. He brought these in with an almost entreating
pathos when he came to the episode of his shivering a high
white gate into match boxes. But I ask you, reader, was it
more than human nature that my thoughts altogether refused
to quit my favourite and his four legs, or that I should then
and there have broken off his tearful story, to rush into the
stable and examine nry belongings after their recent danger?
Ah me ! it is not through the terrible oxers and raspers of
penmanship that we and our horses come to orief. Our
vicissitudes of horsemanship occur often enough, and seriously
enough, but are seldom due to over-valour or anything like
culpable rashness. If we hurt ourselves, it is over a gap, or,
maybe, only a rabbit-hole. If THE horse of our life dies in the
middle of a season, it is because lockjaw has followed the prick
of a thorn or the misdirection of a shoe-nail, or because he
missed his footing at a two-foot ditch. You and I have —
perhaps more than once — grinned in pain over a fractured
limb, the while our daily comrades were riding gaily and safely
in the full swing of sport. But was it ever because we had
made a bolder venture than they, or because we had, on that
unfortunate day, tried our mount too high ?
How often we hear, in reference to a new purchase, " I dare
not ride him at timber because he has never been taught it, or
at water because I don't know that he will face it." When
such doubts and fears present themselves, depend upon it there
is something wrong ; it may be in the stable, it may be in the
cellar, or it may be even in the baccy-box ; but, believe me, the
screw that is loose is far less likely to be found in the system of
the quadruped than in that of the biped. I remember (no
matter when or where) a very excellent rough-rider, in the
employ of a worthy dealer — himself a man of iron nerve,
ready at any moment and for any trial to displace the show-
l 2
148 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
man and occupy the saddle himself. " Bitters " (the sub-
ordinate) had for years been accustomed to mount whatever
brute was forthcoming at his master's signal, with wonderful
adroitness to make-believe he was exhibiting a pet lamb, and,
without hesitation, to cram the said lamb at any dangerous
leap that might offer itself to the fancy of either seller or buyer.
But, as years went on, it became noticeable that Bitters's erst
ruddy countenance was gradually losing much of its fresh and
wholesome colouring. By slow, but sure, degrees, the bright
complexion became bleached and pallid ; while the once keen,
sparkling eye assumed an unbecoming fishiness. Bitters, in
fact, was beginning his day too early in the morning, and
lengthening it too far into the night. And, with this un-
pleasant change of countenance came a still sadder alteration of
temperament and soul. Bitters no longer jumped eagerly to
the saddle the moment occasion offered for trying conclusions
with a rogue worthy of his steel ; still less did he display
alacrity in forcing a half-taught colt to acquit himself as became
a finished hunter, no matter what the suggested test might be.
In other Avords, for instance, a greasy stile had no longer the
same enticing charms for Bitters, nor was he now wont to offer
of his own free will a tall, strong gate as a mere after-breakfast
relish to a green four-year-old. He rode what he was obliged,
and hitherto he had jumped where he was ordered. But
suspicion had long ago entered the unwilling breast of his fond
employer, and one day matters came to a crisis. " Take him
across the drop-fence, Bitters, and bring him back over the
timber in the corner " (the timber in question consisting of four
stout new rails, and the young horse's shoulders being withal
of the most questionable type). Bitters (without doubt not
such a fool as he looked) affected to hear only the first part
of the directions ; took the drop-fence leisurely, and galloped
back over an easy stake-and-bound. " Put him over the post-
and- rails," repeated the master, with some acerbity. But
still Bitters lingered, and assumed that most convenient of all
protectors, a stubborn deafness. Once more did his com
A BURSTING FALL.
149
man ding officer shout the order, adding, somewhat sullenly,
" Why, confound the fellow, I believe he's afraid." " Even a
worm will turn," we are told. But Bitters was up in arms at
once. The leaden hue which had stolen over his wan face at
the first suggestion of the timber flushed suddenly to an
alcoholic purple ; and forgetting his deafness, he flung the
insinuation from him with hot indignation. " No," he retorted,
" I ain't afraid, and that's all about it. But I've larned to
know when the beggars are going to fall."
A BURSTING FALL.
" A bursting fall," is a term with which most of us have
acquired familiarity, as a fashion of speech as well as a too
possible incident in our several careers. But seldom have I seen
it more sharply illustrated than in the case of a bold brown
hunter to-day, who met the turf with such concussion as to
send saddle, rider and all, a full furrow's width across the field.
He then, of course, proceeded to take his place at the head of
150 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the Hunt, while his hapless owner (barred by the hat of nine-
teenth-century custom from carrying the saddle in its only
proper position, viz. on his head) had to trip it o'er the
greensward with the pigskin and its shivered girths held in
front of him like a big drum. The question in my wandering
mind at once arose as to whether he, poor man, was worse off
under the circumstances than another fellow sportsman whose
misfortune I witnessed (and vainly endeavoured to assist) with
the Whaddon Chase some weeks ago. In this latter case the
dismounted horseman carried the bridle ! The steed thereupon
had everything his own way — not excepting other people's turn
at the gaps (a distinction we all covet but attempt only to seize
according to our bringings-up). Which for choice ? There can
be little doubt as to the answer, though a saddle may weigh
fourteen pounds, and a double bridle can claim but two in the
scales. The barebacked horse may be caught in a single field ;
the bare-headed one may gallop to Jericho, Coventry, or to the
public nearest his own stable — as fancy, knowledge of country,
or daily habit may suggest. In this case the loss of saddle was
fortunately at the cost of neither sport nor other inconvenience
beyond a short double in heavy-marching-order. But that to
be unexpectedly flung saddle-and-all is no pleasing joke I
happen to be able to testify most strongly. Last week's two
frosty days having forced me into the well-brushed sleekness
of a London hat, I went, after the manner of a fox-hunter who
is very busy indeed in town, to indulge in a dawdle at my
saddler's. His wooden horse carried his new patent saddle
to perfection ; but by some chance a similar saddle was im-
mediately afterwards put " on the wrong horse," to wit on a
saddler's stool. In happy and well-hatted ignorance I mounted
briskly — making certain that in this instance at least the new
mount was surely entitled to the description of " sound and
quiet to ride." But (alas for dignity, safety, and self-command),
the saddle pommel alone was supported, the seat and its
occupant in a moment occupied inverse positions, the saddler
picked up the pieces (among others a crumpled hat), and our
BICES TERSE IRE. 151
interview came abruptly to an end. (Think I shall ride at a
fair post and rails now, and judge if a fall over timber can hurt
half as much.)
BICESTERSHIRE.
A MOST pleasing feature in the Southern Midlands is to be
found in the grassy sides attached to every road ; and that, even
after the recent deluges, allows of a safe, clear gallop to covert,
or of a long pipe-opener on an off-day. The number and
direction of these roads are amplified to a degree truly extra-
ordinary ; but the way-wardens, of Northamptonshire at all
events, decorate all crossings and turnings lavishly with sign-
posts that will almost tell you the way to Paradise, or even the
number of miles you must travel to get there. That these are
sufficient guides for ordinary purposes I can gratefully testify ;
but if the kindly officials to whom I refer will forgive me, I will
mention (in all good faith) an instance in which even their fore-
thought failed signally to carry out their public-spirited inten-
tions. On a certain day, and at a certain hour, a certain hunt,
as written below, turned abruptly in its cross-country track to
regain a covert just left ; and as is usual in such sudden
counter-marches, everybody in the field encountered everybody
else — rider to rider — save one, who was footing it hard to the
old familiar cry, " Hi, catch," &c. Everybody would only too
gladly have clone so, but where was the etcetera ? This was
evidently the question the well-breeched and unwilling pedes-
trian asked himself, for he redoubled his gait till breathlessly
he reached the signpost at the four cross roads. Banbury so
many miles, Daventry so many less, and Lutterworth so many
more ! But where, oh where ? " Three to one on the
field," said the signpost. " Which way has he gone?" cried his
comrades. But to neither could he frame a word of reply; for
not even the glimmer of a short-cropped tail was to be seen in
the distance. In bitterness of soul he cast his stirrups on the
ground (he had 'em both, for safety-stirrups possess ever this
152 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIIUE.
advantage, that you may pick them up at leisure after a fall) ;
in auger he realised the culpable shortcomings of the road
surveyors and their directories ; in spirit he invoked Triviator,
the deity of the cross roads ; and, in good humour, he will
forgive my recalling an incident that bade me pick up my pen
at bedtime lest I lie awake to laugh.
A tale I have to tell of the Bicester (Sat., Dec. 4th) — if I can
but tell it, hampered as I am by knowing little of the country
and not a moiety of its field by sight or name. Thenford was
the meet, and the source of a run that could boast of an eight
mile point and a kill in the open, and that lasted for an hour
and fifty minutes. The time conveys no idea of the pace, for
the early part of the chase was anything but straight. Hounds
went over a great amount of ground, and, freshening to their
work as the run went on and as their fox went straighter, they
drove him to death in the handsomest fashion.
The sport began from the very meet, was carried on into the
Grafton country, and there continued till the fox was killed and
hounds went home. At least three foxes were roused from the
willow bed outside Mr. Grazebrook's garden gates ; one soon fell
a victim to the popular enthusiasm, but a brace contrived to
escape the medley. Hounds swallowed their luncheon speedily,
and then took up the line which was to lead to an afternoon
meal. But they were not as yet on terms good enough to
allow of pace, and the huntsman's assistance came in more than
once before they had worked their way round a pretty grass
valley to Thenford Gorse, and forward into Grafton territory.
From Silverstone Village came the fastest and merriest part
of the gallop. Stovin held his pack over a passing difficulty,
and Avhen again they touched the scent they went into it with
a fervour they had scarcely felt before. By a plantation -side,
they carried a determined head over stubbles and arable for a
mile or so, and fairly flew across the grassy acres beyond.
Mr. Harrison showed the ready way into a deep lane in their
track, and Mr. Campbell bored a hole out, while Colone
Molyneux, Mr. B. Grosvenor, and Lord Suffield went quickly in
BICESTERSHIRE. 153
and out on the right. Two loose horses within a quarter of a
mile gave token that the pace was telling. " Hang his bridle
over the gatepost, sir, and push along ; or you'll never see
hounds again to-day ! " Plough once more ! Wheat that can
never pay, and stubble that must have cost three pounds an
acre, dead loss ! Alas, for agriculture ! Well, each Radical
cow will demand most of her three acres in grass, will she not ?
But, heavens, how close the fences will come then ! They are
wide apart just now — thirty or forty acres to each field — the
speckled pack glancing in front, half-a-dozen riders struggling
across the plough in their wake, and several sensible men
skying off to the left to gain a parallel line of grass, even at the
cost of a stout flight of rails and its varied consequences. Into
another lane, with the same deep and hairy ditch beside it,
that has already distinguished so many fences and extinguished
no few followers. Another plough team, working by the way-
side. " He's gone for the corner ! " Yes, but which corner ?
And till hounds can glean the teamster's meaning, or the
huntsman can carry them in the direction gradually intimated,
a half minute is lost that means a quarter of an hour's reprieve
to their gallant fox. In his blown and distressed condition he
has turned away from the first wood now encountered (Crown
Lands, I believe), clung to the neat open rides of the second,
Bucknalls, and struggled out beyond for a final effort home-
wards. Bearing back from the village of Abthorpe, he is
plainly to be viewed in front, toiling over the grass fields by
the railway. Now, they must have him, and they've earned
him. If you have any blood in your body, it must spring in
your veins at this moment — the most spirit-stirring in fox-
hunting. Don't your hackles go up like the bristles of the
straining bitches now running for blood — else why that hot-
and-cold feeling down the backbone as you drive the Latchfords
once home into your tired beast, and your thoughts flash back
to old Jorrocks in his maddest, wildest happiness ? " 'Ere's the
fox ! " cries a boy in the ballast hole by the railway bank,
while out bounces a banging old hare, and close in her tracks,
154 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
with no hungry look at her, but with a wistful, pitiful glance
over his shoulder at the n earing turmoil in pursuit, comes
Keynard, red and bright, and still almost clean, but, oh, so leg-
weary and exhausted ! No spark of pity, though, can we spare
him now. The bitches are trooping over the bank, not fifty
yards behind him, but never a glimpse do they catch, as he
crawls from view through a dark, thick hedgerow. But in the
very next field they are coursing by sight. Half-a-dozen hats
are crushed and torn in following through a low bullock hole
in the thorny screen, and soon there is the old happy group —
men happier, yet more gently happy, than after any other
success in life — and there is the old delightful scene of steam-
ing, riderless horses, and on the green turf a stark furry form
the centre-mark for forty fierce, baying throats.
The sole drawback to this most sporting run was the absence
of the Master, Lord Chesham, through a luckless fall. As to
who was at the kill, it is impossible that I should attempt to
enumerate by name. But besides those above mentioned, there
were here, and prominent in the run, at least Messrs. G. Drake,
Green, Grazebrook, Peareth, Kenyon, Brown, G. and B. Leigh,
Bourke, Lord Bentinck, and Lord Capel, while Mrs. Brown
carried away the brush in confirmation of honours she had
fairly earned.
JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHEKRIES,
1877.
THE OOTACAMUND HOUNDS.
You are already aware that the Ootacamund hounds have
their home and their sport on the grass-covered summits of the
Blue Mountains. From other sources most people know that
Ootacamund is the rendezvous of the Anglo-Indians of the
south — fleeing en masse, as much as may be, from the purga-
tory of the hot weather of the plains. This year the famine
held the Governor, his Council, and all minor satellites fast
bound to their duty of charity and relief in the arid districts
below. In a few cases helpmates and offspring remained to
support the good men in their trial, and to share their priva-
tion. But such is not altogether the wav in India ; and so,
though there was wanting, perhaps, whatever little element of
grave decorum might previously have held place in the society
of the hills, yet Ooty, apparently, suffered no lack of life or
energy in consequence. Its routine of gaiety was never more
unceasing; its whirligig of excitement was never pushed round
more merrily; gossip never flew so blithely, nor reputation so
lightly ; tongues were no less glib ; ears were no less open.
Maidens were no more timid, matrons no less frisky, though
fathers and husbands were not there to guard them, and the
social wolf of India (who ever loves and never weds) beset their
path at every turn. Fearlessly and happily, as heretofore, they
gambolled on unceasingly. The rink had added a new attrac-
tion, and thither resorted daily the lambs who had pretty
ankles, while the lambs-who-had-not disported themselves on
the Badminton courts hard by — lambs that were no longer
156 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
lambs, but would fain be thought so, joining the one party or
the other, as fancy or figure dictated. The wicked ones in
sheepskin, too, mixed freely in either throng, shared their
pursuits, or hovered outside on the watch for a straggler, stray-
ing maybe not unwillingly nor unconsciously. Badminton is,
doubtless, an exhilarating if not an ennobling game, but
me thinks, if I had a mind to be young again, I would rather
seek my amusement with yon grey-clad skater than with his
prototype wielding a Badminton bat. The former is swinging
round the glassy arena hand-in-hand with a supple nymph, the
sparkle in whose eye and the rose on whose cheek can surely
not all be due to the exercise ; the latter has to stand rooted
silently to his section of the court, posed elegantly with legs
wide apart, mouth and eyes wide open, every nerve intent on
returning a ball of Berlin wool over a net — no whispered word,
no gentle pressure of hand for him. He is but an unit of the
dozen thus solemnly attitudinising ; his loved one is placed,
may be, yards behind him, and the only winged words that
reach him are her chidings as he fails in his stroke ; and yet
Young England, after a brief transportation, does play Bad-
minton— more, I am inclined to think, as a means than an
amusement. That a temporary degeneracy may ofttimes be
begotten of circumstance, we have the case of Hercules and
Omphale of old to prove; while for more modern instance have
we never seen a staunch warrior holding a skein of worsted for
fair hands to wind, nor deemed his occupation one whit less
worthy of his manhood than is Badminton ?
But if the above gay throng suffered no depression from the
absence of heavy fathers and doting husbands, the Ootacamund
Hunt Fund did; for the fair beings by no means represented
in full degree the family purse, while as for their esquires, 'twas
pitiable, 'twas eminently sad, to see how complacently they
doffed the lion skin, laid down the club (I refer not by any
means to Ooty's corner-stone of tittle tattle — the men's brush-
and-comb association of the Neilgherries), and took up the
lyre. In other words, how they gave up hunting and took to
THE OOTACAMUND HOUNDS. 157
Badminton, forswore their early instincts, and buttoned up their
pockets. Alas for our country !
And so at the commencement of the season of 1877 — the
hunting season, be it remembered, being cotemporary, perforce,
with the period of the year during which Ootacamund is a
fashionable resort— there was a fine pack of hounds in kennel ;
but at so low an ebb were the funds of the Hunt that the
adjective fine was gradually assuming a distinct and secondary
meaning, and sale or starvation were only just warded off by
the self-sacrificing efforts of Mr. Schmidt, the keenest and most
thorough of honorary secretaries.
Thirty-one couple ; and you might almost have taught a
child his alphabet from the varied brands on their ribs. From
the Atherstone to Lord Yarborough's, every initial was repre-
sented that ever figured on a list of hunting appointments ; and
there is little reason to doubt that the causes which had pro-
cured the banishment of the various members were well-nigh
as numerous, embracing every sin of omission and commission
to which hound flesh is heir. Far be it from me that any
expression of mine should appear as a wish to foul the nest
which received me in April 1877. But such was the nest — a
bed of roses, possibly, for an enthusiast, but of no thornless
roses most assuredly ; and such was the material with which
it was considered desirable that the field should be taken at
once, and in full publicity. Cubhunting or schooling of any
kind was held as totally inadmissible, on the plea that the
sinews of war must be the most immediate consideration, and
that the ever-shifting society of Ootacamund could only be
called upon in earnest when matters were fairly started. The
reasoning was plausible enough, no doubt, and the argument
possibly sound ; but this scarcely sufficed to make the situation
relishing, even when it was added that there were plenty of
jackals on the hills, and that the hounds were apparently in
perfect health. So they were undoubtedly — in the most
boisterous of health — short commons notwithstanding. For
very fear, the gates of the kennel yard had been kept closed on
158 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE,
them for the month they had already spent on the Neilgherries.
Half the pack, it is true, were tried and trusty servants, the
chosen remainder from the previous year ; and their well-
deserved rest after the heat of Madras and Bangalore misdit
possibly not have elated them altogether beyond bounds.
Another three couple had recently arrived from Leicestershire,
and it was hoped that not even a sea voyage would have
entirely eradicated the discipline inculcated at Quorndon. But
of the rest no language can give any just idea of this band of
wild irrepressibles, of the atrocities they committed, or of the
anxiety, and oftentimes shame, that they caused before any
glimmering of the idea that they were to consider themselves
" component parts of one harmonious whole " could be made to
dawn upon them.
" I am the Lord Cardwell, sir," was the closing sentence of a
hot argument held in a railway carriage some five years ago.
It was addressed by an elderly gentleman to a cavalry captain
of strong views and a good parade voice. The two were
travelling casually together ; the latter entertained a decided
opinion on the new military system, and was ever ready to hold
forth loudly, and perhaps rightly, on the subject of discontented
officers and pigmy recruits. His last vehement outburst,
ending, " Cardwell's the man who did it all, and blessed if they
haven't gone and made the beggar a peer ! " extracted from his
opponent an admission that might more discreetly have been
made earlier in the encounter.
I have received no peerage for my administration of affairs,
nor, as a consequent counter-punishment, yet come unawares
across the plain speaker who should hold up the glass in which
each error was reflected and each shortcoming shown with
unsparing exactitude. But, to guard against either contingency,
I may here proffer the admission that it was I, the writer, who
had to bear the chief burden of the task of organisation in the
Ooty kennels. No apology is wanted for the declaration ; for,
while to the bulk of my readers it will merely serve as a
guarantee of facts, the individuality of the scribe being a matter
THE OOTACAMUND HOUNDS. 159
of indifference to them, to local readers it will, I trust, only
open to their friendly recognition what a nom de plume would
not have availed to hide.
No undertaking in India is ever carried on except at the
hands of a committee, who meet with great solemnity and cum-
bersomeness, and record and treasure very carefully all the
profound utterances and dignified resolutions given birth to at
these meetings — usually leaving to their honorary secretary all
the trouble and responsibility connected with ways and means,
which one would imagine to be the chief function for which
they were called into existence. So of course there was an
Ootacamund Hunt Committee. But the two working represen-
tatives— and the two men to whom the Ooty Hunt really owes
its life and being — were Major Robert Devonshire and Mr.
Schmidt. The former knows a good deal more about the
business than is given to most amateurs, having been brought
up under the guidance and tutoring of Squire Trelawny, and
inheriting from him the keenness of a Scotch terrier. He
would long ago, and with thorough fittedness, have assumed the
joint offices of Master and huntsman himself, had not the
Forest Department, in whose pay his lot is cast, considered that
the care of their young plantations demands a man with a less
engrossing source of recreation than the charge of a pack of
hounds. So now he contents himself with remaining the prac-
tical backbone of the Hunt ; has locked up his red coat to
please his employers, but still lends full and vigorous assistance
in all matters pertaining to the flags or the field. Mr. Schmidt's
knowledge of the chase has been the offspring of local experi-
ence ; but, while each succeeding season has added something
to the store, it has diminished in no degree his ingrafted love
for the subject.
So one morning, early in April, there issued mounted from
the kennels at break of clay the huntsman, the two gentlemen
above, with two " dog boys " on foot, the first-named accoutred
with his horn, and the others with whips of office — all with a
view to taking the newly -formed pack for exercise. But where
1G0 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
was Veerasawmy's well-known form and sable face, that for
fourteen years had never been missed from kennel or covert
side, whether during the summer at Ootacamund, or during the
cool weather at Madras % Fur fourteen faithful years had he
tended each pack — loving them as no nigger ever loved animals
before — nursing them in sickness, and glorying in their doings.
Let rice be at famine price, he took none of it from the troughs ;
let the work be never so hard, it was performed as soon as sug-
gested ; and these are two attributes that we have since searched
for with patience, but searched for in vain. If stray hounds
were to be fetched home, Veerasawmy knew by instinct where
to find them. With him it was no " Very good, sar, I go
bring," and a prompt exit — to the nearest bazaar for a drink
and a sleep ; but he would sound the " Co boy ! co bo'oy ! "
that he had acquired, and the old tin trumpet with which he
was entrusted, on every hillside, till sure enough he returned
with the wanderers. He was an honest native, a truthful
Madrassee, an anomaly in his land ; and his death was a loss
irreparable. Not a week before the date of which I write he
had been carried off by heart disease. That I may not have to
dwell further upon the misfortunes of the year, I may here add
that during the ensuing three months the kennel cook was
carried off by small pox, and fever either killed or laid low almost
every other member of the Hunt establishment.
But to return to our morning's exercise. The inmates of the
building had already begun to sniff liberty, and the noise within
had become appalling, when at a signal the door was opened,
and out they rushed, scrambling and tumbling over each
other — those underneath yelling for their lives, and the puppies
giving tongue as freely as if on a hot scent in covert. The
cracking of whips in their faces hindered only the old stagers of
the mob, the remainder dashing forward, heads up and sterns
down, as delighted as schoolboys at their unexpected holiday.
A nanny goat startled at the uproar sprang away before them,
and naturally enough the puppies seized the chance presented,
raised a hue and cry in her wake that must have roused all
THE OOTACAMUND HOUNDS. 1G1
sleeping Ooty, and pursued her pell-mell down the road. A
check was brought about by Nanny manfully turning round
upon her pursuers ; but reinforcements arriving (the contagion
having now spread through the whole pack), she was forced
again to betake herself to flight. As ill-luck would have it, a
Mohammedan shopkeeper, of high caste and position, was
taking down his shutters close by. In through the open door
dashed Nanny, after her rushed the thirty couple of noisy
fiends, upsetting the shopman on their way, and defiling his
carcase with their unclean feet. The uproar in the shop became
hideous, as the nanny goat stood at bay on a shelf, the counter
swept of its wares, and the floor a chaos of every conceivable
commodity that a store affords. The huntsman, almost as
enraged at the conduct of his pets as the now foaming shop-
keeper, stood some fifty yards away, blowing his horn with
might and main, while his attendants plunged into the melee,
and plied whipcord and rating with lavish freedom. The Baboo,
regaining his feet, seized a double-barrelled gun ; but, fortu-
nately, could not find his cartridges, or assuredly some crime,
and possibly bloody reprisal, would have been committed. The
old hounds soon tired of their disgraceful lark, and their younger
confreres were quickly made to feel the situation too hot for
them.
This was only the first act of a stirring morning's perform-
ance. But I need not dwell on how the young entry found
further genial occupation in chivying a black retriever until he
plunged under his sick master's bed ; nor how they ran the pug
of a lady of high rank and position (this in India, too, where
rank and precedence are words of awful significance) to ground
in its mistress's pony carriage, frightening the owner almost to
death, and starting her pony in their determined efforts to draw
their prey. When at length they were brought back to kennel,
master and whips were exhausted and despondent. But break-
fast did much towards recruiting nature, and enabling them to
continue the course of discipline. A great part of the remainder
of the day was spent in impressing upon the subjects under
M
162 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
treatment that names had been given them in their youth, with
the intent that they should come when they were called, and
not before. The difficulty of inculcating this principle was by
no means facilitated by the fact that several recent additions
to the pack had arrived without register of baptism or other
record whatever. The next day was very similarly employed,
very similar advantage being taken by the leading miscreants
of the opportunities offered by the morning's exercise. On the
third da}r, virtue (the virtue of sublime resignation, and of trust
in a merciful fate) had to be made of necessity, and the public
gaze faced at the opening meet. Ye huntsmen of Merrie
England, who from April to November can throw all your
energies into the schooling of your ten to twenty couple of
juveniles, whom it is proposed to incorporate with three times
their number of steady veterans — tell me, what bribe would
you accept to place yourself in such a situation as this ? Put
reputation on one side and think only of the personal misery
of such a plight. Think of the shameful dread, of the agonised
anticipation, of the excruciating attempts at appearing cheerful,
placid, and confident, when all the time your mental condition
would be, as Mr. Bumble put it, that of " sitting on broken
bottles ; " and say, would any price induce you to accept the
position ?
True, the field was scarcely of the class we hope to see on
the 1st prox. (or thereabouts) at Kirby Gate, though from many
points of resemblance it might possibly aspire to rank with that
sent out by some of our sporting spas (other, of course, than
Handley Cross). But, as we are all aware, knowledge of a
subject is by no means a sine quel noil to criticism upon it ;
moreover, the backslidings and offences developed by the pack
of the season '77, in their two first mornings' exercise had gone
from mouth to mouth, and ear to ear — rapidity of transmission,
strange to say, blunting in no degree the points of the story,
nor even deducting from the variety and number of its inci-
dents. Indeed, of such terrific significance were some of the
tales abroad, that more than one timid fair one stayed at home,
THE OOTACAMUND HOUNDS. 163
rather than encounter a pack to whom rumour assigned all the
fiercest qualities of Cuban bloodhounds. So the public were all
agape to witness something novel and spicy for themselves ;
nor were they doomed to be altogether disappointed, though
every precaution had been taken by those most concerned to
avert any catastrophe and invite success. Twelve couple of
trusty hounds had been told off to represent the kennel on the
occasion ; but in a hapless moment it was determined that a
more orthodox and imposing appearance would be presented by
some slight increase of numbers. Thus, against better convic-
tion, and again swayed by the luckless necessity of currying the
favour of subscribers present and problematical, two more
couple were drawn to swell the parade. These consisted of two
puppies, who, instead of taking part in the recent riots, had
shown, by remaining timidly at horses' heels, that they required
encouragement ; of a hound whose chief fault lay in the plebeian
appearance of his unrounded ears, which it was hoped might
pass unnoticed in the mob ; and of a recent importation named
Statesman. The last was a hound recently imported, of fine
appearance, and of a countenance so meek as almost to lead to
the belief that butter could not melt in his mouth, nor had he
been noticed as taking any very prominent part in the disturb-
ances aforesaid.
The precautionary hour of 6 A.M. having also been fixed for
the meet, prevented anything like a large assemblage. But
why dwell on the sad history ? Ill-fortune prevented a find
for the first hour of search, until Statesman espied a buffalo
calf in the distance, and gave instant chase, being in his turn
pursued by the cow with an agonised bellowing that brought on
the whole of the herd to her assistance. Screams that might
have been heard from end to end of the Belvoir Vale rose from
the Toda herdsman, and, unable to resist the excitement any
longer, the whole pack soon broke away into the valley, leaving
their huntsman in a frame of mind in which tearing of the hair
would have been no solace, and murder the only alleviation.
He spoke not, neither did he once apply his horn to the
M 2
164
FOX-HOUND, FOIIEST, AND FRAIFIE.
whitening lips that might be seen moving, as it were, with the
incantations of a wizard. At last Bob Devonshire succeeded in
^y> - ■ ,»- \t -••■"' . " ■ ' : ^ -
cutting the dastard form of Statesman well nigh in two with
his heavy lash, and sent him slinking back to sterner and more
formal punishment at the hands of Mr. Schmidt. The re-
mainder soon found they had been enticed into a wild goose
chase. Statesman was sent home to kennel, and condemned
indefinitely to half rations and idleness. Matters were righted
pro tern., and a twenty minutes' scurry soon afterwards acted as
some slight salve to wounded feelings.
But it would be hard indeed to pass judgment on the Ooty
Pack on the basis of their misadventures at starting ; and so I
must ask my readers to allow six weeks of daily and incessant
work to have passed, and come out with me on one or two of
their best dajrs.
By this time the puppies and new-comers had been drilled
into very fair order, having been out at least twice a week, in
company only of an odd couple or so of venerable sages, until
one by one they could be depended upon not to disgrace them-
selves before the public, and were permitted to take their part
THE OOTACAMUNB HOUNDS. 165
on advertised days. These were now alternately three and four
per week — quite sufficient, you will say, to employ a pack of
about thirty couples, but, believe me, not a bit more than suffi-
cient to keep the ardour of such a " vagarious " establishment
within bounds. In fact, severity administered in the shape of
work was found to act far more beneficially than in the form of
punishment — the more so as Bob Devonshire's stud being-
very liberally employed by the department to which he was
attached, his services could not always be depended upon, and
Mr. Schmidt's knowledge of the country did not always make
such amends for want of pace in his hunters as would allow him
to be at all times within hail. Indeed, the chief difficulty con-
nected with arranging for more than two days in the week was
in the impossibility of getting together a field of anything like
reasonable size.
I was going to say they are all one-horse men in the Presi-
dency of Madras. But that expression, I have been told, is
nowadays occasionally used as a term of reproach (much as that
of Ensign was considered and repelled accordingly by a friend
of mine, to whom it been applied, and who added indignantly,
"off parade"), and, moreover, as such might be seized upon in
triumph by the intolerant men of Bengal ; so I may qualify it
by saying that, with few exceptions, they don't keep any horses
at all — solely for recreative, much less for hunting purposes.
Whether this is due to the famine of the last two years, which,
directly or indirectly, pinched everybody ; to the facilities of
the present day towards an early return to England, and the
consequent desirability of saving a fund for the trip home ; or
to the extinction of other sport, such as pig-sticking, in Southern
India, I am not in a position to decide. Or else, again, it may
be that India is not as desirable a country of residence as the
pensioners of old John Company depict it as having been in
their day ; and, consequently, all men whose means are sufficient
to allow of their keeping a horse or two, or of permitting them-
selves any indulgence beyond bare existence and a never-ending
succession of rank Trichinopoli cheroots, prefer to return as
166 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
soon as they can to the country of their birth. By these I do
not of course mean the men of long standing and in possession
of lucrative situations, who feed upon the cake and ale of the
land, who receive more rupees per mensem than they can spend,
even with the aid of dinner parties many and big, of the mem-
sahib's frequent consignments of dresses from Paris, and of
thirty ravenous servants on the premises. They are great
potentates in the Presidency. But, alas ! how many people will
they find to do honour to their Collectorship or Commissioner-
ship (or even to understand the meaning of the terms) when,
with a liver that has increased in a steady ratio with the pension
due to their service, they give up the East that for them at least
was gorgeous, and attempt the disappointing process of assimi-
lating in their old age their tastes and habits to those of a new
and different world.
Accordingly, as I have observed above, very few men on the
hills were in possession of horses purchased and maintained
solely for the pure and peaceful pursuit of hunting. The
military men had brought up their chargers, civilians the hacks
that carried them about their districts, and the coffee planters
what they termed their estate horses — though it is only fair to
add that the coffee estates appeared to require more horses than
were wanted for daily parade. Two chargers and their masters
had been induced to take service with the hunt, and the latter
rendered great and willing help to the cause. But neither a
hussar's nor a gunner's war horse can be expected to turn
hounds four days in a week, and that in a countiy where six
practised and well-mounted whips would not be too many ; the
two old kennel horses were on their last legs (these last being
by no means better than their first) ; and so it was often a
matter of difficulty to get the "hunt servants," as well as the
general public, turned out as often as desirable.
But I am losing time, and must abbreviate as I go if I
would keep within bounds allotted.
A Friday morning, 7.30 A.M. — one covert already drawn blank
(Porcupine Sholah, where many a hound has been pierced,
THE OOTACAMUND HOUNDS. 167
and more than one killed), and two miles of hillside already
searched. A mongoose was then holloaed by Mr. Phantom (one
of our staunchest supporters) as he caught a glimpse of a brown
form slinking over a brow ; but the mistake was rectified by
his wife before mischief was done (for the steadiest of hounds
will go mad over a mongoose). Jack Phantom, I may here
remark, was one of the most successful steeplechase riders in
India, till matrimony gave him a lady who can ride up to hounds
as hard as he can, since which, like many another man, he has
had to renounce the flagged course. The man on the brown
horse I may call Mr. Thomas : he is also a planter, and, in my
humble opinion, the best man to hounds on the Neilgherries ;
while the horse he is bestriding is quite equal to the task of
carrying him. To see the two in the wake of hounds, driving-
down the mountainous hillsides, or flying in unchecked career
over ground bestrewn with loose rocks and hidden with ferns,
is in itself terrific ; and no run is ever too severe or too intricate
to choke him off. Two other people there are I must introduce
you to, as most intimately connected with Ooty's Hunt. They
are Col. G. Clerk, of the Rifles, and Mrs. Clerk. They have
learned their love of hunting in England, and are prominent
among the minority who keep it thriving under an Eastern
sun. They both possess the gift of living with hounds under
all circumstances ; and Mrs. Clerk has an unequalled talent for
counting them out of covert. Mr. Ricardo, the first whip, is all
there, you will observe. Mr. Butler, the second, is there too ;
but is reduced to a pony to-day.
So on past a village, with a view to some scrub-covered hills
beyond. Old Dalesman has stopped with wavering stern across
the path of the huntsman's horse. Now he gives a single
anxious whimper ; the old hounds crowd round him and work
their noses as if to draw a scent from the ground by the main
force of the inspiration ; while the youngsters of the pack
circle rapidly and excitedly round the busy group. Hecuba,
eager to distinguish herself, is making a cast of her own a
hundred yards ahead, Ricardo rides round her, and once more
168 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
there resounds the too familiar words " Hecuba, ba-ack ! " If
my death-bed be an uneasy one, I really think my spirit will
cry out " Hecuba ! Have a care ! " and pass away muttering
mournfully that one should ever have to rate a hound of one's
own. Hecuba was a brilliant puppy, full of dash and drive and
devilry ; but I should like to have sent her to George Carter of
the Fitzwilliam for three months' schooling.
More than one of the field has already kicked his horse
nervously in the ribs ; and when Hebe and Bondsman indorse
the line it requires some persuasion to prevent them starting
off at score — for they know how hounds can scatter their field
when they run on the Neilgherries. A herd of bullocks obli-
terates the faint trail, but a rather lengthy forward cast reopens
it again, Hecuba this time flinging into it before the others
cross it. Now it freshens ; now they can all tell eagerly of it,
and now they hunt quickly down the hillside to a little brook
below. Jack might have stopped here for a bath in his morn-
ing prowl ; for in an instant hounds settle to it noisily, dash
over the stream and up the next ascent. Hide after them now
as hard as you like. There is not a man, woman, or horse that
will gain a yard on them for the next twenty-five minutes.
Phantom is close at them ; and closest to him, as in duty
bound, is Mrs. Phantom. Steady a bit, Phantom, you haven't
got steeplechase condition under you to-day. Thomas takes a
pull ; and so does Mrs. Clerk. Gentle rising ground now,
then a high level, and hounds three hundred yards to the good.
Major Titbit loses his hat as he gallops along a bullock path,
the only road through a narrow sholah ; and, much to the
indignation and chagrin of Mrs. Clerk, he insists on dismount-
ing for it and completely barricading the way. You may make
np some ground now if you have only the nerve of Mr. Thomas,
and your horse has shoulders to allow of your sitting back and
kicking him down the hill. There are countless loose stones in
your path ; horses never fall when galloping down the steepest
and most stone-covered hills of the Neilgherries. But then
there are no rabbit-holes there. Ugh !
THE OOTACAMUND HOUNDS. 1G9
The fertile Nunginade valley is the course, and as pretty a
one as our country could afford. Turf stretches alongside its
stream for several miles, and the pack are raging over it still a
hundred and fifty yards ahead. Now we plunge in and out of a
ford ; now we cross again and fly it, Thomas alighting in a bog,
but up again, a little dirtier, in a moment. The pace is awful ;
Mrs. Phantom and the grey are the only ones who look likely
to last long. Three miles along the valley ; then, as it curved,
straight up the opposite rise. What fiends are these hill
jackals ! No fox that ever heard a view holloa could live in
front of hounds like this. Forty minutes to some rocky crags,
and he has beat us clean ! Not a horse can wag ; and for the
last five minutes our pace has been but a crawl.
That was one run. Very few lines must suffice for another
of a fortnight later, when the monsoon had broken, and cloudy
weather admitted of a meet at the charming and familiar hour
of eleven. A large field in consequence. Two jackals on foot
at two o'clock, one of which sought his own destruction by
getting to ground where hounds could reach him — a job which
they accomplished with much satisfaction to themselves.
Moving from the spot, a line was spoken to, not two hundred
yards away. " It's the old line" was the scientific remark pro-
nounced by more than one Nimrod of the Ooty Hunt ; and
when the direction followed was seen to be exactly the converse
of the one taken half-an-hour before, their opinion was duly
strengthened. Strange to say, the line was not an old one ;
twenty-five minutes' at racing speed ensued, while many of the
philosophers remained wonderingly at the starting point. Met
by some woodcutters, our jackal lay down, eventually sneaking
back upon us and gaining time. We had nineteen couple out,
and they hunted from one grassy slope to another till they
wore him to death at the end of two hours and five minutes —
every hound up, and old Fretful (who had previously done her
six seasons with the Craven and Quorn, but who is younger
than ever now) having puzzled out more than one subtle
170 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PBAIBIE.
twist. Wasn't this a dish dainty enough to set even before a
king ?
And so Englishmen make the best of a bad country ; but to
keep a pack of hounds going in India is often a work of no
little difficulty, and not all pleasure.
GRASS COUNTRIES.
Season 1886—87.
SHOOTING GOATS.
_, The final musters of the cub-hunting months are often as
representative — if scarcely as exaggerated — as those of mid-
winter. And the multitude makes the multitude ride. I
question if it is ever much harder upon hounds even when
arrayed in all the panoply of adventure and pride. An item in
a shooting jacket is apt to consider himself incog., at least to
a degree that allows a chance of his being set down as " only
somebody's man schooling a young one " — instead of being
wrathfully particularised as that " thrusting chap who killed
old Dorothy, and whose subscription wouldn't pay for the rails
he breaks in a week." I have no individual instance before
me — nor will I have in the future when seeming to adopt the
villany of fault-finding — unless perchance I may have caught
myself tripping or fooling, and can picture it under some alias
for the entertainment of our little world. But, i' faith, good
company does dispel funk, as it scatters many another doleful
malady of mind or nerve. We who hunt looking on — one eye
on the hounds, another on the Master, and as many more as
we've got on our comrades, that haply they may help us along
or discover some chance outlet that has escaped our bewildered
vision — we have none of the righteous sense of duty that,
assisted by a very proper conveyance, urges a man instinctively
whither the pack calls, regardless of all else than of the last
spot where the leading couple spoke, or of the clod in a gate-
way who has " hoorooshed " the fox back in his very track.
172 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
We see, perhaps, all we can from a respectful and timorous
distance ; but the main part of our fun lies in the relation we
can maintain with other riders — holder, maybe, and better and
younger than ourselves. And much enjoyment and much merri-
ment we get by the way, except when the flock splits up and
Ave follow the sillier sheep instead of the wiser ones, to find
ourselves in that most lamentable of all states — clean out
of it.
Saturday, Oct. 23, brought " on our side of the country "
(wherever that may be) the occasion of the first big field of the
half-hatched season— and, though the ditches looked little dif-
ferent from what the haymakers may have found and left them
some four months ago, and the hedges were giant in their robes
of green, somehow the public took ready heart, and, as it were,
impelled one another to view a good deal of what came in the
way at about its proper value. Now and again, while all others
were at a halt, or groped hither and thither in despair, a meteor
would shoot forth from the darkness, and — lancing forward as if
bent on self-sacrifice for the common weal — would cleave a way
through timber or bullfinch, to release the huddled mob. And
as often as not, I noticed, this was no drag hunt exotic or
steeplechase darter, but some grizzled old fox-hunter familiar in
the white-collared livery. It did the heart good and it warmed
the too sluggish pulse to see such feats : for it shows that the
fire of the chase is no ephemeral flame. Where were we ?
With the Pytchley — I had almost forgotten to say ; for my
thoughts were harking to a wide caverned oxer, and to the far-
set rail that scarce yielded to a clean and clever pair of heels —
yet remained quite big enough. In an aged book of Tales
styling itself An Oriental Collection, that it was my privilege
to read but a week ago, occurred in every few paragraphs the
pleading, "but this history must be abbreviated, lest the reader
get an headache " (a formula that I must remember and repeat
in the prolific future). So I need write only of the day that
there were foxes enough in the Dodford neighbourhood ; and
that twice hounds circled for twenty minutes over that pleasant
SHOOTING COATS. 173
district — finding scent but indifferent, even though the well-
soaked turf was all their field could want for foothold or for
fall.
I am fain to allow that the hunting field of October, even
with a pack of fame and fashion, does not behave very well to
itself as far as personal adornment goes — the ladies of course
excepted, for do they ever insult themselves by self-neglect I
and has it not been written that " if she be but young and fair,
she hath the grace to know it ? " In these days a man has
probably in his wardrobe more smoking coats than shooting
coats. (By the way, what a radiant field we should have if, on
an occasional day, say, once a week on the Leamington side, the
order for covertside parade were " smoking coats ! ") A man
of the humbler sort — especially unless, as sometimes happens,
his tastes in life carry him no further afield than a hot corner
and a warm drawing-room — allows himself one decent suit of
tweed apparel at a time, in the which he travels, and in which
he associates with his country neighbour. For the wife of his
bosom and the toilers of the stableyard he reserves the old
clo' — already rather " better " than half worn out. In these,
too, he carries out his shooting, his colt-schooling, and his
general round of work or idleness. The hunting-day then
arrives, with a gloomy ceiling significant of drenching showers ;
and, besides, he is going into a plough country, with a five-year-
old and a very fair certainty of a dirty fall. To-morrow the
Johnsons are coming to lunch. Mr. J. is always neat and smart
as a novus homo should be, and pretty Mrs. J. is not at all the
sort of woman before whom to appear in a threadbare coat.
No, the new garment must stop at home ; the shabby jacket go
a-hunting ; and, somehow or other, the same chain of circum-
stance and reasoning seems to have had a hand in clothing nine
out of ten of his somewhat shabby comrades of the day.
Look to your colours, ye ladies of Leicestershire ! To the
county of Northampton belong the first honours of justice to
the national cloth — the scarlet of heroism in war and chase.
What the dames have done for politics and for patriotism, the
174 FOX -HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
brighter sex is now doing for fox-hunting in this old-fashioned
shire. Pretty heads have been laid together, treaties have been
concluded, Signor Snip has been put on his utmost mettle, and
by next week the fashion will be found set, endorsed, and
adopted— the same that found such favour last season in sport-
ing Meath. Surely, if men consider they uphold the honour
and the popularity of Fox-hunting (" God bless it ! ") by clothing
their ungainly bodies in pink attire, how much firmer hold will
be attained upon the affections of the populace, how much
deeper emphasis will be laid on the traditional value of the
sport, by the wearing of the symbol by those who are fair to
look upon ? The principle is right. The practice cannot but
be bright and becoming. And, with the ice of novelty once
broken, the league of scarlet will soon have a widely-gathered
muster-roll.
If naught else comes of October hunting (and the merits of
the month hinge almost entirely upon the use made of it —
which, again, depends very much upon the views of each
M.F.H. as to education of hounds and foxes), it seldom fails to
give to us onlookers a pretty fair inkling of what to expect in
the near future from each new inmate of our stable. It may
even be utilised in a great degree to correct many shortcomings
of disposition and acquirement ; and, whoever has missed such
opportunity (or failed to send another to seize it for him) may,
likely enough, soon be seen bewailing his negligence, in shat-
tered hat or battered repute. What matters it in October, if a
young one rolls clumsily through a blind gap, breaks the weakest
rail we can find him, or challenges to a twenty minutes' tussle
before he will own that he can jump a fence of any description ?
'Tis all in the day's work — in the day's pleasure. But in the
morrow of November — when everyone will be in a hurry, and
the black devil of disappointment shall take the hindermost —
such exercise is the province only of the unprepared, or the
impecunious (and from a varied experience I can testify pretty
accurately to the miseries of either state). Few men, bar such
of the gilded youth as have held themselves superior to the
A FIRST TASTE OF THE OPEN. 175
costly fascinations of a Cesarewitch or a Cambridgeshire, are
left at the end of October with a sufficient margin to allow of
immediate drafting and replacing. The season has to be gone
through as it begins — and the worst horses probably drop in for
the best runs. No help for it now — we must " rustle " along
with what we have, conceal our fears, make a Marathon out of
each ponderous failure, and ape the jauntiness of youth, to whom
■every horse is a " ripper," and every fence a means of joy.
A FIRST TASTE OF THE OPEN.
A VERY luxuriant autumn is this. The grass grows rankly ;
and the ditches are so carefully hidden that a three-season
hunter may well be excused for ignoring them — while neither
excuse nor apology is needed for the ill-will with which we
many-season riders regard the same. Shirk them we do, as
rigidly as is possible. But the latter half of October is a
seductive time ; and the most self-contained and conscientious
abstainers cannot but be now and again dragged out of them-
selves, in the stirring excitement of a short blind scurry with
fox-hounds. So it was, for instance, a few days since, on as wild
and wet a morning as ever prepared turf for the approaching
fray. Where it was, I will not tell you — for tales out of season
are tales of October hunting. But no prettier covert looks
down on a grassy vale than the ten-acre medley of gorse and
broom, privet and bramble, whence broke, at noon of the
drenching day in question, the last fox of a lively half-dozen.
Some twenty or thirty gruesome-looking mortals with true
delight heard the order to go, and hailed the chance to get
warm. Well they recognized the wooded knoll looming darkly
through the rain, across the fair but stoutly fenced vale. Well
aware were they that all their horses were fat ; many indeed
still undipped. But they remembered, too, how freely-gated
was that green plain — and fully they realised that among the
present little band there would be no rabid ambition for place
170 FOX-HOUKD, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
or distinction, no striving for imaginary honours, no incitement
to avert impression that to other dogs belongs the present day,
and that yours must be numbered with the past. So a cracker
they rode down the two great pastures ; gaily leaped an insigni-
ficant gap in the dividing hedge ; and lustily galloped for the
well-known bridge — over a brook that has witnessed as much
discomfiture as ever a stream in the Midlands.
In the natural order of things, a first whip is often called
upon to act as pilot — when a huntsman is }^et scarcely clear of
covert, and hounds are running rather farther in front of their
field than they should be (this, remember, being merely an.
occurrence peculiar to October, and at all other times appa-
rently impossible save through the intervention of river, wire,
or similar unforeseen check upon the madding crowd). So now
the redoubtable Bill (this name will do as well as any other) is
slipping ahead on a lengthy bay that has all the conditional
advantages of six weeks' cub-hunting ; and that possibly owes
his present chance to the possession of a wilful disposition,
suggesting the advisability of Bill's determined manipulation
for a period previous to full-dress appearance in public. Any-
how, Bill does his duty (as indeed he meets all occasions and
all demands requiring instinct, skill, or courage) with the
readiest facility ; guides a grateful group as directly to gate or
gap as if his way were placarded, and hounds on a guiding
herring. Deftly he parts the leafy covering that clouds the
broad hole in a dense bullfinch ; with a sharp little crack, like
a mere passing snap of the fingers, he flings aside the single rail
that would block the way through an uncompromising stake-
and-bound ; and with a wriggle and scuffle he demonstrates
how easily a horse may be squeezed round a tree where foot-
people have trod down the thorn. Content to be led, only too
glad to follow, the bruisers string on — while faces grow rapidly
red, fat horses sob early, and the pack stride on in advance, over
rich pasture and lengthy aftermath. No story need 1 make —
for a fifteen minutes' spin is but a flash in the pan, of the sport-
giving pack I speak of — and before whom many an old fox will
THE GALLOPING WHIP. 177
surely die this season to a fifty minutes' grace. The straight
little cub of to-day finds shelter below ground, a mile from the
shaggy height that seemed his aim. In a glow of warmth and
pleasure the dripping gallopers disperse for home ; and to-night
they will be talking of fences wide and dark, and of timber
gigantic — the dreadful shapes and monstrous creations with
which we love to overawe a patient after-dinner audience.
THE GALLOPING WHIP*
If life is a business, existence is fun
"When duty and pleasure and sport are in one ;
And so he wears ever a smile on his lip —
'Tis a Labour of Love to the Galloping "Whip.
The moon of September's his light in the morn,
When the cub's to be killed and they've carried the corn ;
The moon of December's his lamp for the trip,
As home with the pack goes the Galloping Whip.
For hours never vex him, and work cannot tire,
That dapper pink fits on a framework of wire ;
He'll go without sup, and he'll go without sip
From daylight to dark, will the Galloping Whip.
The phiz of bold Reynard is shaped on his mug,
Mouth wide as an oxer, as deep as a jug ;
That feature was fashioned to scream, not to nip,
And a bumper's no charm for the Galloping Whip.
The last to leave covert, he'll cheer on the pack ;
Twenty couple are out, then away with a crack ;
In a mile he has given the quickest the slip —
The wind from their sails takes the Galloping Whip.
When we're jammed in a corner, the timber too strong.
The bullfinch too thick, and our courage all gone —
Hie ! give us a lead ! and over he'll flip :
But it's little improved by the Galloping Whip.
Does he ride for repute ? No, his eye is ahead ;
He works for his huntsman, and works for his bread.
Wherever he steers men are glad of the tip :
The bruisers delight in the Galloping Whip.
* Republished from "Fore's Quarterly Magazine."
N
178 FOX-HOUND, FOUEST, AND PRAIRIE.
Ever sparing of rate and indulgent of youth,
His cheer urges Faulty get forrard to Truth ;
But a rioter determined will never outstrip
The swift- venging thong of the Galloping Whip.
They've run twenty minutes as close as a wedge.
By Jove ! the}'' have split — two liues since the hedge !
Old Reefer is right. Up the furrow they rip ;
And round swing the rest with the Galloping Whip.
A game fox is sinking. The Whip isn't here !
Look, a cap down the wind ! " Charles has him, I swear ! :
And Reynard, poor devil ! is well in the grip
Of Whitecollar Will and his Galloping Whip.
PRELIMINARY CANTERS.
November the first of 1886 asserted its calendar rights as the
opening of fox-hunting legitimate — when the newspapers can
tell us whither to ride, and when we come to the covert side
furnished and trimmed, and as spruce as vanit}' may prompt,
or funds allow. You, perhaps, have been through the ordeals
(many, and actual, and stern) of the earliest cub-hunting, when
you rose with the stable-helper, breakfasted before ever a lark
was aloft, and rode abroad with the teamster — wondering if
ever a kind Providence would prompt you, too, to whistle aloud
at that miserable hour. The first note that shook the dewdrop
no doubt served to drive drowsiness from your eyelid, to pluck
discontent from your heart, and to bundle dull care backwards
over the crupper. The scamper of a frightened cub across a
narrow ride, the double twang of a horn, a view holloa from
three different quarters at once of a long-familiar wood — and
you were a fox-hunter again, as foolish and fervent as when first
you rode to the hunt on a shaggy Shetland. Morning after
morning would see you still setting forth — on pleasure, no
longer on mere duty, bent. And so you worked your way to
the recognized opening day, a fitter and physically far better
man than if you had remained content to accept things merely
in their accorded order.
PRELIMINARY CANTERS. 179
With the arrival of October and its rainfall, cub-hunting of
course assumed its much brighter aspect. The ground softened,
the code of discipline expanded, brief scurries into the open
became possible and often advisable, the hour of meeting was
soon somewhat more human, and men's hearts opened to the
chauge. Galloping was now and then admitted as legitimate ;
an occasional leap almost justifiable ; the glow of exercise and
excitement became once more visible ; and the ice was fairly
broken. With a wetter soil came a better scent. Hounds
could hold their cub in hand from find to worry ; and the
month that we have long learned to look upon as the happiest,
because the least overdone yet the most unbroken, of the
sporting year, showed forth in its full freshness. " Plenty of
foxes, ca-r-pltal scent, never saw the young lot enter better ; "
such Avas the report from every competent mouthpiece in the
merry Midlands. It may have differed in degree, and its
paragraphs varied in emphasis, but the tune was the same ; and
I take it that you who are only now plunging in media*, with
all the pomp and circumstance (i.e., new clothes) of November,
may accept the prospects as hopeful in the extreme. Some of
3'ou will go to Melton, many will go to Rugby, and a few to
Harboro' — too few (for was not Market Harboro' well nigh as
mighty, and quite as hard, as Melton itself, within the memory
of many who are not so particularly grey nor so very palpably
bald and bulky even now). There are other little haunts —
very accessible too, and rapidly becoming more fashionable as
their merits get whispered abroad. But of these it is high
treason in the eyes of the early discoverers to speak save in
terms of faintest praise — for what right have strangers from
afar to come poaching upon preserves that first settlers had
intended keeping strictly for themselves ? Have I not — many
years ago — heard even a very minor member of the great fox-
hunting metropolis deliver himself loudly in such straiu, and
call malediction fierce on the gross presumption that then
dictated new arrivals ? 'Tis not very difficult to learn where the
cakes and ale of the chase are to be found ; and surely these
K 2
180 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
are products of our native soil that more fairly than aught else
may claim all the benefit of free trade. Yet it is not for me to
trumpet forth their merits here — an' I would live. There are
grass countries besides those that are accessible only by half a
day's journey from the great village ; and there are more and
wilder foxes in small natural woods than where the little gorse
coverts must be drawn almost weekly. But I would be neither
traitor nor turncoat — so no more of odious comparison.
After all, the Grafton did not give rank to Monday, Nov. Ir
as their opening day; but a good day's killing was achieved.
Besides, in the case of many horses and no few men, an extra
and lengthy day's preparation such as this could not but be pro-
ductive of benefit. Plenty of us are called upon to buy more
than one horse at the very last moment. We can buy the
animal (no difficulty at all, I assure you, in the Midlands, where
every second man has a large supply on hand with which to-
suit all customers), but we can't buy condition. (No, don't
contradict me, sir, I know your horses have been doing " no end
of slow work all summer," but you can't afford to have them
fine-drawn, and you know you don't keep them long enough to-
have them hard as well as big.) Now, if we drop into a gallop-
with one that is soft — are the chances much more than even
against that horse knocking himself to pieces for the season ?
With a recent purchase (no matter whence) a Jong day's-
dawdling and a few sharp canters can only be fraught with
good. And again, we have not all been trying young ones in
Ireland, or even enjoying a weekly bump round the riding
school throughout the summer. The bread of idleness, or even
the hard-earned dainties of a Avell provided shooting lodge, are-
in their different way and degree anything but good preparation
for the saddle and for the exactions of a covertside toilet.
Absolute inactivity of course produces a frame that is only fit
for filling a lounge ; but even sturdy pedestrianism fails to
mould, or in other words to attenuate, to the elegancies of the
pio-skin. A stalwart deerstalker, I warrant, suffers as a rule-
more severely when he shifts from knickerbocker and worsted
PRELIMINARY CANTERS. 181
into breeching and booting than does even the softer product
of the London pavement. There is a lean and active kind, it is
true, that forms yet another variety — a type similar to the raw-
boned shikari of the East. These never fatten, and they cannot
work thinner ; they walk and they ride ; they neither tire nor
ueed they starve themselves — " A Leicestershire leg, my dear
fellow, as straight as a cane and as thin as a crop. A bucket
of rain won't wet my stocking till my fellow succeeds in
stretching my new tops!" But with the many (supposing
always that they have any decent regard for appearances and
any thought for the future as induced by six days a week up to
Christmas) the first adjustment of duly connecting etceteras is
a process of difficulty, that too often ripens during the day of
trial to a state of positive agony.
A word in season. Four days one week and five the next
(i.e. without training) offer an allowance not discreditable to
any hunting quarter. This is an average obtainable where, as
in this quiet corner, five different packs all touch a little circle
as many miles in width. It needs no oracle to proclaim that
the duty of every hunting man (bent on eking the maximum of
enjoyment out of the winter, and who counts every day lost as
an atom of life unfulfilled) is to let no single opportunity slip,
leave no chance unseized, of getting to the covertside ere winter
has really time to assert her claim as his doorkeeper. After
Christmas let him hunt as often as he can. Before Christmas
every day — if hounds are to be reached and a sound horse is in
the stable. November is the month of sound horse — and had
we not ten weeks of frost in young 188G ? It so happens that
Tuesdays are the almost universal discard by packs hunting the
Rugby and Weedon district. He must be a man singularly
without resource, and boasting a quite lamentable immunity
from the casual worries and anxieties of this life, who cannot
find occupation of some other kind on this one day. On every
other of the week he is beneficently treated : and if at the end
of the season he can look back upon his Tuesdays as the only
occasions of absence from hounds, he will surely not be able to
182 FOX-HOUND, FOHEST, AND PRAIRIE.
call himself to account on the score of wasted opportunities,
in this line. There is another way of looking at it — without
running exactly counter to the admonition of carpe diem
aforestated. Six days a week (without a nap immediately
before or after dinner) will make the strongest man if not
actually stale, at least not every day sensitive of such ready and
keen enjoyment as he is well capable of when content with five.
I may be wrong ; but I could name few, if any, instances to the
contrary. Let each please himself as best he may or can. But
go for six days, go for five — go for one day a week — do not put
it off till after Christmas !
With the Grafton on Monday, Nov. 8 — after meeting at
Woodford, and realising once more the worth of the triplet — A
white frost, a bright sun, and a scentless morning. I think I
saw more foxes flitting from hounds on Monday than it was
ever my privilege to view before. During the early part of the
day, from Woodford, hounds pushed a line through Fawsley
Park in spite of a number of the deer running actually ivith
the pack. Yet not even a single puppy turned her head to the
tempting accompaniment. Surely hounds were seldom sub-
jected to a higher test ! It comes to memory, though (and I
quote altogether without any desire to discount the performance
above-mentioned) that the Rev. John Russell, of hallowed
memory, for ten years hunted fox, hare, and occasionally deer,
with one and the same pack — and he averred strongly that his-
hounds never changed from the animal under pursuit. Must
not this have been due to natural instinct rather than to deep
subjection ? — though his wondrous voice had, I believe, more
power to enforce his will among the deep rocky coombes of
Devonshire than the help of two ready whips would have con-
veyed for most men in an open and rideable country.
Slowly they worked their way through the dread neigh-
bourhood of Fawsley — easy enough, however, with its mani-
fold gates at the present pace — to the wooded upland of
Mantel's Heath. There can be no shame in confessing —
what is common to all of vis hereabouts — a feeling of unmiti-
FOXHUNTING IN EARNEST. 183
gated terror and dislike towards those Fawsley doubles, which
can surely only have been planted there for the pronounced
purpose of interfering with foxhunting at some period of
the 18th century. No farmer and no landlord of the present
day could afford so extravagant a means of marking his dislike
towards his neighbours or to the popular sport (were such
a feeling possible), for they cover a width of in many cases at
least ten yards apiece. More often the first fence alone is
repellant enough to turn all comers aside. But should you be
deluded enough to accept an apparent opening and make your
way on to the bank, you are likely to find yourself in a far
worse plight yet — surrounded by thick jungle that forthwith
lays hands on your hat and face, and confronted by new oak
rails or an impossible bullfinch, with a ditch of unknown
dimension beyond. You are at once, in fact, on the horns and
thorns of a cruel dilemma. You must elect between the
agonies of physical cowardice or the humiliation of moral
pluck. For the way out points to the certainty of a cropper, to
be taken at a stand or walk (ugh !), while to go back must
entail upon you the well-merited jeers of comrades in waiting.
Some men may like the situation. I admit that such few
trials as I have ventured upon have brought for me anything
but a sensation of perfect happiness, but on the contrary left me
firmly determined to try no more — till I am younger.
FOXHUNTING IN EARNEST.
Saturday, November 20th. — As the leaves drop off, how the
crowd drops in ! To-day's attendance on the Pytchley at
Welton Place lias been as ten to one compared with their
Badby meet of a fortnight previous. Racegoing is nearly a
dead letter ; half the tame pheasants of the British Isles have
been already gathered ; half the best guns have been sent into
store, and as many new coats brought out. Has not the long
swinging stride of a bold fox leaving his lair power to raise
184 FOX-HOUXD, FOREST, AXD I'll A HUE.
tumult stronger and gayer than ever the swish of a rocketter
breaking the sunlight ? The pistol-like cracks of a ding-dong
finish may well carry excitement with them — albeit that
excitement is but the quivering gamble of £ s. d. — the greed
of money to be gained or the despair of lucre lost. You will
make no money at our game : but there is still your little
gamble. The stake is Sport — to see it or to fail. Luck may
have some little hand in the result — but your own manhood a
good deal more. We are all losers at times ; and, believe me,
loss is as bitter as success is entrancing. No involvement of
the coin-of-the-realm could enhance or detract from either. I
speak not of triumph over other men or of the degradation of
being worsted. The man who rides jealously rides not to
hounds. He and his bravery are misplaced and unappreciated
in the sphere of foxhunting. Besides, taking a season through,
he is " not in it " with the men whose sole effort is to be with
hounds, irrespective altogether of where others may be placed.
These will see most of the runs, and will see them with credit.
Jealousy will as often cut himself out while aiming to cut
down ; will seldom fail to annoy the huntsman ; and is certain
to interfere with sport.
But of all sorts and of both sexes, fair and unfair, jealous
and sportloving, habited and pipeclayed, they were present on
Saturday as thick as the blackberries at the covertside —
Braunston Gorse to wit. What omen, by the bye, are we to
attach to a crop so unprecedented as that which decks the
hedges this autumn of 1886 1 Nothing to do with foxhunting
any how, you will say. But it had, and it may have. It had,
because a thirsty foxhunter was then and there busy pointing a
moral at this very covertside — plucking and gobbling the
precious fruit till Goodall's horn tented him off and wafted him
away. " Better than any brandy-and-soda!" he explained with
all the gusto that a full and thirsty mouth would allow ; and
away he galloped a better, leaving us a wiser, man. Again,
it may have ; for it may, or must, mean something — perhaps
a hard, perchance an open, winter in store. We shall see.
FOXHUNTING IN EARNEST. 185
Meanwhile, November is hardly a winter month — though an
early spell of frost has too often set in before the date on which
the printer's devil shall handle this trifling. I would not waste
your time — after the fashion of the little handgate at Braunston
Gorse that frittered the precious moments for a swollen troop
striving and squeezing. Sand through a minute-measure ; Her
Majesty's faithful servants doing homage at a Leve'e; a magnum
of champagne dealt out in liqueur glasses — are all similes natural
but wholly insufficient, to convey a notion of the fight between
self-control and the aggravation of delay, such as attends the
progress of a Pytchley, or other "too-many-by-half" field,
through a handgate at starting. And all the squeeze led this
time to little or nothing. The " scented zephyr " of the hunts-
man blows for most from the East. It must be specially so for
the good man whose office it is to exhibit to the best advantage
the show of the shop, Braunston Gorse — though the antithesis
may be appropriate when his Lordship views the same vale
from Shuckburgh's entrancing heights. The wind now came
directly from the valley ; and Reynard obeyed the prompting
as readily and unhesitatingly as the world accepts ill tiding.
By Bragboro', to lose at Ashby St. Ledgers Park, was the run
from Braunston — given under circumstances of some little
jumping, no little nice hunting, and a waning scent. But the
lesson of an otherwise uneventful ride was provided on reaching
Ashby St. Ledgers Park, at the hands of Mr. Goodman of
Catesby — as sturdy a yeoman as ever bred a bullock or made a
hunter. Objecting to locked gates on principle, as being
incompatible with the due co-operation of foxhunters and
farmers, he turned his four-year-old short round ; and, ignoring
the hesitating throng now clustering at the gate, lifted him
over some five feet of ghastly timber next to the latch-post.
Offer me a dukedom, or a pack in a grass country free of all
cost (the latter for choice) — I would have hung my head and
slunk round, whatever my mount, rather than followed him.
The plain moral of such bold proceeding was obvious enough.
Foxhunters are in a great degree dependent upon farmers. But
186 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
farmers will ride the country — and farmers can if " foxhunter "
can't — whether the shepherd has remembered to unlock his
gates or has left the keys at home.
Monday, Nov. 22. — The Grafton opened the new week on a
bright frosty morning at Preston — or rather Little Preston, for
custom has it in Northamptonshire, where two hamlets of
similar insignificance adjoin, that they shall be clubbed to-
gether under one title (possibly as one parish) but allowed to*
retain each its separate measure of importance under the
heading of Great and Little. Perhaps it was owing to the fact
that only the lesser Preston was named as the meet, that so-
remarkably few robes of red lit up the gathering ? Far be it
from me to commit the impertinence of cavilling at a fashion
that depends solely on personal choice on the part of the
people most concerned. But it is indisputable that on the gay
hues of the dress of its worshippers depend all the bright
aspect and half the fascination of an assemblage about to pay
practical homage to foxhunting. Afterthought almost bids me
erase such comment at the lips of one steeped to the throat in
the oldest of black. But let it stand. It was prompted by a
due regard for truth ; and as for its author, " please, sahib, my
very poor man."
The coverts of the Prestons are a little wood of that name,
another of similar class known as Hogstaff — and in the latter
was found the first fox, who led us for ten or fifteen minutes
for a half circle on the green sward, returning to be killed at
the entrance to the Park. A second fox, in duplicate or
triplicate, was forthcoming at Charwelton Osier Bed. Over
the wide Fawsley pastures the pack fairly flew for twenty
minutes ; and gates made progress not only very possible, but
quick enough to enable all who did not mind wetting their boots
at a deep early ford, to keep hounds in view or reach. Glorious
ground for hounds is this rich grazing district ; but, as I have
said before and repeatedly, acceptable from a rider's point of
view chiefly when its many gates come handy. In the clear
sunlight of to-day many a weak spot was discoverable in these
FOXHUNTING IN EARNEST. 187
veils of thorns (I mean the Fawsley doubles) — possible routes-
that seemed to have no existence while the screen was in all
its pristine density of leaf. But this may, after all, have been
but the passing fancy of a fugitive bold in the presence of a
line of gates. We were not obliged to jump anything. And
nobody has yet come down from Hanwell to ride over the
Fawsley fences for a lark. A circle to the Hall in question
completed the gallop, and a dying scent afterwards flickered
out 'twixt By field and Griffin's Gorse.
Wednesday, Nov. 24, brought a multitude truly enormous to
hunt with the Pytchley at Misterton. Tis difficult to suppose
that even Christmas can make the many, more. For whence
are they to come ? The settlers are all at their cabins of
comfort ; and already the L. and N. W. R. finds its stock of
horse-boxes inadequate. (This was I informed, when sentenced
to a twenty-mile ride this morning.) The meaning and applica-
tion of the term " spring captains " has never been adequately
explained to me. Certain am I, at any rate, that it has no^
significance whatever in these improved times. For, besides
the locals and the Leamingtonians, a large majority of the
weekly pilgrims on the iron road are, at this excellent season
of the year, men-at-arms, bent on maintaining due efficiency
in the most important section of their training, to wit, the
exercises of horsemanship and foxmanship.
If omen, augury, and the rudiments of Rugby-teaching avail
anything, surely your rejDresentative penman had every reason
to anticipate with some certainty a day of happiest event. To
me — but I may adapt the poet still closer, and if my translation
seems inapt, just borrow a Horace, or, if you like, ask Mr.
Smart's assistance with his English version of Satire IX., Lib. 1
— then ride your hunter to covert for a score of miles along Dick
Turpin's Roman Road, being careful to follow it through the
Crick fields. " I bam forte Watling-strect " (a wholly unex-
pected treat). To me there appeared no corvus sinister, but
a whole flight of noisy merry rooks on my right hand amicably
escorting the quaintest companion that ever winged it over
188 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Northamptonshire (not even excepting the quick and lengthy-
heavy- weight who, from Weedon in years gone by, did such
credit to the Flying Horse Artillery and to his own bird-
sobriquet).* An enormous white cockatoo, resplendent with
yellow head-plume, repeated in his Punch-and-Judy voice as
he passed almost overhead, " Good morning, good morning!"
Then, leaving his dusky comrades, he perched himself on a
tree by the roadside, placidly to watch us as long as we rode in
sight. A true bill this — on my word and on that of my dis-
interested companion, and bearing at least the likelihood of
truth, inasmuch as this curious well-wisher appeared in the
form of no after-dinner phantom, but as a wayside apparition
to a couple of sober, and somewhat sulky, foxhunters jogging
unwillingly to covert, two hours after breakfast and a full hour
behind time.
But all hindrances and all by-the-way interruptions not-
withstanding, they were there to add two more particles to the
torrent sweeping past Misterton Reedbed after fox and hounds
about noon on Wednesday. The road to Lutterworth is a
broad one ; but it was filled full for half a mile, and afterwards
sprinkled for half an hour to come, with gallopers of every
degree. Misterton Hall is a centre spot of fox-preserving that
has few equals even in this very hunting shire. If a dozen
foxes get into hounds' mouths here during a season, at least
two dozen survive on their native ground. Foxes of a certain
age have necessarily learned the more distant neighbourhood ;
the youngsters are content to remain within call of so good a
home. The first fox of Wednesday probably obeyed the
instincts of youth, in evincing a shifty reluctance to go far.
But the scent was too good, and the Pytchley bitches too
quick, to allow him to dally in comfort. He crossed over to
the plantation at the northern end of Shawell Wood, touched
Cotesbach Village, and, by a very quick forward movement on
the part of the huntsman, was brought into view on the banks
of the little river Swift. The latter was bridged ; but not so
* General Greene.
FOXHUNTING IN EARNEST. 189
a deep-cut second dyke on the nearer side. Hemmed and
pressed, the field were huddled in almost laughable helplessness
on its brink. Horses would not face its uglv insignificance.
Four were eventually got over: but as — amid the vain medley
of whacking, spurring and whispered enunciation — I failed to
recognize all but one rider, a very gallant and valued friend, I
am compelled to refrain from the liberty of specifying the
quartette who alone saw, properly and deservedly, the best and
final quarter-hour of this run. I should add that the bottom of
this watercourse was in most places a sound gravel, and it was in
fact a very easy kind of " rhene." But these vaunted hunters
of the shires were in most cases superior either to jumping or
fording it. A Grafton lady alone succeeded in insisting suc-
cessfully on the latter : though I believe that there are two
or three very angry men riding up and down the drain still.
They seemed at any rate to have taken up permanent quarters
therein, when I for one left for the night exhausted by useless
effort. This quarter of an hour was by Bitteswell Village
round Lutterworth ; and we were all — i.e., not less than two
hundred and fifty of us — present when Reynard was pulled
down about a mile from the little town in question — the chase
having taken just about an hour.
Longer by thirty or forty minutes was the hunt of the after-
noon, after a fox of somewhat similar initiatory tastes, but still
more strongly acted upon by the vigorous compulsion of hounds
and huntsman. Misterton Gorse was his home, and he took a
complete circle nearly round the manor before consenting to
go abroad. On the first supposition that a straightaway gallop
was mapped out for them, more men than I have ever seen
tempting each other on to encounter a very undeniable peril
(if my too timorous view of things is at all worth credence),
went one and all for a double stile through the narrow planta-
tion above the covert. It is true that the second timber was
only visible when the first had been accomplished (which by
the way was necessarily into the gaunt arms of an overhanging
chestnut tree). It is true also that the same chestnut tree quite
190 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
shut out from view two entirely successful summersaults per-
formed in due course by the fated among the first essayists. It is
true, moreover, that two fields more of fast riding told those who
■did come out of the situation still on horseback, that they needn't
have done it at all. A crowd was determined to go this way :
and quite a crowd went. For, indeed, the men of white collars
(with many and many others whom they are good enough to
Lid to share the fun with them) will ride. They rode in full
form to-day, and yet no one, I think, could say that, amid all
the difficulties of two lengthy hunts, they rode otherwise than
fairly. Excellent country stood in their way when this fox at
length went forth into the open from Swinford Corner past the
right of Swinford Village, nearly straight to Lilbourne station.
Turning down wind then, scent waned greatly; but hounds
worked the line up the river-side to Swinford Old Covert,
■quicker round Stanford Hall Park, across river and railway
towards the Hernplow. In the midst of this wild grass region
their fox seemed utterly beat, turned back to Yelvertoft
station, and yet, after crawling the hedgerows thereabouts,
managed to drag himself out of scent.
And now, " lest the reader should get an headache, &c, &c."
Space fortunately prevents my recurring at any length to such
mishaps as a good sportsman's horse turning, riderless, over a
high crate in view of all, and his owner arriving to find his
"best hunter crippled in the back. Nor under any circumstances
should I be justified in recalling beyond as an incidental fact,
that mud-covered habits were as many in number as earth-
stained coats.
A ROUGH WEEK.
Year by year, I notice, men of the Midlands still further
accept and adopt the principle of mounting themselves above
their weight, A fourteen-stone hunter is in this year of grace
the natural conveyance for a rider of calibre or ambition, be he
even a featherweight. In fact, such a horse would seem to offer
A HOUGH WEEK. 191
the only proper foundation upon which the public now build
reasonable hope of crossing a strong country in safety. And
there is no little soundness in the notion. A big well-balanced
horse can carry himself, and nine times out of ten will carry a
rider too — be the latter qualified to do little more than merely
"remain." It is more or less a matter of indifference to the
former what the latter is about. They interfere but little with
one another. A little horse, on the contrary, requires a master-
hand to do him justice, where the ground is deep and fences
tall and strong. In years past I have run over many a sheet
of paper in pursuance of the argument of Big Horse versus
Little. Now I have only to say that advocacy of size is put
forward by common practice. It is recognized that horses of
weight and substance go easier over the ground, tire less in
jumping, and often scatter without inconvenience a fence that
would turn a lighter animal on to his head. I believe I am
right in asserting that there are a dozen fourteen-stone horses
:at the covertside nowadays to one that was to be seen ten years
ago — and the}7 show as much breeding as any of the lighter
•ones. The professional " thrusters " who have money or credit
are seldom seen on little animals. The dealers keep very few
of them ; and the farmers find they don't pay. You must go
through quite as many places in these countries of grass as you
can ever jump over — and in so doing weight must tell. Breeders
are obviously aiming to produce size ; for buyers will have
nothing else. Sixteen hands, up to the weight of a man in
full bloom, sired by a thoroughbred and with a dam whose
pedigree has scarcely a suspicion of stain — such is the vehicle
upon which a man of means is alone content to take his chance
with the rest. Even the bulkiest of our contemporaries " assume
a virtue if they have it not ; " order the clipping machine to be
kept closely at work on Smiler's rounded heels, and under the
guidance of their dealer's glib invention palm off their ponderous
provincial as own brother to Melton. A little nippy horse,
ridden by a little nippy but powerful man, will perform great
feats, and in the neatest fashion, as has been instanced by many
192 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
a mount in the hands of such artists as Capt. Smith and
distance. But such a class of horse is wofully unsuitable to
six feet of leggedness, however limber, while to a duffer of any
build he constitutes a source of positive unseaworthiness when
difficulties run strong and high. But ignoring all argument as
to choice, it is a matter of apparent fact that average sports-
men, as produced hereabouts, ride more powerful horses now
than they were wont to when we were ten years' better men.
Yet, as long ago as 1842 Mr. Apperley put in the mouth of
Captain Barclay (who, however, was of athletic rather than of
riding fame) : " Purchase your hunters with more strength than
merely required to carry your weight. Never buy horses that
are not at least a stone above it ! " And now having brought
out my text at the end of my little sermon, I may let you go.
Saturday, December 4>th, opened with pouring rain ; and
Goodall brought the pack to Badby Wood. But it must have
been a perilous journey from kennels and back. Hunting was
out of the question ; for even the turf had not given a bit. It
was better towards afternoon, and at least allowed exercise and
rumination — which at least is as profitable as " the feast of
reason and the flow of soul," provided at this merry season for
stay-at-home sportsmen, in the shape of complete and exact
report on the backslidings of their fellow creatures in sin.*
The meets of the week to come had just arrived ; and a softened
atmosphere gave prospect of our yet going through a truly
choice programme. The country wears its pleasantest aspect as
one views it longingly and expectantly from a hack saddle. The
hedges have cast off the last shred of their autumn clothing
and relapsed into the becoming scantiness of seasonable attire.
As compared with the heavy dark structures of a month or six
weeks a<>o, they are positively tempting — when contemplated
from a position of safety. (Tis a very different thing when
they stare you straight and grimly in the face with a " No, sir,
you don't come this way ! ") And in fact we ought to be riding
to hounds — there can be little doubt of that.
* Allusion to certain causes cilehrcs in process of being thrashed out.
A ROUGH WEEK. 193
Anticipation is a vain thing — and never more vain than when
wrapped in the fancied future of fox-hunting. But for the life
of me, I can't help looking at that card again. Monday,
Grafton or Pytchley — each in a district very suitable indeed
for putting the last new buy to the test. Tuesday — well, training
is an expensive form of getting to covert, and we can better
afford to devote the day to schooling and to scribbling (if so be
that Monday will vouchsafe us a subject). Wednesday — what
better in the wide, wide world than North Kilworth ? — must
have a creditable representative under the saddle that day, or
certainly be lost among the camp followers of the Pytchley
host. Thursday, Lower Shuckburgh, so help me Nimrod !
Friday Ashby St. Ledgers — may be Braunston Gorse and
Paradise in the afternoon. Saturday Prior's Marston, the
choicest and remotest comer that is hunted by the hounds
of Warden Hill. Let me out — to gasp with excess of hope
and inhale the breath of kind heaven. By all that's it's
freezing again ; and on Monday I'll be driven to making "copy"
on the premises, an occupation about as delicious as building
your own cigars out of cabbage leaves of home growth ! Two
days' frost is quite sufficient to tell any man all he wants
to know about his own stable and how it is working on, or
otherwise. For one other day he may entrap a few deluded
friends to submit with decent serenity to the ordeal of observing
ten or a dozen horses stripped in succession — each rather better
than the other, and one and all considerably more accomplished
than anybody else's — a good many of them moreover furtively
watching for a chance to expel the unwilling intruder vi et
armis (which means by ivory or iron). But even in the
indulgence of so simple and charming a resource as this, the
noble owner must exercise a fair degree of caution as to his
subject, or gnashing of teeth rather than gratification may be his
lot. " The old soldier " is not to be depended upon to conceal
his nonchalance ; a youngster, on the other hand, may by a
ruthless and untutored flippancy destroy at a blow all the
smooth complacency that his enthusiastic and wholly undeserved
o
191 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
praise of old Timbersmasher has just established — by calling
attention to the too obvious deformity of Sunbeam's battered
legs. " Capital bone, hasn't she ? How much does she measure
below the knee ? " Unhappy boy. " Have another cigar. I
don't think we'll look at any more horses ! " The well-crusted
cynic, again, is even more, because he is intentionally, brutal.
He ignores at once your half-uttered panegyrics — nipping in the
very bud by commenting, in tones of a man making new and
important discoveries yet too generous to retain all the advan-
tages thereof for his own use, on each and every defect in your
shapely collection that has been an eyesore to you for months
or even years ! " Did I build the horse myself? " or " How long
do you suppose I've had him in my stable before I found that
out ? " is a retort that exasperated Proprietor would give worlds
to utter. But he has brought it on himself. All he can do is
to hate that man.
A HUNTSMAN'S DIARY, AND MINE.
Fox-hunting is a large subject. (If it were not, you might
say, a man could scarcely go on drivelling upon it for twenty
years on end.) But without the incentive of its exciting
phases, the enthusiast's pen had better be amplified into a
ploughshare. Hare -hunting is, I am told, quite as scientific a
pursuit, and for all I know may be fully as prolific as a subject.
No it isn't. Yes, again, it may be. Personally, I see quite as
much fun from a back seat in five minutes with foxhounds as
the most observant among hare-hunters would be likely to
glean in an hour — a space of time that I understand is about
the average preparation for currant jelly. But if in those five
minutes Larkins takes such a comical tiptopper over timber
that anyone but his own mother must laugh at intervals for the
rest of the day ; if Jumpkinson cuts down the whole field by
landing half-way into a brambly bottom ; or if Martin becomes
the receptacle of M.F.H.'s loud and righteous wrath because
A HUNTSMAN'S DIARY, AND MINE. 195
Mumford rode over hounds but had rous enough to turn under
the bullfinch, while poor little Martin, who never did worse
than jump after somebody else as close as he dared, was carried
on to his doom — none of these things are for the forthcoming
weekly. It's a merry game, truly. But most of its comedy is
contained in the personal discomfiture of Tom and Harry for
Dick's amusement. And though Dick, Tom, and Harry seldom
let each other off — they are not performing for edification of
the printer's devil. In a rattling run, Richard, Thomas, and
Henry become perhaps public property ; their patronymics or
their pseudonyms are in everybody's mouth ; and posterity
might suffer if not taken into confidence. But as to who was
first to drive hounds over the line, who led a lot of sinners to
tumble into a lane which the fox had run down. Don't name
him, sir, or I'll him, must be the natural thought of men
who keep hounds. And concurrency of sentiment on the part
of a writer to hounds cannot but prompt strong control even
over a voluble pen.
Friday, December 11. — To-day found a much-improved state
of things prevalent for the Pytchley meet at Ashby St. Ledgers
— though the roads were crisp and snow-sprinkled, and a clear
sky sparkled ominously. The initial duty of the diary-keeper
is, I take it, to summarise that with which he proposes to deal,
giving some idea whether there is a story in store, a bare record
of small events, or a mere outbreak of fancy such as is the
produce of frost and indoor life. I pretend to no omniscience
or omnipresence ; but the material for a straight good run has
not come within my ken in the first six weeks of this season
of '86 — '87, though I have battled hard to follow hounds five
days out of seven up to date. Friday was an enjoyable
day, a hound day and a huntsman's day. But when those two
well-earned masks have been fixed to the kennel door, Dec.
11th will be sunk in oblivion — unless the keen ladies of the
Pytchley pack care to retain its memory, to whet their already
most adequate energy against their next visit this way. Goodall's
diary (if he has leisure to keep one) probably runs thus — " First
o 2
19G FOX-HOVKD, FOREST, AND PEAIIIIE.
fox. Ashby Spinnies. Ploughman said he had gone into a road
drain. Always talk so, those fellows. Don't raise a noise \
Let's make it safe down wind. Do stand still a minute, 'please
gentlemen ! Give the hounds a chance ! Huic, little bitches I
Fat, fut, fut ! Puzzled it out beautiful to back of Barby. Big
fences gave 'em a chance : and a check set folks talking in the
road — till hounds slipped nearly all the lot, and sprung round
the grass at back of village like wildfire. Back to Ashby
Ledgers, but didn't go in. Lor, how they blazed after him then
— till we set him up in a spinney ! And, blessed if they didn't
holloa away afresh one ! They might ha' known better. Nipped
back and killed him, though. Forty-five minutes. Braunston
Cleeves afternoon. Two in front up to Bragboro'. So they
say : but sometimes it's one fox, sometimes it's three. Every-
body likes to see a fox. (Wish they weren't always so certain
about his being fresh one or run one. Think I must hold a
class at Brixworth during summer months, and get one of those
painting chaps to draw the curl of a tired fox's back on a black-
board. Cleans nothing to do with it. A few gorse bushes will
brighten up any grass-run fox in five minutes, fit for stuffing !
But this wasn't just now.) A good killing scent. Skirted
Ashby Village. Chap in woodyard wanted to break our necks.
Put those rails up himself, no doubt. Road right and left
brought 'em all upon hounds quite as quick, too. But at
Welton the field held to the road, while hounds hugged the
dairy meadows, and a few of our old customers let off after
them. Crossed the road through the thick of the horses.
Little bitches wouldn't be denied. Down to the bit of a brook.
Ever so many stirred up the mud. Can't think wiry the gentle-
men want to tumble about so ! We Hunt servants can't afford
to do it. Some that I know would catch it if they did. At
Thrupp's Spinney the rascal lay down among two or three
fresh foxes. Drove him out and round. Killed in hedgerow.
Just an hour. Dashed if they didn't deserve him. 'Been two-
straight foxes, 'been a rare day's sport. Time enough yet though."
On Monday, December 13, the Grafton met with an equally
A HUNTSMAN'S DIARY, AND MINE. 197
brilliant scent — on a day similarly quiet, grey, and sporting.
But, different to Saturday's experience elsewhere, their fox was
short-running and the country some of the worst in the Hunt.
The Belvoir Heath or the Bicester Flat offer very similar
ground to such as exists between Blisworth and Towcester.
But there was a killing scent : and hounds ran none the less
gloriously because the light red soil was mostly turned up for
root and barley-growing, and the hedges were chiefly boundary
marks or sheep guards, with many a bridle-road to lend still
further facility to the careful galloper. I cannot pretend to an
intimacy with this part of a very varied country ; nor, were I in
the full youth of ambition, should I feel drawn to this particular
section. But commend me to this arena if a crack pack were
always to carry such a head over it as on Monday. Their fox,
sturdy if not straight, never had a chance before them. He
gained, moreover, a full minute at starting from Nun Wood,
through the intervention of a flock of sheep in each of two first
fields. As he turned away from the edge of the Plane Woods,
the pace warmed up, and they raced him round to (I believe it
was) the Cottage Plantation by Easton Park — as quick a twenty
minutes as is often galloped. On thence, across a certain ex-
tent of grass, broken by road and quarry-tramway, till, after
forty and odd minutes, they had their fox to ground under the
Watling-street road, about two miles north of Towcester town.
There are times in fox hunting when a rider had best be brave.
There are times again when he had better be clever, or at least
follow some one who is clever and accomplished. In the fastest
and earliest part of this gallop, the brave were all pounded —
while the clever and their following had an easy time alongside
the pack. Verbum sap.
With true gratitude and with never a qualm of shame I view
the fact that I was not called upon to hunt on Tuesday. I
(that is, I who am much as other men, in my desire to combine
some sense of comfort with as free as possible indulgence in the
pleasures of the chase, and who am called upon often to write
a representative ego to express in some small measure the views
IDS FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
of a class), well I do not mind a wet skin — except under such
circumstances as demand aid from a plough team. Nor do I
prefer to stay at home because my stirrup-irons feel cold through
my boots. But I don't like a driving pitiless rain from the
north-east, that soaks me in ten minutes and turns me into an
ice pudding for as long as I can stay in the saddle. Do you ?
And I never yet saw a run in such weather, did you ? So I
am glad no hounds invited us to come out and look for one on
Tuesday.
If Wednesday was again under the ban of foul weather,
Thursday was all that the most delicate and particular of fox-
hunters could desire. The North Warwickshire came to Hil-
morton on a bright still morning, specially fashioned for inviting
storm-stricken sportsmen to come forth and air their feathers.
Many of them must have lagged in coming; for the very
ready fox that went away so instantly from Hilmorton Gorse
had an attendance in his wake of not more than fifty souls,
as against fully two hundred who rode out to sun themselves
during the day. From the gorse of Hilmorton to that of Crick
is not much more than a five minutes' scamper, even when the
meadows are Avet and water-holding as now. (Surely never
were the Shires in such an universal flood as in this wild
December of 1886.) After a halt at Crick Covert, scent be-
came hopelessly weak : and it was soon necessary to take
hounds on to Cook's Gorse. From the latter a rapid and lively
start was soon attained, as I will endeavour to sketch in a few
words. Two fields below Cook's Gorse runs a brook, at which
quite as much fun has been seen year by year as at those of
Twyford, Whissendine, Manton, Stonton, et hoc genus omne.
The way down these fields happens just now to be cut and
imperilled by the most complete possible system of cross drain-
age ; and as we blundered over these close-recurring traps we
had ample time to recognize the fact that a brimful brook, as
yet screened off by a high bullfinch, was running in all its
yellow earnestness directly across our front. The tall hedge
pierced, a view was at once disclosed that shut the door of
HOW WE FALL— AND HOW PREVENT IT. 199
escape to all whose longing fancy had brought to mind ford to
the left or bridge to the right.' The leading hounds were
streaming up the yonder pasture, the tail hounds just shaking
the glistening water from their ribs. Mr. Lort Philips was
driving a shower of spray heavenward ; but, falling on the
further bank, was in his saddle again as he made way for his
whip to land in his tracks. Left of him some fifty yards, the
brook banks were just clear above the flood. Here was the
safest jump on this hand, quickly seized by Mr. Frank Osborn
and one or two others — till this point of exit became choked,
in common with nearly every other tempting spot near by.
On the right, meanwhile, the twelve-foot brimmer (it could
scarcely have been more) had been skimmed by Mr. Greig,
Capt. Middleton, Capt, Beatty, Messrs. Stirling-Stewart, Home,
Guthrie, and the farmer who pushes his three excellent chest-
nut horses along so well. These, with at the most four others,
succeeded in crossing the Rubicon before it became impassable,
filled bank high by its too usual complement of men and horses.
Bearing to the right at once, recrossing the brook this time by
a bridge, hounds raced their fox round to Bilton Grange — the
coverts of which he entered in view in twelve minutes, over
grass and water. Killed him ten minutes after.
HOW WE FALL— AND HOW PREVENT IT.
It were almost well to have sounded the little Tiber of
Northern Warwickshire on Thursday of last week, that at least
some active memory — even if nursed with gruel and hot
flannels — might help over the stagnate waste of Friday and
Saturday. Hard as iron, bright as steel, the former morning
set its seal upon kennel and stable door, bidding us turn where
else we might for exercise or interest — for this was to be a
Christmastide of the true old fashion. The holiday can, per-
haps, be well afforded by many. For most men's studs are all
too small for their ambition ; and the wear and tear of several
200 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
open weeks have resulted in confining rather than expanding
aspiration.
If I hunt two days a week, it makes me sad to see Smith and
Jones pass my door with colours flying on a third morning,
which is as a matter of course of the most perfect hunting type,
whereas my lot has been cast on two wild profitless days
altogether devoid of sport or pleasure. If I hunt three days,
hounds are pretty certain to come rollicking across the neigh-
bouring meadows when I am tamely taking heel and toe
exercise on the afternoon of the fourth day. If I eke out four
days, it is certain I miss the best run of the week on the fifth.
Five days round home inevitably lead to one's turning to Brad-
shaw for a hint as to the possibility of acquiring a sixth. Give
me six days — and I would gladly re-arrange the calendar, that
June and July might set the church-bells going thrice a week,
and the wardens be thus relieved from their expensive and not
invariably successful efforts to put warmth into frozen flooring-
stones.
How excruciating, to change the subject, is the chill conveyed
by stirrup irons of English make and custom, on such bitter cold
days as we have encountered of late ! A thin boot and a bright
steel stirrup in a North East wind will, I undertake to say,
inflict pain almost as acute as the bastinado (a form of retribu-
tion, however, only known to me at present by hearsay). But I
can speak from some personal experience of the fact, that in
excessively cold climates a wooden stirrup is actually a guard
against cold where an iron one would inevitably entail frostbite.
I see there are stirrups advertised as lined with rubber. Some
of you have doubtless tried them — and their experience might
possibly convey a boon to the " tenderfoot." For my part, I
intend at once to commit myself to the extravagance of a pair,
to be used on such days as the iron fox over the stable has his
nose to the north. But as of all the terrors that appeal vividly
to my craven soul none comes home with greater force than
the dread of being " hung up," those rubberlined stirrups shall
be worn only on a safety stirrup-bar.
HOW WE FALL— AND HOW PREVENT IT. 201
But of falling — and to this subject at all events I have given
diverse and multiplied trial ; and have good hopes of continuing
the series for many a year to come* For let a man once ex-
perience for long enough the false enjoyment of a total im-
munity from falls, a cropper will surely become a matter of
dread, and his personal safety will occupy his mind far more
engrossingly than the sport which is the nominal object of his
outing. Now in the district in which I am told off to hunt I
see many falls accepted — very often courted. And latterly I
have learned to sum them up into two classes, each typical of
the country that occasions them. In the light and woolly arable
into which so much of the soil directly south of Weedon
naturally resolves itself, there are as many loose horses daily to
be seen as ever in the strongest area of grass over which the
Pytchley flyers disport themselves. But in the one scene they
roll casually and easily, in the other they turn over with a
bound and impetus that will make the fall remembered. And,
oddly enough, the better horses are often entrapped to tumble
in the former, while in the latter the animal comes down only
because he is not good enough to stand up. In other words, a
second-class but skilful horse will do well in the one country,
while in the other he is not nearly so pleasant a mount as a
half-taught performer of higher calibre and more resolution.
The most elastic of horsemen can scarcely assert with truth that
a fall of any description is an enjoyable addition to his day's
pleasuring ; but it remains a matter of taste, and is quite open
to argument, as to whether a smasher on the grass or a shaker
on the plough is the lesser evil.
Wednesday, December 22nd. — Looks less like skating, and
more like an open and merry Christmas than the past week gave
reason to expect. Skating is no more in my line than it is in that
of an earth stopper : so I can pretend to no regrets on that head.
Besides, with a prescience begotten perhaps of last winter's frosty
experience, I had organised an alternative occupation, much
more in keeping with my training and with the narrowed view
through which I am content to regard and concentrate all that
202 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
is acceptable of English winter pursuits. Like many other men
whose fate and duty it is to teach their own horses, I happen to
have built a kind of double corral which I term The Ring,
and which my stablemen persist in denominating The Circus.
Round this every young horse that comes into my possession is
called upon to exercise himself before being formally entered as
a hunter. And here he can rap his knees at his pleasure, or
blunder on to his head as often as he chooses, without op-
portunity of causing harm or fright to a rider. He thus learns,
quickly and with little risk to himself, that strong timber is not
to be brushed aside and that gorse bushes may have a more
solid background than a light hurdle. And in case of forget-
f ulness, the lesson may with advantage be repeated on any
future and desirable occasion. Well, with the first breath of
frost I summoned all hands from the warm shelter of the cuddy
— or, rather, from the saddle-room fire — to spread stable litter
to the depth of a few inches over the ground that forms the
circus. By this means I beat Jack Frost by a short head.
The Ring has remained in working order throughout this
spell of cold, and the youngsters have been able to canter daily
round with every advantage to themselves and to me. The
seizure of the opportunity has been all the more useful, because
however good any such system and theory of instruction may
be, it is often most difficult to carry out fully in practice, while
the weather is open and a stern sense of duty is compelling
the horsemaster to follow hounds five or six days a week. To
stop at home because the animal to be ridden has not yet com-
pleted the course of study meant to fit him for the position of a
hunter is far too much like abstaining from entering the water
till you can swim, and is altogether inadmissible under the
conditions of a short life and a clue fondness for hounds. So
Ignorance has often to be brought out before his time, to take
the place of Bliss, as best he may. Thus, too, he may learn
quickly enough — if a kind Providence will but protect his legs
and his rider's collar-bone during his first display of artless
and clumsy helplessness. I am a great believer in the efficacy
FROM WELSH ROAD GORSE WITH THE WARWICKSHIRE. 203
of kindling the spirit of a young horse by giving him a share
in the enjoyment of the hunting-field — sending him, however,
always back to his stable before he has become surfeited or
wearied. He then learns to look upon cross-country exercise as
a happy pastime. But, again, I am equally of opinion that a
hunter can be made more brilliant and perfect by a few finishing
lessons at home than by many a rap received and many a diffi-
culty barely overcome in the track of hounds. No horses measure
their stride so accurately, change their legs so quickly, or jump
their fences so clean, as well-schooled steeplechasers — whether
you take them at their own game or apply their talents to the
field of foxhunting. And these are all tutored at home — taught
to look after and collect themselves, however hurried the pace,
and however frowning the barriers. I would imply that to
jump the big fences of the grass countries, with ease, flippancy
and safety, a horse should have been educated to take care of
himself without any stop to look. In other words he should
have by a few fast and finishing lessons (and of course the
encouragement of a lead) acquired quickness, confidence, and
freedom from hesitation that in only solitary instances will
come to him by means of the hunting field. He should possess
the power and readiness to go fast over his fences ; though far
be it from me to advocate the desirability of his being at all
times allowed to do so, even in the countries of which I am
writing. A horse going into his bridle collects himself, and is
more under his rider's command as to pace and procedure than
the cleverest slug that ever measured to an inch how much
he is really obliged to jump.
FROM WELSH ROAD GORSE WITH THE
WARWICKSHIRE.
A day's hunting is often a vivid lifetime of action and thought.
But unless it has brought an event of great mark, you sleep it
off, and it is done with. Next day, following the same pursuit,
204 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
but in a new scene and in fresh company, you might be inhabit-
ing another sphere. Yesterday's existence has gone up to the
clouds — and calls for a moment's thought to bring it down
again. Yes, personally, I enjoy raking out the half-burnt ashes
and warming myself over their recovered glow. Who knows, or
how soon, when the brightness may be dead, and the warmth
all wanting ?
Tis Wednesday night. Let me study the heaven, and the
signs. A clear sky, a southerly wind — and an optimist groom
pronouncing, after the manner of his kind, " 'osses all well."
He rightly deems that there can be no calling him to account
before Sunday — when we shall pick out and present him
with more thorns than he ever dreamed of for stable per-
quisites, and discover for him possibly more passing injuries
than he has bandages to treat. (But then the fdus Achates of
a writer is but as a relative or intimate of an angry M.F.H., an
exponent subject, a whipping block, to " point a moral and
adorn a tale," and is certainly no worse than his fellows, except
in print.)
Thursday evening, Feb. 3. — What did you do at Dunchurch ?
Let me tell you what we did from Shuckburgh, as far as time
will admit — a proviso that must always accompany an account
of a Thursday run. The two Warwickshires to-day met within
a few miles of each other — on their respective sides of the
beautiful Vale. The morning embodied a wild, warm gale, and
brought nothing but confusion and discomfort. To hear was
impossible, to see was difficult, to retain your beaver a feat of
balance and sleight-of-hand combined. At two o'clock Lord
Willoughby de Broke took his hounds on to the Welsh Road
Gorse near Ladbroke (from which we last year saw so sharp a
run) — and half the company went home. " No scent ; save
your horse for another day ! " — and so, my gay and noble
adviser, you lost the most brilliant run of the season !
2.30 p.m. — The gale, now somewhat moderated, blowing
towards Shuckburgh, but a rare stout fox, with a point in view
and a heart within him, away up the breeze. Forty or fifty
FROM WELSH 110 AD GORSE WITH THE WARWICKSHIRE. 205
men had remained to see the draw and see him go — and a truly
wonderful proportion of these completed the gallop. As a com-
parative stranger, I can make not even an approximate list.
But of what and whom I saw I will tell — as far as acquaintance
will carry me and a breathless struggle has left its memory.
Up the wind, then, and down the road — that black dog " making
the run " by his drive and nose, and turning to a yard where his
quarry had left the gravel. Out of the road at this spot some
twenty men followed their proper leader, the Master, then
spread out to gallop and to jump. In a mile or so hounds bent
leftward up a thin hillside plantation, then, crossing the ridge,
raced on for a due southerly course. Three oak rails refused to
bend or break, and a crack and a roar (I trust it was only of
alarm, not injury) turned half the gathering phalanx to a less
crucial difficulty some fifty yards below — where hedgecutters
had just lowered the black staring bullfinch. But the lead of
huntsman and whip was well established over the enormous
pasture which hounds had already half covered — Mr. Craven
{fits), however, being also very visible in the van. Two ^ates
which formed a cart track took his lordship and Mr. Bunbury
parallel with the pack, yet half a field to their right ; and this
palpable route also had the advantage of bridging a deep ugly
brook. Capt. Mildmay, however, must have tackled this suc-
cessfully on the far left — for now he seemed suddenlv to have
dropped from the clouds, holding a clear, close, lead for several
minutes.
A deep, hidden brook next lay on the path — but hindered
not half so much as did those three baleful ploughs that took
up the final five minutes of the first slashing twenty, and that
stole the steel out of many a hunter whose pedigree owned any
taint of such soil. By a farm building came a second pause —
not a fair breather, alas — then forward as fast as before — and
the first fence a very chasm — an honest twelve or fourteen feet
brook, with a fortunate stake -and -bound before it. All
scrambled, but few fell — though the loud clatter on the left
bade the most self- engrossed glance hastily round. The cause
206 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
was as obvious as the disaster was pronounced. An oxrail on
the farther bank had been invisible through the taller hedge —
and a good man had gone down. The grass now rode bitterly
deep ; the pace was tremendous as ever — and hounds led their
field well to the Oxford Canal, Messrs. Onslow (10th Hussars)
and Bunbury, with Lord Willoughby, cutting out all the work
on the right, Mr. Hanbury doing the same office on the left —
and so we rose to the road leading into Prior's Hardwick (now
a quarter of a mile away), where perhaps a dozen or more men
gathered while hounds feathered for another brief moment.
(When I have mentioned Sir F. Wilmington, Major Long, Mr.
Rhodes, Mr. Leon, Mr. Watson, I think I have enumerated the
few I was in a position to recognize — though I have a promi-
nent recollection of two other blackcoats in the prime of youth
and tailoring, and again of a brown and well serviced hat, and
again of a covert coat beneath a face I ought to know. But let
me, prithee, be forgiven.) Nor can I say exactly how we came,
•except that it was in a very straight line to the village of
Priors Marston — thirty-five minutes to here, as good as shall be
seen this season — pace wonderful and country superb. That if
we did not pass actually near the covert of Watergall we at
least crossed its well-known brook, I'll swear, for I recognized
the glint of its water while just escaping the bath of a previous
year. Now my story must quickly close. Hounds could only
pick out the line over light plough to Hellidon, after their fox
had threaded the village last named, but at length they worked
it into the covert of Dane Hole. Here he was — right enough —
but in company with a brace of others. The difficulty of keep-
ing to the true line seemed insuperable — when there were no
less than three going forward above Oatesby. Yet, though
there was no possibility as yet of verifying the subject of pur-
suit as being still the great weary fox that had left Dane Hole
— it seems they never changed. For, though the chase was
given up at 4.30, about a mile from Staverton village, in conse-
quence of the probable confusion of foxes, the beaten fox (as I
learned on my homeward way) had barely strength to creep
SAINT VALENTINE. 207
into a stackyard at that place. Yet 'twas a grand good run —
such as we are treated to but few times in a winter, even in the
grass countries.
SAINT VALENTINE.
Of the six days for work and play, Monday has everywhere
the most peremptory claim upon hunting men. No one will
miss a Monday if he can help it, let the country be what it will,
let the weather be what it may — and there is more zest, more
keenness, perceptible on the first out-day of the week, than on
any chosen occasion of later day. The giants refreshed come
forth with vigour and ambition that settle down rather than
intensify under fatigue and routine. But, given a choice
Grafton meet, and an atmosphere as cool, bright, and ex-
hilarating as a decent sample of '7-i — no wonder the opportunity
is gladly and gaily seized by a very host. I fear no contradic-
tion when I speak of the Grafton lady-pack as offering a
pattern almost incomparable — in work, beauty, and uniformity.
And, hunted as they are, they exhibit the faculty of accounting
for their foxes to a degree that is truly admirable. Quick,
handy, lathy and brilliant, they drive and hunt, charm the eye
and teach a lesson. These ladies were at Little Preston on
Saint Valentine's Day of the present year, when the sun shone
bright, the wind blew cold, the turf was hard and dry, and the
plough rough and dusty : and they ran a brace of foxes down —
killing one and leaving another underground. In more correct
order, the latter first. He was found at Ganderton — the which
is a small hollow wood between Preston and Canons Ashby, the
three places marking a circle now followed and traversed for an
hour and a half. We all jumped a fence in a desperate hurry
at starting — and, for the rest, Ave needed not, ought not, to
have thrown a leap again. A very road-running fox, in truth —
and, even if this road-running brought out the powers of the
pack to the utmost, the addition of some variety in the ride
beyond the labour of adaptation and the misapplication of
whip-handles to gate-latches would not have been altogether
208
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
inacceptable, where so much of the ground was green, and the
scent generally good enough to insist a gallop. That a jump
was now and then to be found if sought, I am ready to admit —
and indeed can illustrate, taking A. and B. once more as my
factors in the problem to be demonstrated. A. was by no
means ambitious, but he didn't know the country as intimately
as he may at some possible future period, if times go well. B.
didn't know it either, but was amiably willing to make its
acquaintance in such fashion as might be represented as desir-
able and befitting. Hounds crossed a lane ; crowd branched
right and left for proper outlet ; A.'s gaze pursued the dis-
appearing pack, and his heart was fain to do the same. But
A.'s veteran steed, on whose well-fed ribs the conscience-marks
of many a previous shortcoming are, like the violets of spring,
just sprouting in deep contrast to their groundwork, set his face
resolutely against quitting good company. And A. and his
recalcitrant beast were left for a while alone, in mute but bitter
contest, till an evil fate brought B. trotting innocently up the
lane. The words " Give me a lead out, sir ! " with which A.
SAINT VALENTINE. 20!)
summoned him to assist, partook fully as much of the assump-
tion of command as they did of entreaty — for time forbade
ceremony, and A. was already well nigh to wrath with himself
and all surroundings. Anyhow, B. gave unhesitating com-
pliance. The ditch was broad and blind, the binders lay strong
above a lofty bank, and a goodly drop led into the field beyond.
Into this field B. and his horse pursued headlong their different
ways. A. followed gleefully, but, alas, with the consciousness
of a debt incurred — and found himself involved in a ten
minutes' ride in pursuit of his pilot's clumsy hunter ; while the
gay throng that he would have headed faded gradually from his
longing sight. Begone ambition. Begone gratitude. Make
your moral, and swing your gates. I have no long story for
Monday. A warm sun, a capital scent, and a fox that loved a
circle and might well have learned his country on a pony.
These made the young day.
The first point to note in the next Pytchley Wednesday is
that we hunted at all. The ground was deemed possible for
hounds about 11.30, but pronounced by one and all who were
sunning themselves at Misterton to be absolutely unfit foi
riding, positively dangerous for jumping. How consistently
they acted upon the unanimous dictum, I will briefly show.
Fifty — nay, a hundred — went with hounds for a forty minutes'
ride from Misterton Gorse long before the hot sun had in any
degree ironed out the stiffened turf. And later on, not a
hundred, but as many as were quick enough, scurried from the
same good covert to Stanford Hall for as sharp a little burst as
has decked the calendar of this chequered season. Of course it
was not fit to ride or to jump. But hounds went so fast that
the fact passed out of recognition for the pleasant time being —
and I fancy few people or horses suffered for the temporary
forgetfulness. The first fox, then, led them what I may term
the usual line of the present season — a ring by Swinford
village rightward to Shawell Wood. Hounds went more than a
fair pace most of the way — while we kept to the roads with
determined persistency for a mile, then found we couldn't, so
rode resignedly over such gaps as came in the line. I don't
210
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
like frosty ground, and am not ashamed to own it. But this
chanced to be a day of gruesome peril to the emissary of " the-
Field, the Farm, and the Garden" in fair Northamptonshire.
And the least of these perils was occasioned by the frost.
Whence came the others, then? Why, from the porter, the
pig, and the sheep — and in degree according to the order
named. Let all this of course be included in a single
parenthesis, only to instance how dangerous, even to the most
careful and over experienced, is the wild pursuit of the fox.
To begin with, the railway porter pushed his timid hunter,,
with its possibly more timid freight, backward during the
process of mounting — till the pair were involved in a struggle
for very existence, on the metal-edge of a deep wagon-cutting.
The pig raced him up the straight of the second field from the
gorse, and with a wild grunt charged his left front — causing a
sudden check that might well have dislodged a man of ordinate
>. -->^4!»'',
length of leg. A wicked sheep left the scudding flock, and the-
good quad, cleared twenty feet of fearful space to leave the
beast untouched. Truly I am glad to be working pen and
cigar in the peaceful security of the " home-ranche." Yes, I
bested my sheep — though an old and valued friend fared worse
SAINT VALENTINE. 211
with his. His baa-lamb made his cast in the centre of one of
these big pastures while the huntsman was making his round
its outskirts. Merryman is not only a foxhunter, but, after the
manner of all in this happy country, very fond of the farmers'.
So Merryman snatched the opportunity to turn shepherd, and
rode valiantly and good-naturedly to the rescue. But the
sheep kicked horribly — and, moreover, looked dangerously like
biting. Merry man's horse had a far more vivid sense of the
danger of the situation than his master ; and at ten yards
distance testified it with forelegs outstretched and nostrils
dilated. From each point of the compass Merryman tried it in
vain. Moments were passing. Toot-toot — away, away. " Hey,
you fellows, look after that sheep ! " — and there were plenty of
ready sheep-lifters, for the soil wasn't safe for a ride this day.
Where was I, when the first stroke of this parenthesis was
struck ? We had reached Shawell Wood, and went on. But,
in spite of two as clever moves as ever recovered a line, scent
failed after Cotesbach ; and the fox scored.
Next the bursting of a fox and the handling of him in twenty
and odd minutes. Misterton Gorse a second time. A long
waiting, and then the usual rush (let me add, not a soul had
stayed at home because the lawn was frost-hardened). And we
blundered all of a heap (good English, please, requires a
leisurely pen) on to the long plantation — two fields, by the
course, from the covert. In to scratch and out to thorn, if you
wished ; or, better, by way of double handgate, through the
same belted thicket, a hundred yards back. Hounds soon hung
a few seconds over plough that was dusty, and discreditable to
February. Then they raced over the old proper pastures to
Stanford Hall. If anybody pressed them now, let him enter
his mount forthwith for the Hunt Cup of Kugby, March 8th.
Fifteen minutes brought hounds up to their fox at the Icehouse
Spinney. In seven minutes more they were heaped in a
scrambling mass. Brief it had been ; but " the right sort " for
a grass country, while it lasted.
p 2
212 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PEAIIUE.
MARCH MOMENTS.
North Kilworth on Wednesday, March 9, showed what a
Pytchley field could be — in the final spring month, and on the
day following the Rugby Chases. I dare not call upon my
meagre descriptive powers to attempt any picture of the surging
mass that spread out over the country when fox and hounds
went away from Kilworth Sticks. Perhaps half the crowd
belonged to Northamptonshire ; the others came from any-
where, everywhere — and a few were very alarming on their
strange mounts, and in their strange fashion of treating a packed
gateway as though it were a scrimmage at football. During
the greater part of the day there was fortunately not even scent
enough to allow of their riding over hounds — the latter being
absolutely helpless. Then, after witnessing a close-running fox
well hunted to death round the hills of Hemplow, more than
half of them went home.
But no cross-country scurry could well be brighter, while it
lasted at its best, than the evening gallop of to-day from
Elkington (Lord Spencer's) Covert. A strong remnant of the
hundreds of the morning (all hope of a run long ago dismissed
from their minds) stood by while a brace of foxes broke covert
across the grassy hills on the Cold Ashb;y side. They holloaed
the one that turned for Hemplow, but the little ladies coursed
the other to Elkington Bottom (half a mile's distance). To
gallop in and out of these steep gulleys is like a memory of
Exmoor, or of the green tops of the Neilgherries. The quickest
and truest of pilots in such and similar case is one of our
ex-Masters,* to whom Badby Wood is never a labyrinth and
Nobottle never a difficulty. His lead showed a ready outlet in
a bridle-path handgate, from the dell to the open country.
Such a change now from all that had belonged to morning and
midday ! Hounds driving and straining — the quickest from
covert still in front, every one of the others racing to reach the
* Mr. J. A. Craven.
MARCH MOMENTS. 213
head. Fences in front at which man need turn not a yard, as
he issued from the glen and hurried to ride. And I fancy,
from what I could see of the fray, that the order of battle de-
pended much upon precedence at that little gateway. Two
earlier stake-and-bounds were good and fair along their whole
face. Then came an oxer in a corner — whose rail told a noisy
tale, as second man or third man made it good, for us who fol-
lowed and were thankful. Sharp to the left through a tall stalwart
bullfinch, the big horses of Mr. Muntz and Mr. Jameson making
the daylight comfortably visible. Hounds still holding a little
the best of it — and the pasture a full quarter of a mile across.
Under a tree was the only place, and a drop into a lane a next
necessity — while for the first time the leading horsemen fairly
came up to hounds. I am not good at mapping a run as I ride
— but from long habit I seldom, if ever, forget a fence that has
once caught my nervous eye. As we plunged into this road
and rose out of it, it struck me we were crossing the track that
leads from Cold Ashby to Winwick village. At all events we
left Winwick Warren on our left hand, and crossed the strong
valley to West Haddon village — half-way to which a deep little
watercourse, with heavy blackthorn binders laid on the farther
bank, came in the course. The two leaders crashed into its
strength ; Mr. Onslow and Mr. Schwabe flipped over in their
wake ; Mr. Atherton met with the temporary delay that must
necessarily accompany a double summersault, however deftly
rendered ; Mr. Logan, Mr. Greig, Mr. Adamthwaite, and Mr.
Pender were very much in the front rank ; and twenty men —
ay, and fair women among them, as is usual here — were all
together when a chance came to unfob the watch.
A moment's check after this ten minutes' struggle was sue-
CO
ceeded by a good gallop forward, which fifty or sixty of us could
see and enjoy. A fine grass country still, wherein several
smaller ox-fences had to be doubled by the ready troop — then
leftward till the house of Mr. H. Atterbury (who, too, was
riding prominently in the run) was passed in view. And at
the same moment, not a hundred yards before hounds, Reynard
214 FOX-BOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
himself also turned into view. But, dodging through a gate-
way, he just evaded the gaze of the busy pack, and, as bad luck
would have it, next moment he was on dry arable and among
flying sheep. Half an hour to this — and he had seemed almost in
their mouths. They hunted him on under utmost difficulties till
the hour was completed, Guilsborough was nearly reached, and
Cottesbrook was shadowed forth across the valley. But thus
he saved himself; though the huntsman would not be likely to
leave a beaten fox in a free country, while a ray of hope and
daylight remained.
And truly, when the turf is in such order that a good horse
goes upon springs, and when a scent is vouchsafed in dusty
March, a burst over the green Midlands is a little gift from
Paradise.
WEEDON BARRACKS THE CENTRE.
This dry sunny spring has at least been a boon to the very
best class of our suffering fellow mortals, the farmers. Never,
I am told, have they known so apt, and workable, an early
spring : and now, if ever they are to experience a turn of the
tide, the " good fellows who live by the land " should see the
way to getting their own again. I came across a scrap some-
where the other day, the truth of which is widely applicable, but
in no case more seriously than when the struggle for existence
is " on the top of the ground," A.D. 1887 and thereabouts :
'Tis a very good world, sirs, we live in,
To spend and to lend and to give in ;
But to earn and to hold, or to get a man's own,
'Tis the very worst world, sirs, that ever was known.
Going to covert was the quickest and the least cheerless part
of Friday. If you don't start late and travel consequently in
feverish anxiety, which on the strength of various fair trials I
am bound to consider the common condition of those who hack
upon wheels, driving is " good business " in the dry days of
WEEDON BAHRACKS THE CENTRE. 21.")
Spring. It happens I had to do eighteen miles across the
heart of Pytchleydom on Friday ; but even a spring captain
-could scarcely be happy while spokes rattled and dust flew thus,
though voyaging through the undulating loveliness of Kilsby,
Buckby, Haddon, and Welford. The sun seemed to shine
through a black veil ; the dark hedges were in quiet mourning,
while birds in high feather and lambs in high jinks proclaimed
the land their own. So it was indeed — though I fear the gay
rascals saug a different tune on the morrow, when another freak
•of weather awaited them.
So to Saturday, the 12th. Weedon Barracks with the same
pack and a good many of the same people. Rugby came by
rail, door to door. And the soldiers insisted that ail should
■consider " the sun to be over the yardarm." The only men, by
the way, who can honestly and solidly claim proficiency at a
hunt-breakfast, even at noon, are the robust, healthy, and true
sportsmen above-mentioned "who lose by the land "but who
stick to it and are round the farm before the bugle has sounded
for guard mounting or the landlord has slept off his last cigar
{if in these pauper times he can afford himself flor Jina cab«(ji<>
•at all). The appetite of work and the thirst of late research
were alike readily ministered to, by the section of Her Majesty's
Army that her Jubilee year finds here awaiting its turn of
foreign service, and whose creed is to be embodied in the local
Standing Orders for all generations, and batteries : " Dine in
blue, and ride in red ; quaff good liquor and scorn a head."
Snow — yes, snow, and two inches of it — had fallen betwixt
•cockcrow and blind-opening (these dates at any rate involving
a margin upon which I defy contradiction — for the Ides of
March are at midday, while Foxhunting is a favourite over-
night toast and a prolonged topic here). Foxes won't run
to snow, it would seem. Dodford Holt, accordingly, had no
answer to give. But Mr. Burton had a very determined fox
in his tiny gorse above Daventry. Hounds too appeared to
like the slippery snow-spread hillside far better than did men
and horses (I honestly believe that, if these horses had not been
in a still greater funk than ourselves in our " slithering "
216 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
progress down Mount Verdant, they would have gone clean
away without power of protest on our part, and one and all of us
quaking horsemen have been immolated below on the market-
place of Daventry Town. I am assured, however, and dare
almost credit it, that horses are really quite as timorous and
quite as self-careful as we — (though so many of us do wear
spurs of masterful length and sharpness, even if we hold them
studiously forward that the only bloodmark shall be afore the
saddle). The fox we now followed went direct for Welton
Place, touching the town of Daventry (now intent on aspiring,
with its nearly-completed railroad, to the dignity of a second
Melton) ; then took the brink of the reservoir and was run
hard — till lost.
Tuesday, March loth, 1887, brought about a difference
between expectation and result almost as marked as on a
certain day in 1605 — when Catesby and his following were to
have made " The Bloody Hunt at Dunchurch " the celebration
of a Parliament blown into the Thames and a d}masty
destroyed. Frost did for us what treachery did for them. Our
plot collapsed, and the gathering fell flat. A few assembled ;
the majority stayed away ; and the former only arrived to
celebrate a failure.
FROM BRAUNBTON GORSE AT LAST— A TALE
OF THE BROOK.
The long-deferred gallop from Braunston Gorse came off on
Saturday, March 26th — to the delight of the " customers " and
a full demonstration of the charms of its vale. Between Shuck-
burgh Hill of the Warwickshire and the above-named angulus
ridens of the Pytchley, runs, in deep muddy narrowness, a little
stream soon afterwards expanding into the almost unjumpable
Leame. And, believe me, the green valley that it drains is in
every sense typical of the cream of the Midlands — not so flat as
Crick-and-Hilmorton, not so hilly as Skeffington, not so simple
as Misterton, yet not so stupendous as Oxendon. The brook
FROM BRAUNSTON GORSE AT LAST.
217
itself is easy here, formidable there, impossible at a third place
— as you may happen to hit it, and, still more, as your mount
faces width or you fancy water. But, nearly everywhere, the
I
'I- x- ,
mem
one bank levels with the other ; a bold horse need never be
trapped ; and the mere stride of your gallop will land you, if
only ah, there is the word that has wrecked every plan,
annulled every project, and spoiled every plot since the sun first
shone upon failures. And the mud of the Braunston Brook was
stirring with ifs well nigh the whole of Saturday's afternoon.
The water made the feature, nay, the whole physiognomy, of
this foxchase and landscape — as I will endeavour to sketch.
Need I touch on the weather, the ground, the covert, the
hounds, the horses, and the people ? A line is enough, in
epitome — the day warm, cloudy, and breezy ; the earth, with
its velvet coverlid, in perhaps better form for hunting than it
has been during the season that is now fast vanishing ; the
covert a perfect nest of thorn, privet, and what not ; hounds the
Pytchley bitch pack, wiry, varmint and sharp ; horses ugly in
their motley spring colouring, but in a hundred instances,
striking in their lean shapeliness ; the people — now I am
" baffled and beat." He who would venture to lay hands on
one name should be prepared to complete his list with a whole
'218 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
catalogue. And, alas, I keep neither a notebook nor a memory.
But here at haphazard, let me throw you a few sample names
that at least will convey some guarantee that the faculty of
crossing a country was not without its representatives — the
Master and Mr. F. Langham, Lord Spencer, Lord Rathdonnell,
Captains Soames, Riddell, Beach, Majors Long and Riddell,
Messrs. Craven, Foster, Henley, Schwabe, Wroughton, Muntz,
Wedge, Graham, Sawbridge, Atherton, Greig, Graham, Home,
Dale, Osborne, Fabling, Goodman, &c, &c, and several of the
.straight-riding ladies of the Pytchley Hunt.
There was music in the scream of the galloping whip as it
cut across the breeze from his post beneath the covert — for did
it not come from the Shuckburgh direction, and did we not fend
off all the baser background of rough hilly upland ? The
merriest moment of life — a start with foxhounds over a ravish-
ing country — had come again. If any man can think of his
woes, his debts, his lost opportunities, lost love, or loves, his
bitter to-morrow or bis regrettable past — surely he had better
withdraw at once from the miserable imposture, confess that his
heart is not in the sport, and cling only to late drink and early
smoke. The thin chain of white black and tan was already
shooting forth from the tangled covert, and glancing over the
ant-hilly pasture, swift as minnows across the shallows (an
obvious simile in the face of watery trial to come) — ere we
had spun down the slope and burst three abreast through the
gateway in the hollow. Ridge-and-furrow and ant-hill for
forty acres, " all on " — hounds and men — heads straight for the
distant hill, no stop nor even a jostle at two low-laid fences,
then a dart for the bottom, and water on every man's brain.
Where a cross fence runs down to the brook, the rush divided.
Right division found the smoother sailing and the brook
charmingly amenable. Left were locked in — though only for a
brief, anxious, half second — for the thin end of the wedge, in its
everyday practical and determined fashion, split the heavy bull-
finch, and made light of the water where it ran in a crude and
ugly bed. First follower rolled heavily on the further bank,
second went down into the depths. Fifty yards up stream it
FROM BR AUKS TON GORSE AT LAST. 219
•was far more savoury to the delicate nostrils of the too sensitive
hunter of the Shires, and was accepted, if not with ravenous
appetite, at least with less show of nausea.
As I ride the prairie in summer (an occupation quite as
conducive to complete abstraction of thought as tramping the
pavement of Pall Mall in August), I shall often leaven the
dulness of solitude by turning over my mental scrap-book at
•the pages relating to Braunston Brook. See now — for the life
of me I could not tell you who, nor would if I could — but I
•can still hear the hearty voice of some familiar comrade in the
game. "All right, old fellow, I'll give you a lead ! " So he did,
but the angle of ejectment was wrong — he went up-stream
instead of across — and he wore such a nice new pink. Another
(he in black) accepting the lead with gladness close and prompt
— went upstream too ! " And the first lion thought the next a
bore." He said so too, and very loudly. There I left them,
roaring lustily, almost in each other's arms, for " Two's company,
.three is none." Would you have had me spoil the party ?
Flimsy report tells me that one dead lion was still in his place
when the chase drove back by the spot half an hour later. Was
it, I wonder, brought about by the wondrous kindness of fellow-
feeling that, while warming my chilled limbs at this evening's
fire, my eye should have been caught by this notice in the
•county paper ; " A. P. Licensed Horse Slaughterer. Dead and
worn-out horses and other animals fetched away on the shortest
notice. All transactions cash. Best price given of any man
in the Midland Counties. Telegrams paid for." Herein is to
be found the hope that in some small degree we may yet be
enabled to lighten the crushing expense of the Sport of Kings.
But this was only the play of The Brook in its first act.
Acts II., III., and IV. were yet in store. Fifty men were over
the streamlet now, on the fly ; fifty more, nearly as speedily, by
a bridge ; and hounds were running gloriously over the wide
sound slope below Flecknoe. I wondered (the ego must con-
tinue for narrative's sake) why a strong and forward section
should bend suddenly in their course, and dart leftward for
the low ground again. Hounds were bearing agaiu towards
220 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND TRAIRIE.
the water — and another bridge was there. Oh, but I would
not have gone by that bridge, if you would frank me to the most
rollicking comedy of the year. Nobody saw it but I, sweet sir ;
and on my honour I will ne'er betray you — for are you not one
of the boldest and best that ever schooled a nag on his own
farm ? And I ought not to have seen it, but that I, too, was-
" delayed on business." Two, three, four, " six of 'em took it in
their stride " — and close in their wake came the speediest and
most determined of all.
Look that your bridle be wight, my lord,
And your horse go swift as ship at sea :
Look thfit your spurres be bright and sharp,
That you may prick her while she'll away.
And had not his bridle been wight, and strong as leather should
be, I ween that it never had stood the strain or the master
escaped a wetting — when thirteen stone seven hung down the-
bank at one end, and the sorrel, with outstretched legs and
down-turned head, held back at the other. A horseman, too>
far above the common. But the impetus was awful.
So far, so good ; and still we did not leave the brookside.
Fox and hounds were pointing for Staverton, when the former
encountered two men at work, and the chase forthwith crossed
our front with a swing to the right. In the hurry and turmoil
it was difficult to see why such a plain-looking oxer as now
lay between men and hounds should be beyond a fair hunter's
compass. But the width of a Northamptonshire ditch is a
varied and often illusory quantity, especially when it chances to
mark the line of a valley. I don't fancy any one struck the
oxer ; but I am open to correction if any one covered the ditcb
■ — though three experimentalists in a row were seen busily
sorting hat-strings and bridle-reins after a simultaneous essay.
Lower to the right, or higher to the left, the fence was moderate-
enough : and gladly, by the way, I noticed that a horrid strand
of barbed wire had been lowered since a fox was first hunted
this way in the early autumn. Else had a fearful catch most
certainly have been made to-day.
Fast they ran, now along the valley for perhaps another mile,,
FROM BBAUNSTON GORSE AT LAST. 221
hounds favoured by the recent turn, and almost within view of
their fox, when, for the third time, they spun over the brook.
A shaking fall is no fitting preparation for horse or man when
water, however insignificant, has to be encountered. This was
•but a meagre rivulet, scarce a horse's length across. But two
■couple of the blown ones scotched and plunged in (Oh, " I slip,
I slide, I gloom, I glance,") and the example was immediately
followed by another, and yet others — till the miserable mud-
stream was full as a wash-pit at sheep-shearing. The Hunt,
meanwhile, left these " waders in the surf, waist deep in
meadow sweet," and careered forward for Shuckburgh. Why
this fox failed to reach such haven is a matter of speculation, if
not of indifference. Nay, it was much better that he should
not have gained the hill and its open earths ; for, turning
short within two fields of it, he had only to retrace his steps
and give his followers much the same cheerful quarter hour
back. So they leaped the now pigmy stream a fourth time,
on this occasion much nearer to Staverton, and galloped the
south side of the valley on the return journey to Brauuston
Corse. Hereabouts they had the bad luck to change from a
thoroughly beaten fox to a fresh one. Scent altered at once ;
and they could scarcely follow the line to Bragborough. But
those bustling thirty minutes had surely been as replete with
fun as any half-hour in this most moderate season. And now I
will put many of my comrades, and myself, to very shame. A
ten-summer boy rode forth to-day on a shaggy yellow pony —
and the latter will complete his third year only when the
paddock in which he runs ungroomed has arrived at what is
lenown as "this grass." His father's spurs he had girded on —
big steel prongs that might serve a mahout, or do duty on off
■days for toasting forks. In addition, he wielded a short ash
plant, and was actuated by an instinctive and indigenous love
of the sport. Armed with these, he followed the hunt throughout
— and actually jumped the Braunston Brook three times ! His
name is Allen, and his place of birth and residence is Weedon
— where you can easily verify the above improbable, but ab-
solutely correct, statement.
THE WILD STAG ON EXMOOR.
An opening day of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds-
must by no means be taken as affording a type of their sport,,
or fashion of hunting. Staghunting this Tuesday was merely
the excuse ; and a noble sport had to submit to being mis-
appropriated for the occasion. The opening meet at Cloutsham
is a yearly Carnival, and a Carnival with many of its grotesque
accompaniments and clownish attributes — staghunting acting in
about the same relation to the jubilee as horseracing to the
Romish festa. Judge from this advertisement, with which the
little town of Minehead has for ten days past been placarded by
an enterprising tradesman.
A PLEASANT PICNIC.
The Devon and Somerset Staghounds.
The First Meet will take place at Cloutsham on Tuesday, Aug. 13th.
CONVENIENT DELICACIES
may be obtained at .
Sparkling "Wines from 2s. Id.
THE WILD STAG ON EXMOOli. 223
And from all appearances the convenient delicacies and the
champagne at two-and-a-penny found no little favour.
From 8 a.m. carts and carriages, brakes and omnibuses,,
waggonettes and pony traps, passed the Feathers Hotel, laden
skyhigh with hampers. By eleven o'clock the town was-
deserted, while each road converging to Cloutsham was choked
with vehicles and horsemen, hurrying in from every corner of
North Devon and West Somerset. It is asserted that neither
in Taunton, Dulverton, IMinehead, Porlock, nor Linton did there
remain a wheel that would go round or a leg that could move-
under a saddle : and the scene at the meet lent probability to
the assertion.
Cloutsham, to the eye of the stranger, appeared to be but a
farmhouse surmounting a spur of the main hills, about four
miles directly south of Porlock Bay. One more mile to the-
south stands Dunkery Beacon, nearly 1700 feet above the sea,
and a landmark always strongly impressed upon a new comer,,
as the centre point round which his geography may by degrees,
extend itself. Green, and on this occasion crowded, lanes take
you to the foot of the hills ; and a short but terribly steep
ascent lands your panting steed at the top. Lord Lovelace's-
shooting box (or rather the drive to it, cut through a deep dark
wood) is pointed out to you half-way up the incline ; and your
informant next adds to your stock of knowledge the dictum
that the great primeval woods of Cloutsham are the property
of Sir Thomas Acland — also that these coverts and the equally
dense and still more extensive ones of Culbone lining the sea
to the west of Porlock are the mainstay of staghunting in this
district.
A lovely spot for a PICNIC truly ! The purple-topped hills-
speckled and varied with gold, where the bloom of the gorse
trenched here and there upon the smooth surface of the
heather ; oak woods of darkest green filling the depths of the
precipitous combe at your feet ; in the farther valley rich
cornfields ready for the sickle, mapped out in broad inky lines
by stone banked hedges : beyond these the solitary height of
224 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
North Hill (the same rosy colouring on its brow, the same
sombre verdancy on its wooded side) marking the sea line from
Minehead to Horsedovvn Point ; while through the gap smiled
Porlock Bay, " calm and still," as the master pen of romance
and sport described it, " like the eyes of a girl, whose being has
never yet been stirred into passion by the storm." It was too
beautiful a scene for such a motley carousal, such a break-out
of Cockneydom ; still worse that such sacrilege should be
committed under the assumed shadow of a grand and genuine
sport. Repugnant it must be to all true sportsmen (and this
is a country where in unusual number they are the natural
outcome of the soil) ; and repugnant it undoubtedly is, if form
of expression and epithet go for anything. But the Master
knows he has to undergo it every year ; so submits to the
inevitable, and accepts it with the equanimity with which
Masters of Hounds have to fortify themselves against trials
more numerous and galling than the world at large would
imagine. For the others, they stay away on this opening day,
or else attend under protest. They do not expect sport under
such circumstances, and in this they are seldom disappointed ;
it is only fair to add that they do their best to forestall any
such miscarriage of hope on the part of the visitor.
" Go on Friday " they say " to Hawkcombe Head, and next
week to Winsford and the open common, and you may come in
for a gallop over Exmoor that will give you a fairer notion of
our sport. To-day you will only see a number of people eating
and drinking more than is good for them ; and if a stag is
hunted at all 'tis more than we expect." Indeed, anything less
suggestive of the chase it would be impossible to conceive. A
grass field next the farmhouse was like a square cut out of
Epsom Downs on Derby Day — packed close with carriages, the
air alive with champagne corks, and the ground already littered
with bottles and the debris of luncheons innumerable. On the
edge of the coombe each tree had its group of merrymakers
intent upon their luncheon-hampers, while horsemen passed
from party to party feasting as they went, and noise and mirth
THE WILD STAG OK EXMOOR. 225
grew rapidly. All round the deep glen, whose fish-hook out-
line could not have been less than half a dozen miles, were
dotted little parties, some in hopes of being near the spot
where the deer should break, but most of them intent upon
enjoying their picnic apart from the crowd.
Meantime the body of the hounds were shut up in the farm
stables, whilst Arthur, the huntsman, and George, his whip,
worked the covert with four or five couple of trusted " tufters."
For those whose experience of hunting the wild stag, as here
carried out, is even less than that of your humble servant, it
should be explained that these tufters are not, as might be
imagined, anything distinct from the other hounds employed.
They are merely staunch and steady members of the pack,
experienced in drawing for their game and obedient to voice
and horn. Their business is to drive the deer from covert, to
submit to being stopped when reaching the open — when, should
the quarry be a hind, they are taken back to draw again ;
should he be deemed a huntable stag they are kept back till
the rest of the pack are brought, and laid on to the line. It
will be remembered that towards the end of last season
Mr. Bisset had the great misfortune to lose half his kennel
from rabies, brought about, it is said, by the extraordinary
foolishness of a countryman, who actually shut up two stray
hounds in an outhouse ivith a mad dog and a dead sheep —
turning them loose the next morning after a night spent in
a triangular duel over the carcase ! When the horrid scourge
developed itself, all hounds open to the slightest suspicion of
infection were at once destroyed ; and the remainder having
since been kept, each in his separate kennel, without any
further symptom of contagion, it is confidently hoped that all
danger of infection is now passed. Still, it has not been deemed
advisable as yet to incorporate them with the new material,
collected from various kennels to meet the deficiency. Naturally
these new comers, mostly from foxhound kennels and mostly
unentered to anything, are likely to show themselves green to
the game (if I may use the expression) till blood has whetted
Q
226 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
their appetites and instinct. As for tufters for them, Mr. Bissett
would be entirely at a loss, were it not that, at the time of the
outbreak, a few couple of working hounds had been sent to a
distance, on account of kennel-lameness. HaviDg recovered
from this they now take their place as tufters, and nestors, to
the novices.
At the hour I am speaking of, these were threading the
combe, while Arthur rode the narrow paths winding down
and along its steep sides, and led them in their search. As
time wore on, an occasional cheer, a note on the horn, or the
throwing of a tongue, rose upwards in the gathering mist, and
told that game was afoot. Then, to those who were content to
watch steadily over the valley, there was given a glimpse of a
brown form glancing across an opening in the trees ; soon after-
wards a second, and, when the tufters had been some two hours
at work, a roar from the crowd proclaimed that they all could
see a deer. On the opposite hill the speckled bodies of three
hounds, following close on a darker and bigger animal, were
plainly in view, crossing the purple carpeting where it stretched
upwards from the wood. This was THE STAG, surely ! No, the
hope was scarcely framed into words or echoed from a thousand
well-wined throats, before a horseman was seen to ride down
upon the hounds, and turn them back to the horn. The hind
was left to go her way in peace, and the multitude relapsed
again into its hampers. The sunshine of the morning had now
given place to a drizzling mist ; which in turn resolved itself
into a driving rain. But the assemblage stood its ground
manfully, determined on rivalling, or even outdoing the heavens
in its steady downpour. There was no thought of moving,
though two o'clock came — three o'clock, and eatables were run
out — four o'clock, and even their drinkables were beginning to
feel the strain.
At length when it seemed as if these followers of Bacchus
and Diana must pitch a night camp, a sudden buzz and stir
showed that a change was coming. Half-emptied glasses were
thrust aside, waterproofs were cast off or buttoned closely up,
THE WILD STAG ON EXMOOll 227
and a murmur of expectation culminated in a burst of excite-
ment, as the huntsman issued from the thicket — his horn to
his lips, and most of the tufters at his heels. The whip had, by
some marvellous perception, found himself in a position to
intercept hounds as they left covert on a scent, where a deer
(stag, or hind, he did not know) had stolen away behind the
farmhouse. The news was quickly in Arthur's hands ; and now
he was on his way to fetch the pack to the line. All was in
a moment bustle, hurry, and anxiety. Hounds dashed noisily
out, mad with excitement and long restraint. Horsemen
hurried up from every side — their excitement none the weaker
that it had been aggravated by other causes rather than long
restraint. Up a narrow lane went the exuberant pack.
Crowding1 in its wake came the no less boisterous crowd —
freedom of action, and freedom of diction, its peremptory and
strongly enforced tenets. Half an hour — perhaps more — had
the deer been gone ; but lapse of time would appear (from
all one hears) to have a bearing upon the scent of a deer on
heather altogether inferior to its influence upon that of a fox
on plough or grass. Minutes are of no consequence : and a
quarter of an hour, more or less, need not be taken into
consideration. If the deer is accustomed to take full advantage
of this theory, here is possibly the explanation of the enormous
length of some of the runs on record.
Mr. Russell (wiry, keen, and almost youthful in his eighty-
third year) rode twent}T-five miles to Cloutshara, and took back
with him Col. Thomson, who had run down from London for a
single day of novelty (the which at least he must have found)
before setting off to his cub hunting in Fifeshire.
At 12.15 the stag had broken covert. At 1 P.M., hounds were
laid on the line. Mark this, fellow foxhunters ; and frame your
conclusions anent the scent of the deer ! No carted " hass " this
(as the enthusiast of immortal memory termed the half-tamed
animal) ! no tricks of anisceded hoof here ! But a genuine
monarch of the glen — his feet tainted by nothing more artificial
than the heather and the fern. And yet, with five-and-forty
q 2
228 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND Pit A HUE.
minutes interval, a young uneducated pack flung themselves
into his track, as if the heather blossom were still quivering
from his tread — not as fox-hounds stoop and drive and cry, but
silently jumping and snatching at it, as if to pick the scent where
it hung high on the flower ; stealing forward noiselessly, but no
less swiftly and determinedly. Up an open gully they sped, the
huntsman and others (chiefly, I fancy, novices, who, like your
correspondent, wished to see and learn all they could of the
game) riding parallel above them — the old hands getting on to
head of the ravine, there to wait their coming. Across the main
heath road, through a gateway in the huge banked fence, such
as divide these moors into their separate sheep-walks — and now
we are embarked on the open forest, nothing but wild common
for miles before us. The heather is knee deep, often girth deep ;
but the ground underneath it as sound as old turf, and horses
rake over it with a freedom and safety that the new comer can
scarcely credit. But example lends confidence ; and soon he
learns that he too may gallop, and must gallop, if he would see
his share of the fun. If his horse be, like him, new to the
country, he may likely enough, bound and jump at the waves of
heather and fern — but only for a first few strides ; the pace is
too good for that ; and no less quickly than his rider will he
be warmed to emulation by the rushing forms alongside.
Hounds are only seen as they bound over the smothering
growth, searching and catching at the scent as they leap. No
pack could carry a head (as a foxhunter understands the term)
over ground so hampered as this ; and already the pack is string-
out, like a comet in its swift course. That the scent of a deer
is, in all its characteristics, entirely different from that of the
fox, a single fortnight's experience fully convinces one. As has
been noted before, time has comparatively little effect on the
former : and hounds can apparently run it as vigorously at the
end of an hour as when the stag is just before them. A hot
fresh scent of the deer seems to have none of the maddening
power of that of the fox — to send them driving and flinging,
with every tongue loosened and every hound striving for the
THE WILD STAG OX EXMOOR 229
lead. The track of the stag is acknowledged tacitly and
willingly, not exuberantly. The leaders settle at once into their
place, and the rest follow on. There is no noise, and scarcely a
quiver of the stern — and yet these hounds arc all imported
(unentered) from kennels where a mute hound is not allowed to
live. And this silent, stealthy, impassive style of running
(which, in my ignorance, I had considered a peculiarity of the
chase of the carted deer — and as, more or less, a consequence of
want of blooding) is, I now learnt, quite as much a characteristic
of Wild Staghunting — stamping the fact that the scent of the
deer and the scent of the fox exert totally different influences
on the senses of the hound.
Over hill and valley and stream hounds now ran on, moving
ever fast enough to keep horses at a stretching gallop. Still
they kept pointing onwards into the bleakest and, in a hunting
sense, the best of Exmoor Forest. But, when seventeen rapid
minutes had been scored, the rivulet of Chalk Water reached,
hounds stood suddenly still — and I can only add (venturing no
♦speculative explanation) that the stag was lost, then and there.
With the old hounds such a sudden failure could not have been ;
but the puppies and tyros were not to be depended on ; so, after
prolonged effort, Arthur had to give up his search — and the day
ended in a pelting merciless downpour.
The chase of the red deer on Exmoor is no longer a mere
local pursuit ; but from every county pilgrim -sportsmen have
journeyed down to settle themselves for a common purpose
where their various fancy may dictate. There are no lack of
good quarters for them. Some choose Dulverton as a quiet (if
sociable) retreat ; others like to be landed at the terminus of
Minehead, nor care to take themselves and their horses farther
than the " Feathers." Others drive another eight miles to enjoy
the ripple of the waves at Porlock Weir ; some like to view the
sea dashing on the rocks at Lynmouth ; some pi-efer the heights
of Lynton just above ; while others come by train each hunting
morning from Taunton. South Molton has its visitors ; the
village of King's Brorapton is a central spot that might well be
230 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
utilised by a man intent only on stagbunting — and tbe same may
be said of Exford, which offers the further inducement of the
kennels, neat and pretty as can be seen in England.
In the local mind staghunting is as much a portion of an
acknowledged creed as the solemnisation of matrimony, or a
belief in the merits of cider. Men are brought up to cherish and
revere it : to regard it is a solemn institution — their country's
by right of being nature's chosen ground, theirs by a happy
accident of birth, which appointed them to so honourable a
trust. They speak of it no less earnestly than of the national
policy — with the difference, that this earnestness is ever applied
in heartfelt support, and no voice is raised to cast a doubt, or to
suggest another side to the question. The stag robs no hen-
roost ; and interferes with no game-bird's nest — save when now
and again his lordly step falls by chance on the greyhen seated
beneath the heather. But in his own way he makes his pre-
sence felt — not always harmlessly. Yet his living is never
grudged : his right to the produce of the soil is never questioned.
Not a farmer, or a labourer, within the wide radius where the
staghounds are seen, but welcomes his broad slot in the turnip
field, is proud to think that a warrantable stag has been
harboured thence, and that the combe above the homestead
will give out royal sport this morning. Every passer-by on the
road — yeoman or working-man, country townsman or more rustic
shepherd — enquires of the returning sportsman " Did you kill
the stag to-day ? " ; and the news of last spring, that the pack
were fallen victims of a destroying malady, came like a dire
calamity on Devon and Somerset. Few packs of foxhounds can
find their game as readily, and certainly, as these staghounds —
whether on Exmoor proper or elsewhere in their wide, and
heartily-disposed, territory. A vulpecide is everywhere looked
upon as a selfish sneak — be he the village poacher, or the lord
who with estates in one country takes his pleasure in another,
or muffles himself sullenly in his cloak of egotism at home.
But the man who lifts his hand, in person or proxy, against a
stag in the West is branded at once as a pariah, a leper whose
THE WILD STAG ON EXMOOR. 231
presence cannot be tolerated in the market place or at the dinner
table ; and he quickly learns that neither in North Devon or
West Somerset is there room or greeting for such as him.
A meet of the staghounds on Exmoor has none of the smart
appearance and showy concomitants of a meet of foxhounds in a
fashionable country. On the contrary, neither in general effect
nor in individual detail can it be designated as even neat. The
hounds are (especially the remainder of the old pack) exceed-
ingly even, powerful and imposing; the huntsman and whip are
well dressed and mounted ; and the Master shows in example
the attention to completeness of appearance which he insists
upon in his establishment. But beyond this, there is a rough
and ready, if pleasant and hearty, look about all that meets the
eye. Dress is a matter regarded only from the point of utility :
leathers are unknown — and with leathers, of course, are avoided
the whole structure of vanities, of which those snowy cares are
the keystone. A pink coat is to be seen here and there ; but
(no offence to wearers) so apart are they from the surroundings
that they catch the eye little less than would a court dress at a
cricket match. No, it is satisfactory to be able to tell fox-hunt-
ing friends who may meditate a journey westward, that they
may give their valet a holiday ; and may safely limit their hunt-
ing kit to a billycock hat, an old shooting coat, butcher boots,
and a pair or two of coloured cords rather too shabby to give
away — and this without finding themselves at all remarkable.
They may make up their minds to be drenched to the skin
almost daily ; and a covert coat is not unuseful for the journey
to the meet : but if recent experiences may serve as a guide, I
should say that a waterproof is scarcely a desirable extra, in
which to ride a run in August. But one can afford to set wet
with the thermometer somewhere about 70° ; and though, there
would appear to be always scent enough to follow a deer, rain
cannot be by any means detrimental to that very necessary
agent.
On Friday, August 29 (Hawkcombe Head). — A stag of great
size had been harboured in the wood immediately above Por-
232 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
lock Weir (Garner's, if I mistake not) ; and the tufters were
quickly busy, while the field, as usual, mostly congregated on
the brow above. Soon a two-year-old hart made his way up
from the wood. But lie was not game enough : the tufters
were whipped off, and the search resumed. Likely enough, the
youngster had been pushed out, as a substitute, by the, cunning
veteran who was still hid below. An old stag — with all the
experience of several summers, and possessing, as he does, the
same keen sense of scent as his followers — will frequently, I am
told, drive out every hind in covert, or rouse up a young stag
and crouch in his lair (letting hounds pass right over him)
rather than run for his life till actually obliged. And thus it is,
that the expedient of separating and forcing him out, by means
of a few steady tufters has to be resorted to, though he may be
harboured in his lair to the very bush.
Almost from the same spot where they were in pursuit before,
the tufters were again on a line ; and in a few minutes a trusty
"tally" from the middle wood proclaimed that this time a
warrantable stag was afoot. Pushed along the covert bordering
the cliff, he made his appearance outside the wood a mile away,
as was telegraphed by watching footpeople. It was impossible
to know if he had gone or not ; but, crediting him at least with
good intention, Arthur spurred for the pack and laid them on
to his line. Out upon the moor for thirty minutes' galloping.
Down again into the woods they drooped, running hard
while, along overhung paths and deep cut lanes, the field
struggled in a parallel string close above. Two miles of this
work, with little to guide us except the influence of example,
and we emerge on to a grassy knoll with the sea almost sheer
below. What is that boat, pulling hard after a brown speck in
the still water — two other boats racing up at an angle ? To the
new comer they represent nothing ; but much to the experienced
eyes of the sporting yeoman who have guided us hither. The
stag has taken to the sea — little thinking, as he dares his pur-
suers to a swim, how fatally handicapped is he, nor counting on
the fell allies which boat and oar bring to the only enemies he
I
THE WILD STAG ON EX MOOR. 233
knew. Hard indeed to be swooped npon by these sea-vultures,
when fighting already an uphill battle against odds. But ho
will not give in yet. Turning shore wards he strikes out des-
perately for the breakers, whence are already issuing a dozen
couple of gleaming heads — with tongues more noisy now than
they were ever heard from heather and wood. Up through the
quiet height rises every cry of hound, every cheer of the com-
peting oarsmen, as plain to the groups on the cliff as though
30 feet, not 1300, intervened between the latter and the exciting
(not gladdening) scene below. Now he doubles as they near
him, heads once more for the sea, and gains two boats' lengths
an the unavailing fight. Again the leading boat is on him ;
again bow rises to fling the noose ; and again a quick turn
scores against the thrower. The white heads of the hounds dot
the sea in the wake of the boats, as all three crews now close for
an effort, and from three sides dart upon the hapless beast. It
needs not the shouts of the captors to tell they have conquered ;
nor can one feel a spark of pleasure that so grand an animal has
fallen in a manner little befitting his powers or his proper destiny.
However, he took the sea, as Reynard goes to ground : and
either meets with little sympathy or indulgence, on seeking so
mistaken a refuge. Secured by a rope round his horns the stag
was hauled ashore. The huntsman proposed to keep him to
turn down before the young pack ; but it was decided that veni-
son should be his future state — and venison, accordingly, he
became (a form of expression which must be allowed to take the
place of further detail ; for, remember, this was no exciting
finish to a long chase, when the softest-hearted of sportsmen is
bloodthirsty and unsparing, but a matter of business-like
expediency such as appeals not to the amateur). He was a
splendid stag of thirteen points — his weight, moreover, being
something enormous, and possibly accounting in some degree
for the aversion he displayed to facing the open.
234 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
THE QU AN TUCKS.
The Quantock hills, by force of custom, yearly demand a
couple of days of staghunting, early in the season. Accordingly
Mr. Bisset the following week took his new pack from the
Exford kennels to his own place, Bagboro', situated at the foot
of these hills, on the slopes of which he has considerable
coverts. The Quantocks are little more than a lofty isolated
ridge some twenty miles eastward of Exmoor Forest and
running at right angles to the coast. Heather as rich as is to-
be found on Brendon or Dunkerry crowns their summit ; woods
as dense and game-enticing as Culbone or Cloutsham fill their
wide combes and clothe their steep sides. But the Quantocks
are limited in length and still more limited in breadth. A stag
may run their whole extent, and be killed in the sea in half
a dozen miles — while the crowd rides along the upper ridge
and anticipates his course from point to point. In fact, as
said the oldest sportsman of the west (and all who hunt here
must know whom I take the liberty of quoting), " A quiet trot
along the top will probably show you all the run." It may
happen indeed as it did on this Monday, that the deer takes to
the vale and the " enclosures " (as the impracticable fields and
fences of Somerset are aptly termed) ; and then your trust
must be put in roads and gateways, of which there are happily
plenty. And so the Quantocks are not held in high favour by
true staghunters as a body, nor, I imagine, by the master in
particular. But at least they commend themselves to the
notice of the overflowing energy of Taunton, Bridgewater, and
their environs ; and on the occasion of Quantock Farm being-
advertised, there is as much stir in the neighbourhood, as when
Cloutsham calls out all the picnic populace within reach of
Exmoor. So, on horse, foot and in carriage all within twenty
miles betake themselves, luncheons, wives, and other belongings,
to the summit of the Quantocks — there to feast, to shout, and
to make staghunting a right royal sport. The longer the
tufting, the better for them ; for, if the meet be at 10.45 A.M.,
THE QUANTOCKS. 2-T>
cannot these worthy citizens ride about till the unaccustomed
exercise renders the saddle uncomfortable ? Can they then not
lunch till two P.M., and toast " staghunting " till three? After
this, a race or two along the heath road — in which pleasant
sport a most practical instance of the inability of speed, as
produced by single horse power, to overcome an inert mass as
represented by a gigful of screaming women, come vividiy
under notice. Then a return to the commissariat department
to recruit exhausted nature ; and the worthy burgesses are
ready for anything.
But, over and above the opportunity for the study of human
nature under its freest and liveliest aspect, the Quantocks
have another compensating virtue, in the shape of scenery
wondrously beautiful. Descriptions of scenery at least from
an ordinary pen, of necessity read dull and flat — if ever they
are read at all. For my part I generally skip them ; and I
expect my readers to treat me in the same way. But the
salient points of the landscape are often necessary to the argu-
ment of the play ; and, with no regard to scenic effect, must
yet be sketched in broad outline. On the topmost ridge, then,
there is a double view — east and west. Each picture has the
same immediate foreground — knots of horsemen, and men off
their horses, round well occupied and well-victualled carriages.
The eastern view gives the lovely fertile vale of Bridgewater
flanked by the waters of the Channel in the distance — black
under lowering rainclouds, nearer in, red as rusty iron with the
silting of the hills from the late storms. West and south-west
lies the similarly beautiful vale of Taunton — the half-gathered
corn crops now wasting under the continued rain, while
the square of bright green turnips revel in the invigorating
moisture. (Weather cannot suit all his products, or Farmer
Giles might be left without his grievance.) The heights of
Brendon and the lofty head of Dunkerry to-day were lost in the
sooty vapour, that swept across them and hurried over the dark
water to join the banks of clouds on the Welsh hills. But the
hunting grounds of Hawkcombe, and Cloutsham, and all the
236 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
woods fringing the eastern edge of Exmoor were plainly marked
under the overhanging blackness — masses of darkest green to
connect the varied colouring of the plain with the deep purple
that lost itself in the frowning heavens.
The glorious landscapes of Devon and Somerset require no
bright sun to show them to advantage. Their own lights and
shades are so vividly marked that the aid of sunshine dazzles
rather than assists the sight. The dull grey light of a cloudy
day does them better justice, preserves all outlines, but softens
tints which the glare of the sun will render almost tawdry.
The brilliant colouring of the heather, the flashing brightness
of the yellow corn, the intense depth of green of the woods,
and the mirrorlike surface of the sea, are best brought together
under the soothing influence of a dull sky. And in this respect
we have this year been continually fortunate. Often the
advantage has been bought by the discomfort of a wet skin ;
but a wet skin is seldom harmful under exercise ; and the price
has not been a heavy one for such pictures of nature as have
been daily spread before us.
So the Master goes to the Quantocks to fulfil a duty : the
field go there to feast upon the scenery — and upon other more
portable luxuries. Scenery, however, is the chief reward of the
trip ; and most of the staghunters look forward impatiently to the
return of the hounds to Exford. For sport can no more subsist
on scenery, than matrimony on love — a point which a man of
the world once put in the following forcible way. A. was a
younger brother, dependent on the elder orphan B. A. decided
that he was in love, would like to get married, and appealed to
B. " What are you going to live upon ? " said the more
practical B. "Oh, I never thought of that ! " replied A.
"Well, then," rejoined B. in a style of diction peculiar to him-
self, " the sooner you think of it the better ! Love's a blessed
good thing, but it won't find you a bottle of pop when you want
one, or a gig horse either ! So don't let me hear any more of
your nonsense ! " And accordingly A. is still a bachelor, and
still able to drink and drive when he may feel inclined.
Til E QUANTOCKS, 2o7
The day's doings of Friday last (August 30th), then, were
briefly as follows : Nearly the whole of the east side of the
Quantocks is covered with a chain of dwarf oak woods. In one
of the biggest of these (Ramscombe Wood, I fancy) it was
supposed that a stag was lying — but the heavy rain of the early
morning had thwarted the harbourer's later efforts, and he
could offer no certainty. For an hour or so the tufters were
drawing in vain, then they roused a stag of fine frame but
moderate horns ; hope rose high, and picnic parties paused for
a while. But moving into the deep hollows of Seven Wells
Wood he defied all efforts to dislodge him, till the afternoon
was more than half spent, and any huntsman less wiry and
determined than Arthur Heal would have been wearied. Back-
wards and forwards he dodged and twisted, often threatening
the open, but again retiring to shelter. At last some eight or
nine couple of hounds were loosed at his heels ; and in the end
he was forced away with his head to the sea, and the line of
coverts before him. The leading hounds were stopped, and the
whole body fetched from Quantock Farm and laid on while yet
scent was warm — i.e. when not more than three quarters of an
hour had elapsed. Ye gods, what would a Leicestershire hunts-
man give for such a scent as that? Why, he need never lose
a fox I and might wash his hands in blood till even his
huntsman's love, for slaughter was satisfied! The new pack
were not altogether at home at starting. The high heather and
still higher oak-shrub bothered them no little. But Arthur
pushed them along the line for an hour, through combe and
over hill till he had to abandon pursuit in the deep glens above
Holford. How we rode the hill top, or struggled through the
brushwood in his wake, it will not interest to tell. One result
of the day was that the determination was registered in more
than one instance to await another week and a return to
Exmoor.
And yet on Monday next (Sept. 2) the new pack were at last
blooded — and from the Quantocks. Two stags were roused
from Buncombe Hill, near the Master's residence, within the
238 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
first few minutes of drawing. One of these went away un-
pursued — in bis course taking a turn over the railway, and
running the gauntlet down the platform of one of the stations
on the line. The other was a heavy old stag with a single
antler. From where the field stood he could be viewed making
bis way over the enclosures below ; and soon the pack were
moving after him, while following sportsmen made their way by
means of gates and roads. A point of some half a dozen miles
was run in an hour and forty minutes ; a fallow deer chopped on
the way, and the bigger animal killed five minutes afterwards —
on the plain within a few miles of Bridgewater. The pace was
not great, but the result was satisfactory, and the long sought
object of blooding the new comers was at length attained.
That a stag should from the Quantocks descend into the
inclosures of the lower country is looked upon as a somewhat
singular occurrence.
September and early October are by no means less favourable
for a venture with the staghounds than August. On the
contrary, I am led to believe that, especially this year, better
sport is likely to happen in the second than in the first month
of hunting. Both deer and hounds will be more capable of
putting forth their full powers. The former will no longer
have their horns in velvet ; but will have recovered all their
natural vigour, and be more ready to run than when first
disturbed in the heat of August. The latter will have gained
not only improved condition, but, in the case of the young-
pack, experience of what they are called upon to perform.
Moreover, there will be more for the visitor to do during the
coming weeks than hitherto. The staghounds meet, as a rule,
but twice a week. Now, two days' occupation, as against five
of thorough idleness, is a proportion not all suited to the
taste of a man of vigorous habit. And I defy the author of
all mischief himself to suggest employ for so many surplus
hours, if his ground be limited to any one of these quiet
watering places.
In my opinion he has long ago been completely ennuyed
THE nl'ANTOCKS. 239
away, and betaken himself to more fashionable fields. The
scribbler of course has his occupation, and must be, or
may be, a hermit ex officio. But even he has his readers to
consider, and must not quite trample their patience under-
foot. For my part, I consider two days' hunting a week is only
just enough to make }'ou want more; and tends only to whet
your appetite, and render you restless and idle on the off days.
I am tired of picking shells and I never cared about picking-
shrimps. I forgot to bring down a gun, or possibly I might
have been caught poaching a rabbit. There are said to be
trout in the West Country ; but none of them stray near this
seagirt hamlet. Indeed, for lack of more exhilarating occupation,
most of my many spare hours are spent in a loose box — there to
study at leisure a splendid instance of the incisive power of
Somerset stone, as used by the natives in revetting their hedge-
banks. The subject is my best horse (we always say it is " our
best " ), who in letting himself quietly down (as any sensible
animal would) from the top of a moorland wall, tore skin and
flesh away, almost from fetlock to hock. I mention this (the
result of the single risk to which your careful correspondent
has exposed himself) solely in the hopes of deterring adven-
turous strangers from indulgence in the hazardous pleasure of
" throwing a lep," daring their sojourn in the West. The
prudent principle of "going round/' is here exemplified with
clearest force. The delight of a jump has no place among the
attributes of the Chase of the Wild Stag. Thus, the horse for
this country may be built on totally different lines from such as
are wont to catch the foxhunting eye. As Capri Bianco is the
wine for South Italy, while in Sicily you swallow Marsala with
gusto, so the Somersetshire horse is the nag for Exmoor. His
shoulders are short, his appearance is mean, but his manners
are excellent. " Stuggy " and sturdy, he may have the blood of
Katerfelto ; but he shows it rather in his powers of endurance
and bottom than in comeliness of shape or refinement of appear-
ance. But he can hustle through the heather, slide down
precipitous declivities, clamber out of rough combes all day,
240 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and perhaps make himself very comfortable in a grass field all
night.
One more word (don't snap your watches so loud, pleaser
beloved hearers) to those who, like myself, come down thus to a
" strange countrie " and a novel sport. Besides making your
railway journey a delight by aid of the pages of Katerfelto, arm
yourself for thorough, and most pleasant, study with Collyns'
" Chase of the Wild Red Deer " (Longman and Co.). You will
then start with all the knowledge that anything but actual
experience can give you, and enter upon a new field better
posted than was he who now proffers the impertinence of advice
unasked.
The Wild Stag on Exmoor will require horses enough for two
days a week, perhaps five days a fortnight. And in August you
may, indeed must, accordingly limit your amusement to these
days, while your stud may best be fixed at a couple of strong-
backed horses and a pony. The pony will carry you to covert
and take you to see the tufting ; while your horse each day may
be left where the pack are kennelled, and will afterwards show
you as much of the sport as immunity from accident and your
own luck and prowess will allow.
In September and October you may extend your stable,,
stretch your purse, and throw away the cigar of idleness. For,
if time be an object only to be got rid of as pleasantly as can
be, the saddle may be your base of operations daily, and the
process carried out, under a variety of scene — and with a
constancy of appetite that can compete with Exmoor mutton
six times a week. The Stars of the West are out on the hills
on two days, and Mr. Snow will show you how a heath fox can
be rolled over in forty minutes, with every accompaniment of
music and a dashing head. Mr. Froude Belle w will tempt you
from your bed to display the powers of the Dulverton pack to
work their fox to death without interference. Mr. Luttrell
will hunt the worshipful animal twice a week round Minehead ;.
while if you are not above galloping to eighteen-inch hounds
after a stout moorland hare, Mr. Chorley will invite you to
THE QUANTOCKS. 241
ride with him round Dunkerry, or Mr. Clarke will give you a
spin on North Hill. So every day may be filled up : and time
need hang no heavier than your debts. There are sportsmen
who languish between the early grouse and Kirby Gate, who do
not shoot in Norfolk nor attend Newmarket, who hate Brighton
and have no soul for Scarborough, but who would gladly leap to
boot and saddle, months before November. Let these come
down to Devon and Somerset, leave foxhunting out of thought
and out of comparison, and try the wild staghunting as (to
them) a novel sport, an art and practice of itself, as, in fact, a
separate science to be studied. Let them divest themselves of
the idea that it has anything in common with a burst after
the fox — save in the note of the horn and the breed of the
hounds. They will see something of venery quite different to
what has fallen to their lot before ; and they will see it with
the happiest accessories of nature and landscape.
My acquaintance with Exmoor, with its inhabitants (or
rather, its neighbours, for there are not even gipsies on the
Forest now) and with its visitors, has necessarily been a brief
one. And so any attempt at naming them must of course be
incomplete. Yet, though by no means amounting to a full list,
the following few names, of men prominent in the Hunc, will
be found not altogether inaccurate.
Among the leading local residents, or subscribers, or both,
are Lord Fortescue (whose two sons are more often in the field) ;
Sir Thomas Acland ; the Rev. J. Russell (known to all the
sporting world, and knowing as much of sport as can well be
learned in fourscore years and odd) ; Sir Alexander Hood of
Audry and Mr. Carew of Crowcombe (both of whom have good
coverts at the Quantocks) ; Mr. Knight, Mr. and Mrs. Froude
Bellew ; Mrs. Rowcliffe, Mrs. Lock-Roe, Miss Leslie, Mr.
Luttrell of Dunster and his sons, Messrs. W. Karslake,
Daniell of Stoodley, Doddington, Bouverie, Norman of Luc-
combe, Hancock of Wiveliscombe, Dr. Collins of Dulverton,
Mr. Battersby, Messrs. Glasse, Capt. Luttrell, &c.
And of the visitors, so far, Mr. and Mrs. Granville-Somerset,
242 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Lord Rock Savage, Messrs. Bolden, Codrington, Blagrave, and
Sperling (all at Minehead), Hon. J. Trollope and Mr. Horsey at
Dunster ; Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, Col. Festing, Miss Festing, and
two young sportsmen of high promise ; Col. Williams, R.H.A.,.
from Exeter ; Mr. and Mrs. Warren, Mr. and Mrs. Baker,.
Mr. and Mrs. Turner at Lynmouth, Dr. and Mr. Budd at
Linton, Rev. Tothill, Mr. Foster Melliar from Oxfordshire,
Messrs. Allen and Lindham at Porlock Weir, Dr. Bassett, &c.
The yeomen of the neighbourhood are nobly headed by Mr.
Nicholas Snow of Oare, who, while holding some 3,000 acres-
of land of his own and keeping a pack of foxhounds, takes pride
in maintaining all the traditions and style of an honoured class.
And in this and in prowess with hounds he is fully followed by
Messrs. Chorley (of Quarme), Joyce (of Timberscombe) and
Walter Snow. Mr. Halse is, perhaps, the greatest authority in
the Hunt on all matters connected with the chase of the stag.
Mr. Parramore has also a great reputation with hounds ; and
no unwortlry names are those of Messrs. Baker, Clarke, Rawle,.
Lyddon, Burston, Birmingham, Lovelace and Risden — I wish I
knew more of those through whose energetic goodwill stag-
hunting is chiefly maintained.
Yard Down was the meet of Tuesday, August 10th, and Yard
Down is to Barnstaple much what Cloutsham is to Minehead, or
Quantock Farm to Taunton. But unlike the other two, Yard
Down is a fixture more associated with good sport than almost
any in the Hunt. Three years previously, from a meet at Yard
Down, and a find from Molland Wood, they scored a run that
will be talked about as long as staghunting survives on Exmoor..
Eighteen miles they galloped from point to point, in an hour
and fifty minutes — killing their stag under Cloutsham, and five
horses on the way. Only half a dozen men were still up with
hounds when they brought their deer to bay — Mr. Karslake
carrying off the chief honours of the run, while Mr. Snow of
Oare and Mr. Parramore did themselves almost equal credit.
Curiously enough, only the week before this event, another stag
had brought them a like route, in the converse direction —
THE QUANTOCKS. 243
crossing the moor westward and dying close to Yard Down.
Such are runs of which we hear — and such we hoped (alas !)
to see to-day. To watch a stag hunted to death through brake
and coppice, gullies and streams, roads and cramped country, is
a sight, and a study, interesting of itself and peculiar in scene
and feature. But the good bold gallop over the forest is the
western staghunter's hope, the object for which he cheerfully
jogs his five-and-twenty miles to covert. It is this that he
will tell of as a type of his country's favoured sport ; and his
cheek will glow as in description he carries you for two hours
over the brushing heather. But he speaks of a rough road-
and-covert hunt without enthusiasm ; sighs over the glories of
the past, and condoles with you that the present should offer
samples so inadequate.
To-day was by no means without its incident, though wanting
in the special event with which we had hoped to connect it.
Stags were roused, a stag was run, and a stag was "pulled down
in the open " — by no means a common occurrence with an
animal that usually awaits the huntsman's knife in the water.
Yard Down is, to all appearance, represented only by a farm-
house, situated just below the extreme south-western edge of
the Forest of Exmoor — some nine miles, as the crow would flv,
to the south of Linton and Lyn mouth, and about the same to
the east of Barnstaple. From Lynmouth the road first winds
upwards through a lovely wood (to-day fresh and dripping from
last night's rain, and now gleaming in every leaf under the
brilliant sunshine) ; then, leaving the brawling trout stream
behind it, breaks at once on to wide-stretching moorland, bare of
heather here, but boasting of a soft covering of coarse, and
fairly firm, turf. So on past Mole, which tradition assigns as
the bog in which a man and horse were swallowed, to be found
perfectly preserved in death fifty years afterwards. And of
course tradition must always be held true, or how would any
history fare ?
You can't quite travel as the crow (though the ill-luck which
has so persistently accompanied your presence with the Devon
r a
244 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and Somerset might fairly stamp you as a bird of ill-omen), so
your ride is a hot twelve miles before you reach the meet — just
in time to drop into the stream of horsemen and vehicles now
pouring off down the lane after the moving pack. Mr. Joyce's
■figure is prominent to all who will see it as they should do — as
he stands in the roadway with his Deer Damage bag out-
stretched. Mr. Russell, a few hundred yards further on, is
collecting shillings for some similar object. It is worth more
than a shilling to see him any morning ; so, very few men are
likely to grudge the contribution. The lane is only just wide
enough for a waggonette, of which there are plenty, and not
nearly wide enough for kickers, of which there are many more.
Every other horse seems to be a colt just bridled ; and, as the
lane is, westcountry-fashion, burrowed out from the adjoining
level, the high banks effectually bar the timid stranger's escape.
Soon, happily, an open gateway shows a grass field, wherein the
bulk of the cavalcade proceed at once to bivouac. It is only a
mile from the covert, 'tis true : and of that covert they can see
nothing ! But, hush ! we are not telling of a fox-hunting
scene on a cold winter's morn in the Midlands. They manage
these things better on a sunny day's staghunting in the West —
and there are sweet spirits and kindly hands in those waggon-
ettes that will yet render grateful help to the weaiy sportsman,
and raise him to bear the heat and burden of the day.
On either side of a narrow valley, through which rattles one
of the many moorland streamlets, is Molland Wood. The pack
are stabled close at hand ; but the first half-hour's tufting (the
most critical time of all, as testing the success of the harbourer's
work) passes in silence. So does another hour, when hope,
almost ebbed out, found new life in the sound of an opening
hound — only to be roughly extinguished when, five minutes
later, a hind breaks through a delighted, screaming, crowd of
footpeople on the opposite hill. Molland Wood can furnish
nothing more, and at two o'clock a move is made to another
wooded valley, Gratton by name. A stag of fabulous size and
age is said to be harboured here ; and fervent prayers are
THE QUAXTOCKS. 245
loudly expressed that not he, but some lighter and more gallop-
ing deer, maybe found. So far, wishes are to be realised. Ten
minutes has not elapsed ere note of hound and horn proclaim
a find ; and almost at once there issues a flyiug deer, nimble of
limb and light of body, breaking upwards in the desired direc-
tion of the Forest. He cannot quite face a knot of a hundred
horsemen; so rounding the old ruined mansion of Lydcote Hall
(the birthplace of Amy Ilobsart) he again makes his point over
the enclosures beyond. For a long distance he can be seen
bounding over the fields, leaving each huge wall and bank easily
behind. " He's going straight for the Moor, with only one little
covert before him ! " " Surely we must ride over the Forest
to-day ! " And hope and aspirations, long suppressed and pent
up, make men almost quiver in their saddles. Twenty minutes
waiting fcr hounds may be nothing in staghunting. It would
kill us at Crick or the Coplow. To some at least it seems an
age noiv, before Arthur appears with the scanty remnant pack
(not more than eleven couple in all) — the fierce old veterans of
years of successful chase, small in number now, but giants in
prowess ; strong as mastiffs, tenacious as bulldogs, and staunch
as bloodhounds.
Work has given them back all the vigour wasted in their long-
confinement ; and they show out to-day in far superior form
to that of the earlier hunting. They go into the scent with a
rush and determination that I have not seen with the deer
before ; and they own it — not with a noisy cry, but with a
note that, if subdued and under the breath, is fiercely earnest.
Through a few inclosures, and then into the wooded basin of
Whaddifell, already studded round with groups, who according
to their custom, have, some minutes ago, hurried off to a point.
Not one stag, but two (a panting rustic avers there were three)
have entered the wood — Now the tale becomes pitiful, and tear-
fully we ask for sympathy. A stag had gone on over Exmoor,
— before him nothing of refuge within a dozen miles, save a pass-
ing bath in Badgworthy Water. Hounds are at fault for a
minute or two — time enough for at least a score of proffered
246 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
opinions to be thrust into the huntsman's ears (ears that should
be, and, it is to be hoped, are, at such a moment deaf as door-
posts, to everything but absolute and tangible information, on
which to frame action decisive and untrammeled). At length
the pack are laid on to a track entering the wood — as fate
would have it, not the track of the forward deer. This line leads
them back to Molland Wood, men following under the weight
of crushed hope and pungent disappointment. Through wood-
land ride and deep-cut lane, by riverside and marshy meadow —
instead of over the free wide common and the rich deep heather
— we follow for an hour and a half, under the blazing heat of
a sun that is little like that of an English September. The
stag must have felt the sunshine even more ; for the course of
his last half hour is never a hundred yards from the River
Bray — hounds hunting him with a tenacity that leaves him
no chance. By Castle Hill he follows the stream till it runs
under the railway ; leaves the water, in view ; and, with the pack
rushing in for blood, struggles up the embankment of the line.
On the railway they are round him in a moment. He turns
for a last effort, and breaks through them on to the viaduct.
But like wolves they fasten on him from head to haunch.
Two, bolder than the rest, have him by the throat. With, a
mighty struggle he shakes them off, with what strength is left
drives his antlers upon them, and rolls them howling across
the rails. But his race is run, his life is all but gone. With
their very weight the huge hounds bear him down, the knife
is at his throat, the pack is whipped off, his carcase hurried
off the metals — and in a moment a train rushes screaming
over the spot of the death struggle. So nearly does Mr. Bisset
lose the few of his old favourites still left him after last season's
misfortune.
It was a young stag that died. " Not more than four years
old" — so said the experts who proclaimed him to have but " two
on top on one side, none on the other, and no bray." And he
died quickly for so young a deer. But the da}r was intensely
hot ; and he was fat to a degree altogether unbecoming to youth ;
THE QUANTOCKS. 247
though his haunches should bedeck a table none the worse for
this reproach, and certainly the hounds fell to with no less gusto,
■on the portion assigned as their share.
An honest thirty miles ride home — not at all an uncommon
•distance in connection with the wild stag, either, oh ye men of
Melton ! — was the lot of your humble servant. The moon was
shining brightly over the heads of the dark and ghostly combes
■of Cutcombe ; to help him home. But, again, when it lit up
the watch from a still dinnerless waistcoat, and told that ten
o'clock was past he ceased to wonder that staghunting should be
•entwined so intimately with heavy outdoor luncheon — and he
ilaid his head on his pillow that night to dream of " Foxhunting,
God bless it."
ROEBUCK SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF
THE BHINE.
I.
Roebuck-calling, or roebuck-poaching, would be an equally
applicable term to apply to this curious, legitimised, sport.
Many queer methods of killing game have I witnessed and
shared in, from my youth up — from tickling trout to angling
for albatross, from tiger-netting to deer-shooting by torchlight.
Now I have lived to shoot roebuck to the call ; have been
immensely interested in the pursuit, and consider I have taken
part in a phase of sport about as justifiable as shooting a fox —
a form of murder I have never yet been able to bring myself
to, even in countries where poor reynard is as vermin as a
wild cat.
My basis of operations was Baden Baden. Now, Baden,
though a lovely resort — where the sun and the flowers are
always bright, the leaves always green and the shade always.
cool — where music fills up half the day, and is apparently
sufficient for all the remaiuing energies of those who bathe,
of those who come newly married, and of those to whom
promenade and pretty frocks are life — yet Baden, with all its
charms, is apt to pall upon a man of active habit and tolerably
sound body. There is no polo, no cricket — yes, there is lawn
tennis, and there is trout fishing. It would seem a hopeless,
not to say senseless, task to inquire after shooting in the
month of July. But I made the inquiry nevertheless — en-
couraged by the sight of venison at the table d'hote ; and, as
usual in such cases, made it in various directions before I
ROEBUCK SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE. 240
could strike information of any value. At length I was sent
by a kind acquaintance with a letter in hand to the man
really in authority over the public shooting land. All was-
plain sailing now. It was arranged for me that two days-
hence I was to put myself under the guidance of a head-
forester, and was to be taken forth with a view to slaying
roebuck. Meanwhile, I had to "rustle up" a gun (smooth
16 bore, and cartridges of No. 3 shot the gunmaker insisted),.
I had also to obtain a ten-mark permit from the Kur-saal
(which seemed to me very much akin to applying at the
Trocadero or the Empire for a game-license), and I had
further to attend at the police-office armed with another
twenty marks — of which I was disarmed after an hour's dumb
confinement with an official who made notes on the colour
of my eyes, the tint of my remainder hair, on my length of
limb and my measurement of figure.
Observe me, then, at one o'clock on the day in question (a
very hot day it was) seated in a landau — for Baden Baden
descends not to cabs or suchlike vulgar vehicles ; landaux-
and-pair, with liveried coachmen, being its only stage carriages.
Starting thus for a shoot — and a very problematical shoot,
too, I feared — I was in doubt whether my position was more
that of a prince-imperial going forth to a regal chasse or
that of my countryman 'Arry setting out for Epping Forest
on the Monday of Easter. No, there was too much state
about it for the latter. The hotel porter swept his goldlaced
cap to the ground, the proprietor gave me his blessing and
blandest smile as he bowed me into the carriage, and the
waiters, while lifting a hamper on to the box, flung at me
all such sweet expressions of good wishes and congratulation
as they could put into English. Oh, the start was deliciously
" chalk." It was a dream for a cowboy of an " English-lord
a setting out hunting."
I then picked up the oberjager (if you don't speak German
I'll help you — that's an upper hunter, and should be spelled
with two dots over the a) : and a grim, warlike looking old
"250 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
sportsman he was, clad in a brown cotton cloth suit, suited
to woods and weather, while I was arrayed in cockneydom's
gayest tweed — having ample and snowy cuffs protruding from,
•and stiffly starched collar surmounting, an attire that wholly
precluded any possible presumption of sporting proclivities.
It is not many years since I nearly drew the contents of a
Winchester upon me by means of similar incongruity of cos-
tume. Descending direct from civilisation and a trans-Con-
tinental train, I struck 200 miles across the prairie to seek
an outlying ranche with a view to stock buying ; and on nearing
it called suddenly at a solitary cabin to enquire the way.
The noble proprietor saw us coming, made sure that no one
but the sheriff and his men would be abroad on the prairie
wearing " biled rags," ran for his gun, and a moment later
was covering us through the half closed door !
For company when after the roebuck I had been fortunate
■enough to secure the society of a young German friend, who,
besides breaking up the tete-a-tete between myself and my
guide and counsellor (with whom the only means of direct
communication one with another would have been French of
the most indifferent quality) was able to extract information
from the old man's not very discursive lips in answer to
various queries as to the country and its game resources.
The drive of ten or a dozen miles was not altogether un-
interesting. Harvest was in full swing; and the method of
farming and manner of harvesting were both to be studied.
Peasant-proprietorship is the system of the Duclry of Baden;
■and apparently satisfactory enough in its working. Poverty
and distress are almost unknown, and the land is farmed to the
best purpose — each man with his household cultivating no
more than he and they can manage properly. Be it re-
membered, however, that these are industrious and frugal
•Germans, and that this is some of the most fruitful soil in
■Germany. They put not too many eggs in one basket, these
•careful Teutons. On their holdings a strip of wheat runs along-
side an acre of potatoes ; half a dozen rows of hops grow side by
ROEBUCK SHOOTIXG ON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE. 251
side with a patch of tomatoes ; and so on. The corn yield of
the present year was said to be in excess of any for thirty years
past ; and they were busy, the man and his wife and the girls,
getting it carried off with all expedition, mostly by ox, or rather
•cow-drays — the bright, healthy faces of the girls peeping out
from the clean kerchiefs that bound their heads, and the milk-
ing cows and heifers taking their turn in yoke and collar. The
most prevalent and to all appearance the most natural and
•comfortable manner of harnessing the sleek kine (they are of a
high-bred Guernsey-like type) is to attach the weight they are
to draw to brow-bands below their horns, so that they push, as
it were, with their foreheads. But custom seems to vary very
much. This is also the plan by which the heavy timber is
■drawn by cows and oxen from the Black Forest. Collars and
the more familiar wooden yoke are almost as commonly used.
And under the hot sun a cloth often covers each of the cattle
to protect them from the torturing flies.
Horses there were at work also — upstanding, well bred,
horses too — more like our London hansom cabhorse than the
ordinary beast of agriculture. Some, I believe, are cavalry
•cast-offs ; but, whatever they may be, they are of a class far
.superior to any I have ever seen in the hands of peasants. As,
however, I saw not a single foal alongside the many mares at
work on farm and road, I can only conclude that the farmers of
Baden do not lay themselves out much for horsebreeding. As
there are few open grass tracts, and fences are almost unknown,
possibly they consider that young stock would be more trouble
than profit.
Excellent roads, and very little dust — a dreamy drive under
the soothing sun — and everything that was to be seen comiug
placidly in one's way without effort or exertion. Drone among
bees. A loafer among toilers. Who shall say that the
idler is the happier ? Not I. Yet Baden-Baden is an idler's
clysium — and a true elysium so long as rest is welcome, until
inactivity takes the form of aimlessness, and the sweets of
idleness cloy on the palate. Then, if laziness is not to become
252 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND FRAIRIE.
a disease, and energy is not to moulder and die, a man's whole-
desire is for object and action — and even a harvester's toil
seems an enviable and worthier lot.
Now to shake ourselves clear of inertia, now to light upon-
our feet, and enter the cool green wood, was in itself a welcome-
change — a move into action of some sort, a grip of the hand
with Nature, and a throwing off, in some degree, of burdensome-
sloth. Another forester stepped out of the shade, gun in hand,,
doffed his cap to his superior and the strangers, proffered
information or suggestion, and piloted us into the covert — a
lowlying forest of oak and beach, acacia and ash, having under-
wood of similar growth and narrow rides and glades of moist,,
green grass.
Under his direction the oberjager, leaving the others hid at
a little distance, would place me now and again in some leafy-
ambush having a space more or less clear of covert to our front,,
while he stood behind and brought his call into play. Bla-a
sounded the whistle, like a child's toy, every thirty seconds —
the old forester's cheeks expanding audibly, and your humble
servant, not without a twinge of shame at the whole process,,
standing eagerly at the " ready," with every sense alert and
every feature a prey to the hungry mosquitoes. Surely no-
battle between duty and inclination, no fight between what
one ought and what one wished to do, ever called for severer
strength of mind than this struggle between the necessity for
intense quiet and the distraction of these heartless, bloodthirsty
insects.
At times it seemed unbearable. You know it well — any
who have ever watched the jungle by moonlight, or have-
even stood at attention on parade with a fly on your nose
But bla-at he never so coaxingly, charm he never so wisely,,
and shift our ground as often as we woidd, no sign of roebuck
or of living beast (save the mocking of the jay) was forthcoming,,
while two hours stole by, and the old grenadier ejaculated with
increasing gutturalness and impatience, as he left each lair. I
lit my pipe, for the double purpose of soothing myself and
ROEBUCK SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE. 253
•quieting the mosquitoes. " No smoke," said the ancient —
finding his English for the first time.
It was useless for me to argue that if the animal would
.smell smoke he would surely smell us ; or recall travellers' tales
from other climes to persuade him into concurrence. He
would certainly neither understand nor accept such conclusion.
He was lord paramount for the day; I was his slave, and there
was nothing for it but to pocket my pride and my pipe
.together.
Now he pointed out where the object of our search had been
recently scraping and stamping under a tree ; fresh slots were
■visible all round ; and I began at last to believe that roebuck
might after all be no mere prehistoric animal as regarded
Baden. So languishing attention was sharpened up, the
swollen muscles of the face were again surrendered peacefully
to the buzzing enemies, and I stood again as watchful as a
sentry on a dangerous outpost — endeavouring with rigid neck
to look in several directions at once. Of a sudden, the re-
motest corner of my right optic jumped, as it were, to a quiet
movement just within its focus. Hitherto it had caught nothing
more than the flutter of an occasional butterfly, the flight of an
insect, or the passing of some tiny bird from bush to bush.
But instinct told that this was something better worth watch-
ing : so, without turning my head or moving a muscle, I
brought both eyes round as far as possible, and awaited de-
velopment. A second later a little red head peered round a
tree only a few yards away, a miniature pair of horns came
forward like feelers — and I deemed that the chance had surely
come. In my ignorance I had expected some answering call to
that of his supposed lady love ; but the little gallant had crept
■up in silence and stealth, and was now peering curiously round
him for the siren that had lured him. Another moment and
he would be clear of covert and at my mercy. Moreover, apart
from the savage instinct of killing, I was anxious for further
acquaintance. But the curtain was suddenly pulled down by
another hand. The old shikari behind me, either distrustful of
25*
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
my alertness or of my experience, or else himself carried away
by excitement, poked me sharply in the ribs while assailing my
ear with a fierce stage whisper. Round came the roebuck, and
I with equal celerity — his movement prompted by alarm, mine
by anger. For a moment I knew not whether to laugh or to
swear. The roebuck might 50 where he liked. I would take
no snap shot when thus robbed of a certainty. So away he-
went, barking loudly his defiance and fear — while having re-
lieved myself of a single very deep one, I laughed heartily in
the chagrined face of my over-zealous mentor.
II.
Ten minutes' rest, and a solacing pipe, after the catastrophe-
mentioned in the previous article. Then, working onwards by-
many a leafy retreat, the call sounding ever in vain, we-
suddenly issued on to the bank of the Rhine — the blue waters
flowing briskly at our feet, as we stood on its stone bound
ROEBUCK SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE. 255'
towing path. A bathe was very tempting, and the cool water
sorely enticing. But the stream ran faster than a lame man
could walk. How then could he hope to swim, except whither
it might choose to carry ? So we drank and turned away — a
covey of pheasants, with heads erect above the grass, running
back into the low jungle as we passed on. Though late in the
afternoon, the summer sun was blazing terrifically ; and the
green woods — with all their mosquitoes — were preferable to the
glare and heat outside. By this time my old shikari and I had
both fairly recovered ourselves — and if we still thirsted for-
blood, it was not for that of each other. Working back towards-
the village wherein our trap had harboured, we sounded every
glen, and set the call going about ever}'' quarter of a mile.
At length we took up position at the junction of two narrow
grass-carpeted glades ; and from the shelter of a straggling
bush kept watch as before. Bla'a went the lamblike whistle :
gurgle went the old hunter's cheeks ; while round our twitching
faces the mosquitoes played waltz and hymn (they seem to-
hum any tune your fancy of the moment may suggest). The
afternoon was closing in ; no response had come to the forester's
monotonous plaint ; and the chances all pointed to returning
home empty save of recrimination and of an opportunity thrown
away. Still, patience had by this time become almost a habit,
and expectancy our natural state : so we were no whit surprised
or startled when a roebuck burst into view and came fairly
dancing down the glade. Bright, perky and happy the little
fellow looked — as dapper and self-confident as the Favourite
(the dandy in doublet and hose of the well-known pictui'e). It
was a sin to pull trigger against such beauty and life. But as
well ask the butcher to stay his knife from the lamb, or the
srentle fisherman to withhold his instrument of torture from the
speckled trout. The deed had to be done — for we had come
forth to do it. As the showy little gallant cantered to within
thirty yards, he met the shot full face ; and, blundering on
rolled over to the second barrel. The work of cleaning and
packing was achieved in neatest form by an under-forester — to
256 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
■whom fell the liver, in Scotland held to be the titbit of a roe.
The rest of the animal by no means becomes the property of
the shooter. His only perquisites are the horns and an inch or
ttwo of skull as trophy. He has the proud privilege of buying
his game, if he choose : if he does not, it is sold piecemeal for
the benefit of the poor.
Now for the hotel-hamper, for a supper washed down by the
wine of the country, and for home. Every village in the duchy
•of Baden has its clean hostelry and its very drinkable wine.
Could you but transport thither the tea-house moosmies of
Japan to infuse merriment and picturesqueness into the scene —
bah ! as well say, could you but make a sausage into a vol-au-
vent. Baden, with all its charms, is not the land of the Holy
Mountain. Grandly beautiful, though, it looked in the setting
-sun — as the red orb dipped behind the Vosges Mountains, and
the queen of night at the same moment rose clear and round
.above the dark brows of the Black Forest ranges ahead.
Comfortably and contentedly we drove back in the cool
•evening — across the half-harvested plain, and past cart after
•cart laden sky-high with golden grain and laughing peasant
girls. The fair ladies (save the mark — but bless their jolly
faces) seemed by no means worn or depressed by the work of
the day ; and the gay young Teuton beside me got many a
joyous response to his gallant sallies, while I perforce lolled
back in dumb propriety.
To have seen the sport was something — might have been
•enough (for, after all, was it quite an orthodox and honest
ianethod of game-killing ?) But 'twould have been rank ex-
travagance to have rested content, now that the piper was paid,
.and one was still bidden to dance. Besides, however much
one's fastidious soul might rebel against the method, there was
at least this to be said in its favour, that the victims were only
•of the superfluous sex. No need of " 'Ware doe," or whatever
may be its synonym in German. Also, as one's permit-card
.said plainly, roebuck were the only game at present in season —
.and they enforce the game laws closely and fairly in Germany,
ROEBUCK SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE. 257
recognising, as the farmers of England do now with regard to
hares and rabbits, that when the wild animals become public
property they soon cease to exist either for food or for sport.
The next occasion was arranged with a view to an early start,
a whole day's outing, and, possibly, a larger hamper. We left
the town while the morning was yet cool : and an hour's drive
put us as far on our way as Rastatt, a Prussian fort and depot.
The great drill ground on the plain was covered, as we ap-
proached, with dark, moving masses presenting at a distance
all the appearance of great flocks of wild-duck upon a lagoon.
As we neared the fortress a regiment was just returning from
its morning work, and we pulled up at the ci'oss roads as if to
take the salute. In heaviest marching order they came past in
fours — equipped in every respect as if on a campaign. They
had been exercising, it was said, since daylight ; and now it was
after nine o'clock. Small wonder they did not look " smart " —
even when called to " attention " on approaching the drawbridge.
Indeed any of our regiments of volunteers, having colonel and
adjutant worth their salt, would — supposing their stamina stood
them — have put the Prussians to shame in their marching.
With the latter, rigid drill had evidently given place to loose-
order and go-as-you-please ; and, beyond sloping their arms
uniformly, they made no attempt to pull themselves together
"as if" — to quote a sergeant-major's rousing appeal — "they
had a sovereign apiece in their pockets." If my soldiering were
to come again, I would crave no such playful schooling as four
hours' battalion drill in complete marching order, under a kill-
ing sun and a murderous black helmet (the most cruel headgear
I ever saw carried). It gave one a headache to look at them.
Handicapped even thus, these boyish Germans were rosy and
vigorous as the youth of the harvest field — probably their elder-
brethren emancipated — for the rank and file of these warriors
were very, very young. Is it all mere play, I wonder ? The
frontier garrisons, I am told, are kept at it vigorously and in-
cessantly, as if war with France were already declared. Route-
marching by moonlight, gun drill and infantry drill daily for as
s
258 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
many hours as the human frame can stand (even if the commis-
sariat be up to all requirements) — these are the portion of the
great Prussian force that lies between Metz and Strasburg : till
men and officers alike are worn almost to death, and are longing
for the war that they are taught to consider at hand.
For ourselves — again reaching a wood, again a forester stepped
quietly from behind a tree (as is their wont on all sorts of un-
expected occasions when men are carrying a gun or whipping a
stream). As a matter of course, in reply to his chief, he knew
of the whereabouts of roebuck — three or four, and one a monster.
But these roebuck had apparently moved out of hearing. We
toiled all morning, but attracted nothing save the mosquitoes,
whose " white wings never grew weary " of hovering round us
in clouds. So, when one o'clock came, we moved to a village ;
and did our duty upon cold chicken and Rheinwein (there is no
trouble in becoming a linguist when two languages assimilate
so comfortably). The foresters preferred beer, and required a
lengthier rest afterwards. But bv three o'clock we were cat-
calling again ; and an hour later we had our first find of the
day. Again it was prefaced by many obvious signs of the buck
having pawed and stamped under the tree shade — leading one
to suppose (1) that roebuck are not so plentiful in the woods as
they would have one believe ; (2) that they do not very fre-
quently and rapidly change their quarters. In fact, I should
fancy they might well be harboured more easily and correctly.
This time we must have pitched almost on his lair. At the
very first call my eye caught a movement in the covert some
seventy yards away ; at the second I could plainly make out a
red body creeping from the bushes ; and at the third I saw a
far finer buck than we had yet encountered cautiously advanc-
ing with head erect. Now he trotted forward. Now he stopped
to listen — a miniature to the life of the red stag of Exmoor,
stepping sometime leisurely from his bed. Magnificence in
miniature, indeed it was. Now in bold happy triumph he
bounded nearer, stamped as he halted, and looked about him
in confidence and expectancy. Then the murderer's turn came
ROEBUCK SHOOTING ON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE. 259
in. A front shot was offered and promptly accepted. The
bright gay countenance, the proudly antlered forehead were lost
in a smoke cloud. The fell deed again was done, for a certainty.
But a moment afterwards the old forester sprang on to a bank ;
and a barrel apiece went from us into thick jungle that we
might have bombarded for a week without reaching any object
within. The old man had a lot to say, in High Dutch and
patois — being evidently of opinion that we had bungled the
business once more. Indeed, he pulled me back as if we had
been walking upon a wounded tiger, when I pointed out a
prone but still struggling form, not ten yards from where our
game had disappeared. Then I thought he would have danced
— till with a swoop he came down upon the roebuck, and knifed
him at the back of the head as you or I would have done a
pike. " Ver' gut roe ! " he kept repeating at intervals for the
next hour. And this time he consented to act as intermediary
for my obtaining the whole head. " Five pounds of meat I
s 2
260 FOX -HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
must allow him to purchase " — which I did, and the saddle
besides. " Ver' gut roe," we agreed it was, when we ate it to
currant jelly and good company the following eve. And its
head is a pretty picture — a memo of a quaint sport and a new
experience.
GRASS COUNTRIES.
Season 1887—1888.
While the circumstance of foxhunting admits of its beino-
done to best advaotage on a polo pony, how is it possible to
promote it above the grade of cubbing ? Ride your hunters if
you will, gentlemen, and let us believe you have numberless
more, and plenty of the wherewithal besides in the supply
store at home. Huntsmen are holding to fourteen hands and
" nothing over." Masters can do all their duty on the same
standard — is not the outsider extravagant or insane who would
essay to soar higher ? A mad, fresh horse on the broken
hillocky soil of midsummer is an assured agent of mischief to
himself and his owner. A walk in the dewy morning has been
his allowance. To let him tear about with hounds is to undo
whatever good may have been put on him at home ; and may
very possibly result in the loss of his services at the time of
need and fitness. No — I will have none of it. I take m}r
turn with the unemployed. Give me rather the red flag of
Trafalgar than the banner of scarlet at Naseby. A horse a
day, mine editor, and only for looking at hounds ! County nor
Provincial bank can stand it. Another month of the same
sort, and business and pleasure shall be still further combined.
The gate-opener in pink can at all events earn his stable bill.
Newmarket, I verily believe, is a more economical place of
residence than Rugby, Weedon, or Melton, in this false and
extravagant October. At the first-named you can at least
restrict the ebullition of your fancy, and the sum you plank
upon it. At the others you are paying dead money for
excitement that has no existence, for a hazard that is struck
262 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
out of being. Horses are useless ; hounds cannot be allowed
to do anything, beyond eating a fox that won't run — and, in
fact, foxhunting is a farce, so far as the present month is
concerned. Happy ye, who so often " lose the best month of
the year " — as we put it, while you are gunning, or you are
racing.
Pytchley came to Badby Wood — on a hunting morning such
as this October has flung in our faces from the very beginning.
" Take the change out of this " — says October, day after day,
and week after week. " Blame September, and all the summer
— but for fairness sake say never a word against me. Had the
others been ready, I have been willing enough." But the
temper of the ground could be mollified by no sweet counten-
ance of air and sky. Its face is sternly set against the sport ;
and till its hard and wrinkled visage be softened and smoothed,
it will continue to ignore and repel our trifling.
Saturday, Nov. 12, was a cool, crisp, brilliant day as regards
weather, and altogether replete with the best new phases of
enjoyable Autumn. The turf had at length yielded in no
slight degree to the storms and showers of the previous week
— which had at the same time stripped the hedges and laid
bare such ditches as had retained any summer blind. There
was the gladdening presence of inoppressive sunshine, and a
soothing absence of blustering wind. Men in most instances
retained the easy, if ungraceful, garb that pertains to the
hunting of cub and red deer. So they robbed the scene of no
little of its gaiety ; and with their redcoats, had possibly left
something of their energy in silver paper at home. Else why
did hounds slip them again and so readily from Badby Wood ?
For 'tis not only in Cheshire that " we are all of us tailors
in turn," believe me. Mr. Burton, however, has kept touch of
Badby Wood for too many years to be thus easily misled.
To follow such a natural pilot should, one would think, have
been a common instinct. He would have led us all back over
the wooded brow in ample time to see Charles' cap going
briskly and his cheery scream resounding, while he laid hounds
GRASS COUNTRIES. 263
on in the grassy valley of Newnham. A timid few were
huddled at a none too stoutly barred gateway — when the whip
took it in his stride, with Mr. Pallin after him, while Mr.
Newbold Hew the well built hedge beside. A new aspect
was quickly given to the scene. Men were once more riding
fast to hounds, over grass that was fit for them and fences of
the good old pattern. But the Everdon drain, it would seem,
had been a dry eartb till the recent rain — and a well-set gallop
was nipped in its early bloom.
Now I will venture on a bit of hearsay — as I have it,
and with full permission from the mouth of my intimate who
waited while the terrier was at work. Well, he had a very big
cigar alight — much bigger than he usually smokes even after
dinner. But he meant to do his duty by it, and he had
worked conscientiously to within an inch of his lips, when a
banging great fox with wet brush like a heavy mop, ran almost
between his legs. " Up you get, guv'nor ! " urged a keen
farmer — himself already seated for action. " Jump on, man,
dang it ! There'll be a rare jam at the gate." So my friend
Jenkins * — withal he is a careful, not to say needy, man —
dropped the burning fragment, and scrambled breathlessly into
his roomy saddle. The old horse had nearly finished his nap,
and while Jenkins smoked was solacing himself with a chew
from the greensward — when the sudden excitement nearly
swept the pair off their feet. Jenkins' spurs were clapped to
with a decree of vip-our that he only realised when he found
himself competing down a well-nigh perpendicular hill, for the
gate into the road — through which and its choked assemblage
the pair went like a bolt. But their ambition was only
roused, their courage just afire. Was not the moptailed fox in
view beyond, and the whole maddening furore of the chase in
noisy vigour at his heels ? Jenkins is not a young man ; nor,
as he pleads now, a naturally bold one. But Jenkins was on
fire ! Jenkins must go. Stand aside, cravens. Jenkins is
intent ! The fence is low — the ditch a conundrum and artfully
* For Jenkins read Brooksby.
264
FOX -HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
enveloped. But Jenkins was in no humour for the road.
Hoopla! cried a rude bystander. "Oh dear!" muttered
Jenkins — as the Grand Old Quad dropped on the further edge
of the chasm. J., again, is not a man who lacks decision. He
i '■
decided to part. And part he did — with a backward parabole
and a stirrup-iron cleaving in true safety fashion to either foot.
Ugh ! grunted the venerable hunter, in grateful acknowledg-
ment of a burden removed. Ugh ! he grunted again as he
found a sound purchase on the fleshier portions of the recum-
bent Jenkins, and leaped gaily to terra ftrma. The old horse
then galloped gaily through the village after hounds, grazed
happily in an orchard as they were bayed round huntsman and
fox — while Jenkins came home, and told me the tale.
GRAFTON.
The Grafton, who are in the best of form and fortune, made
their mark again on Monday, November 28, with a fast and
severe run of fully an hour and a half — part of it over a charm-
GRAFTON. 265
Ing riding-country, and nearly all over grass. I hear murmur
and plaint from various quarters that rain is wanted. But
why ? Take it all in all, I maintain that this autumn has
been quite exceptionally favoured in the matter of scent ; and,
since we went into pink, the ground has been fully soft enough
for gallop and jump. No, we inherited a doctrine from those
before us — " the more rain, the better scent." But has this
axiom held with the seasons since '70 1 I think not ; but am
-open to correction.
Monday was essentially a dry day — whether as applied to the
atmosphere, the soil, or our palates after an hour's hard riding.
The sun shone with an April warmth and with a November
slant — but fortunately became mist-hidden ere we turned to
ride into its rays. The air was quiet and warm ; and men and
horses alike carried every appearance of having been through
the oven by the time the run was ended.
It began from a little wood, or rather copse, known as Hog-
staff, on the Favvsley estate, and about half a mile beneath
Preston Capes, the place of meeting. What the redskins of the
West would have termed a " heap big palaver " must have been
in progress in this bramble-grown cache. For no sooner did
hounds enter than a whole tribe of sleek furry fellows were
.afoot — dodging their astonished foes as best they could. One,
two, three, slipped away. A fourth fairly jostled against two
couple of hounds, and cut through the others, while a crew of
foot-people joined in to make the medley complete and noisy.
But he too made good the fence, and was away. No start did
he get, and for more than twenty minutes had never a chance
4o catch his breath. Judge, then, if he must not have been a
stout fox to stand before hounds — and worse still, before casual
viewers and shriekers — for a full hour, and escape at last (I
will explain my periods as I go along — and as I decipher the
run).
From Hogstaff does Fawsley, the beauteous old-English
estate of Sir Rainald Knightley, stretch northward in pasture
and deer park — and with every facility to hand in the form of
266 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
gate and bridge — till woodland takes the place of grass, and the
great covert of Badby Wood is reached. By the ravine side to
the woodyard (on the eastern extremity of the park) hounds
ran hard ; and went on into the wood on the best of terms with
their fox. I am not sure there was a great scent yet. But they
started with the nine points of foxhunting in hand ; they were
close at him. And neither they nor their huntsman let the
vantage slip for one second. The run was made by quickness
of hounds and man.
Never was Badby Wood pierced more rapidly. The rides
came ready, and the wood was open and palpable. But, keep-
ing directly after hounds, the readiest horsemen made their
way through just in time. And now they were on grass again
— the line we take every time this year, Newnham to the right
Daventry to the front. A little brook was our first fence — and,
you know, we think a good deal of brooks in this country, how-
ever small, and empty though they be in this droughty Novem-
ber of 1887. (Yet there was just water enough, they tell me,,
to welcome one or two.)
Our fox, to all appearance, had at this time some thought of
Staverton Wood, but he threw it aside with a swing to the
right, and made play for the pepper box on Daventry Hill — the
queer erection that looms over the best part of two counties
being apparently an old windmill, from which the wind at such
a height has filched the sails and dispersed the spars. There
are earths, too, on this bleak hilltop — possibly the same as
those quoted in the old hunting picture " Get Forrard, can't
you ! Don't you know the great earth at Daventry is open ? "
— the said, or similar and well-garnished words, being directed
by huntsman to whip, while the Pytchley were yet some miles
from the earth.
To-day's Reynard had gone on — or, rather, round : and as he
mounted the high brow came the first, and almost only, little
check. Along the ridge at the back of Newnham, then for a
dip into the valley as if for Dodford Holt, and up on to the
higher ground once more, where grows a fir clump forming
GRAFTON. 267
another local landmark, visible for many miles. While those
who could, or would, were wrecking their hats and bruising
their features in wriggling through the grove, hounds had
warmed to their work forward as sharply as ever — and the next
ten minutes were the choicest morsel of the whole good gallop.
Between this lofty clump and the villages of Everdon and
Upper Weedon lies a brief lovely valley that is second to
nothing in the two counties — so say the merry men who lived
within sound of it, and sang
Troll, troll, jolly brown bowl !
A laugh and a quad' and a dart for me !
This is the toast that all good fellows boast,
Whether of high or of low degree.
And who saw this dart, with hounds, however others may have
comported themselves, to their satisfaction or otherwise, upon
a distant parallel % Why, Mr. George Campbell, and Lord
Fieldinof — the latter after coaxing the brown to roll off his back
on to his feet once again, the former by dint of keeping the
grey mare's head straight, while others were riding cunning.
The last two unsavoury words embody the explanation. It re-
mains only to be added that there was a brook — and a bridge
over which many of us are in the habit of riding to covert, and
towards which, of course, we fancied hounds were rapidly steer-
ing. Talk of " knowing a country " as a desirable accomplish-
ment ! If the country be but tolerably fair and rideable — to
recognise it too vividly is the greatest possible drawback, a
prolific and shameful source of mistake and disappointment.
Two of the most accomplished performers to hounds after whom
it has been my fortune to ride were the late Capt. Coventry and
Capt. Arthur Smith, still no doubt as straight and sterling as
ever. Neither of these knew, or cared, in the least about the
direction or geography of a run. The former even jumped into
the park of his own old home before realising his whereabouts.
But I am on the wander — as one whose day's hunting has
left him close to his inkpot. And, by the way, hounds were
much in the same neighbourhood, while Mr. Campbell stood
2G8 FOX-HOUXD, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
still and they for a moment had their heads up in a fresh-
turned fallow. Quickly, though, they sped on ; gave the water-
jumpers yet another easy opportunity at the Everdon Brook,
and pointed for Stowe Wood. Headed back when within half
a mile or so of this, their fox gained the next hill wood of
Everdon Stubbs ; and made for home again by threading the
covert and running a-muck through apparently the entire
population of Everdon, assembled behind the village. He
reached Badby Wood with an hour's hard work completed ;
and there, I fancy — and others fancy — that he at once shifted
the burden of the day on to fresher shoulders. A tired fox
would scarcely have lived through the racing turn they gave
him round the whole extent of the wood ; and, though the run
recommenced from the same point of exit as before, the venom
was out of the pursuit. They hunted up to what we have
suggested as the Great Earth of Daventry ; and it is believed
they left him there. Time, one hour and three-quarters, or
thereabouts.
But now, on coming back to the Laurels at Fawsley House, it
was told the huntsman by one who makes gas — a true speaker
in this instance, too, in spite of his occupation — " A tired fox
has gone in there. I'll show you exactly where he lay down."
And there he lay still ! But was up in a moment ; and with
hounds again at his brush, raced back the one mile to Hogstaff
— reaching a rabbit hole before they could pull him down !
This is the story of Monday— told rather wordily perhaps,
but told while the events remain fresh. The run was a sound
and good one — though it went in a ring and ended without
blood. I attempt no full list of those who shared in its plea-
sures. But among them I believe I am safe in naming Lord
Penrhyn, Lord Capell, Mr. and Mrs. C. Fitzwilliam, Mr. and
Mrs. Byass, Capt. Riddell, Capt. Faber, Messrs. Craven, Burton,
Rhodes, Loder, &c.
GRAFTON AH A IX— THAT USELESS RAILWAY. 2G9
GRAFTON AGAIX—THAT USELESS RAILWAY.
Again my song, or sorry prose, is of the Grafton triumphs.
Friday, Dec. 2, was replete with sport from noon till dark —
the items being (1) a half-hour's burst — straight and furious,
over the best line in their varied country — to ground ; (2) a
sharp thirty-five minutes' ring from Charwelton osier bed —
finishing with blood in the open ; (3) a quick and excellent
hunt of some fifty minutes.
But it is with the first that I have particularly to deal — as
containing the pith and excitement of the day. It dated
from Canons Ashby, the charming feudal seat of Sir Henry
Dryden, who, though no longer taking active part in the field,
provides constant sport from his well-kept coverts for the
Grafton hounds and their following.
The day was bright, cool, and sunny — " gaudy " in fact — and
the wind was in the west (whence, if I have not been over and
over again deceived by the weathercocks of Northamptonshire
and Leicestershire alike, it very often blows when scent and
sport are in the air. Huntsmen say otherwise, and hate a west
wind ; so steeple and stable, gilt chanticleer and golden fox,
have no doubt combined to deceive me). But Friday wras a
lovely day — to see, to hear, to live — and withal to hunt, if
things should go right. That they did not go right with every-
one, the railway must bear the blame — as I will endeavour to
convey. You must know that a line of rail, carrying but very
few passengers, and none too many goods, was made some years
ago from Blisworth to Stratford-on-Avon, with a view to demon-
strating to casual travellers how sweet a valley runs across the
heart of the Grafton and Warwickshire countries. Though the
public fail to avail themselves in any numbers of the means of
sight-seeing thus afforded, the railway still exists as a proof of
enterprise, and in full possession of a vale that had far better
been left for the untrammelled use of fox and hounds and of
men who would ride after them. This railway, then, cuts
270 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
between the hall of Canons Ashby and the village of Morton
Pinkney — pursuing its way right ward to Byfield.
Thus, as hounds raked across the park and darted under the
old elms, men who knew what was before them began to specu-
late and to think, while those who knew nothing charged
fiercely up to the impenetrable barrier across their path — the
lady pack running like birds, and riders loosed forth in all the
mad happiness of " a start " achieved. The situation at once
became desperate. If hounds should go directly forward, a
gallop for the level crossing, 400 yards away, would now mean a
surrendering of all place, and but the merest chance left of ever
reaching the front again. There might be means of exit on the
right — at any rate, it was worth seeking. So a baffled bewil-
dered phalanx skirted the railway, and hurried over the fences
alongside, in frantic search for an outlet, of which no sign was
to be found. Ah, the music grows no fainter ; they may yet
reach hounds — if only a doorway be forthcoming. The merry
clatter sounds positively nearer ! Hounds are actually bearing
our way ! 'Tis maddening. And now a queer cavernous dyke
with a bordering hedge of dead built thorns, puts a stop even
to the galloping search. We are rats in a trap — fools in a fold.
And hounds might almost be hunting us — as they swing by,
along the railway's very fence. Mr. H. Bourke has marked a
weak and breakable spot in the dead thorn ; but horses are for
some moments averse to crawling into the deep gully, with a
view to breasting the black parapet. Mr. Blacklock, however,
works through the stubborn difficulty, and opens out a wagon-
way, of which all make immediate and grateful use. Now the
party are almost riding to hounds — at any rate they are riding
in hope, and riding hard, with the fastest of all packs driving
onward in plain view — hounds on one side, they on the other of
this unhallowed railway. Mr. H. Bourke, Mr. G. Campbell, Mr.
Blacklock, Mr. Church, Lord Rodney, Lord Capell, Mr. Adam-
thwate, and half a dozen others make the party ; and they
spread out with a broad front, to take the country as it offers.
All grass, and all very possible, if decidedly strong. The first
GRAFTON AGAIN— THAT USELESS RAILWAY. 271
recognised point is the identical railway arch under which we
all passed in the good run of two Mondays since, with the same
flying lady pack — and at this point men and hounds at length
rejoin forces to-day. A minute afterwards the pack has shifted
to the other side of the line, and that prolonged bridge 'twixt
Eydon and Ashby, with a hundred yards' wing on either side,
puts horses again a full field to the bad. Very fast, very stiff,
is the definition of the present — and, what is worse, very few to
break the fences. Mr. Bourke is turned over by a blind ditch,
and growers that will only bend ; while a gateway, that might
have had the grace to help us all, flaunts a double chain round
its post. A few more level fields of sound hard grass — the basis
of all this good gallop, by the way — and hounds hesitate and
divide, the body going forward for Woodford, some few couples
keeping leftward for Byfield. Mr. Campbell pursues the right,
most of his companions the left section. We may go with the
former and his one or two adherents, and may speculate as we
follow, how is he to break out of a meadow that might well
answer all the purposes of a corral ? Half-blown horses are not
fond of a hedge of six-foot thorn. The bottom with a post-and-
rail guard is at all events more possible if not very enticing.
And there is this about a half-blown horse — he will jump as far
as he can when once he has launched himself. So two are over
without a fall. No. 3 has an extra stone or two to lift — falls
short, and heavily. Now I will tell you of a brotherly act, such
as is seldom evolved out of the cold blood of daily routine.
Rider of No. 3 picks himself up, as rapidly as the shock will
allow. His reins are flung over, his stirrups are righted. Where
is his hat ? Ready to hand, he crams it on his head — and it
stands up aloft like a pea on a drum ! Beat it and bang it as
he will, the infernal thing won't go home. The hat must be
possessed with a devil ! " What's this — battered and crumpled ?
Another hat. Mine ! or I'm seeing double. On you go, old
concertina. But I won't leave the other fellow's," and, believe
me, on labours Tertius with his own Donnybrook crowded close
to his sleek cranium, and his forerunner's beaver tucked under
272 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
his arm, illustrating the most charitable, kindly edition of the
"Rape of the Lock" that was ever enacted o'er the green,,
green turf.
A shepherd has seen the fox, a ploughman has turned him a
hundred yards, a man carting gravel has stood in his way in the
purlieus of Woodford ; but hounds decipher the whole tangle
with never an ear for the wild screams that ring from Hinton
Gorse on hilltop beyond the village. Messrs. Campbell and
Blacklock then make their way leisurely to the covert side ;
and, posting themselves on the brow, await the turn of events,
while hounds are hunting their way busily through the dense
growth. They meant to " brush him " if they could — you may
rely upon it ! Nor did they intend to be carried forward by any
fresh-found fox — let him break never so prettily. For half an
hour they had borne the brunt of the battle — what would it
not be worth to see the red flag tipped with white hauled
down at their feet ? But their power of discrimination twixt
new lamps and old was not to be put to the test. Hounds dribbled
forth of themselves. Their fox had gone on ; and at this
moment up came the huntsman to keep things together for
a finish. And the end was — a drain under Hinton House-
two fields away.
To turn from the sublime to the ridiculous — from the prac-
tical to the fanciful — I would call your attention to a new
and, as I shall show, by no means an impossible danger to
yourself and comrades as entailed by a temporary disregard
to the duties of dress. You may, by pictured advertisement,
have been made aware of the virtues claimed for a hooded
waterproof cloak — in the which a foxhunter, dogged and de-
termined, faces the driving storm with impunity and an un-
ruffled smile. But the picture, you will note, insists upon a
tall hat to surmount the pleased visage and the moustache
irreproachable. This, I take it, was the one point missed in
my friend's accoutrement on the one wet morning of last
GRAFTON AGAIK—THAT USELESS RAILWAY
273
week. He donned the frock, but omitted the beaver. And
what happened ? He dropped short at a winsome ditch —
fence being on the near side — and the horse, "just from a
stone wall country you know," relapsed plaintively backwards,
to be buried out of sight — all but his four new shoes. Young
Furiosus came after. He had been cigaretting at the moment
of starting — "just his infernal luck;" but, like a gallant lad,
was hard bent on repairing fortune. He had fixed his place
from across a twenty-acre field. What mattered it to him
that a smock -frocked shepherd stood waving and gesticulating
beyond the gap ? All the bucolics in the kingdom shouldn't
stop him. " Mind yourself, old gentleman ! out of the way,
^';ym%0mmm
you fool ! " And my friend Cording had to cut it, for very
life, or be ridden on and demolished — while overwent Furiosus,
clearing the four glistening hoofs, casting a glance of scorn
and contempt on his despairing senior, and (as is right and
proper) thinking only of hounds in front. Draw your own
moral, reader. But don't disguise yourself as belonging to
another calling — or you may be ridden down as a wolf in
shepherd's clothing.
T
274 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
AND MORE GRAFTON.
A very pretty hunting run of forty-five minutes and a kill in
the open was the outcome of the Grafton Monday (Dec. 12).
To pull down a fox in that time of itself proves more than
" fair pace." Yet " a quick hunting run" must be the defini-
tion, rather than a " gallop " or a " burst," as we are given to
employ the terms. It was, from a very justifiable point of
view, as unlikely a morning for scent as has been dealt us this
season. The ground was half frozen, and wind and weather-
glass alike unsteady. Yet hounds ran hard in covert, and at
times carried quite a head outside. To drive to covert was
about as safe as going by train on a cheap track in Western
America. Both down-hill and up, it paid to take the grass
siding in preference to the road — and the damp breeze nearly
froze your fingers to the ribbons.
Maidston was the meet (where the village boys had made
beautiful slides on every yard of meadow) : Seawell Wood was
the draw — down the wind, as it blew at the moment. Two or
three foxes fled at the far end, and together the pack settled on
a pleasant and easy line to Litchborough, left that village j ust
on the right, and worked their way (with one trifling check)
across the valley for Stowe Wood. Skirting the lower end of
this, they topped the hill overlooking Everdon — with again
three foxes before them. It seemed to me an instinct — I
suppose, though I need scarcely hesitate to employ the only
proper term — it was real talent on the part of the huDtsman
that he now took the pack off a new line and carried it forward
to strike the true one. And then came all the fun of the fair
— caused mainly by the little Everdon brook — about two yards
of water and two more of sloping rat-holey banks. The turf
Avas greasy, and horses — naturally timid at water, as is in proper
keeping with an education in the Midlands — were even more
nervous and helpless than usual. One here and one there slipped
in, a couple fell back, a dozeu got over, and the rest remained
AND MORE GRAFTON. 27 5
— while hounds improved the occasion and the pace. And a
mile or two farther on the same episodes repeated themselves,
to complete the programme of the run — which, by the way, was
now taking- place over the exact converse of the line held by
their Fawsley fox of a fortnight ago. Remember, it was " the
flower of the Hunt," as chosen and separated by the previous
streamlet, that now charged the Newnham and Weedon brook.
Horses that continued to gallop at it scarcely knew they had
been asked to jump — except that in two instances the fact was
made known to them b}>- their burden flinging himself on the
turf, to prostrate in lowly thankfulness for that the danger was
over. But, again, one or two hung on the brink, took in the
shallowness of the water, and elected to try the channel. These,
I take it (if the owners will believe me when I say I only wit-
nessed the act from a position of distant safety, and quite
without any clue to their identity), may — for all we know —
have been summered in a running stream — an excellent pro-
cess, I believe, but one hardly conducive to free water-jumping
when the test time comes. For my part, for " Brutus is an
honourable man," I headed the field of art to a bridge fifty
yards away — hidden from the more audacious by a tall dark
hedge. Hounds threw up at that moment ; and in the next
were routed by a pair, couple, or brace (whichever may properly
express a twain of swine) of fierce rampant pigs, who scattered
them right and left in howling confusion. Even this did
not disconcert the huntsman. Instinct again triumphed over
casualty and circumstance. He held his pack a hundred yards
up stream ; and they pounced on their beaten fox in a hedge-
row— savaging o'er the worry as I never saw a lady pack cling-
to it before.
With full permission I have a little tale to tell. It involves,
as usual, a moral — merely, the necessity of attending to detail,
in foxhunting as in every-day and prosier life. These are times
wherein men, like hyacinths, bloom early. Whether, like them,
they early fade, remains to be seen. Anyhow, men of one-and-
twenty nowadays have forgotten far more than we of forty (and
270 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
as many odd as can be proved against us) are ever likely to
learn. Smartness is their characteristic. They are born to a
knowledge of fitness and completeness ; and carry it as bravely
to the covert-side as to the smoking room. Now one of these
(there is, believe me, neither malice nor bad faith in the dis-
closure) bought himself a new horse but the other day. "A
clipper" he told us, " and the best looking one you ever laid
eyes upon." So by train he came to a certain meet above-
mentioned — his coterie of confidential all agape to view the
new wonder. He was rather late, but that was scarcely to be
wondered at. He had barely time at the station to pitch his
furry coat and half a crown to the railway porter, to jump into
the saddle as the rugs were pulled off, and away. He looked
so pleased ; he looked so pretty. He almost commanded
approval and applause, as he gazed around with conscious pride
— not for himself but for the beauty he bestrode. Applause he
got, and readily — but accompanied by a ring of laughter that
grated horribly on his expectant soul. " Confound you fellows,,
what are you grinning at ? " Hounds were just moving ; and he
elected to go — and rid himself of such rude unsympathy. So
off he galloped, that at least he might show how Wonder could
move. He even larked him over a stile, and flicked him over a
sturdy fence — despising a gap. But, wherever he went, the
same maddening cackle followed, till he was on the point of
fleeing homeward, in fury and amazement. Then up rode one-
of the Nestors of the Hunt, with never a smile on his kindly
countenance. " I say, young gentleman, are you obliged to ride
that old horse in four bandages and in kneecaps ? Surely he
isn't safe ?" The murder was out. Down jumped the juvenile
Crichton. With muttered blessings, and a hot, flushed face, he
tore off the bandages and kneecaps left on by the porter as part
of his hunting accoutrements ; and stowed them away as best
he might under his saddle flap !
For some reason or other the day appeared by no means well
adapted to development of the very needful science of gate-
opening — an art in which a Northamptonshire field is, as a ruler
AXD MORE GRAFTON.
'Ill
second to none. Let me not be misunderstood. Gate-handling
is as much a point of skill in riding to hounds where gates have
to be used as is ever the power of jump or the faculty of gallop
— and, indeed, is of far more importance, inasmuch as on its
acquirement depends not merely the success of our own progress
but the sport and convenience of others. I will volunteer no
sermon — and I can conscientiously disclaim any personal super-
excellence in gate-handling. But I confess and protest that I
hate to see a man gallop up to a gate without casting a look at
its method of latching, or at the direction of its swing — nor yet
change his whip hand — until he is fairly on it, or even lias his
horse pulled right athwart its opening, while fifty anxious men
and women are depending for their start upon his celerity.
Still less is it pleasing to see one comer after another let a
crowded gate slam to, from sheer inability to hold it as they
pass. A single slammed gate has cost many and many a good
man all share in a gallop. To-day we suffered chiefly from the
complication of excessively narrow gates, an unusual number
of kicking horses, and an extraordinary proportion of men who
went a-fishing with their crops — sometimes with the wrong
278 FoX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
end, still more often with the wrong hand. But the Daventry
ball was overnight. And, with regard to the kicking horses,
honesty is coming out apace. We all decorate our horses' tails
with red ribbon now. It pays, and saves trouble. I should
like very much to say what I think — and what most of us
think — of a man who will continue to ride hunting on a regular
kicker. But I daren't. Tis more than my place is worth.
Will you, please, Mr. Plainspeaker — who tell all the world
their sins in a shouting whisper — will you give us your senti-
ments, and benefit five hundred where you offend five — while I
await in silence the melting snow ?
Rain and snow, sport and frost — all come within the week's
calendar. Foxhunting was at its best a few days ago ; and the
weather at its worst in the interim. On Monday, Dec. 19, we
could not reach Woodford for the clogging snow — though
hounds (the Grafton), being more punctual than ourselves,
reached the meet in tolerable comfort — only to return through
the downfall.
But the approach of Christmas has been heralded by all the
customary signs, besides that of ugly white weather ; and most
of us are not unconscious of its coming, albeit, in contrast to
the two previous seasons, we have been allowed our hunting
even after mid- December. The most novel symptom of its
approach, perhaps, was evolved by mere chance towards the
close of a recent run. Hounds had suddenly thrown up their
heads. Huntsman cast right and left, and was puzzled. " Hark,
holloa, forrard ! " came with energy from the lips of a bon
vivant who is usually as reliable as he is outspoken. Grateful
huntsman in a moment had his horn to his lips, and his horse
tight by the head : the run was surely saved. Hark ! There
it is again — clear and distinct this time. Turkeys, by all that's
holy ! " Oh, mickle have I wandered and muckle have I seen —
but view holloas from a turkey never did I ween." Riot upon
PYTCHLEY. 270
hare, riot upon dog, riot upon deer, riot upon cat, riot upon
goat, riot upon badger, riot upon skunk, riot upon porcupine —
all these have come under my ken in East or West — but never,
no never, dear friend, riot upon turkey ! And on the part of a
clever old hound too — fie, for shame ! Strange things are said
to have happened in Georgia,
"Where the turkeys gobbled that the commissariat found ;
How the darkies shouted when they heard the good old sound !
— but it was not for fox, nor was it for Christmas fare.
PYTCHLEY.
I LOOK upon Saturday last, Dec. 17, with the Pytchley at
Badby Wood, as instancing as hard a day's work as is often
carried through by hounds and men (I mean the executive, not
the casual accompanyists). Eighteen miles to covert, eighteen
miles home after five o'clock, were only preface and conclu-
sion— the meantime being occupied as follows.
Badby Wood — as, if you live and hunt in these parts (where
no one is held to live at all unless it be for hunting), you
probably know as well as I do — is a covert in which nothing
remains for long, except the bulk of the field. Hunted by two
packs, and preserved by one who might well take post as the
Nestor of both Hunts, it is a playground on which the ball is
kept almost continually rolling. And the rich grass of Fawsley
has scarce time to grow under the players' feet, Foxes fear
nothing here save horn and hound : and the note of either has
the effect of a catapult upon their wide-awake nerves. On the
other hand, nobody would have the effrontery to dub a Pytchley
field drowsy, sluggard, or unambitious. Set the man who
would dare such aspersion to see a gallop in their company
where the timber comes strongest round Waterloo ! Or, for
variety's sake, pin him with a gouty foot on either leg to take
his chance through the bridle-gates of Stanford Hall ! No —
280 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
but they have a soul above treelaud, a spirit superior to rides
and rabbit paths ! Or why this same old tale? Foxes have no
manners : foxhounds no courtesy— and neither one nor the
other have the grace to wait till " All On " announces the
muster roll, as at the little gorses of Crick, Lilborne, Kil worth,
and other fairplay starting points.
This morning, again, hounds found their fox instanter, sent
him the length of the wood to the same metre, and were away
up the breeze with a contemptuous disregard of all behind
them. " West was the wind, and west steered we, with both
sheets aft. How could that be ? " is a silly old seagoing enigma
that many a puzzled voyager essayed to expone this morn.
By the time Goodall was on the higher ground above the
Byfield and Daventry turnpike, the white bodies (for they all
are white in the far dim distance) were flicking over yonder
hill for Catesby. And when hounds have a start, and a scent,
over hill ground, nor huntsman nor devil can catch them. So
even He had three fields the worst of them as he rose and
dipped, over crest and trough of upland and valley. His
artless henchman had circled the first great hill by darting
down the Catesby lane ; and thus, with Capts. Soames and
Middleton, now struck the trail with a marked advantage as
the more level neighbourhood of Charwelton was neared. But
a fox seldom sets his teeth against the breeze for nothing — or
for little else than an open earth. This Reynard's mark was a
garden drain ; and here the quartette above named pulled up,
to groan against the fleeting vanity of earthly joys — a senti-
ment that was shortly brought home to the refugee, for he was
dislodged and unbrushed. And as the garden in question lay
ensconced in a quiet hollow, it was for a long time believed
that the Badby field had with one accord resented such cavalier
desertion by going home to lunch.
Now came an interlude — not by any means an easy one for
hounds and huntsman, though little could be done with the fox
from Fawsley Laurels. He was hemmed in from his intended
break; and so, like many another, became "a bad fox" from
TYTCULEY. 281
sheer disappointment. When at length they hunted him
whither he had no intention of going, the day grew worse, and
scent began to fail. I happened to find a little episode to
amuse me — but this was enacted in strict privacy, and has no
business to be reproduced here. But, as I have an old-time
respect for the main actor, and "for fear my spare rib should
ache against a jest untold," I must have it out. He is a
sportsman of the old school, and his saddle was built for a
bigger man. He galloped to a gate — but the black bullocks
beat him on the post : so, going faster than the " quad of his
own breeding," he shot into their midst. Being a man of
reading, he had long ago accepted Assheton Smith's doctrine
that one " never looks such a fool as when running after one's
horse " — and, accordingly, he stuck to the bridle with all the
•strength of manhood and despair. The "quad" didn't mind
that ; but the bullocks did — and the quad minded them. The
oxen lowered their lengthy horns and bellowed amain. The
sportsman hung on — the quad held back. The arena was
knee-deep in the rich belongings that surround straw crates
and cake troughs. You have read Selous' graphic tales of lion
killing ? You remember well how the Boer lion hunter, tied
by his wrist to the saddle rope, was dragged before a raging-
monster that he meant to shoot ? This was exactly a parallel
position. The horse backed away from the roaring bullocks,
and the sportsman, altogether unaware of his peril, ploughed
the mire with his back at the bidding of his frightened steed —
while the black bullocks bellowed at his heels. How it ended,
I know not. There seemed no immediate danger. On the
contrary, all the parties concerned appeared eminently pleased
and fitted fully into the play. Hounds were running — and I
dared not laugh, lest my little story be spoiled or my sense of
the obligations of friendship maligned.
Storm of rain saved this fox, and drove the multitude under
cow-hovels and behind haystacks (hounds in full tune) — for,
mind you, many a bright red coat, though it may be water-
proof, is not yet beyond its first freshness, and the age of purple
282 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
pink belongs to better times. Readymoney Mortiboy has two
coats a year. Joseph and his garments are out of fashion.
This is the decade of 1880 — and you will please comport
yourselves and clothe yourselves accordingly — on credit if need
be — but in keeping with '87 still.
A SCRATCH DAY FROM TOWN.
It seems to me that one day's story per week is alone more
than sufficient for a hunting writer and reading public — how-
ever elastic may be Editor's indulgence and printer's capacity.
I have an invention half completed — and have already cut off
my old horse's mane to admit of the instrument being carried
on my bows. This is — denning it casually, for the invention is
as yet unpatented — a combination of the typewriter and the
pedometer — and is intended to mark passing events as they
occur, having a system of punctuation that shall, for instance,
mark an ordinary obstacle by a comma, a rasper by a semi-
colon, a severe peck by a note of exclamation, and a cropper as
a full stop. But, as I have said, this machine is not yet in
full work.
Wednesday, Dec. 21. — Pytchley at North Kilworth. Tis
neither here nor there. But if ever life wears a gloomy aspect,
it is when London town is the starting point, and 6 a.m. the
call hour. Add to this a doubtful morning, and a still more
doubtful cab — I'd sooner be a second whip. And his is no
Sybarite's life, if I reckon it rightly — Pytchley of course
excepted. ,
A taste of the last cigar still lingers, long after Euston is left
behind. Papers won't interest — war never broke out on a
hunting morning. All that is disagreeable in life comes to the
front in the chilly atmosphere of a railway carriage. I am a
monk. But as a matter of curiosity what are the sensations of
the man who has had a " bad night at baccarat " before he
embarks ? Ugh — hot coppers are more bearable than heavy
A SCRATCH DAY FROM T01VX. 283
bills ! A ride to covert gives a charm to life (unless you ride
in the agony of a late start) ; a railway journey begets blue
devils. Hunting by train is — better than no hunting. That
is all.
A fine hunting run came off Wednesday afternoon. We had
seen a fox well worked in the morning — an hour's circumlocu-
tion from Kilworth Sticks, till he found a rabbit hole in a
gravelpit near Welford. Then to the Hemplow. Foxes are
very lively at this period of an open season. So we plunged
down the precipitous hills directly we reached them. Straight
for South Kilworth. Men in the fields (every field) ; so we
veei-ed round to Welford and reached the Canal. Character of
this hunt was — strong and frequent jumping, steaming horses
ever close upon hounds, everybody in a hurry except a patient
huntsman. A fair working scent of which the lady pack made
the very most. This was a good gallop — though some may say
it was not straight enough, and others may urge it was not fast
enough, to please them. I can only say that had it been
straighter and faster, few would have seen it all. I, for one,
should probably have got no more than halfway. Not only
did every fence call for an effort, but the hills were distressing.
The first half hour brought us round by Welford Village, to
skirt the heights of Hemplow ; and then came the stout
country and steep hills of Elkington and Winwick. Now we
rode fence for fence as we did last year from Lord Spencer's
Covert, near West Haddon, and swung over the turnpike to
Guilsborou»h.
The check that occurred after forty minutes found most
horses blowing, and gave our fox the breathing time that
probably saved him — cleverly though Goodall cast back from
the plough team. A mile or so previously a casualty befell two
of our hardest and heaviest riders, that looked positively awful
at the moment ; but, happily attended, I believe, with no
serious consequences to either men or horses. They galloped
at full speed over the precipitous side of a gravelpit ; and came
rolling over each other in appalling comminglement of scarlet
284
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and brown. I should not like to have been under any of the
four — but am happy to think that no one of the quartette
crushed any other. The final check came (time, one hour
twenty minutes) among the very turnip fields that ended last
year's gallop. Now our fox crept back through Guilsborough
Plantations ; and they gave up on the bleak uplands near
Winwick Warren. The neighbourhood of Cold Ash by may
possibly account for the freezing out of scent, and for the
Canadian hue of men's faces. A polar climate this, and one
that, while saving many a fox's life, sends many a man home
to hot gruel and lumbago. But this is an after thought — only
requiring to-morrow's hunt to dispel it as unfounded and
shameful. The memory of passing discomfort needs no
nursing ; and the main advantage of foxhunting is the per-
petuation of youth and strength. Even "old boys" are boys
still while a keen pack is driving and they are in the swim.
'Twas a pretty, a clever, and an interesting hunt this afternoon.
SCATTERING THE GLOOM. 285
SCATTERING THE GLOOM.
If light is to be found in darkness, brightness in obscurity,
gladness in gloom, it was surely with the Pytchley on Wednes-
day, in their gallop through the fog. They had met at Cold
Ashbv, sauntered for an hour or two in semi-darkness at Win-
wick, then seized upon a passing interlude — while blue sky and
bright sunshine beamed on them for a few treacherous minutes
— to cast hounds, and fortune, into the spinnies of Thornby.
Two plantations were drawn blank : and a third (it may have been
Firetail) — but it matters not — the fog shall be answerable for all
inaccuracies, of place, people, and surroundings. All that I
pledge myself to is that we ran for two and thirty minutes, and
brushed him. He found himself, just as the mist came again
looming over us. Hounds broke out in music along the tiny
dell. Before we fairly knew why, we were away — pouring
greedily forth through a gateway where the copse ends, and
hurrying in a dazed fashion down to the streamlet that flows from
the gully. The first whip was gone. Hounds were barely to be
seen but plainly to be heard. We all wanted to go, and there
was room for a couple at a time — always supposing these two
did not jostle each other in the air.
As I write I feel the fog on me — I must be forrard, or be
unsighted, lost and miserable. Let me pose as your pilot. I'll
hide our mishaps, and I'll carry you through — let whose coat-
tails you like be the real beacon to guide us. You and I
scrambled and doubled this first brook and hedge (we'll pick out
the thorns to-morrow — also those from the dead hedge in the
next near valley). Get off your horse at this loosely chained
gate. Now open your ears for the tinkle ! Up wind, at your
hardest — riding to sound, riding to hope now faint now furious.
Here is the Guilsborough turnpike, and all those who have
ridden — more sensibly than you and I — are on the left flank of
the pack. Two wheat fields, then a grassy dip — the little com-
pany as yet pretty compact and plain, though the haze is wrap-
ping their figures more closely each moment. Mr. Gordon
286 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Cunard on the brown and Capt. Middleton on one of his greys
carry the front just now. The men of the Kennel are exactly
where they should be ; and, as " over to the right, sharp through
the bullfinch to the left " is enacted, Mr. Jameson on that
wonderful bay mare, Mr. Harford on his little brown, take up
the running in turn with Mr. De Trafford (I am taking unusual
liberties with names — and please I must do — to illustrate the
momentary, shadowy, glimpses of this queer dream gallop).
Broken vale and upland is now our lot, as hounds swing right-
ward still from Cottesbrook (they had hitherto apparently aimed
for that district or Maid well), and bend round for Guilsborough
or West Haddon. The turn favours some, while discounting the
advantage of others. But the last scene of any width, that
lingers in memory, previous to the falling of the close thick cur-
tain, contains a complete reproduction of what I have seen fifty
times before, and hope I may yet see fifty times again — a
portrait picture that is scarce ever away from a Pytchley
Wednesday. For, besides those on whose names I have already
seized, there are Mr. Foster, Mr. Pender, Capt. Soames, Mr.
Muntz, Major Cosmo Little — I was all but adding two other
accustomed leaders and treasured comrades unawares, but they
are no doubt hovering somewhere close at hand in the darkness.
I am safe, however, from contradiction or mistake in substitut-
ing Mr. Rose — and I can put no name to half a dozen more
shadowy forms. Goodall keeps his foghorn loudly sounding,
and we plunge after him into the night with a feeling that we
must cling to him or collapse. Why, here is a turnpike road
again — and guarded here by an oxrail we remember well.
Surely Ave have seen it twice before in the two past seasons, as
we rode the other way from Elkington and the Hemplow ? John
shows us how we may double the rail, and to him we owe direc-
tion as we leave the road and ride onward into blank space. An
old man is cutting a hedge : and his face of astonishment and
alarm as the phalanx gallops on to him is as out of an old Dutch
painting, in its dim, red, roundness. Of course he has turned
the fox ; and the latter must have run almost against him with-
SCATTERING THE GLOOM. 287
out betraying himself. I never saw situation grasped and
rectified quicker. With one short sharp chirp the huntsman
checks the lady pack in their forward cast ; his men pop them
as it were into his very pocket, and without noise, hurry, or con-
fusion they are righted and going again in ten seconds. In the
next few minutes is concentrated, perhaps, the very kernel of
the fun. The darkness is palpable ; the pace is the same ; while
the fences are problematical and close coming. The very next
jump has apparently no ending. We drop, not into agravelpit,
but into space : and, maddened with anxiety, find ourselves
galloping hard down a white-frosted hill side. Before we know it,
we are over a little brook that had nearly swallowed us unawares :
and now we are in the wake of half a dozen men helping each
other to keep touch of the pack. Now one, now another,
•catches a glimpse. All are riding with heads bent forward, and
best ear to the front — straining their eyes and catching each
note — dodging hither and thither as fences offer easiest (for this
is no country to trifle with). One makes it possible here,
another there — and somehow they hover on the edge of the pack,
as it would never be possible, or even fair, in daylight. A true
hunter is needed — for now it is a broad stake-and-bound, now a
creep. Now into a plantation and out, by guidance of a chance
shepherd ; and now a gorse covert looms forth. Winwick
Warren. Twenty-two minutes. (You have taken longer than
this, Mr. Brooksby, to spell out your horseshoe — though the red
ground was hard galloping all the way.) The line holds on, the
fog thickens rather than slackens, the pace has already told —
and in an open stubble field — ten minutes further, they are on
to him openly and fairly. As pretty a kill and as joysome a
scurry as we shall see this year. Slacken your girths and be
glad.
This is life, and will savour the rest. Foxhunting will help
us through oil i- time.
288 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
MR. LORT PHILIPS.
The title of "Grass Countries" is apposite enough to Tuesday,
Jan. 10, when we rode the turf of North Warwickshire and the
greensward of Northamptonshire for some two hours and a
bittock. Mr. Lort Philips was at Dunchurch ; and, if I mistake-
not, hunted the same fox as on the occasion of his last common
9 O
This time it was from Bunker's Hill. We had, to all appearance,
made the covert absolutely safe, in the interest of the one main
object of foxhunting. But, bother him, the fox found an outlet.
Not so easily encompassed was he. I must not stop to consider
how to put it ; for the story is a long one, if I fail to compress
it. Here is the skimming — till we come to the brook. We
went a beautiful line. Grandborough Village is but a mile to
the south of Bunker's Hill. Grandborough would have none of
him. The village was in readiness, and screamed him off.
Interruption of this kind is all against hounds settling, no doubt :.
but in this case it worked for the public good, and sent us in a
healthy direction. (I had forgotten to note that to-day was as
sultry and blazing as yesterday, and that the field took an idle
and hopeless view of the situation as at first presented to them.)
The start was slow, and scent seemed catchy and faint. Hounds
ran leftward under Grandborough ; and by degrees pace
freshened and improved. A brook, as you may know, threads
the valley before joining the Leame ; and here it offers all the
advantages of a screening hedge and a sound take-off. This was
our very first fence — and the occasion of such rolling about as
made a Morning Performance of itself. Each comer in turn cut
a slice off the farther bank : and each accordingly left it worse
for his successor. So, what with pecking, scrambling, and diving,
there was a heap of a variety. They rolled on the bank, and
they floundered below. One even stood on his head for a grace-
ful half-minute — with his white leather lowers poised upwards
against his horse's shoulders. I can tell you, however, that half
a dozen ladies took their turn of the chasm in safety — making
this a veritable creditable sign of the times.
Mil. LOUT PHILIPS. 289
A far less agreeable sign came a little while later — when
we got among the wire by Willoughby, and one or two were
caught in it, while many others were frightened. Touching
the canal at Willoughby Inn, after a sweet succession of flat
firm meadows, with hounds going prettily thereon, we turned
along it for a mile — till at Barby Wood House we came upon
the second whip with his cap up and his throat going, to tell of
the fox having crossed the canal where he stood. Now hounds
ran their hardest of the day — clinging to the farther side of the
canal till opposite Cook's Gorse, then bearing upwards between
Kilsby and Barby for Braunston Cleaves (the very same line of a
month ago). This was the prettiest part of the run — fences
very close together (requiring, alas ! an unnatural instinct of
Ware Wire before loosing off, or spurring onward), turf very
sound, as becomes the dry — and good scenting — season of '87-
'88, and the pace sufficient (the Master, Mr. Fabling, Mr. Muntz,
Mr. Wilkinson, and Mr. Arkwright cutting out the work).
Under Braunston Cleaves came the first real delay. Fifty-five
minutes to here — fox close in front — but plenty of go left in him
yet. Hunted him short to the right to Ashby St. Ledgers
Village — turning and twisting by the way — had him almost in
hand at the latter place — but, thanks to holloas and outside
excitement, he beat hounds into Welton Place, and there to
ground : two and a half hours' run, and a seven-mile point.
I have not done adequate justice to this well-developed chase.
I have not even alluded to the morning's cold fog and the day's
lathering sunshine. Still less have I told of the bevy of ladies
who shamed many a man out of shirking a truly strong country.
To name them would be an impertinence, and involve compari-
son, the odium of which I, at all events, do not care to incur.
Again, there was one incident came under my immediate eye,
and that I must not omit. A sportsman found his horse in a
deep ditch — and five men in kindly friendship stayed to pull
him out. Four of these were farmers — and just as fond of
being with hounds as others. Now my neck is too sore, and my
brain too stupid — from craning back to look at the topsy-turvey
v
290
FOX-IIOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
man in the first brook — to write more. So to bed before Cold
Ashby.
I am delighted to be able to add a postscript to the effect that
though one fox undoubtedly went to ground in front of them in
Welton Park, news was brought almost simultaneously that their
run fox lay beaten in a turnip field behind them, and that they
were thus able to go back half a mile to pick him up without
difficulty. A good run is never so complete as when it finishes
with blood.
CRICK AND KIL WORTH.
The fairest area of the whole good Pytchley country is
undoubtedly that which comes within the scope of a Crick or
Lilbourne Wednesday — and it was this that they harried
(harvested, is a better term) on January 25th. The present
being the annual Rugby gala week, the choicest meets and
easy hours had been named by the three packs of the neighbour-
hood, so that all who came to dance might also hunt to the
best advantage. On Wednesday, then, the order of the day
was Catthorpe at 11.30 — and on a beautiful hunting morning —
a cool breeze blowing, for dancers to inhale and for all fox-
hunters to accept with gladness. The day began badly with
the chopping of a fox in Lilbourne Gorse. Then we trotted
some three miles, to Crick's famous Gorse ; and ranged up
alongside the covert in that state of subdued excitement that
belongs so specially to the trial of a small and noted covert, to
which memory already attaches many a hurried start many a
blissful gallop. It had been said there would be an enormous
field to-day. If this came true, it was certainly not evinced
beside Crick Covert ; for, as far as one could see, there were
not a hundred riders in the grass field wherein we were bidden
to wait. Hunting is assuredly not "going out of fashion," is
it ? Another term that meets the ear more frequently is
that " times don't run to it " — and this, I fear, more correctly
expresses the cause of a very apparent falling off in the strength
CRICK AND KIL WORTH. 291
of these little Pytchley Wednesdays. And that of this week
ought, by all custom, to have been, as the " Farmer's Boy," the
biggest of them all. But there were plenty, and to spare, who
would ride the country, and do justice and credit to the chosen
ground of the old Grand Military. I think the day showed
that as hard a field was mustered as ever revelled in pace and
good grass. Here are a few names jotted hastily and at
random — which at all events will serve in some small degree
to show how the field was leavened. The Master (Mr. H. H.
Langham), Mr. Lort Philips, Mr. and Mrs. Cross, Mr. and Mrs.
James, Mr. and Mrs. Graham, Mr. and Miss Holland, Mr. and
Miss De Trafford, Mrs. Dalgleish, Mrs. Byass, Miss Hargreaves,
Mrs. Jones, Miss Podmore, Miss Darby, Generals Tower,
Magennis, Rattray, Lords Braye, Erskine, Henry Paulet,
Captains Soames, Middleton, Beatty, Fawcett, Wheeler, Riddell,
C. Fitzwilliam, Messrs. F. Langham, Wroughton, Logan,
G. Cunard, Jameson, Mills (2), Tollemache, Scott, Pender,
Muntz, C. Rose, Powell, Stirling-Stuart, SherifTe, Craven,
Adamthwaite, Cochrane, Mackenzie, Hazlehunt, Manning, Ford,
Darby, Fabling, Atterbury, Elkin, &c.
We stood upwind at Crick ; and stood for long without
hearing whimper or whisper of a find. We grew almost tired
of being anxious, and became gradually careless of the fact that
fox, if there was one, might take hounds a mile awav, on two
sides of the covert, before we could be aware of his going. But
obliging Reynard preferred to face the wind ; and broke across
our front for Hilmorton Covert — his rashness probably costing
his life. Hounds were quick away — men even more so.
And the old brief tale was again unfolded — as bright and
sparkling as ever. Crick to Lilbourne, by way of Hilmorton
Gorse and the Old Military Course — the prettiest and most
perfect trifle to be found in the green Midlands. For 'tis rare
scenting ground, as flat as a billiard table, and everywhere
fenced as if for chasing. But the very second hedge of to-day
hid a chasm under its right corner that none, I think, would
have jumped had they known of its width. The Master's
u 2
2<)2 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PEAIEIE.
example, some ten yards to the left, encouraged belief in the
easy insignificance of the obstacle — and, I am told, led to six
coins of varied value being paid for horsecatching in that
one pasture. In and out of the old muddy lane that right-
angles to the Watling- street. (The oldest reminiscence of my
hunting life, by the way, goes back to a view of Charles Payn
aud Mr. Robt. Fellowes as they landed into that lane, all but
atop of a boy on a shaggy Shetland pony.) Opposite the gorse
of Hilmorton we would all gladly have ridden into the high road
through the white gates apparently placed on purpose. But
for some reason, unknown and regrettable, they were locked
and stapled — and two lamentable holes had to be bored
through the fence into the highway, while one rider who went
on for a next gate wras promptly hung up in a wire. 0 tcmpora,
0 mores !
On with hounds, then — past the edge of the covert, which to
the relief of the Master of the pack of to-morrow, was left
untouched. Five minutes' flutter, now, over the final fences and
the enticing brook of the Steeplechase Course — to Mr. Muntz's
Spinney. Fifteen minutes thus far ; and this all the best
of the run. They hunted their fox to Lilbourne Gorse and
through it ; got up to him at the little Clifton Coverts, and
killed him in Clifton Village. 45 minutes in all.
For another they went to Kilworth Sticks — and if you,
reader, have never seen men in a hurry, you should have been
there, when the Pytchley field rode for Walton Thorns. They
couldn't override hounds — for the latter went away with one fox
while their destroyers were intent upon crowding to a gap in
pursuit of another, on the opposite side of the covert. And
once the bruise and turmoil of gateways was over, there was a
spread of energy and a display of haste that it is impossible to
realise or reproduce in the quiet moments of a non-hunting
day — when the memory recalls but a dizzy struggle amid a
living torrent, and relies for reminder merely upon post-
blackened shins and face engraved as a gridiron. The country
was wide and the country was easy. But hounds were ahead —
CRICK AND KIL WORTH. 293
and that, you will allow, is more than a correct Pytchley field
can stand. So we whisked through the bullfinches, while the
twigs whipped sharply and the thorns imprinted their stinging
kisses : we hustled over grass and we hugged over plough —
till we reached Walton Holt only just too late to cut off the last
tail hound, whom we had been after with all our might for at
least ten minutes.
I would fain call attention to a praiseworthy custom that of
late has gained much prevalence in the Midlands — viz., the
practice of braiding ribbon into the tail of a kicking horse. It
answers its purpose admirably, I assure you — gives your friends
a hint to get out of your way, or even to make room for you,
and virtually relieves you of all blame for damage done. The
system is to be commended as practical, expedient, and not
altogether unornamental — allowing, as it does, of some little
play in colour, and of much ingenuity in fancy braiding. One
day recently the new practice was very noticeable — to an
extent, indeed, that proved sorely trying to ordinary nerves.
At every gateway bows and festoons fluttered in terrible
propinquity, in front and alongside. To move forward meant
courting danger. To rein back was to invite the full force of
lathy iron-shod limbs. We hurried for our turn, and we drew
back to seek safety. This is scarcely a state of feeling that
induces rapid progress through overcrowded loopholes and
admits a Northamptonshire field to sight-seeing on equal
shares ! At length the situation became so embarrassing that
two of the decores set to work to put a stop to it. Each was
garnished like a cart-horse at Islington. Of a sudden extremes
met, and bow jostled bow. Crack, bang ! Hocks and quarters !
You might have heard the clatter in the provinces. The
amazed and apologetic face of each rider was a very picture.
They too let off the ready disclaimer, that each man who
bestrides a kicker ought to have poised on his lips. The
apologies met like shells in mid-air, exploded harmlessly — and
then ensued explanation, mutual examination and doubtless
two billets to Albert-gate by that night's post, " A gentleman
294 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
having no further use for him, good hunter and free with
hounds, without reserve."
Another little turkey incident did I learn, as, in company
with half a dozen good farmers, I smoked my way homewards
from the last day's hunting in 1887. Conversation was not
unnaturally of the Fox ; and so it passed on to poultry. My
farmer-friends were good enough to champion Mr. Fox stoutly —
averring him to be more often maligned than guilty, especially
at a season of the year when cold and hunger pinch the un-
employed, while many a fowl is fat. One then took up his
parable — which I craved — and with permission here it is. The
turkey-roost of a certain farmyard, not twenty miles from here,
had been laid under contribution more than once during the
recent autumn. Of course Reynard had been helping himself;
were there not feathers scattered about ? — and was not an old
gobbler's head and neck found lying on the ground outside ?
What further proof was needed ? Reynard is a roost-robber
by profession, tradition, and notoriety. The farmer, though, was
a sportsman, and troubled himself as little about the matter as
consideration for the glide wife's feelings, and regard for his own
peace of mind, would allow. He "loved a fox," he said, and " he
shouldn't make any complaint." Moreover, he had taught his
little girl not only to ride, but to give forth a telling view
holloa that would have done credit to James Pigg. The
opportunity soon came for the maiden to exhibit the accom-
plishment to some purpose. She had just retired to bed, when
flutter and commotion were to be heard in the yard. The fox
was in the turkey pen ! It could be nothing else. So, flinging
open the window, the little lady sent forth into the frosty night
a lusty holloa that might have been heard from one end of
Badby Wood to the other ; and, pleased with her effort, she
repeated it again and again in the same shrill key. 'Twas too
dark to see ; but her fox broke covert with a rumpus that
ATHERSTONE. 295
bigger and wilder beasts of the forest could scarcely have out-
done. Her screams, too, attracted attention from a distance, as
the same sounds might had you or I — or a keen multitude —
heard them from afar, with hounds in covert. Two more
foxhunting farmers were passing near, heard the sharp signal,
that set their hearts beating — pounced on the fox — no, foxes, a
brace of them — chopped them as they left covert, and brought
them both to hand, dark lantern and all ! Moral. Lock up
your chicken-houses ; and bring up your daughters to pay
homage to a fox.
ATHERSTONE.
The Atherstone marked the Rugby Carnival (Friday,
Jan. 27th) in very pretty fashion, with a gallop that might
serve either to rouse the wearied spirit of the midnight
reveller or to hurry the pulse of the sturdiest early- to-bed
foxhunter. They gave the ball-goers till midday, and a while
besides, to bring their shattered remains in trim and plausible
order to the covert-side. Alas for the thirst of honest riot, for
the after-conscience of merry-making, for the retribution that
is gathered with the grape, and for the punishment that is
meted out to the scoffer-at-sleep — not a bottle of soda was
to be had within a mile of the meet ! Coton House was
but, as it were, a whited sepulchre — a hideous mockery of
Drought and Despair ; silent as the grave, empty as a Marine
Magnum, dry as the Great Sahara. So powerfully did this
unfitness of things appeal to one of our more opulent fellow
foxhunters, that he decided there and then — it should be so
no more. When another January comes and the Atherstone
arc again at the door of Coton, pallid youth shall no longer, I
warrant me, lounge limp and athirst in its saddle, but shall —
well — be found fit to ride over every hound in the pack ! Not
but that this latter virtue was displayed with some little
freedom in the earlier minutes of the run to-day ; but, if I
understand the symptoms, or if I took in at all accurately the
692 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
manner of man offending, its exhibition was now due neither to
the dimness of sight that is consequent upon late hours nor to
the false vigour of strong restoratives. It seemed to me, on
the contrary, that many who, as a rule, haste not to dance nor
hurry to ride, now merely seized the occasion of hounds
requiring time that they might shine as delinquents in the
wicked art of overriding. In plain English, there were men
among hounds and round them — while the latter were flinging
and straining in mad eagerness to catch the first thread of the
line just cast them — who seldom if ever keep, or even attempt
to keep, a good pack in view during twenty quick minutes.
" The thrusters are bad enough," say the Masters (more power
to them, to their gentle tongues and to their oft-tried tempers!)
" but the shirkers and makebelieves are ten times worse."
This is gospel, as is shown by commas inverted.
Well, you will understand, that Friday's field went rather
faster than the hounds — for some few minutes at starting.
The find had taken place, not at the Coton Spinneys (which,
like the Coton sideboard, are possibly languishing for want of a
resident tenant), but at a warm and roomy withy bed, planted
in recent years by Mr. C. Marriott, by the side of Bensford
Bridge on the Watling Street road. The little river Swift
flows through the osiers, making it difficult for the huntsman
to command both sides of his covert. To-day's fox went north
(whence, by the bye, the black clouds were swooping omin-
ously) ; the pack were chiefly on the southern bank ; and,
before the horn could be sounded on the trail, the latter had
been well trodden under foot. The Atherstone ladies indeed
form a beautiful pack — much like the Grafton, in make and
length and shapeliness ; not quite so generally matched for
colour (a very minor detail), but very even in build, and very
quick and vigorous and bold in work.
They hunted under difficulties for ten minutes, by which
time they had reached within a few fields of the right of
Twelveacres Wood; then a kindly fox jumped up before them,
and they were off, over the pick of the Atherstone grass. I
ATHERSTONE. 297
cannot say whether the farmers term this Bitteswell parish
feeding-land, dairy-land, or mere store keep ; but for a score
of years it has seemed to me that, whether beef or butter or
bone be the fruit of the soil, it demands such hedging around
as would guard a vineyard from without or inclose a cattle
ranche within. The hedge-cutters, too, work with an eye to
foxhunting. They know exactly what a hunter can accom-
plish ; and they set their task to an inch. Four feet six is
their measurement, a calculation I will back for a beaver hat
(though the dents and cracks that prompt the wager are not
the result of to-day). We can accept their challenge when
we're going fast — but I am coward enough to say they are a
little exacting when pace has once failed, and we quarrel for
"turn." I like a gap then — no, I prefer a simple two-foot
brush hedge. And I speak and confess only as one of a
million. This is not a slow-going country. There are too
many of us. 'Tis excellent cunning to mark a gap or a hole in
the glance of a second ; 'tis sheer pain and misery to ride in a
string. It frightens us, and it brings our horses down to a
strain of impotent plagiarism. What one does, the next does
likewise — only probably worse.
But I ought to be on, in the wake of Mr. Fabling and Mr.
Hipwell. You may follow the farmers here, my gay citizens.
The former carved out most of the work on his short-legged
chesnut ; the latter, as usual, galloped faster and jumped bigger
(with his steeplechase brown) than did any of the centurions
(the which is local term for three-figure men). This is an
era of sensational leaps, so I may be pardoned (and, moreover
this is fact) for mentioning that Mr. Hipwell began his ride
with a jump worth measuring with tape and standard.
Well, but about hounds. They set to on their fox with a
will ; and they gave us a short sharp treat — in a merry race to
Bitteswell Village. There they knocked up against one of
those scientific hedoe-builders — who would have it their fox
was still in his ditch, under the newly cut thorn. Hounds
were at fault, while we rode all round the misguided man and
298 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
between him and them and the line. But they took it on, and
Ave took the little brook— or fell in. And at the Lutterworth
turnpike it all changed — the fox. at all events (twenty-five
minutes). For, though up-wind now, they could merely hunt
(which you know is a very plough-country sort of thing,
especially after a Ball) ; and then it was we bethought our-
selves of the exact size and propriety of these Bitteswell fences.
So we worked our way back to the Osier Bed of Cotesbach —
some three-quarters of an hour from start — and the run came
to an end, I believe at an open drain or earth.
Next night came the total eclipse of the moon — and of fox-
hunting.
And since Saturday another dry frost, as you have very
possibly realised. The parched earth will be more waterless
than ever when again we ride over it. And yet, I maintain —
interruptions apart — the present has been hitherto an excellent
season, in this section of the shires of Northampton and
Warwick — showing that here at least a wet winter is no
absolutely necessary condition in the interests of sport. The
counties of Leicester and Rutland want the rain that has ever
been deemed a sine qua non there : and every man we meet
from that side of the Midlands is emphatically crying out
for it.
It occurs to me that, if on the score of scent and sport we can
do without rain, we assuredly find ourselves better without it
for every other reason. Such a trifle as personal comfort may
be set aside without discussion. But, how much less mark do
we put on the land, how much less damage do we inflict on the
crops, how much less havoc do we play with the fences, while
the ground is firm and sound as this year — compared with
what happens when horses sink up to their fetlocks at every
stride, and up to their hocks at a well-poached gap ! A hunter
now takes his fences clean, and leaves most of them in much
the same state as he found them. But a tired, draggled
animal — however good a performer when fresh — is jumping all
the while under difficulties. He has not the physical strength
ATHERSTONE. 299
for the effort, nor docs the ground help him with a firm foot-
hold. Then it is that a field of horsemen make havoc ; and
then it is that we have a crop of blows, bangs, and big legs
throughout the winter.
P.S. — My postscript is a very sad and sorrowful one. I have
seen to his grave the dear old friend, the kindly director under
whose mandate and sympathy it has been my privilege to
sketch foxhunting for nearly a score of years. Of Mr. Walsh's
life and good work it is written elsewhere. But from me
a word may not be out of place in humble, affectionate
tribute to the memory of one whom it was delightful to know
intimately, and gratifying to see frequently. He formed
opinions strongly and would express them incisively. But
sincerity and consistency were stamped on every word — and
the thoroughness of his kindly nature came out in every
sentence. Once a friend, he was always a friend — staunch and
unprejudiced, plainspoken but ever considerate. His clear
judgment and knowledge of details extended to other matters
beyond sport. Of whatever subject interested him he would
master the why-and-wherefore ; and thus, while never pros}r,
he spoke always with authority — never at haphazard. Misan-
thropes have flung their bitterness against eveiy stage of life —
dubbing youth as flippant, manhood as selfish and unreliable —
while age has come in for varied epithet of detraction. But,
surely, where the mind remains unimpaired— still more where,
as in the case of Stonehenge, it is only strengthened and
enriched by time — age is the period wherein heart and noble
nature prove themselves, endearing the owner far more readily
to his fellow-men than in the earlier years of existence. Mr.
Walsh in his old age (and twenty years ago he was old, ;is
ordinary men would be reckoned) was not only remarkable for
his wondrous clearness of intellect, but was admirable for his
kind, sympathetic heart.
300 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
HEM PLOW IN THE SNOW.
By Wednesday morning, March 7, the snow was melting with
a rush — but melted only in the midfields, and still many feet
deep in drifts. The lanes were like railway cuttings, every
ditch was choked, and most hedges piled high. But, for all
this, the Pytchley brought off a capital day's sport, of which the
sketch is given below. 10.30 p.m. is the scribbling hour ; and
mind must not be allowed to revert to a sixteen-mile home
ride, against a chilly breeze and in distress of snow-soaked
boots. These have nothing to do with the sport, any more
than the very needful dinner, the " sleep-enticing bottle," and
the necessary cigar. I am at the beck of duty, and must obey
a call. Shuckburgh belongs to the morning — and the cigar
may go to the fire.
Crick was the meet ; but Crick was not the draw. They
worked to Hemplow. Stanford Hall Coverts were said to be
unstopped. Fox went unexpectedly from roadside spinney on
the way — and we were launched on to the Arctics forthwith.
A splendid crop of snow here. But he was a kind fox, and
disdained to hang up his field. So we jumped only once — can
scarcely say what — from snowdrift to snowdrift, till hounds
wavered on the hillside opposite Welford Gravelpit. Here
they turned leftward, and ran harder — though canal path
favoured, along the valley opposite South Kilworth, as if round
to the Hemplows. Handy men, working or snow-ploughing or
sight-seeing, held him in the valley — and, though gates were
very useful and regular, the lady pack had it much their own way
(Eh, what a luxury — on a Pytchley Wednesday ! And didn't
they make use of it, from noon till night, hunting like beagles,
and leaving us all whenever occasion came ?). Thus they ran,
and somehow we rode, down the valley that the railway has for
years considered all her own — till we touched Stanford Hall
Park (thirty minutes). One, and our only one, who rides at all
times and all places, really tried the fences — and even he had
to cry Peccavi in a snow mound.
HEMPLOW IN THE SNOW. 301
Thence across the valley to Heinplow was a simple measure
and there they killed the stiff one. A right good hunt of
an hour.
We had yet another hour from the Hemplow — we all saw
the fox, and rode like dare-devils into the snow-flecked vale
and its obvious gates, the more readily that a liveried second
horseman had announced the only trap by turning a treble
one over snow-covered cart ruts. (I don't think I am singular
in this respect, but whenever I feel a more than ordinary aver-
sion to taking a cropper myself — say, when like bold Reynard
I am fat after a frost — it does amuse me beyond all reason to
witness a little unnecessary catastrophe such as this.) Re-
meniber, we go out to be boys — and verily we are boyish indeed
after a three weeks' frost. Let the old man be assumed on
the morrow — or in summer. " Then why should we wait till
to-morrow ? " is the popular refrain of the winter — and may
we ever be where foxhunting is " Queen of my heart to-night."
'Tis getting late — the uproar of the usual Shuckburgh gale is
thundering already — and I have another snow-hampered gallop
to tell. This was brisker yet than the former. Such a country
too ! We were with them now, and again we weren't. For
they ran fast, and we were, perforce, mildly cunning. They
hunted over the edge of the Stanford Hall Estate. (If you doubt
me, go and tick off those stone emblazonments on each corner !).
We snapped hounds at a wavering moment under Yelvertoft
village ; and with reckless determination followed them over a
six-inch hedge that stood between us and the Lilbourne road.
Providence is often very good, it is said, to those in extremis.
We will leave that for more serious case. But it was remark-
able to-day that, though we (I say we, for nobody put us to
shame more than once or twice — and then a snowdrift) could
never tackle a strong Northamptonshire fence, the country
came marvellously easy, save for the weight of the snow-
embedded gates. Hounds ran gloriously half-way to Lilbourne
village, and we made the road sound joyously. Fox made a
sudden break back. Why ? Because he had eaten fowls there
302 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
last week ! So explained an old friend and farmer, who should
know the ways of the varmint if anyone may. Well, Reynard
certainly did hurry back, like Mother Hubbard's dog from his
empty cupboard : and he took the brookside back, beside the
juvenile River Avon, leaving Swinford Old Covert wide. This
move made jumping — and, believe me, it was very unwilling
jumping. The ditches were underground. The fences (and
you may be sure they were picked with every possible view to
sober fragility) were best approached with free exercise of whip
and spur — weapons that are as often tell-tale of nerve impaired
as they are instruments of man dashing and fearless. Hounds
ran hard back to Yelvertoft, and hunted to the Hemplow —
reaching the nearest point to their find in exactly an hour. (I
may take the liberty of adding that to handle hounds under
such difficulties was of itself a feat to prove keenness, quickness,
and determination beyond praise — name unnecessary.)
And this was our show day from Hemplow, March 8th, '88.
I hope, ladies and gentlemen as follows, your stable report will
contain no black entries to-morrow. Mr. and Mrs. Simson, Mr.
and Miss Walton, Mr. and Mrs. Graham, Mr. and Miss Judkins,
Major Duthie, Capt. Middleton, Count Larische, Capt. Atherton,
Messrs. Hazlehurst, Adamthwaite, Leveson-Gower, Guthrie,
Jamieson, C. Marriott, Stirling Stuart, Heneage, Ruddock,
Bishop, M. Walton, Rhodes, Gebhardt, Hardy, Cross, Elkin,
Goodman, L. Gee, J. Gee, Attenbury, Gilbert, Cooper, Smith,
Johnson.
THE WARWICKSHIRE.
Thursday morning, March 8. — With five minutes in hand,
with at least one boot safely mounted, with spurs and gloves
ready 'to be snatched, and an hour's margin in which to do the
eight miles, I'm safe in " assuming a virtue though I have it
not," and pretending to be ready before my time. Hounds are
even now on their way to Shuckburgh ; for this is the renewal
of existence, the end of a brief bad dream. One horse, or ten
THE WARWICKSHIRE. 303
horses, m stable — we are all alike ready, and willing, to ride as
near hounds as we dare. I have seen bright pictures — have by
force of circumstances lived actually among art, doing my very
best to hide my shameful love of the practical and unsesthetic
by crushing out all reference to the athletic and venatic (a
word I beg leave to borrow for the nonce). The ruling spirit
would no doubt come out at times, with the same vulgar
impromptu that forced Leech's stableboy-footman to implore
the jelly mould to " who ! who ! !" But this by the bye — and
without argument as to whether art belongs neither to killing a
fox nor to riding to hounds, whether there is no poetry to be
found in the open air nor romance in the grand ecstasy of a
dart across country. Pshaw ! we shall prove it in an hour or
two — or my pen shall cease here. We are off to the island, in
the soft sea of the Warwickshire grass. The bright picture to
awakening eyes has been the leather clo' airing before the fire
— types more or less snowy (as our valet has been dutiful or
festive in the week rung out) of the ups and downs of climate,
the ins and outs of Weathergage Cottage. Vita brevis, ars
longa — which may be literally translated " As pants the heart
for cooling streams." The Braunston brook is an old time
receptacle for the heated in the chase, and is all ready for
to-day. Now for the covert.
Thursday evening. — A magnificent day's sport — and only
the usual meagre margin left me for a Thursday post. Hounds
have scarcely run harder this year (the day through). If
Hemplow's hill coverts gave us yesterday's sport, Shuckburgh's
wooded heights did still better to-day. Meet 11.30 — and
consequently more people late than ever. Hounds, the lady
pack — and even sharper than, while quite as shapely as, their
handsome brothers. At any rate they ran right away from
their field this morning — fair/// left them (as I will show, fast
as my pen can gallop for these remaining minutes). Found
almost at once in Shuckburgh Wood, hunted quietly to its
Prior's Marston end — and there was Reynard to be seen
slipping off across the grass beneath. Lord Willoughby had
:304 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
hounds on the line in a second— and lustily we raced down
the bridle road that leads to Prior's Hardwick (three miles
away) — and which, if we had only been content to follow it,
would have kept us within hail of the pack throughout this
splendid run. But to our eventual misery we didn't — and so
were beaten, the fastest gallopers and the fiercest fencers, quite
as much as old Pegasus the slow coach. We rode the first mile
almost abreast of the flying ladies ; then turned up hill as they
swung leftward across us, and by so doing were condemned to
hilly ground and fences girt with snow, in place of the smooth
safety of the parallel road of the lower vale. They vanished
over the first ridge, had gained a quarter of a mile as their
nearest followers rose the second ; were visible afterwards only
in briefest glimpses ; and finally disappeared no one knew
whither. The fences were all to be jumped — but not any-
where, and not always fast. So, doubtless, they gained some
vantage thus. But the sharp undulations did still more for
them ; and, again, I daresay they were far fitter than horses
after the recent imprisonment. At the road above the brick-
yard (on the Welsh road, from Prior's Marston, is it not ?) they
were near, by sound, but high hedges cut off the view. They
were again to be seen in the next valley, streaming onward for
Prior's Hardwick. And here it was (after twenty minutes of
straining gallop) that men made their main mistake. Someone
of the leaders supposed hounds to have turned again up hill, to
the left of Prior's Hardwick. Everybody else supposed he was
right, and followed him. The fact being that hounds were just
in front, still racing upwind along this superb valley. A mob
of miserable men meandered the village — this way and that.
And hounds went on alone. Leaving Boddington Gorse to the
left, they crossed the wide pastures to Wormleighton Village (a
point of five miles) ; and on reaching " Scriven's House," at
last turned down the wind and took a bee line back to Prior's
Marston by way of the neighbourhood of Fern Hill Spinney.
About a mile from the last-named village they were at fault in
a grass field — and here they consented to be overtaken (just
THE WARWICKSHIRE. 305
one hour from breaking covert). Mr. Goodman, the second
whip, and some one other had met them on their return journey
— which was at a pace within horses' compass. Their upwind
flight was far beyond it, as had been too plainly proved. A
holloa at length enabled them to be carried on. They hunted
then readily to ground close to the village; and a terrier evicted
an immense fine fox, too tired to make use of the law they gave
him.
Then, the afternoon run was a delightful event — and more
appreciable because amenable. His Lordship again drew Shuck-
burgh ; and from the laurels behind the house dislodged another
ready traveller. Nobody, apparently, expected a find — this
being the only portion of the Hill left undrawn in the fore-
noou : and nobody could possibly tell in which direction hounds
might be breaking. In course of time we made out they had
started for Flecknoe ; and they favoured us (in consideration
possibly of the hard treatment of the morning) by flinging back
across the turnpike that we were so blindly clattering. This
bend put their heads direct for Catesby ; and thither they held
them for the next fifteen minutes to reach the coombe of Dane
Hole. Over the same description of glorious turf as in the
former run, they travelled almost equally fast. A small brook
crossed the line after about five minutes — a second, none too
awful from the point of measurement, but very brimming with
water and presently with men, immediately afterwards offered
itself. It is only the Catesby stream, eventually the Braunston
Brook. But snow water, when every furrow is splashing with
it, is very enticing foothold to a fat and careless hunter. Well,
the air was warm now, if the water was cold. The half gale of
last night had moderated to a pleasant breeze — and the warm
wet earth carried a rattling scent. Dane Hole has from this
side an approach of two ploughed fields : and we are old enough
to know that a good March fox is not likely to hang long in so
small a place, with Badby Wood only a couple of miles away.
So there were various half-blown horses recovering their wind
on the road above, during the moments between the forward-
x
306 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
holloa upon the run fox and the arrival of the pack. Now the
latter ran on well, and within reason, over the grassy hillsides
to Badby Wood — pointing at one time to Staverton, but driven
back up to the wood through their fox having met foot-people
on his way. So they struck through the beech trees on the
westernmost pinnacle of the wood ; then at full speed crossed
the Fawsley estate to Charwelton. At such a time it was no
source of regret that gates should make the way easy over
these beautiful grazing grounds. Close to Charwelton Church
came the first and only real check (forty-five minutes). Scent
then seemed to vanish : and the hunt came to an end. So
must my jottings. But never again let the hypercritic scoff, or
the unbeliever shrug his shoulders, at the Shuckburgh rhap-
sodies of Brooksby.
I should add that some twenty people went through this
second run ; and among them I may be allowed to make
mention of Mrs. Bouch (the only lady), Sir Charles Mordaunt,
Messrs. Leigh, Beatty, James, Ford, Rose, Goodman, Fabling,
Jenner, Waring, Martin, Major Duthy, Capt. Atherton, and of
course the Master and his man.
THE BRAUNSTON GALLOP OF THE PYTCHLEY.
Out of your shell, my old snail ! Prick up your horns, and
spring to the occasion ! Tell the world what you know, what
you saw, and what you gathered of the Pytchley gallop from
Braunston ! Yes, a true, typical grass country gallop, of
exuberant pace and plenteous incident from beginning to end —
no flash-in-the-pan scurry — no slow difficult chase, by help of
huntsman and pottering of pack. But a straightaway, ravish-
ing, run — a race from find to finish, with a bold wild fox in
front, a swift pack in unhalting pursuit, and the best field of
the present day (I assert and repeat — and defy contradiction)
toiling and striving, not one atom against another, but in sheer
incompetence to be more than after hounds — and finally
THE BRAUNSTON GALLOP OF THE TYTQHLEY. 307
sinking astern. Let the old, old, men talk as they like.
<c Hounds are bred too fast," they say — "sport is spoiled and
foxes can't run as they did in our day." Why, have we not
twice in one week, seen a fox playing with hounds for forty-
live minutes — and simply laughing at a Midland field ? No,
old gentleman, no ! Slow off our foxes, give us Newmarket
mounts (with double bridle mouths and with Liverpool talent)
then you may hope to set things on an even footing, and we
may hunt the fox in old-fashioned form ! Happily, for the
equilibrium of foxhunting, for balance of temperament, for
method of science, for the adaptability of huntsman's skill and
of master's sweet sway, such delirious rushes come to madden a
field only at rare intervals. Or all steadiness would be gone,
all ballast would be lost. I have ridden to hounds for more
years than I can hope to ride again. But not six times in
those cherished annals of the past can I look back upon a pack
running with such sweet venom as on Saturday (Pj'tchley) and
Thursday (aforetold).
Now to Braunston Gorse — I have event and movement still
vivid to mind and eye. May my pen dissolve in rust if it can't
evolve some tangible action out of scenes that have been my
waking thoughts for two nights and shall be my memory while
scent lingers in the black pad of this Braunston fox (a sniff
and a solace I begged and pocketed against a sportless summer).
A yellow, bright, fellow he was, that stemmed the easy west
wind and left the gorse behind. To-day we were privileged to
line the covert's upper boundary, to peer into the inner thicket,
to gaze over and beyond it upon the rich green vale beneath,
and to shut off our fox from the less witching land behind us.
I cannot sketch — but I can give you a trace from the Ordnance
Map. It may help my words to convey their meaning, and my
reader to fill in where I fail to be clear.
The Gorse, then, looks south and west — with the young
Leame, or locally the Braunston Brook, marking the valle}'
between it and Shuckburgh Hill. And straight for the brook
rollicked a jovial fox, with never a glance at the cluster of
308
FOXHOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
eager onlookers, who in wonder and delight watched him face
the breeze as they had never dared to hope. And, though
hounds caught no view, nor even hunted him from covert, they
strung out to the horn as rapidly, and settled as determinedly,
unston
I
Daventry
MAP OF THE BRAUNSTON RUN.
as though already assured of his brush. So the two big"
pastures were done at racing speed : and the brook was reached,
where the old canal dam bridges it helpfully. And here some
stray villager turned our fox's head southward ; and the lady
pack crossed our front. No, not the front of quite all — for even
now there were skirmishers over the embankment, while one or
THE BRAUNSTON G ALLOT OF THE PYTCHLEY. 309
two luckless others on the right flank, had already become
involved in the brook — " fallen," like Ossian's Fillan, " in the
first of their fields ; fallen without renown." Aye, and able
warriors, too.
Now hounds ran the nearer bank for half a mile, then crossed
it where it might be jumped, and was freely jumped — they who
already found themselves on the safer side crying cheerily as
they galloped by, " All right, will do capitally." To do is a
word of elastic meaning. (In the Tommiebeg Shootings, the
noun factor is credited to the verb facio.) The brook, at all
events, did for many. How the huntsman extricated himself,
and was among the first at the finish, must remain a marvel for
all time. And,
"Where were ye, sweet nymphs, when the relentless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? "
On the Flecknoe bank things went gaily, soon furiously.
Hounds warmed to their work more hotly in every field ; the
fences were honest stake-and-bound, but for a while in such
close succession that the instant of landing over each was also
the moment for marking the next. Mr. Adamthwaite (who
may fairly be stated to have held a better place than anyone,
the run throughout) was pilot at this period, the running being
shortly taken up by Messrs. Gordon-Cunard and Foster — and
the two could be seen taking the strong fences side by side, as
if the course were flagged. In the full swing of pace and
excitement, and when already half way to Shuckburgh, their
path was crossed and their progress checked, by a double that
would have stopped an elephant and might have frightened
even a Christ Church undergrad. High as a barrack-room,
dense as a wall, there was no possibility of getting in, much less
a probability of getting out of, such a rampart of thorn ; and
the party, now joined by Major Cosmo Little, by Mr. Sheriffe,
and by Capt. Pender on his grey, pulled up for the moment in
blank despair. The two latter worked off to the right, and, I
fancy, hit off an eventual opening. Mr. Cunard took his
310
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
chance at the tiny spinney in the left corner ; and the old
black mare, landing safely in, lifted herself properly out.
Mr. Adamthwaite followed ; and these two had on the right a
first clean cut at the brook, where fox and hounds had swung
down to it from some object or individual unseen. The others,
meanwhile, retraced a hundred yards at a gallop, made use of a
gate they had just passed, and, catching sight almost imme-
diately of the descending pack, also thundered after them for
the brook below. Here they found it flowing muddily under a
steep sloping hill; but the banks were good and the pack
tremendous — while men and horses were in the full glow of
spirit fairly roused. Charles accepted the water as a mere
matter of course, or as easy practice for the Staunton Brook of
his next — and, 'tis to be hoped, many a — season to come. A
cut in the bank caused General Clery to diverge a few yards
for his jump : but he too went on in safety, followed by Major
Duthy, and led into the next field, to join forces with the
leaders of the right wing (terras and principles will be found
duly explained in " Minor Tactics ").* The pastures grew
* Minor Tactics, by Maj.-Geu. Clery, War Office.
THE BRAUNSTON GALLOP OF THE PYTCHLEY. 311
wider now, but the pace no less severe. Ridge and furrow, too,
was no relief — and, I might have mentioned by way of plea for
steeds that early began to sob, many of those racing fences of
the Flecknoe neighbourhood had a heavy drop in store, for
horses jumping vigorously and landing wide. Besides, was not
this to every hunter engaged, his first gallop since the frost ? A
shining ox rail garnished one of the last hedges before the
Shuckburgh-and-Staverton road. Mr. Adamthwaite's little
brown rose sharp and flippantly as the spur went in twice to
the final stride; Mr. Foster chose double-timber, and left it
behind him undisturbed ; but Mr. Cunard's good mare only
saved herself by a clever in-and-out. Her bolt was all but
shot, and two minutes later her head was resting plaintively on
a ditch bank. Refusal was the fate of the next comer, a heavy
fall that of the next — the latter being the lot of one of the
oldest members of the Hunt, Mr. Mills, who to-day was riding
to hounds with all the quick talent of twenty, or, may be, of
twice that number of, years ago — but who was soon back in his
saddle, happy and mirthful, and going on with his son. Mrs.
Dalgleish and Mrs. Graham made the oxer no easier ; but
Capt. Faber served it usefully. Scrambling over bank and
weak double, the party left the road for the dingle-broken
slopes that form the side-vale to Catesby. Did one of the
above gallant officers recognise, I wonder, the first blind water-
course— of which he and the black horse of to-day made no
shallow survey some seasons ago and before he set off to the
land of Pharaoh ?
You will vote me garrulous ere I've done. But I have you
by the buttonhole now, and must have out my say — craving
pardon not so much of you but of the good fellows with whose
names I am making free. I pretend to no completeness of
story : but impressions are by no means as fleeting as the
happy moments themselves, and here the}' are — and peopled —
as they came to me.
Now men were crawling in single file over three cramped
water-girt hedges marking three deep notches in the grassy
312
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND FRA11UE.
ridges — or for lack of breath and strength were riding wider
for a trio of gates. Now they bore leftward over two fences
that should have been " flying," but at this period had better
been termed " crashing." And now they were on the verge of
Catesby Hill. (Only twenty minutes to here, but such
minutes!) Fox would not face hill or House, so breasted the
steep hillside still more to the left. Every horse was at a walk,
and many men led up in thoughtful — not to say forced —
humanity. And on the hill top wras a first ploughed field, then
the Staverton and Catesby road — and in the road a gallant
Lancer walking round his steed, only to call Time ten seconds
later and bid him go again to the lead of a brother-in-arms,
Capt. Atherton. Another older member of the Whitecollar
Hunt, Mr. Woodrooffe, was also very forward here. Then, beyond
the road there frowned the tufted pinnacle of Studboro' Hill,
shutting hounds for the minute completely from view. But a
sportive shepherd wras on the summit, waving his cap in en-
couragement and advice. Some took a gate to gallop round
its right base, others an equally ready means to circle its left.
THE BRAUXSTON GALLOP OF THE PYTCHLEY. 313
The ground was again firm, now the slope was downwards, and
horses recovered half their wind. Two light fences next ensued,
and hounds could be readily reached. Mr. Adamthwaite at
least was with them. Arbury is another ragged hill close by.
Here the line crossed that of Lord Willoughby's second fox of
Thursday previous (as his lordship was here to see). And from
this moment the point of the present run was virtually identical
with the other. Hounds gained a little on the plantation top ;
but Mr. Logan and Mr. Fabling were not a hundred }rards
behind them as they rode down a second, and final, plough to
the lane beneath. Had they crossed the lane at once to the
music ahead, they would, I cannot but fancy, have ridden a
line of gates in direct pursuit, across the unjumpable Fawsley
Lordship. But a strong party of forward riders (headed by the
two whips, Mr. Goodman, Major Riddell, and Mr. Craven, I
believe), galloping parallel down the wheatland, caught sight
of hounds veering Fawslej^-wards ; and, in duty bound, held
the vanguard along the bridle path in that direction. They
lost not a turn, and they loitered not by the way. But the
ladies were now running for blood — and beaten horses could
only lose ground o'er each rolling pasture. The pack left
Fawsley a quarter of a mile to the east ; and their followers all
that distance to the bad as they reached the spinney of Church
Charwelton (36 minutes — and six miles by crow-fly). The
yellow fox would have struggled another mile ; but the gallopers
were round before him — and he turned back among the pack
to die (44 minutes to his death).
The above is but the view of one man — and of one man,
among many, intent upon a task that beat them all, viz., dis-
tinctly to live with hounds from start to finish. The backs of
men hurrying are not easy to decipher — though the accident of
a lead at a big place, a laugh or a merry word, a groan of
sympathy or a murmur of glad co-operation — any of these are
signs and symptoms of common object, of joint and joyous
feeling, that cannot but stamp themselves on a narrator's mind.
There were quite as many others, as forward as most who
314 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
chanced to career past the penman, and so caught his view.
For instance, the friend he missed in the fog of the Thornby
gallop, Mr. Wroughton — Captain Fitzwilliam, Count Larische,
Mr. Darby, Lord Henry Paulet, and Mr. Schwabe — also Mr.
Henley, Mr. Close, Mr. Burton, Mr. and Mrs. Philips. But I
dare attempt no full enumeration. I would merely venture the
query to Lord Spencer and Sir Rainald Knightley (both in a
position to give a verdict of to-day) — was not this almost as.
worthy a gallop as any in the Pytchley History ?
Surely the number of hunting days has never been so small
as in the winter of '87-88 — the proportion of sport perhaps,
never so great, in the counties of Northampton and Warwick.
THE BLUE COVERT BURST.
More of the Pytchley — and this in closest sequence with my
last voluminous record.
It is of Saturday I would speak, the final day of this mar-
vellous March — broken, as it has been, by frost and snow-
storm, but bedecked with such sport as we have not seen for
years. The Pytchley have had brilliant runs, or at least good
runs, on nearly every day that weather has allowed them out
of kennel. They have been fairly spoiling us. Nothing like
it has happened in the Shires for five years — and, believe me,
strangers, nothing of the kind is likely to happen again for
another such cycle. So you need not think to cluster like
bees round a honey-pot. The pot is not dry, but its contents
may not be dished with the same flavour after a summer's
keeping. You remember the Quorn record, the Cottesmore
blaze, the Bicester furore, and the Pytchley craze — all within
the last decade \ And you know how these passed away for
a lontr while. Don't come to the Grass Countries — at least
unless you mean to stand a five years' trial, pay your house
tax to the county, and buy your forage of the farmers. So
say the sages, and so sing I the chorus.
THE BLUE COVERT BURST. 315
Now you would lcavn of the Oxendon meet and its out-
come. I wish you joy of Waterloo and its immediate sur-
roundings— and I throw in the halo that clings to the im-
mortalised Gorse. Jim Mason's dictum that " the best man
and best horse ever foaled could not ride from Waterloo
Gorse to Market Harboro' with less than three falls " has
been my quotation before to-day. And the same measure is
more than fairly applicable to any three miles from the same
starting-point, given men and horses considerably below the
great man's requirements. Such is at all events my opinion
founded on recent personal experience. They contrive in this
special pasture-land to put width and strength enough into-
their oxers alone, to send us often a mile out of our way in
a run. But besides this, every valley is drained by water-
course, with timber and blackthorn in a conglomerate mass
to laugh at ambition and to scoff at the impertinence of
riding to hounds — the which is apropos only to the bj'play
of the early day. We may pass over the death of four foxes-
— victims of fat and fecundity. And now to Blue Covert, a
well-honoured centre spot in a wild grass country — the con-
ditions of to-day being a N.E. wind (very little of it), a warm
wet soil, and the lady pack fierce, intent, and undeniable,
with recent and constant success.
" The leopard-fox," grey and black spotted, and unmistakable.,
the hero of two previous escapes, went away of himself, just as
the sandwich box had been cased, the flask holstered, and
now only sport-hunger and thirst-for-a-ride remained. Parade
was formed in double line, as Goodall galloped hounds through
to the view. Walk, trot, canter, gallop — what an orderly corps
we are ! And how a double plough steadies us — till we get
a chance of riding in among a flock of ewes and lambs, and
of scattering them across the front of hounds ! We are all
cattle-riders here — not born, nor taught, but impelled. The
wondrous scent-power of the day was nowhere better instanced
in this good gallop than when the pack drove through the
bleating mob from hedge to hedge. And now we were on
316 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
great grazing pastures that your stray scribbler had never
seen before — though now content to live in earnest hope of
seeing many a time again. The pack was at its fastest, and
so were the crowd of men — yet spread with half a mile of
front, and dotting the broad acres as across the width of
Fernley's old canvases. Sweeping down the gentle green
slope, they covered the scene with varied a.ction delightful to
mark — for you could see right, left, and in front, to take in
a spread of life and vigour seldom coloured in a single view.
The pack were dotted on the farther slope, as men came
twenty abreast over the ant-hilly field, culminating in the
boundary hedge of the valley beneath. Messrs. Foster,
Wroughton, Cunard, Pender, Sir Saville Crossley, Captain
Middleton, Mr. Sheriffe, the Master and Mr. F. Langham,
Messrs. Murietta, Stirling-Stuart, Schwabe, Bishop, Mills ('pere
■et fits 2), Sanders, and the huntsman of course, with his men ;
and others besides. Short Wood had been left half a mile to
the right ; Mawsley Wood was the prominent point, and thither
hounds gained at every yard — as they will do on a burning
scent where the fences are a quarter of a mile apart. Crossing
the road just to the right of the wood, they proved the scent
more determinedly than ever. The leading couples had a ten-
length advantage in leaving the lane. The others could never
touch them for a mile — though the little Pytchley ladies are as
evenly paced as a coach team, and never tail nor string. And
though they ran the very hedgeside, not even a road rider could
live the pace with them — till they turned into the lane again,
to enter Old Poor's Gorse, a rough patch of furze and common.
{Twelve minutes to this point.)
The chase now left the straight line and bent back to the
right (I must follow geography as closely as I can — to fix a
nearly ten mile run within a five mile point — and all within a
forty-seven minutes' timing). The country here was close
inclosure, where the plough had been freely used. But they
drove on hard to Faxton Village, hit the grass again, while the
plot thickened, and we were all " well in it " — and found our-
THE BLUE COVERT BURST. 317
selves at Lamport, marvelling bow road and fallow could honour
scent in such lively fashion. For the very first time in this
incongruous season, the tillage land was soft and holding — and
just when breath was badly needed (twenty-six minutes from
the start). Our fox was on view as he left the corner of Lam-
port Spinney; but Goodall was unmoved to touch hounds in.
steady cry. They ran on as hotly over the dirt as they had
over the greensward ; and in this manner were quickly over the
Brixworth and Lamport road, to plunge into the valley beneath
— where the fences are double and riding must be aided by
knowledge of ground. A few men took a first double in their
stride. A Meltonian, Mr. Murietta, took a second with similar
flippancy. Knowledge went to the left. Chance went to the
right — and the latter heading had been left in sorry plight, but
for Mr. Foster's exposition of a possible on-and-off at a drinking
place (where bricks and mortar had encroached on the brook).
There was a further alternative, I was led to believe — but as.
this involved a plunge into an ash spinney and a horse's head
forked helplessly between the young uprights, the plan recom-
mended itself but very slenderly to those invited. Across a
quarry tramway, doAvn to the railway side, along it nearly to
Spratton Station (this the farthest point) — upwards again to-
Brixworth ; tulto-ivhoop ! in a timber yard. Such was the
finish to as staunch and swift a hound-run as ever brought a
good fox to book. You can't put it quite level with the
Braunston gallop (the peer of which we shall seldom see) ; for
it was neither so straight nor over such exceptional ground.
But it was a great and grand instance of the power of hounds,
on a scenting day. Horses had done their best — and were in a
state to do little more : and a happier — or hotter — lot of people
never pulled up at a worry. If steaming horses and streaming
faces be any criterion of work, surely the severity of the chase
was amply and visibly proven. And now I must disentangle
myself — there were ladies up, and they looked cool and collected
as happiness would let them. Chief among them were Mrs.
Garnett, Miss Czarikov, Mrs. Tabor, and Miss Naylor. Space I
318 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PllAIRIE.
must have, too, for an unsolicited puff. Let it be known, by all
who care to save a favourite mount, and ride him to the very
front — Mr. G. Cunard's famous black mare (who was well nigh
to die after twenty minutes of the Braunston run) went through
this gallop without a gasp or falter — with a tube in her throat,
and never a canter for the tlrree weeks since the operation !
And his name it is Jones, the vet. of Leicester, who performed
the tracheotomy. Could a better test instance have been
found ?
THE STAVERTON RUN
Another grand run fell to the lot of the Pytchley on Satur-
day, March 24 — not so straight, not so brilliant, as the Braunston
gallop of a fortnight before, but a splendid performance and a
glorious treat. If it had a fault, it lay in the fact that there
was almost too much of it — as perhaps you may find ere you
get to my signature. Blame me not — the tale calls for some
telling. I will inflict no map on you this time — for that
already given at page 308 will answer all purposes.
The present run was a great ring, of an hour and forty-five
minutes — from Staverton Spinnies, by way of Staverton Village,
Badby Wood (left untouched), Arbury Hill, Catesby, Shuck-
burgh, Flecknoe, Drayton Hill, Daventry Reservoir, to Whilton
Lodge, with only a few slight checks throughout. This was the
line (between sixteen and eighteen miles as hounds ran it and
as various computations go) — it needs no eulogy from me — and
here are a few particulars.
Badby Wood had been the meet — bright and picturesque in
itself, pleasant and promising in the genial atmosphere of a cool
quiet morning, apparently picked and granted for sport — so
that we may carry foxhunting in its happiest aspect into our
summer's retrospect, and into our summer's fond forecast. The
Badby Wood foxes were on the rove ; and we hied to Staver-
ton, whose tight little copses — guarded the year round by
Mr. Wareing and Capt. C. Fitzwilliam — were rightly deemed
•certain tv.
TEE STAVERTON RUN 319
The vixen was allowed an open earth ; and the round thicket,
about as big as a billycock, was disturbed afoot, while the pack
sat up at a distance. When allowed within, they were through
in a second at the brush of a traveller. And the great mass of
Ted, white, and black took action at once — dividing right and
left, going wrong and going right. Staverton Wood o'erhung
the left flank, and hounds woke its hollow precipice with
liveliest music, in the cold still air. You might very easily
secure a bad start — a chance, indeed, that is seldom missing
when a great crowd is bent, each atom, upon besting the rest.
•Gates just wide enough for a shepherd's pony, hedges uncut
and unbroached, a situation half grasped, and wits rather
startled than awakened — a story half told, a good thing nearing
its expected point— all these, or other foolery, may set a man
going in the wrong direction in the first vital minutes of a
gallop. For my part (and I retain the pronoun entirely for
:such instance of warning and absurdity) the first definite sign
I could see to guide me, after an idiotic detour round the
"wrong side of the spinney and a crush through three gates,
-was a short tail wragging against the horizon — a tail that I
•could swear to, as cut in Harboro' and trimmed to a Leicester-
shire breeze — a tail that I might safely believe, a tail of truth,
a stump of veracity. It even took me off the broadway that
was carrying the main torrent noisily into Staverton Village,
and well-nigh took me, moreover, into a ditch while an erring
gate declined to be unhasped. The tail gave a parting flick, as
it disappeared in the offing ; and my venture was now endorsed
and encouraged by the company of some veteran pioneers.
Hounds had twisted under Staverton Wood, and were making
for that of Badby. Hotly we rode, and heartily we struggled,
while grass gave us every chance and the sturdy fences were
yet plain sailing. So, mercifully, the stern chase was only of a
few minutes. It ended, to all appearance, by prearrangement —
as it may often have been, if men be believed, when The Baron
exhausted a spurt with the stag. Not our Baron now, but a
Knight of high degree — tried in field and proven in action.
320 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
How did it happen, and why ? Only a strong binder — extra
pace — excellent shoulders, and a knowledge of How not to fall
— a recovery in mid-field and a return to seat and dignity that
would have done credit to an Apache, and that did my grace-
less heart good. Robert, toi quej'aime. The pack lingered a
moment to see it, then went on to the cold plough, and forward
to a warm holloa. Over Arbury Hill — the centre, apparently,
of our good border gallops of this queer mingled spring of snow-
storm and high sport. Footpeople had guarded Badby Wood
(an idle neighbourhood this) ; so we Avent west, and embarked
upon Bicestershire. (If all of that shire were thus, what need
of Northampton or Warwick or Leicester ?) Across a brief
o-reen plain to Dane Hole, which is the covert of Catesby.
This at a good hunting pace (twenty minutes now). Through
the larch dingle hounds went steadily. Beyond they threw up,
ran on and again threw up, for another half minute — or where
should we all have been, amid the unbridged gullies ? When
all were ready they drove on again, following more or less the
valley of the Catesby brook : and turned up to Shuckburgh,.
reaching the great Hill, forty-five minutes from starting, horses
blowing fiercely. But a strong fox meant no lingering here.
He had dipped over the hill corner to the Napton side, and was-
on down the dell to Shuckburgh Village to the tune of John's-
scream, far before the world had got its wind on the summit.
(And when next I try that lower circle on a young one, may I
not be told to follow a mufti chestnut — or the gates shall be my
only timber.)
Through Shuckburgh Village and out beyond, another epoch
of the run began. And, mark ye, it was only from where hounds,
climbed the Shuckburgh Hill that we reckon an eight-mile-
point, yet to come ! Hounds were a quarter of a mile to the-
oood of all but the second whip, as they crossed the turnpike,
and spun over the big pastures to Flecknoe. On the hill above
the village is a patch of gorse that almost invariably holds a
fox for the Warwickshire. The Pytchley went on harder than
ever, round the hamlet, and away for Braunston Gorse. For
THE ST AVERT OX RUN. 321
the present, it was a case of how soon a fox should die or how
soon we should run ourselves out. The bridle road was of
amazing help ; and, for that matter, after leaving Shuckhurgh
it was scarcely necessary to jump a fence, did you know the
country and ride near the hounds. But as the bridle-path
approached the Braunston Brook, hounds edged off to the
right ; and some men followed them, lest the direction should
now be Shuckburgh again. The brook was crossed ; and the
jump was very moderate ; but the sting was out of the horses-
and they lurched down to the water with a dull and inelastic
stride. Two refusals and a loud plunge made matters appa-
rently hopeless, till Mr. W. Walton proffered the needed lead •
and a dozen grateful men at once got to hounds. A few fields
further came the hillside spinnies of Drayton — one hour and
five minutes, grass all the way till now, and pace unceasing if
not exactly terrific.
The move upwards took us out of the vale, and set hounds-
going over the upland between the town of Daventry and the
village of Welton. No fox had come to hand ; and the end
seemed as far off as ever. "Too much, too much ! " murmured
men. " Too much, too much ! " sighed the gasping horses —
nearly all that had been ridden up being by this time woe-
fully distressed. Happily for all, it was necessary to jump^
scarcely a fence after Flecknoe, if riders knew the country and
made any use of their knowledge. Now, through the wire-girt
neighbourhood of Daventry, hounds again improved the pace;
and reached the Reservoir — their fox to be seen leaving the
farther shore as they skirted the nearer black swamp that was
our portion once before in the season now fading. The roads
allowed us all to plod wearily on within sight and range of the
bustling pack, now working rapidly on to the left of Norton
village — till every moment it seemed (as was fervently prayed)
that a kill might bring the journey to an end. Within a field
or so of Mr. J. A. Craven's house at Whilton Place, hounds
suddenly threw up — and not all the huntsman's keen resource
availed to solve the enigma. His fox may have lain down
T
322 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAI1UE.
among some farm buildings adjacent ; he may have found a
raLbit-hole or a drain ; or may have crept back into Norton
Park — may have adopted a dozen expedients. At any rate
they never hit him again — and this great unbroken run of an
hour and forty-five minutes ended thus. Where so many
good sportsmen and sportswomen rode up to hounds during the
bulk of the chase, and were up at the finish, it would be a task
far beyond me to venture upon names. So my sketch must
stand as it is in its bare outline — for those who care to follow
the details of a superb hunting run over the most perfect
country. Surely hounds never worked more tenaciously and
quickly than these little Pytchley ladies. Goodall, whose
white-patched chestnut was probably less distressed at the
end than any horse there, had scarcely occasion to touch them
(once on an early plough, and once below Catesby).
I can't feel that I have adequately described this run. Of
course I have taken for granted that high-class country, the
charm of grass, the delight of fast hunting, are pre-understood
everywhere — but especially as adaptable to such a district as
that named. This was purely a fast-hunting run, covering an
immense area of fine country — a hound-run not a jumping,
competitive, gallop, but a foxhunt of the very best type (given
the drawback of a tiring conclusion). For my humble part, I
am prone to consider that the life of a run departs with the
strength of a horse. Riding then becomes cruelty ; and the
suffering of the steed is misery to the man. To "ride a horse
out " is no exhilarating exercise. It is merely a pandering to
one's own vanity at the expense of the noble beast whose vigour
has been a mutual glory. These are foolish sentiments, no
doubt. They can't be held by a huntsman or his whips, and
they are not often confessed by his followers. But men taking
the chase only for pleasure, cannot but entertain them in their
hearts, and would do no worse were they to give them freer
vent. One of the main objections to the artificial and over-
strained amusement of riding to a carted deer is found in the
prolonged strain that is put upon every hunter, spurred on to
THE STAVERTON RUN. ;>o:>
the finish of what is called " a good run " — and which may
mean twenty miles' galloping. Since the above was written,
it has come to my knowledge that six horses died after this
great run from Staverton ; and, further, I learn that our fox
managed his escape by spending the night in a drain under the
farm buildings above mentioned. Next morning he was seen
to issue forth, weary but well, and ready, I trust, to run before
hounds when another season comes round.
The alternative of the next day was Liverpool. I cannot
help thinking that if any of the hard men of the Pytchley were
there to see the open ditches and five-foot fences of Aintree,
and to witness them flown like hurdles by twenty horses in a
cluster, they will scorn more than ever our pigmy obstacles —
and, in fact, Northamptonshire won't be big enough for them.
As a hunting man, I make bold to say that no field of horse-
men in England would have faced such fences with hounds —
let them be running never so madly.
I must be pardoned for adding a scrap that has no bearing
upon the day last mentioned — but a recent and somewhat
awful contretemps that might, in the absence of due pre-
cautions, easily befall any of us — who are given to the harmless
cigar. A sportsman fell (this at least was nothing unusual) and
nobody paid much heed to the commonplace casualty — beyond
seeing that his horse was duly caught and registered. But as
the man rose, he came up, as Mephistopheles from a stage
floor, not only amid odour of sulphur and brimstone, but with
a tangible halo of thick blue smoke. He was known to be
a sober, discreet, and accountable member of society. Spon-
taneous combustion could have nothing to do with the eruption,
any more than D. T. could be held accountable for the frenzied
vagaries he now indulged in. He cast himself on the ground,
he wallowed in the mud, he rolled in the wet ditch, like a
creature insane. Fetch him a " red drink " was a farmer's
notion. Brandy was a friend's ready recipe. But the poor
t 2
324 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
man was deaf to suggestion, while liis yells filled the frightened
air. In his paroxysms he not only rent his garments, but he
tore them off and trod them underfoot — an " extra superfine
double-stitched scarlet, too, with silk linings and five pounds
worth of extra qualities " all duly entered against him ! But
the smoke increased, the dense cloud rose — till he had fairly
trampled the devil out of it. Then, as he resumed three parts
of a cindered pink, it came to light that in a wanton moment
he had harboured a box of vesuvians in his breast pocket. The
fall had set them in full cry — Hinc ilia' lacrymce, and a parti-
coloured liverv, a cross as it were between the uniforms of
Hanwell and Portsdown.
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS.
Year by Year do the great cattle-grazing grounds of the
Far West attract a larger influx of men of birth and education
from the Old Country — men, too, probably endowed with more
vigour of frame than might be expected as the outcome of
those refinements of life with which in England even the
country gentleman is wont to surround himself. Their hopes,
at all events, are large, and their capacity for labour quite on
a par with their power of investment. They bear with them a
sum of money that, maybe, would only suffice them for one more
year's flutter on their native soil ; but upon which they intend
to build, if not a fortune, at least a competency, in as few years
as, they read, others have done before — then to summer abroad
and winter at home, on the firm basis of a well-established and
increasing herd. With these aspirations and the more con-
fidence in themselves the better, they are in a very few days
transported from the society and surroundings which make men
gentle if no little fond of self, into a world as unlike their own
as an English-speaking world can be. The first plunge will
send a shock through their very marrowbones ; but they shake
their heads and set their teeth as they rise to the surface —
striking out with all the determination of men who have
plunged to swim and not to drown. The older they are the
more difficult the shock to meet and overcome. Youth, though
thinner-skinned, rises more quickly to the surface, warms itself
again readily in the sunshine of hope, and shakes off the chill
ere the system is penetrated. Maturity suffers indeed where
326 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
youth is only amused ; the former groans inwardly while the
latter laughs aloud. Maturity carries with it a store of sensi-
bilities that are trodden on by everyone in the crowd in which
it is mixing. Youth having just issued from school or college
life, looks upon this new state merely as an exchange from
partial thraldom ; has no corns to offer to the roughshod tread ;
takes no offence because it feels none ; and is prepared to enjoy
everything heartily. The only thing for maturity to do is
of course to harden the cuticle, and commence the process
ivithout delay. Youth may possibly — and very pardonably —
think well to adapt itself to circumstances and to men so
closely, that before long it is found figuring in proud imitation.
But this at all events maturity will not find itself called upon
to do. Live and let live is the maxim to which the men of the
West rigidly adhere ; and they no more expect a fullgrown
Britisher to clothe himself in stars and stripes than they will
deride what they cannot but consider the quaint eccentricities
of manner and language that he brings with him. He has
merely, and for his own sake, to inure himself to their ways.
They neither ask him to adopt their idiosyncrasies, nor will
they attempt to make him ashamed of his own. Indeed, in
this latter respect they set an example that we might follow
with considerable advantage in the Old Country, where a
queerly-dressed or funny-looking foreigner has in every street,
to run amuck through gibes and grins and ill-mannered
whisperings.
The social acclimatisation of the coming ranchman may in
some measure commence on board his Atlantic steamer, or will
at any rate begin in New York. By the time he has reached
Chicago he has at least learned to make a single plate, with
one knife, fork, and spoon, carry him through dinner without
finding his appetite arrested ; his ears will have become more
or less callous to the unceasing sounds of laborious expectora-
tion ; while he will have come to look upon a quid of tobacco
as a plaything only a little more unsightly than a Piccadilly
toothpick. He will no longer think it strange that a fellow
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 327
passenger of a few minutes' acquaintance should inquire the
prime cost of his watch or overcoat ; and he has ceased to
regard the half-breed conductor of the car as the impersona-
tion of insolent familiarity, merely because the latter slaps him
on the shoulder or settles down beside him for a good chew
before answering a question as to the route. Thus the liberty
and equality of a great nation will have been fairly broken to
him ere he enters the brotherhood of the Far West.
On his way he has doubtless encountered more than one
representative of the race of stockgrowers, and no doubt found
him pleasant, sociable, and — on the vital and absorbing subject
of cattle — communicative to a degree. If our friend is not
foolish in his generation, he will take every advantage of this
readiness of discourse to gain all the information he can on a
topic of equal interest to himself, and will encourage the other
to talk, the while he sets himself to digest what he hears. As
a man of the world, he is likely to accept the utterances of his
new acquaintance with many a grain of salt. But, in testimony
to Western veracity, I may fairly say, from personal experience,
that this is necessary only in a marvellously slight degree.
A stockbroker on his favourite theme may be occasionally
enthusiastic ; but he is as a rule not only precise and clear, but
intentionally truthful — except when he wants to sell you an y-
tlt hi (j.
Then — go to the West, good reader, and learn for yourself !
Still, when he is holding forth in the abstract, the stockgrower
is almost invariably a lucid and reliable guide on matters
pertaining to the business which has enriched him — and which
has, perhaps, even allowed him the luxury of a couple of total
failures on what he would term " side issues," besides. That
his views and statistics are likely to be pretty correct, is more
or less assured by the close coincidence between his statements
and those of his equally discursive brethren-in-stock, with whom
our English friend may easily find himself in conversation.
And, besides being voluble to edify and iustruct the newcomer
on matters pertaining to the art of stockraising, the stockgrower
328 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
is generally ready to set him on his guard against the wicked
men he is about to encounter, and who — he assures him — will
"stick at nothing when there's any money to be made." The
tricks of the trade he will expose as freely and with as much
gusto as if he were a detective holding forth upon crimes that
he helped to bring to light — illustrating his warnings with
many a tale of smartness. Above all, it is a thousand to one
he will add, with the intensitjr of long and very practical
experience, " Believe no man when you are doing business ; and
when you trade, sir, trade always as if you were trading with a
rogue, till you have proved him otherwise ! " — the latter part
of the advice being about on a par with that of not taking the
water till you can swim, and the whole denunciation reminding
our newcomer of Epaminondas and his illogical assertion that
all his countrymen were liars.
Altogether the emigrant man-of-the-old-world will encounter
many interesting and instructive companions on the cars that
carry him towards the Pacific ; and if he makes use of his
opportunities he can scarcely fail to accumulate some crumbs
of knowledge to add to the store from which he means to
make bread. The high opinion he has already formed of the
scrupulous sense of honour possessed by his new acquaintance,
may perchance be slightly shocked when he notes the uproarious
delight with which the latter hails a story at the mouth of a
nondescript business-man, anent the successful carrying through
of a recent flour contract for the Indians, which that worthy has
effected by passing off a compound of musty wheatflour and
indifferent " corn " as best rations. But it is quoted forthwith
that General Sheridan laid it down as an axiom that " the only
good Indian is a dead Indian ; " and so he feels bound to with-
hold any symptom of wonderment, if he cannot quite bring
himself to join in the general expression of appreciation.
So will he find the stockgrowers, or stockowners, whenever he
meets them, which, after he has chosen a district for his own
" location " will more often be as occasion calls him to the
nearest town — for he will have but little time to leave his
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS.
329
ranch e to cultivate the society of neighbours at long distances.
Friendly, responsive, and ready at all times to lend their
experience for the benefit of the newcomer, they will welcome
and assist him with a general good feeling that he could scarcely
iind in any other community.
II.
Man-OF-BUSINESS is, in the Western world, a generic term
<covering a multiplied variety of pursuits — but always, be it
understood, of the pursuit of dollars. And it is in Business more
than in any other relation of life that the code of social equality
in vogue in America is most fulty asserted and accepted. A
inan-of-business must have the advantage of some education,
and a share of natural astuteness and method (gifts in which,
it is only fair to add, few Americans are found wanting).
Starting with these, it by no means follows that he should cling-
to any particular groove, as is customary in the Old Countiy.
Thus a man may be a public functionary, such as county re-
corder, sheriff or road-surveyor one year, and the next may be
330 FOX-HOUND, FOREST AND PRAIRIE.
" running " an hotel or a dry goods store. A " colonel " ma}' be
found selling hardware ; or a doctor of medicine dispensing
timber in a lumber-yard. There is nothing infra dig. in selling
a pound of cheese ; your bootmaker and you (be you the ex-
President himself) take your daily dinner at the same hotel
table ; and the clerk who is good enough to receive your
telegram for transmission, takes care when so doing to put you
thoroughly at your ease by keeping both his legs on the table,
and retaining his half-eaten ci^ar in his mouth while tendering
you his hand for a cordial shake.
The man-of-business has come West for the summwm bonum,
and he means to attain it — as honestly as the law compels him
— out of you and his other fellow-men ; you for choice, as you
are possibly as yet only insufficiently versed in the tricks of
the trade, and are probably still in possession of some little ready
money, and of some lingering disbelief in King David's hasty
summary of all men. To get to windward of somebody, is his-
creed and avocation ; and he is termed a good or bad business-
man according to the measure of his success. He comes not
West for the sake of his health, nor even that he may make a
living (the man who could be satisfied to set up such a goal
before himself, would truly earn the profoundest contempt from
the American business-man) — but that he may amass a fortune-
compatible either with a go in for a big stake here, or with a
fair start in the universal race for dollars back East.
I have spoken of the type of manhood in question as in con-
nection with town — or as it may more likety be termed city —
which forms the chief meeting-ground of local society. But it
is not to be supposed that the Man of Business has nothing to
do with the subject of live stock. In almost every case he either
has, or has had, or hopes to have, an interest in some herd on
the neighbouring prairies, without prejudice or interruption
to his more apparent vocation at headquarters. There is ac-
cordingly nothing incongruous in the sight of an ironmonger
arrayed in straps and spurs, or of a maitre d'hdtel with a lasso
hung on his saddle-bow. Cattle form as recognised a standard
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 331
of riches in Montana, Wyoming or Colorado as they do in Zulu-
land. Wives are not ostensibly bought and sold with them, it
is true ; but this is probably because young ladies have not
arrived in sufficient numbers to allow of a market being
formed.
Matrimony, indeed, is a luxury that, with law and order,
white china crockery and the extinction of game, has only
recently crej:>t in among the ranchmen of the wildest West. If
a man would marry, he must journey towards the rising sun
and fetch him a wife. If he is a cattleman he generally refrains
from this, until he is perhaps manager of a company and able
to share with her the otium cum dignitate of a plank-built
house in "town." Otherwise, should his circumstances rise no
higher than a subordinate position in a cow-ranche, his wife
(though ever treated with the utmost respect and invariably
yclept the " lady ") will be expected to cook for the " outfit,"
and will probably enjoy no further comfort or privacy than is
ensured by hanging up an old blanket to partition herself and
husband from the rest of the apartment wherein the boys and
any number of odd visitors may make their beds. The ac-
commodation in fact coincides very closely with that provided
not so many years ago for the married rank-and-file of her
Britannic Majesty's Army. Not that privacy — as we of domestic
England by habit hold it a necessary part of our very existence
— ever appears to be considered of any substantial account
hereabouts, even where the hallowing presence of fair woman
has arrived on the scene. Actual coarseness or indelicacy,
either in speech or behaviour, will certainly never be apparent
to shock her. The language that meets her ear will be as
carefully expunged as the edition of Shakespeare that bores any
Brighton schoolgirl — and, indeed, instances are not wanting in
which an independent " gentleman who has been working for
wages " (this being the designation under which he wishes to
be known, the said wages being the ordinary tariff of the
Territory, to wit, forty dollars a month with board and lodging,
and the work often such as a Hampshire labourer might
332 FOX-HOUXD, FOREST, AND FRAIllIE.
perform for twelve shillings a week all told) — nature's gentleman
will take himself off rather than submit to such an unbearable
restriction as " a fellow not feeling as if he could swear when
he wanted." But Western Americans are crudely simple in
their domestic habits ; and their sleeping arrangements espe-
cially denote a freedom from the trammels of conventionality
that should be refreshing were it not positively distasteful and
uncomfortable. A man availing himself of a night's lodging at
a ranche will be told off to a share of Sam Snorer's bed. If the
traveller's wife be with him, they may be invited to lay out
their blankets in a corner of the same room ; or, at most, the
wife may be invited to share the bed of the hostess, while the
two husbands cast in their lot together elsewhere. Spare
bedding is possibly ou hand, but an extra bedstead is seldom
forthcoming at a cow-ranche. As the sun rises, so do we all,
and a quarter of an hour afterwards are breakfasting together.
This primitive simplicity of arrangement — apart from the
necessities of life in a wild country — has, I am inclined to
think, its origin in two leading and almost equally indisputable
facts ; viz., first, that " to the pure (of heart) all things are pure ; "
secondly, that the custom of the country combines so very
slight an amount of ablution with the toilet, that no difficulty
whatever is held to prevent that little being performed in
public.
The last— shall I say the lowest ?— type of Western manhood
is the Working-Man; and he, alas, like the mosquito of summer
and the biting frost of winter, forms an unavoidable evil to be
encountered by the newcomer. The latter must have his log-
house built, a stable erected, a pasture fenced in, a well dug,
corrals made, and a variety of minor " improvements " executed
round his newly chosen home, such as, amid the comfortable
surroundings of English life, he had hitherto looked upon as the
indigenous outcome of the soil, but which here, as he will soon
ascertain, represent — primitive of their kind though they be —
a grave outpouring of capital, and, indirectly, a source of
orievous uncongenial infliction. The newcomer may have been,
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 333
for all we know, the Benjamin of some Belgravian household,
who has only left home because his courageous attempts to
keep pace with his eldest brother have no longer found the
cordial support of the paternal purse, and with whom a com-
promise has eventually been effected on the terms of five
thousand pounds and his journey paid to the Western States of
America. Hitherto his associates have been of no more mixed
description than the ballot-box would admit into the best clubs
in London, S.W. ; while, to make the road of life travel smooth,
the most respectful of menials — whether in the pay of his
parent, his club, or, in the minor instances of valet and perhaps
groom and second horseman, of himself — have taken all trouble
off his hands, leaving him full leisure to digest the bread of
idleness in society the most merry but refined. (Alas, will he
not chew the cud of bitterness when realising, in the company
of the godless, a full demonstration of the great truism, God
made all men alike ?)
Or he may be a warrior from the proudest, but by no means
the best paid, army in the world ; one who, having served her
Majesty faithfully in many climes, but in all cases amid the
substantial luxuries of regimental life, has now realised his
retirement pittance, and, in lieu of the pomp of war and jovial
circumstance of military peace, has, so to speak, turned his
sword into a branding-iron. By this means he intends to eke
out his maturity in a manner of life more vigorous and befittin<>-
than that which he sees adopted by so many of his comrades in
arms, and the sphere of which is limited by Pall Mall on the
one side and Piccadilly on the other, with Duke Street as a
centre. In lieu of this placid, not to say monotonous, vista, he
pictures to himself years of sturdy health and prosperity, to be
followed by an old age of positive affluence. His four decades
of life have left him with a constitution still tolerably un-
impaired in spite of hot climates and " festive evenings " — such
as only a well-conducted regimental mess can offer in perfection.
In accepting the provision made by Her Majesty's councillors
for his retirement to facilitate the promotion of his juniors, he
334 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
considers that he is quite capable of throwing off old associations
and old habits in the same moment that he gives away his old
red coat for church decoration or crow-scaring, and that he can
accept a totally new life and new playfellows as easily and
jubilantly as a boy changing his school. In earnest truth, no
man is less likely to encounter with any sense of pleasure the
ways of the West and the bearing of its inhabitants.
Throughout life — from the day he was first asked his name
at Rugby, and received a wholesome correction for da-ing as a
uew boy to ask in return that of his interrogator, to the last
occasion on which he marched his company past the saluting
point, for approval or otherwise, of the inspecting deity in
feathers — discipline has been his guiding star, and the sub-
ordination of man to man has been inculcated in him as a
necessary principle in all the relations of life. He has been
accustomed to courtesy on the part of superiors, and to respect
from inferiors, whether in the service or out of it. Rank in the
army ; station, accomplishment, and age elsewhere — these are to
trim tangible differences, which no amount of vulgar assurance
would ever avail the snob, the scoffer, or the social communist
to bridge over successfully. To these principles he has been
educated, and any breach of them he has been taught to
resent — especially, of course, when directed against his own
■status. Imagine him, then, brought on terms of the closest
intimacy, of the most unsparing familiarity, with men in his
own employ in menial capacities — men whose only claim to
intellect is based upon their talent for chopping a log, whose
accomplishments are confined to squirting tobacco juice across
the floor, whose tastes soar no higher than New Orleans
molasses when at work and the most fiery of whisky when
at play; whose conversation, often unintelligible through its
thickly interlarded and senseless oaths, is utterly pointless
when purged of the same ; whose personal cleanliness is limited
to a dash of water (when not too cold) on hands and face once
-a day, and whose underclothing leaves not their bodies — night
aior day — till absolute necessity demands that the decayed
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 335
garments be replaced by new. This is the company in which,
at least till his house and premises be completed, he will have
to spend day and night, probably in an old log shanty that
is destitute of flooring, and consists only of a single room
12 feet by 14.
In the process of hiring these charming associates the New-
■comer will have to make his inquiries in the nearest town,
where he can quickly be introduced to a motley crew — ragged
and hungry, probably, but by no means even conciliatory
notwithstanding, whether recent arrivals in search of high
wages, or old habitues having just drunk out the final cent
•of their last job. " Let me make you acquainted with this
gentleman — a daisy with his axe, you bet," says the introducer,
■who has probably arranged to " stand in " with the dissipated-
looking individual now proffering his assistance (not his services,
he it understood). Interrogatories as to capabilities are almost
■unnecessary — for the answer probably convej^s little more than
■scorn and pity that such questions should be asked. For
instance, " Has he been in the habit of putting up corrals or
wire fences?" Answer, "Some I guess. Eh, pard?" Thus
'Newcomer has to accept the recommendation of the go-
between, also the terms dictated, and next day sets off for
the ranche with his hired mates in his wagon — nor need his
patrician blood boil if he finds that before the end of their
journey he is addressed only by his Christian name, abbreviated,
if uncomfortably long, or likely enough adorned with some
playful prefix. But, to do the Working Man justice, he usually
possesses and exercises an immense power for methodical work ;
and will get through more, and harder, labour in a given time
than men of any other nationality I have seen.
In the Far West (I am speaking now, and henceforth, more
particularly of Montana, the territory most recently settled up)
men when away from the towns and drinking saloons seem
seldom, if ever, to be ailing ; but, on the contrary, always able
to put out their utmost physical strength through lono- hours
without fatigue. If the party be large enough to warrant the
336 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
apparent extravagance of hiring a cook, at a rate that the
salary of few club chefs in London will exceed, it will be
expedient and in reality almost economical to engage one for
the outfit — that breakfast may be prepared early and the other
meals ready punctually at stated times. It does not follow
that the gentleman who undertakes this office need be a
professor of the art, nor indeed that he need have had much
previous acquaintance with it. All that he is called upon to
do is to be able to make sour dough bread {i.e., bread, or
rolls, always known as biscuits, prepared with sour dough in
place of yeast), to fry bacon, and boil beans and coffee. He-
will not find his patrons too critical. They sit down, one and
all, to eat as if it were the most disagreeable (it certainly
sounds anything but a delectable) part of their daily task, race
mutely against each other for a finish, then rush off to hewr
to dig, or lift heavy logs the moment the last mouthful is
swallowed, and the tin plate of each has been duly swobbed
clean with his last remnant of bread (this final operation being-
quite essential to good breeding, as laid down by Western
etiquette). Three times a day is the above frugal fare served
up at cattle-ranches during the summer months. In the winter
they periodically " kill a beef," as they term it ; and hunks of
meat — first parboiled, then roasted, and finally doused with hot
water before being placed on the table — are then served up
ad nauseam. But the arrival in the country of skilful woman-
kind is making a rapid improvement in the system of cooking.
Her presence brings with it not only a variety of menu and the
introduction of such novelties as potatoes, fruit pies, &c, but
makes its humanising influence apparent even on The Boys
themselves. Thus, as one may hear it put : " A man can't but
notice where there's a woman about an outfit ; The Boys fixes
theirselves up, and the place looks that different a man wouldn't
know it."
It must be added of the average Working Man of the West,
that in his labour he displays a shrewdness and ingenuity that
prove him, even if sparsely educated, to be gifted with con-
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 337
siderable readiness of resource and acquirement, such as is cer-
tainly very seldom possessed by the ordinary day labourer of the
Old Country. He is scarcely ever at a loss, whatever the task
to which he is called upon to set his hand. To be classed as " a
good worker on a ranche " he must be at least a fair carpenter,
a builder, a digger, a teamster — able to put in doors and
windows, work a mowing-machine or sink a pump. If, in
addition to these accomplishments, he can ride a broncho and
give his help in a corral at roping or branding cattle, so
much the better. But these last-named acquirements more
particularly belong to the province of the cowboy, whose talents
are not expected to be of so universal an order. The cowboy
pretends to do little if anything except in connection with
handling stock, and he — not altogether unnaturally — looks
upon himself as belonging to quite a higher caste than the
Working Man. Of the latter the reader will by this time have
had enough — a state of satiety that in practice he will be able
to reach after an astonishingly short experience, should it ever
be his lot to occupy the position of employer.
The Cowboy of the West is, far more than any other section
of the cattle community, a distinct outcome of its peculiar
industry. Once enrolled and educated in the ranks, he
assumes all the characteristics and attributes of that body ;
and, no matter what his former state of life may have been,
would seem altogether to drop the past, to sink the future,
and contentedly adopt the habits, tastes, and existence of the
cowboy for all time. Not the least of his peculiarities is his
dress, which is worth a word of description, and must be taken
in due order from his skin outwards. Next to his natural
covering he puts on warm woollen jersey and ditto drawers,
when with a goodly cheque in his pocket he finds himself
twice a year in the nearest town, to " burn up " his wages, in a
space of time simply marvellous to Eastern understanding,
considering that he has been earning forty dollars a month
" with everything found." These garments he takes off
occasionally when he deems that they want washing; but
o
z
338 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
under the hottest sun of summer he works away in clothing
that would well protect him in midwinter. Over the drawers
he wears a pair of ordinary cloth trousers, the ends of which he
tucks into Wellington boots, standing upon heels of a height
that would put any Parisian damsel to shame. Then he adds
an outer covering to his legs in the shape of enormous " shaps,"
thick leather overalls, bearing a fringe down the outer seam.
Spurs, with blunt rowels an inch in length and chains that
jingle whenever he walks, complete the equipment of his
nether man. His body he clothes further in a short shirt of
coloured flannel, with wide turn-down collar of the same
material and with laces fastening the front. When the
weather gets colder, a loose cloth jacket is added. En grande
tenue he will wear a small silk handkerchief of brightest
possible hue — having its extreme ends tied round the neck,
dbove the level of the collar, and coaxed to flutter loosely in
the breeze. A soft, but heavy, round felt hat of enormous
breadth of brim, light drab or dusty in colour — the shade
varying according to its age — is his head-covering ; the crown
being bound round either with a leathern strap and buckle, or
with a horsehair band curiously plaited. It will be gathered
that the cowboy is in his way something of a dandy, and loves
to maintain his calling by means of due attention to all items
of class adornment.
His saddle and trappings are, still more than his clothes, a
happy combination between the requirements of rough service
and those of fanciful ornamentation. The pommel of his
saddle rises in a horn before him, and answers the purpose of,
as it were, a post to which to affix the end of his lariat (or
lasso) when he has " roped " a horse or cow ; besides at other
times coming in useful in various ways as a means of carrying
sundries. The cantle also turns up high behind him, and he
is thus wedged in a seat that should be secure against the
" pitching " of any " broncho " or half-tamed horse. His
stirrups are broad of make, and are built of wood {far warmer,
by the bye, than our English hunting stirrups) ; and suspended
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 339
on each side of these are great leather flaps or " tapideros," to
protect his feet from cold and from the sagebush through
which he is constantly galloping. The body of the saddle
stretches back behind the cantle and serves to support the
oilskin "slicker" or loose overcoat, without which he never
moves forth — any more than he would dispense with gloves, or
leave behind the enormous six-shooter that he wears half-
concealed beneath his right skirt. Under his saddle are folded
a pair of blankets, which protect his horse's back by day and
form his own bed by night. (And here it may not be out
of place to insert a parenthesis, to the effect that the only cer-
tain preventive of soi*e backs in a hilly country is a carefully
folded blanket under the saddle. I give this as the result
of experiments in many climes and countries — and I venture
to offer it now especially to my fellow-sportsmen of Exmoor
Forest.)
A cowboy has at his command seldom less than half a dozen
horses, or even more during the progress of the spring and
autumn " round-ups " — a necessity which will be easily under-
stood when it is borne in mind that his mounts are too often
mere ponies, weighing, it is calculated, not more than four
times as much as the sum total attained by himself, his spurs,
his six-shooter, tapideros, saddle, and impedimenta generally ;
for a cowboy, equipped for the field, probably bears about with
him all that he possesses in the world, unless it be a " satchel "
(as a handbag of whatever bulk is termed in American par-
lance), which he has left in the nearest town, and which may
contain his eastern suit of clothes and photographs of the old
folks at home. The work that each horse in turn is called
upon to perform, though it may extend over only half a day, is
generally quite sufficient to entitle him to three days' rest,
especially as during that time his only food is prairie grass,
which may or may not be at hand in auy quantity. Each
year, however, it should be added, is a more general disposition
shown in favour of the stronger horses of Oregon and Washing-
ton, large importations of which have been brought across the
z -2
o40 FOXHOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Rocky Mountains ; and Montana now promises to be the finest
horsebreeding section of the American Continent.
A cowboy, unlike a jaoet, becomes so by force of circum-
stances— is not born to the trade. His birth may date back to
some abode of wealth in New York, to a log hut in Colorado or
Wyoming, to a granger's farmstead in Missouri, or even to
some aristocratic home in England. But a man's past history
has nothing to do with his status here, and will have little or
no bearing upon his cowboy life. If he has once joined that
cheery, devil-may-care fraternity, he will probably do as the
rest — viz., work and ride like a tiger when necessary on a
teetotal diet, then off to town to burn up his earnings as-
quickly as whisky and the spirit of devilment can prompt him.
Varied as his origin, so of course is the disposition of the
cowboy ; but, taking the majority to prove the rule, you will
find him almost invariably a genial, warm-hearted comrade,
ready of help and ungrudging of trouble. And to none does
he evince the good qualities of his disposition more readily
than to the newcomer, to whom he is never by any chance
churlish or unfriendly. His life is necessarily a vigorous
rather than an intellectual one ; as a very slight acquaintance
with the social intercourse and style of converse in vogue
among an outfit of cowboys living alone at a cow-ranche will
suffice to demonstrate. Nor can it be said that either their
employers or they themselves make much effort towards pro-
viding desirable food for the soul of the cowboy during those
long months when he must spend much of his time within
doors. On the contrary, the fare in this direction is quite as
crude, scarcely as wholesome, and certainly not as plentiful as
is forthcoming for his bodily wants. Two or three old numbers-
of the Police News, as many dog-eared and half-destroyed
novels, and perhaps the illustrated catalogue of a dry goods
store, form scarcely a feast of literature, to last half a dozen
men through a whole winter. "With these scanty advantages
and no communion whatever with the outer world for so
prolonged a period, it is scarcely to be wondered at that
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 341
narrative, discussion, and repartee in a cow-ranche arc, to put it
mildly, more pronounced than brilliant. It is certainly not
among a bevy of his intimate acquaintances that you would
credit a cowboy with the better side of his nature. Take him
separately, and his good qualities seldom fail to discover them-
selves. Indeed, the chances are that ere long you will come to
the conclusion that the genus cowboy is by no means the least
favourable type of Western life. He at least is not devoured
by the all-absorbing fever for money-making. He likes well
enough to make it, it is true ; but only, sailor like, that he may
spend it. The rest of the mass of men with whom the new-
comer is likely to come in contact worship the almighty dollar
with a fervour in which their whole soul is wrapped, look upon
its possession as the summumn bonum of life and as the chief
claim to worthiness, make its attainment their every thought
by day, lend to their idol such scanty time as they can afford
for dreaming by night, and crave after it madly —for what ? —
that they may have it to make it a basis for earning more.
III.
If you would see the prairie wearing its happiest aspect, you
should be on it in the months of May or June, the period in
which the cowboys do most of their work — when Nature is at
her greenest and freshest, and before the sun has withered the
grass or parched the soil. " Young man, go West ! " have
shouted the railway companies for years past, beguiling
thousands of hapless youths to embark upon a career for which
neither by education nor physique are they in any degree
fitted. ' Young man, go East," is their motto and wail till
opportunity shall take them back, sadder, wiser, and no richer
for the hardships and disappointments of the vaunted El
Dorado. But in early summer the great prairies that still
remain for the sole use of cattlemen and horsemen are not only
picturesque but offer to those whose work is upon them a
342 FOX-HOUXJ>, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
vigorous, healthful, life that has few drawbacks. The air is
then exhilarating beyond measure, the sun is only pleasant;
and saddle- work and corral- work alike, are for a brief while,
recreation rather than toil. This will not last, you know.
Another side of the picture conies shortly afterward — dusty
corrals, crushing heat, torturing thirst, alkali water (more
yellow and muddy day by day), swarms of flies and clouds of
mosquitoes, ceaseless toil and broken sleep.
A few years ago the cry went up — and a very bitter cry
too — that stock-raising in the West, especially in Montana and
Wyoming, was " played out." So it virtually was as regards
growing-herds and cattle-increase. Like so many things in
America, it had been over-boomed and overdone. The mania
had developed with such intensity that the acquirement of a
few head of cattle was looked upon as a first safe step to
fortune. The prairies were soon asked to carry ten times as
many cattle as they could support. Two summers of drought
and two winters of unexampled severity stepped in to check
the mad delusion, and effectually put an end to it by striking
off nearly every cow and calf that ran at large.
But under a different system the cattle-men — or rather cattle
companies, for single individuals and " little men " have per-
force abandoned the game that has in most cases already cost
them their all — the companies and new venturers again came
to the front, driving in accumulated herds of young steers
(yearlings and two-year-olds) from the Eastern and Southern
States to grow and fatten on the rich grasses of the prairie.
Should the system prove profitable, depend upon it that every
man in the West will want to have a finger in the golden pie —
till this venture too is choked by its own popularity.
Meanwhile the Western towns — cities of the dead they might
almost be termed for the last few years — are looking forward to
a revival that, it is hoped, may be steady and permanent. The
bustle, the business, the activity have gone out of them ; but
much latent vigour and no little self-confidence remain, and
they await the future hopefully. True, the saloon-keepers are
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 343
thinned out ; the galloping' cowboy more seldom requires the
attention of the sheriff; and revelry and pistol practice scarcely
ever break in upon the stillness of night. But the higher-class
citizens stand manfully by their ship, put a good face on the
passing depression, deck their stores no less temptingly, and
dress themselves more sprucely than ever. There is a good
time coming ; and they mean to hold on for it.
Very law-abiding and quiet are these narrowed communities.
They bring their little differences peacefully into well-consti-
tuted courts with apparent relish — gratified no doubt by the
knowledge that for the benefit of society they are breaking the
terrible monotony of eventless existence, pleased possibly that
they can still do something to keep their lawyers alive, and
secure in the fact that in a colony so closely woven and so
limited it is impossible that any enlightened jury shall be con-
stituted so as to contain not one staunch friend reliable to the
end. And as in case of litigation the county has to dip her
hand into her impoverished pocket for the bulk of the costs
incurred, it follows that legal proceedings are a favourite and
not necessarily too-expensive a luxury for individuals indulging.
Thus litigation generally ends in smoke and is consumed in
argument, that, however logical and convincing to the un-
biassed listener, is, to say the least, a waste of energy as far as
the twelve are concerned — these being quite capable of making
up their minds on the case at issue without such extraneous
assistance as may be offered by mere evidence and argument.
Rely upon it, the scales of justice in a small community were
never meant to be handled by twelve men at one time — at all
events in Western America. Is not Justice invariably portrayed
as single-handed, and moreover blindfolded among her neigh-
bours ? Even in criminal cases, a verdict is very rare. Judge
Lynch would hang ten villains where one is now passed to the
penitentiary at the bidding of constitutional procedure. But
Judge Lynch seldom goes into court for nothing. He is at
least prompt, and in all probability no more inaccurate than th
machinery that has taken his place. For a long time he was
344 FOX-HOUXD, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
and even now occasionally is, obliged to work alongside and
assist, after the other has been ostensibly in full possession. It
would take many volumes to recount half the stories of Judge
Lynch's vigorous and effective action, even as instanced within
the present decade. But here is a tolerably recent one con-
nected with the mining camps, that is very illustrative of his
code and its methods of enforcement.
A Mexican desperado had come under sentence. The Vigi-
lantes had decreed his arrest, and he was to be brought before
Judge Lynch for summary trial. A detachment accordingly waited
upon him at his log shanty in a neighbouring gulch, and bade
him surrender. His only answer was to shoot the spokesman
dead, and to open fire upon the others with his Winchester
repeater. In return volley after volley was poured upon the
hut. But the Mexican had the best of it behind the thick logs,
and soon placed two more of the delegates hors de combat.
Compelled to attain his capture or destruction by other means,
they now brought into play a large mortar that happened to be
available : and cramming it with stones, pieces of iron, and
anything that came to hand, fired it with blasting powder again
and again against the wooden citadel. At length they succeeded
in blowing in one whole side of the hut ; resistance appeared to
be at an end ; and, after making sure with another volley or
two, they advanced with due caution to the ruins. Here they
found the wretched man — his ammunition exhausted and one
of his legs broken. But justice had to be accomplished — and
none the less because exasperated and defied. The man was a
murderous ruffian who had killed to rob : and they had to stamp
him out. So they hung him forthwith to the nearest tree ;
then, as soon as he was dead, cast him on the shanty roof, and
set fire to the pile.
Now comes the Last detail of the tragedy. It was rumoured
in camp that the Mexican had gold upon him when thus
executed. Whereupon the women — such as alone frequent a
mining-camp — came down upon the scene of cremation ; and as
soon as the fire was dead set to work to pan out (i.e., to wash
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 345
and sift) the ashes of the corpse, in vain quest of the rumoured
gold!
Here is another instance : —
Virginia City — now a well-organised centre of mining wealth
in a Western Territory— was only in its golden infancy then.
Its inhabitants up to a certain day of which we shall tell were
lively exemplars of the theory that no impetus works so
violently towards the commission of crime as the greed begotten
of wealth dug from the ground. Placer-mining has probably
been linked more closely with blood and robbery than any
occupation in the world save freebooting on the high seas.
The turning up of solid gold — money at once, for is not the
yellow ore as good as the very coin of the realm ? — would seem
to have an effect on the instincts of man that no other appeal
to his grosser and wickeder senses can equal. Small wonder
then that, without the restraining influence of either laws or
penalties, evil comes madly to the surface, and a community is
terrorised and outraged till it can stand it no longer, but rises
to put things straight with a strong and merciless hand.
In such a society as that of a young mining-camp will be
found every class of character, every grade of intellect, and
every form of manhood. The more sterling spirits are sure to
come to the front ; and from their initiative grows up the
steadier future that shall develop the lawless camp into the
prosperous city. Colonel Sanders was one of these men. A
lawyer by education, he had, like most others, become a soldier
by force of circumstances, and when the war of brotherhood was
over, he, too, like the others, turned again to civil occupation.
But the campaign had unfitted him for an immediate return to
office drudgery. Love of excitement and the habit of outdoor
life bade him off to the mines ; and forthwith he found himself
shoulder to shoulder with a rough and motley crew — all digging,
washing, and sifting the soil for very life. On the outskirts of
the workers hung a still "tougher" element — gangs and indi-
viduals who, while ostensibly turning the earth for themselves,
made their chief business the jumping of others' claims, the
346 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
" holding up " of men carrying their gold to a distance, and, in
fact, the obtaining forcible possession of what belonged to
others, even if the six-shooter or the repeating rifle had to
be the medium of acquirement.
It so happened that, as the almost daily record of crime
rose to its fullest pitch, one of the leading syndicates fitted
out a well-tried teamster to do their " hauling," with a high-
priced mule-team and wagon and with harness in keeping.
Dave the Dutchman was claimed to be able to hold his own
on the road with most men. But Dave disappeared in his
first trip ; and neither mules nor wagon could be heard of,
till at length it was rumoured they had been sold within the
territory by someone other than Dave. That there had been
foul play was soon afterwards curiously confirmed. A traveller
chanced to shoot a grouse by the roadside, and the bird fell
actually on the body — of Dave, in the bush ! A bullet had
gone through him ; and a lariat from a saddle-pommel had
served to drag him out of sight of passers-by. Suspicion, and
eventually certainty, pointed to one Ives, a ruffian who had
long defied and outraged such law as had been extemporised.
But the blood of the camp was now up. A dozen bold fellows
volunteered as sheriffs : and strong hands were laid upon Ives,
when a row of gleaming guns had shown him that resistance
was no use. A jury of miners was summoned, a judge elected,
and the trial fixed for next day. Colonel Sanders was sent
for from Banner, the neighbouring camp, and rode in to take
the part of attorney for the prosecution. Ives's special gang
were as wealthy as they were determined. They too knew
of the Colonel's reputation ; and had the strongest belief in
the efficacy of a practised advocate. So they too had sent
their messenger to Banner, and when Sanders appeared they
hailed him as coming to succour their partner. " Ten thousand
dollars in gold, Colonel, when you've pulled him through," they
shouted. But the Colonel was one of those whose minds were
made up that a stop should be put to the savagery of the
district — and, moreover, was one who feared neither " bad
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 347
man " nor devil. " No," he answered firmly, " you have not
money enough in camp to buy me. I'm for the prosecution —
and hang him they shall." " We'll shoot you then ! " went
forth from a score of ruffianly throats — and a- score of hands
went to their waist-belts. " Shoot me — not you !" retorted the
Colonel ; " you haven't guns enough in camp to do it." And
looking steadily in their faces, not a muzzle went up. He then
rode coolly off. Their next move was to send a heavy bribe to
the sheriff that another jury should be packed and substituted.
But the sheriff, though amenable enough to the influence of
gold, knew better than to tamper with the body of citizens
now roused to white heat in defence of their newly constituted
tribunal. They meant to have everything in order. Judge
Steel should direct the jury ; and the prisoner might have the
services of Judge Smith (another judge so called, for the de-
nomination clings to every individual who has once been called
upon to dispense justice, however crudely).
So Ives was tried ; found guilty of murder ; and Judge Steel
passed sentence of death. Up rose Colonel Sanders ; and
turning from the judge and jury to the assembled crowd,
shouted, " And now for the verdict of the people ! I move that
this sentence be carried into effect within one hour, and that
the prisoner be hanged by the neck till he is dead before the
people ! " A storm of acclamation carried the motion — while
the assentors brought their right hands on their pistols and
formed front against the cluster of dissentients, who had moved
up with a view to rescue. In vain argued the counsel for
defence, " Surely no prisoner may be taken to death within an
hour of verdict and sentence." The reply came promptly from
the mouth of Boedler, the head of the Vigilantes — one whose
experience might fill volumes with episodes more thrilling than
Dumas, Poe, or Rider Haggard ever dreamed of. " ])id he give
the Dutchman an hour ? " " No, no," shouted the excited
miners. " String him up ! Bring a rope ! " And moving with
his audience, Sanders again jumped upon a cask to be heard.
" I now move," he cried, " that this sentence of the people be
348
Ft > X -HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
carried out at once!" Aye has it — and Ives is doomed. A
half-finished loghouse stood alongside. Thither they dragged
him, strung his own lariat round his throat (probablj7, the same
raw hide by which he had hauled his victim out of view), and
within five minutes the ruffian was choking out his life's breath
against a rafter beam. Twenty-four hours were given Judge
Smith to quit the country : and from that day was inaugurated
a new era in the prosperity, as also in the jurisprudence, of
Virginia City.
A species of rough chivalry is not the least worthy motive
which will rouse a western mob to take the law into its own
hands — often without waiting for deliberation. It is not so
many years since a young Englishman was within an ace of
falling a victim to a sentiment of this kind unduly roused.
Happening to call upon a married woman of his acquaintance,
he was told by her younger sister that she would be returning
home shortly, and was invited in to wait — some wine being
produced for his refreshment. The young lady drank a glass
WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 349
and was promptly seized with a fit, very much to her guest's
dismay. He called in assistance and left her duly cared for.
A report, started maliciously or idly, went round the little town
to the effect that the girl had been ill-treated — and the occasion,
happening at a time when one or two unpleasant cases had
already roused high feeling, was not to be left unheeded. In
short, in course of the evening, the young fellow found himself
surrounded and seized by an angry mob, already armed with a
rope, and with every intention of making short work of him.
In vain he asserted innocence and requested a fair trial. No,
nothing would do, but the girl's honour must be avenged and
prompt justice enforced. Pulling himself together with a strong
effort, he at last obtained a hearing, and made his words tell,
" Look here, men, I'm no coward, and I'm not afraid to die.
Take me before the girl — and if she says I ever insulted her
by word or deed, do what you like with me !" For a moment
it looked as if they would not listen even to this : and the
leader of the party even gave the word to " bring him along to
the tree" — till one of the roughest of his captors spoke up to
the boss, " Bill, I'll be no party to a job of this kind. Bring
him before the girl and let her clear him, or hang him." The
tide turned, and fairplay carried the day. The young Eno-lish-
man, surrounded by his accusers, was taken directly to the
woman herself. " Why, certainly No — Not by a word ! " was
her answer as to whether " this man had attacked or insulted
her." "Well, pardner, I guess we'll just loose you. Let's
liquor ! " And with these words the Englishman was free.
But after this adventure he cared little for his adopted home,
and put a speedy end to his residence in a city wherein the
forms of jurisdiction were so dangerously primitive.
HUNTING A CHEISTMAS DINNEE.
The winter of 1884-85 may have been exceptionally mild
and open in England, but it was very far otherwise in Montana,
the climate of which is as variable and fond of extremes as that
of North China, where the sea freezes over for months, though
the heat of summer is intense.
The winter in question settled steadily down as December
came on, and maintained itself through January and February
with an awful and bitter severity, very trying to the new arrival
in the Territory. It then suddenly broke up, and dissolved —
almost in a day — into warmth and spring. But for those three
months the thermometer ranged nightly between 25° and 55°
below zero. In the daytime a bright sunshine would often
warm the air to an extent that allowed one to throw off a
greatcoat, or even to wield an axe without a coat at all.
When, however, the sky was gloomy, and the hoar-frost drifted
on the breeze, the cold even at midday was so intense as to
be almost unbearable, though feet were equipped in heavy
" German socks " and over-shoes, hands encased in mittens, and
ears, nose, and cheeks protected by silk kerchiefs. Even thus
the cold would penetrate to one weak point or another, and
nothing but hasty and violent exercise, often amounting in
itself to absolute torture, would avail to ward off pronounced
frost-bite. Let the discomfort and pain be what it might, it
would then be absolutely necessary to dismount and run, or
waddle, by your horse's side — the whole time keeping the
disengaged arm banging on the body, and thus sustaining some
dearee of circulation.
Christmas Eve (1884) was preceded by such a day — fully 40°
HUNTING A CHRISTMJS DINNER. 351
below zero, and with the frozen fog drifting- sharply over the
snow-covered prairie. I had arranged to ride up to my " Cow-
camp" (where I had some thoroughbred shorthorns wintering
under the lea of the pine-hills of the upper ground), and to
•devote Christmas Eve to an attempt at procuring fresh meat
for the next day's dinner. For the pine-hills in question, over-
looking Powder River, were still the resort of some few white-
tail and black-tail deer, the remnants of the game that only a
very few years before had swarmed over these prairies. For the
valleys of Powder River and the Yellowstone were, with that of
the Big Horn and the Upper Missouri, the range of the buffalo
as late even as 1880 ; and the heads and hides of the last few
old bulls (the skins too worthless to strip off) dotted the prairie
as recently as 1884. A few elk were said to be still inhabiting
the cotton woods alongside the bed of Powder River, but I
could not hear of any one having shot an elk for some two
years before the date of my story. Game of every kind had in
fact been virtually exterminated by the hide-hunters, who made
Miles City their head-quarters and their pandemonium during
the summer months— flinging away in ignoble debauchery the
dollars that they had earned with no little hardship during
the winter, and that their wagon-loads of skins had readily
furnished them on their return in the spring.
Miles City, before the cattle trade had made such progress —
peopling the ranges with tamer herds and making the town
at once a commercial centre — was nothing more than a oreat
hunting depot, lively and uproarious during the summer months
and almost closing its doors during the winter.
But this belongs to the past. The present, i.e., December,
1884, is represented for the purpose of my tale by two stock-
men, bent on procuring something more edible than bacon, and
with this end in view facing as cold and comfortless a day as
ever men selected for a ten-mile ride. The trail up the creek —
at the head of which lay the log-hut for which they were
bound — was no longer marked in the snow ; for the restless
herds (with a few hardy exceptions still clinging to the hills)
352 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
had moved down the wind to some sheltered nooks, and the
snowfall of last night had deepened the earth's covering to a
depth in some places of eight inches — about the utmost it often
attains in Eastern Montana. Riding under such circumstances
as already depicted is anything but a cheerful recreation, and
its disagreeables were now enhanced by the difficulty of
following the path, which dipped here and there iuto deep cross-
gulches (or ravines), winding its way up again by means of
stairlike ascents, and followed a slippery track, with an almost
certain fall awaiting any mistake on the horse's part. But
these little animals (we always ride the ponies on such expedi-
tions) were too well awake to their own danger to be careless.
Now and then their unshod feet would slip nearly from under
them ; but an actual fall on their part is happily a rarity. The
frozen ground (even with the cushion of snow to break the
contact) is but a comfortless bed on which to land ; but, as far
as my experience goes, a horse will seldom lose his legs in
travelling over it, unless hapless chance bids him tread on solid
ice, such as he might encounter in crossing some little creek.
About noon we came upon a little bunch of about thirty
head of my brood-mares and foals, which with their attendant
stallion (a young Shire horse that I had brought over from
England) I was anxious to see, and to assure myself of their
welfare. Riding into their midst (for even prairie horses are
tame enough while the snow is on the ground), we essayed to
stand and look over them ; but so intense was the cold that one
moment's waiting was sufficient proof of the probability of
freezing should we remain longer. In a few seconds we had
thrown a glance over the stallion, and identified one or two
of the nearest mares ; then, bundling from the saddle, we rubbed
our noses and ears frantically with mittened hands, and pursued
our jumbling way at the best pace our numbed feet would allow
alongside the saddle-horses.
Arriving at length at the Cow-camp, a view-halloo brought
its occupants to the door, and a cloud of hot steam rushed forth
in our faces. One of its inmates led off our horses, and the
HUNTING A CHRISTMAS DINNER. 353
other hurried on the crude meal for which we were happily in
time ; while we threw off our outer encasements and shunned
the hot stove as we gradually thawed out. My nose had a
white tip to it, and my companion Bronson's ears were almost
transparent ; but a handful of snow from outside set them all
tingling again, and they gave no further trouble beyond a slight
burning sensation during the ensuing night, and an uncomfort-
able tendency to freeze again on the scantiest provocation.
Bacon, bread, and coffee — all of the hottest, and in enormous
quantities — having been duly consumed according to the custom
of the country, i.e., at railway speed, and with a greedy indif-
ference on the part of each individual to all else except satisfy-
ing his own hunger as quickly as his neighbour is doing,
conversation and tobacco had a chance, and the news of the
two ranches was compared, chiefly in reference to live and dead
stock. Then it became necessary from Bronson and self to
wrap up our features once more, examine our rifles, and again
to sally forth — this time on foot. Clarke averred that he had
constantly moved black-tailed deer from a willow-banked gulch
only a couple of miles away, but that "they had jumped about
so he could never hit them ;" and thither we scrambled along,
the severe exercise keeping our blood in a warm glow. Peering
into every likely nook, and plunging through countless drifts,
we had pretty well tired ourselves out before arriving at the end
of the gulch and turning our dragging steps homewards. A
last bend, containing a few trees and some undergrowth, alone
remained, when an exclamation from Bronson (couched in the
vivid language of Western wrath) called my attention, and in
another moment I saw his Winchester go off in the air, as if he
were taking part in firing a feu dejoie. To the sound of his
shot a fat black-tail doe leaped from the bushes below me, and
for several seconds stood broadside on, offering a beautiful shot
at twenty yards' distance.
Now was my time, and, of course, my thumb quickly sought
the hammer of my express to raise it to full cock. The devil
a bit would it move, right hammer or left ! The piercing cold
A A
354 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
had seized upon the oil in the locks, and frozen them tight !
The same thing, or nearly so, had happened to Bronson's weapon
— the tumbler refusing to hold the lock at full-cock, and hence
the explosion. Hence, too, that fat deer bounded off into the
distance ; and surely two sadder men than Bronson and self
never trudged home to bacon and bread.
But we " got it all back," as the Western phrase goes, the
next day — Christmas Eve. Breakfasting at daylight, we saddled
up immediately afterwards, wrapped a warm piece of blanket
round our rifle-locks, and set off once more, with desperate
resolve to return not without that acme of luxury, fresh meat.
Beward came sooner and in better shape than our most boisterous
hopes could have suggested.
For half a mile we jogged the bed of the cooly (another name
for the usually dry watercourses of the country) ; then emerged
on to a stretch of open grass, which had served us for meadow
during the hay season.
It is needless to say that ranchemen in the habit of searching
stock do not go about with their eyes shut. When their eye-
sight, as in our case, is sharpened by a craving for food, you
may "bet" — again to borrow their parlance — that any living
thing to escape their view must be not only very small, but
still.
A mile away there was a something — a big animal plainly
feeding — a steer, probably. Up went its head as the glasses
were brought to bear, and the long arched neck, even at that
distance through the thick frosty air, surely proclaimed a deer.
That it loomed so big was surely due to the foggy atmosphere.
A deer of some kind it certainly was ; and we snapped our
glasses and smacked our lips in premature enjoyment of the
Christmas dinner in store. As luck would have it (and luck
was all through in our favour to-day) the ravine in its course
led right up to where the game was working its food from out
the snow, and the wind was right, too. So, following the creek
bottom, we kept the saddle for three parts of the journey, and
then descended for a stalk. Tieing each pony with his head
HUNTING A CHRISTMAS DINNER. 355
bent half round to the near stirrup (a position, mark, which
will secure any horse to the spot you leave him), we left them
in the ravine, and hurried along it to a point that should, we
had noted, bring us almost within range. After a moment to
regain wind (anxiety and meat-hunger combining with the quick
movement to render a recovery of breath a matter of difficulty)
we peeped cautiously over the bank. Not a sign of our game
— already in fancy half eaten ! Ye gods, it was all too
dreadful ! No notice of our approach could have scared him,
for the wind blew right in our faces, and our movements had
been absolutely noiseless in the snow. Shuffling towards the
spot where we felt confident we had seen him feeding, we
searched in vain for track or sign of deer. A hoofmark, that
to all appearance belonged to a two-year old steer or heifer,
was visible and recent, but no trace of buck or doe. The
whole thing seemed uncanny. We had sighted no cattle; but
on the other hand we could stake our existence that that long-
neck seen from a distance belonged to a deer, and only to a
deer. Bronson gave it up, and strode back for the horses,
while I wandered up and down in perplexity and disappoint-
ment, looking again at the large deep imprints in the snow,
and hunting vainly for a smaller trail.
Holloa ! by all that's holy, the beast has been pawing ! No
cow ever got at her food through snow by means of her foot !
" Hi, Bronson ! " (who came up at that moment) " it's an
elk ! "
"Elk! not much!" replied Bronson, laconically; "there
ain't no elk within a hundred miles."
" Well, what else could have been pawing to feed ? " I
argued — and the answer burst upon our sight as the words
came from my lips. Between two and three hundred yards
away a pair of enormous eai-s sprung up over the edge of the
gulch, and for several seconds quivered over the bank, while
we crouched motionless beside our horses. Up now rose a
graceful head, then a supple neck (carrying a thick heavy
mane almost as pronounced as that of an African lion), and
A A 2
356 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
soon the giant body of the finest of all deer, and perhaps of all
meat (for were we not altogether pot-hunters to-day ?), issued
to view.
" Take her with your heavy rifle as she stands," whispered
Bronson, as he again strove in vain to set his frozen Winchester
ready for action.
" Buck-fever " is a malady from which I as well as others
cannot claim to be on every occasion free ; and buck-fever, I
assure you, is only too liable to assume an aggravated form
when the thermometer is ranging 30° or 40° below zero. So it
was due, either to a sudden seizure of the complaint or to
some mistake as to distance, that my first bullet merely kicked
the snow up under her legs, while the left barrel, with the
sight at three hundred yards, only answered the purpose of
breaking her near hind below the hock. (A cow-elk, you will
already have realised ; but even a cow-elk was on the Mispah
as rare a bird as the blackest of swans — and then the amount
of meat !)
"That's done her!" cried Bronson, as he pinged another
bullet in her direction, slipping the hammer from his thumb ;
then, leaping to his saddle, set forth to head her round.
I was to stand where I was, while he accomplished his
apparently easy task with the wounded beast. So for a minute
or two I stood till I saw the elk (at last realising whence her
pain and danger came) making very rapid tracks up the hill,
round which my companion had disappeared. Then I, too,
sought saddle and pursuit — to ride a harder chase than I had
ever ridden from Ranksboro' or Melton Spinney.
The three-legged giant had much the pace of my Indian
pony, though the latter had won many a " six-hundred yards "
match among the cowboys ; and as she vanished over the
brow I felt that the betting was at least a shade of odds in her
favour.
The prairie here was excellent going — for miles free from
sage-bush, and broken only by an occasional easy creek-bed.
Snow to the depth of half-a-dozen inches covered the whole of
HUNTING A CHRISTMAS DINNER. 357
the undulating landscape, which was fringed along the horizon
by the pine-trees of the upper hills, some five or six miles
away, and these it was certain my Christmas dinner would do
her utmost to reach.
Up the hill-side I could only move slowly, following the
well-marked trail left by the elk, and which was rendered more
conspicuous still by the blood drops freely scattered on the
snow. Rising over the ridge, I found Bronson coming round
from the right, now just upon a level with me, riding hard,
and gesticulating towards the front. A broad sweep of sloping
prairie lay before, stretching down to a creek-bed, which
appeared to lead direct to the pine-hills ; and along its bottom,
fully half a mile away, the great elk was to be seen, making
tremendous play towards the sanctuary. Plainly it was to be a
question of speed and endurance between our ponies and the
elk ; so, quickly propping my heavy rifle against a bush, I took
tight hold of little Smoke's head, and sent him best pace along
the slope. For a mile or so it was very evident that, even in
the snow, the elk's three legs were better than the four which
were burdened with thirteen stone of flesh and accoutrements.
I could barely keep the big beast in sight as I held the upper
ground and she struggled along the bottom. Soon I saw that
the creek-bed forked right and left, and I lost no little distance
by speculating to the right, with a view to cutting my game off
from the nearest section of the pine-hills. The elk swung
round the corner to the left, and I followed suit at once by
dipping in and out of the right-hand branch, and galloping
parallel with the left. By this time Bronson's " squaw pony "
was far behind, and little Smoke, with all his six-hundred-yard
reputation (and six hundred yards is a long-distance race in
Montana) was beginning to show very visible signs of the effect
of some three miles through heavy snow. I had neither whip
nor spurs, but soon found it necessary to untie my saddle-rope,
and make use of its end to keep him galloping at all. The elk
was no longer to be seen, and the ground becoming rather
broken.
358
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
I bore down to the creek bottom with all the speed I could
muster. There was the fresh and bloodstained trail plain
enough — three heavy footmarks and a dragging limb. Poor
brute ! humanity as well as hunger called for her speedy death.
The creek bed had been trodden tolerably level beneath the
snow by wandering cattle ; and rousing by means of a sharp
blow or two what little fire remained in Smoke, I hurried along
at a good hand-gallop still. Another mile, perhaps, and
suddenly we reached not only again a junction-point of the
creek's many tributaries ; but, to make matters five times
worse, that number of head of cattle had joined and confused
the trail. It was just the toss of a coin this time; " whether left
should be right, and right should be wrong, or t'other way."
To cease galloping might be to lose the elk ; but it was im-
possible, without stopping, to determine which might be hers
among the various cloven hoof-marks leading in either direc-
tion. So, speculating boldly, I struck to the right at the best
speed still at Smoke's disposal, and, soon afterwards, was
HUNTING A CHRISTMAS DINNER. 359
rewarded by the sight of a broad patch of blood. Not only
that, but a few hundred yards further, a turn round a high
bank brought me all at once within full view of the object of
my chase. With her yellow back up, her dark-maned neck
hanging low, and her tongue lolling, the great elk was hobbling
painfully along ; and, though at sight of me she quickened her
pace for a while, I felt she must now be mine. There was no
covert of any moment within her reach, and in less than
another half-mile I had brought her to bay in a small bunch
of willows. She was done to a turn, and to tell the truth
Smoke was almost in the same plight. Gladly he stood, with
legs outstretched, and sides heaving under his woolly and
dripping coat, while I clambered off, revolver in hand, holding
my hard-earned prey safe at last. A bullet through the head
secured her safer still ; and another shot into the air helped to
guide Bronson to the scene of action. Forty minutes without
a check ; a kill ; and a Christmas dinner. Not a bad day's sport
for the prairies !
But the work of the day was not nearly over yet. Here we
were, fully seven miles from camp, ten more from home, and
sternly determined neither to sleep out nor to lose any of our
precious meat. Bronson was, fortunately, a most accomplished
butcher, and had served a time at skinning buffalo, while
buffalo were still in the land. We each possessed a good knife,
and the barrel of his Winchester, if it wouldn't shoot, at least
acted very well in lieu of a steel. So the comely hide was
readily whipped off, feet and head and all encumbrance
removed ; but still the great body was heavier than our united
efforts could avail to raise. Fortune again favoured us, in the
fact that neither of our ponies was to be frightened at the smell
of blood. By efforts almost superhuman we contrived to sever
the strong backbone, and thus to divide the big deer in two.
On one saddle we set the fore-quarters, with the skin covering
them and drooping over the horse's loins, while the enormous
ears and black mane surmounted the whole, and gave the figure
a most weird appearance. On the other we perched the hind-
3G0 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
quarters and titbits, binding both bundles down with saddle-
ropes and stirrup-leathers, after the fashion in which Indians
and cow-boys fasten a load on a pack-horse, and which, simple
as it may appear, is altogether an art, to be acquired only under
proper tuition. By this time we had been pretty nearly caught
hold of by the frost ; the blood had congealed in red ice upon
our hands ; and the poor ponies were clothed in icicles. But
the loads rode well. We made the best of our way, footing it
beside the horses, and reached the cow-camp with the last
glimmer of daylight. The ghost-like form and demon-like ears
nodding on the foremost horse fairly scared the occupants of
the loghouse, as they opened the door to our holloa, and let out
the same steaming fog of hot air as before. But their alarm
soon turned to joy and triumph ; and their Christmas Dinner
and ours on the morrow were veritable feasts to Diana.
GRASS COUNTRIES.
Season 1888—1889.
Oct. 20th, 1888. — The grass countries are only now wakening
to the horn. The woodlands have already been roused, and
dropped a few first leaves to its echo. Foxhunting in the
open is quite a fortnight behind its time ; and October of '88
will never make its mark as " the merriest month of all." A
cheerless month it cannot be called ; for the grain has been
gathered and the stubbles are being turned in a blithe and
prosperous fashion, in keeping with the turn of the tide, that
at last is heralded for the farmer. Nor is the grazier without
gladness. On his " bit of plough " depends his winter safety :
and for the present his bullocks are fetlock-deep in rich
herbage. But while the corn was about, foxhunters were
perforce at home : and so far this bright October has belonged
rather to an Indian summer than to an English autumn.
Summer is gone on swallow's wings,
No more the lark, the linnet sings.
There is a shadow on the plain
Of Winter ere he comes again, —
There is in woods a solemn sound
Of holloa warnings whispered round,
As Echo in her deep recess
For once had turned a prophetess.
—Hood's "Song of the Fox."
Ours is the brighter side. The dulness of winter exists for the
poet, not for foxhunter, nor verily for fox — who, forsooth, would
speedily be seen only as a keeper's scarecrow or as a dog-
dealer's bait in a barrel, were it not for the strange infatuation
that keeps millions of money circulating in Old England for
his benefit.
362 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Plentiful enough, moreover, he still appears to be, thanks to
the appreciation of all who hunt and of all on whom hunting
confers boon, direct or indirect. So far in the Midlands he has
been found wherever sought — and now we only need rain, to
make things pleasant for all parties. Scent has been keen, in
the cold frosty mornings : and the young entry has caught up
the business readily. Now we want to be riding to them : and
the present week has been our first induction.
On Saturday (Oct. 13) we had even a little scamper over
grass and fences ; aye, and relished it, under protest. The
most self-reliant broke their vows when others set the rash
example ; and while hounds were crossing the open they had
fully two score of followers. But the experiment was no
success ; and is scarcely likely to be repeated even by the
hardiest until some rain shall fall. This may be next week,
next month, or at the Greek Calends (which hereabouts is held
to be a date synonymous with the abolition of land burdens).
But the moment rain comes, we shall be in the thick of fox-
hunting. The interim may be employed in a dozen useful
directions — imprimis, by our good friends the farmers in
removing the wire-strands from athwart the path they so
courteously throw open to us ; by the hunting men of the
country in working variously in the same great cause, to
removal not only of wire but of grievances ; by gilded youth in
feathering itself afresh ; by rusted age in repair of its war-
paint ; and, lastly but very seriously, by ladies equipping
themselves in safety habits. It is not for me to puff this
habit-maker or that. But safety against the awesome feat of
hanging head downwards from the pommel can be easily
bought, and ought to be insisted upon in the case of every
woman who hunts.
You have heard how baked and banefully hard is Northamp-
tonshire— its pasture ridges unyielding as the dry road, and the
GEASS COUNTRIES. 363
turf, wherever close cropped, as resonant as a sounding board !
And yet I may tell you of two good gallops with the Pytchley,
and of two old foxes done to death in the open during the
week past. The lesser run I saw — and this I will inflict
upon you.
Wednesday, Oct. 24, was the date — a ring of thirty-five
minutes about Thornby, to a capital scent and a sturdy old
vixen. Wednesday, you remember, was a warm sunny day,
succeeding a frosty morning. The ponds were ice-covered,
and the grass glistened white under the northern shades,
as we rode to Winwick Warren, for a 10"30 meet — a
very tiny meet too, and a very local one. (But, gentlemen,
you may look up your riding-garb, brighten your spurs, and
study the forecast now. The moment it is written " S.W.
winds, cloudy, some showers," you may hurry down, to find the
ditches well marked, the hedges thinning, and the plot gaily
thickening.) The cubs and their parents, on Wednesday
morning, were quickly ousted from the Thornby Spinneys.
One was run to ground : and then we moved towards
Elkington Bottom. A turnip field looked enticing, and hounds
were led over it — while we trod the turnpike and spared the
turnips. We even turned to the midday sandwich — but
stopped in mid-mouthful to list to a strange uproar from the
piece of green roots. " A hare, of course, and the puppies at
riot " — and we munched contentedly onward. By-and-by we
learned the cause of shout and whip-cracking. A lurcher dog
had pounced on a fox just roused, bowled her over before the
pack, and was only knocked off by a ready whipper-in. The
noise vanished ; and so, as we rode up, did the three red coats
of the executive. The provender-box was hastily sheathed ;
and in hurry and wonder we set off in pursuit. Vows had
been interchanged : comments had been muttered ; and we
ought to have stood still. Who was man enough to do so?
A locked gate forced a tittup from fallow to stubble — and so
the mischief began (the next chapter being to-morrow's visit
to the stable).
364 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Turning leftward from Elkington Bottom, we rode a fast
mile without an intervening fence. Then leftward still, we
struck what in softer weather would have been an easy line to
the West Haddon road, crossing it by jump in and scramble
out, just short of Win wick Warren : so by grass, and such
fences as we must, past what a gasping shepherd told us was
Nortoft Lodge. The fences were of the kindest, easiest
description; but the landing was (ugh!) shameful and cruel.
But, again, hounds were running beautifully — what was to be
done ? Go home — no. Better a tear in the morning than
discontent and regret to-night. Was not this, to most of us,
the first taste of flesh, the first excitement of a new era, the
first thrill of an old, peerless joy ? No crowd now, no jostle ;
a fair scent and a well-known sphere. The very crack of an
ash rail was music, as it shivered in quite friendly fashion to
let our leader, and us after him, into a lane.
The best of the hunt, the best of the fun, was as we circled
to Firefly, by aftermath and gateway and gap that made the
way feasible and pleasant enough. Through the said spinney,
which our fox had scarce cleared when hounds hove in sight to
the loiterers of the morning. Up to Cold Ashby Village, round
its back buildings, and forward over a good line pointing to
Welford — the only terror a jump into a bean-stubble, and the
relief at clearing the wide hidden ditch being quite wiped out
by the horrid clatter of landing on the hard-baked clay. In a
mile or so further the old vixen was forced to turn ; and with
hackles up the dog hounds swung to the right, while Naseby
Reservoir shone in the sunlight beneath them. Racing back
across the pastures and the poor allotments, they soon had
their fox dodging them in the Welford and Thornby road —
turned her in view towards Cold Ashby Village, and ran into
her handsomely. A warm and cheery gallop — let the morrow
do its worst. It sends a man home " feeling good," as they
phrase it over the water, where, however, they know nothing
of the glow that belongs to, and lingers after, a true good
gallop with foxhounds. This, and a good deal more, passes
BREAKING THE ICE. 365
into thought as, in the contentment of sport just witnessed and
a cigar burning amiably, one saunters home through a country
whose every field suggests a memory, every fence recalls an
incident. The ride under such circumstances is by no means
the worst part of foxhunting. A lame horse, a run lost, are
frequent exponents of a very different state of feeling. But
these are not for the present; and, indeed, should never be
admitted into the scribe's elysium.
BREAKING THE ICE.
A CHARMING beginning was made by thePytchley on Saturday,
Nov. 3 — and not its least charm lay in the slow, soaking rain
that wrapped the proceedings, and us. A beginning it was,
not so much of running and hunting, but of pleasant, practicable
riding ; and whoever knows the Shires must give the latter
capacity at least a little place in the definition of what we, of
the nineteenth century, understand as Sport. Houndwork is
of itself a delightful thing — but what is foxhunting if students
and lookers-on are excluded ? Too many runs take place at all
times with only a few witnesses. How is it when everybody
is shut off, by hard ground and fences unrideable ? Saturday
was the first day whereon to start the new order of things, and
to allow of men taking their due share in the fling and the fun
of the chase.
There had been rain for a day and a night ; the turf was in
velvet, save where the crusted horn of an old cold pasture still
held out against the softening drizzle ; and a quiet, melting-
rainfall made the parched ground better hour by hour.
The " little pack " had been taken to Newnham, a new and
judicious fixture, with intent upon Fawsley and Badby Wood.
In a small round spinney on the domain, and close to the
house, a fox was chopped. A second went off during the
brushing (the eating being dispensed with, fur apparently
patchy). So, hounds were laid on with their fox quite free to
366 FOX-HOU.ND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
choose his way — which he did by dodging in the Daventry and
Byfield road, and enabling us all to ride over his line on the
turnpike. But, this being set right, a smart twenty-five
minutes ensued. They ran a circle and they mopped him up —
grass throughout and mostly gates. (The first five minutes, by
the way, showed us fairly how we ought to have ridden the
finish of the great Braunston run of last season. We ought to
have stuck to hounds that day, nor deserted them for a bridle
path. And they beat us. Isn't it always so ? Why, the line
was an easy one — even for beaten horses.) To-day we went a
wide sweep towards Charwelton, gated it happily through the
fierce doubles of Fawsley, met an in-and-out at the turnpike
road, circled past Charwelton's gorsy hillside, and completed
a tour of the Fawsley home lordship with a who-whoop in a
double hedgerow. Scent was holding ; pace was fast ; and it
was just the gallop for the breaking of the ice.
Now wre were up in our stirrups ; had jumped a fence on fair
soft turf ; and had galloped our blood aglee.
Staverton Wood for the afternoon. Here they grow larch
and bracken — good covert for fox in November, and where fox
can do as he likes while the bracken lives. So a turn up the
hillside wood, and a turn back again. Then a scramble o'er
the apple summit of the queer eminence that overlooks all
Warwickshire and half Northamptonshire — and away to the
piping of the little ladies. (I don't mean the crackling cadence
of the dames of the cottage on the hilltop — who, rightly
enough, bade us " go arter the fox, sir, he's dipped to the
garden.") We slipped and slithered downwards, trod the new-
dug garden shamefully — and looked, askance. For it was yet a
drop, a sturdy stake-and-bound, and on to very hard turf in the
dim depth. But come ye from High Leicestershire — to be stayed
by such paltry dread ? A dip, and a drop, and a groan besides ;
he lands with a quiver, and on he rides. " Not for sale, sir ; "
but kept for his good qualities — as in the days that are gone,
when the best performers out of all Melton would seldom have
passed the vet. Turn to your left, for a dart over the clean-cut
BREAKING THE ICE. 367
hedge, and a pause at a gate — while the huntsman conies up
from the wood and the game is fairly set going. Now we are
for Badby Wood ; but a " muck cart," as Northamptonshire
would delicately phrase it, turned our fox to the good, and set
him for Hellidon and the joint corners of several Hunts.
This was a Bicester fox most assuredly. He knew of Griffin's
Gorse, and he went there — nearly as straight as we could have
ruled the way for him. Now (I may whisper in your very
inmost ear) we all, and each and every one, verge closely upon
cowardice at this first beginning of a winter's career. And
thus a none-too-difficult line called for as much indecision as
a far stronger course of December's offering. The little places
were difficult to find. Gaps have grown up ; and timber looks
terribly strong in November. Fence for fence, we rode this
way last February, also from Staverton Wood. Ah, but then
we had not with us the same lusty trippers from Harboro' to-
day, else had the ash rails shivered much more blithely and
readily. In the end, however, and quickly— we made a way —
yes, and found a trifle of wire ('tis all to come down, though, I
gratefully hear) — passing Hellidon merrily, and leaving the
village several fields to the right. Then over the hill to
Griffin's Gorse, which the Bicester do hunt. The line was
forward — had scarcely touched the covert — and five minutes
later was at an end just short of Byfield. That fox knew more,
I trow, of the buildings of the Ironcross Farm than his foes
could fathom. At thirty-five minutes by the watch he beat
them.
I have probably not conveyed fittingly the pleasures of
Saturday's afternoon gallop. The country formed by no means
its least merit : for it was smooth if not actually flat, and
rideable enough without being insignificant. Our fox was bold
and the pace was good — as is testified by the point and time, five
miles in thirty-five minutes. Among those who took part in it
were the Master, Mr. and Mrs. W. Blacklock, Mr. and Mrs.
Byass, Lord Henry Paulet, Captains Jacobson and Soames,
Messrs. Wroughtou, Onslow, Craven (pere et fils), Atherton,
368 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
E. Johnstone, &c. And as they had run well into the Bicester
country, hounds and several of the little field had a long
journey to make to their several homes.
AN EARLY WEEK.
The volume of my story must depend for excuse upon the
wealth of its subject. Sport has been flowing freely upon us,
as I hope I may be able to convey.
Let me pencil the Pytchley burst of Friday, Nov. 23, while
it is yet fresh in mind, and before overclouded by after event.
For sport is coming quickly, and happy occasion is multiplying.
Brock Hall is one of the oldest and prettiest lawn meets of
the Hunt. A quarter-hour margin was mostly occupied with
the tale of yester- afternoon — the Warwickshire second gallop.
Then to business. The Brock Hall fox ran short, and ran
scentless. Ah, how little do we know of the law or accident of
scent !
Wilton Osier-bed is a little brookside covert under Mr.
Craven's close care, and almost beneath his very homestead.
It sives us at least a gallop a year, and more often on the first
occasion of asking. A brace of foxes were here. One went in
view, the other was away by the brookside ; and a fitting field
threaded the bridlegate almost as quickly as the pack settled
to the last-named. The flat meadow spread them to a broad
front as the brook turned across them. Mr. Craven, as in
honour bound, showed promptly that the water need be no
terror ; and he, Mr. Adamthwaite, Mr. Muntz, Captain Middle-
ton, and Mr. Wroughton swept the deep ditch almost in a line.
It was nothing awful, perhaps ten feet deep and ten feet broad.
But it brought blunder and mishap profusely : and the above,
and only perhaps a dozen more, were to hounds for the next
mile. Yes, there was a scent now ; and merrily hounds took it
across the low meadows.
On this occasion, for honesty's sake and that I may attempt
AN EARLY WEEK. 369
no more than I can, let me break through my ordinary rule and
describe my own venture — so to illustrate merely the view of
the chase that fell to me and my coterie. An old head upon
young shoulders (the old head mine, the shoulders my green
beginner's), we recovered ourselves at the water, and picked
ourselves piecemeal out of the next thorn ditch — a handsome
lesson that did Shoulders good service for all the rest of the
pilgrimage. Ah, we must have example — and where shall it
be found better than at the coat-tails of one who has led us in
many a gay dance before ? So in safety and glee, from meadow
to meadow, till the railway embankment of Long Buckby sud-
denly jumps up in view. The pack tear up to the very station,
and almost touch the road that leads under its bridge — then
swing suddenly back along the embankment side. Conceit gets
the better of us. We discard our pilot, dive under the bridge
in the good company of the Master, Lord Spencer, and Mr.
Adamthwaite — and bind ourselves to the probability of our fox
having yet made his point across the railway. Aye, we almost
chuckle in the thought of what a nick we shall get when they
turn to us. So out of the road over a small drop fence, and
hard as we can gallop close parallel to the railway — the red
coats bobbing visibly beyond the double-hedged roadway.
Race as we may, we can gain nothing, and nothing comes to
us. Too self-willed to turn across at the next bridge, and take
up a well-earned after place, we push forward still for another
mile — only finally to recross the railway, with a clear loss of
three fields. Now they are running their hardest towards
Brington Village, and hard as ever they bend up wind and
point for Brington Clump — the bend serving us a little, but
the gleaming pack urging on a full field and a half ahead, with
Capt. Middleton's grey conspicuous and close on their left rear,
Mr. Wroughton and his bay in equally good position on their
right, while a dozen men in pink and black are in a cluster at
the heels of these. Meanwhile a lady is down at some blind
ditched timber ; and next minute a horse is seen to fall prone
as he nears another little brook, then to rise and real*, and now
b b '
370 FOX-ROUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
to be struggling in his last gasp. Poor old " Gridiron " — you
have died in the sphere that ennobled yon ! Over more and
bigger fences have you led us, in the years that have lapsed
since your win of the Conyngham Cup, than can be set to the
credit of any ten horses in the Shires. May your new hunting
grounds be happy ; and may your master soon fill your stall
worthily ! It will be no unmanly moisture that damps his
pillow to-night, old Gridiron.
The grass fields are growing larger, the strong fences are
wider apart, the pace is no less, as the chase streams onward
to Brington Clump. Leaving this wooded landmark just on
the left hand, hounds dash downwards beneath Brock Hall —
the field largely discounted and scattered, and all but the
better few now obviously slackening, or rather urging and
pressing in vain. A dozen gates make the finish easier ; but
it is " all out " with most horses when hounds stop at a drain
one field below the Hall. Only twenty-three minutes, an ex-
cellent authority gave it. As for my watch, it had forgotten
its duty — thrown it over in the excitement, or maybe in the
ditch. But the gallop was unmistakably fast, the country un-
doubtedly good ; and, if a half ring, it was wholly a charming
burst. And the ground never rode better than now — moist
enough, but not deep, underneath, and all the more solid and
sound for the rough winds that for days past have been testing
our temper and hatstrings. Make the most of it, gentlemen.
Leave your sorrows for Christmas or summer. You may reckon
in some slight measure on the morrow, but nothing on the day
after — how much less on the year after. You know not even
if December shall be wrapped in frost : you have no right to
even a guess upon life. Why, the very existence of foxhunting
in the future is a subject beyond your ken and mine. And
now to dream of the happiest of all topics — and to wake for
Hellidon.
Suggestions for the better conduct of the chase, in matters
both major and minor, appear to be the duty of every man.
Here is a point that surely calls for attention and amendment.
AN EARLY WEEK.
371
It is a regrettable fact that no fixed plan is in vogue among
the countrymen of the Grass Countries for dealing with the
many loose horses that bring shillings to their honest nets.
Witness two instances belonging to the past week, illustrative
of two entirely different methods of procedure. In the one case
the rescuer took the runaway by the bridle and ran on with
him till he could £0 no further — seeking the owner at the tail
of the hounds ! In the other, catching a horse in the road as
the hunt swept by, he forthwith climbed upon a gate with the
reins in his hand, lit his pipe, and there awaited the turn of
events, or the arrival of the dismounted one. But the latter,
poor man — having by ill luck been persuaded by the closeness
of that day to inclose himself in cords instead of leathers — soon
tired of crossing a particularly strong thorn country on foot, and
leaving the lost hunter to chance, walked home to lunch — his
second horseman eventually appearing with both in hand.
B B
372 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
PACE AND BLOOD.
A scent again on Monday, Nov. 2G, and what I may
safely term " an excellent hound run " with the Grafton that
morning. The wind had dropped, the sun showed us his face
once more, and we were treated to sport that we could all see
and enjoy. The meet was at Woodford, the run from Hinton
Gorse adjacent.
It was nearly half an hour before a fox would go : which, as
each and every corner was closely besieged by foot people, was
scarcely to be wondered at. But when once away, they ran him
for fifty minutes — with only a single trifling check — and pulled
him down in the open. Over a nice and none too difficult
country, too — not straight enough to warrant the spinning of a
lengthy yarn ; but withal a very merry hunt.
Fox and hounds left in about the only direction open to
them, viz., by Hinton House ; and we, one and all, lost useful
time by crowding into the little gateways when we ought to
have been jumping the little hedges alongside. But somehow
we adopt very gatey habits whenever we find ourselves at all in
the vicinity of the awe-inspiring domain of Fawsley, with its
double ramparts and its many doorways. So hounds easily
kept their 'vantage up to the Byfield and Daventry turnpike —
where, as is customary, their fox was headed. He threaded the
road for a while towards Badby, then rose the hill leftward ;
and a sweet piece of hunting laid open the puzzle inch by inch.
Now they ran hard, and I must tax memory to decipher the
line. It led over two lofty hills of grass and red plough (if
their names are not Blackdown and Vengeance, I read my map
wrongly) — kept clear of Griffin's Gorse, by two fields to the
right. Now we recognised the ground of the first Pytchley
Saturday of this season ; and quickly and fearfully we asked
■of the wire strand we remembered then. It's down, answered
the good farmer, while he held gate for our passage — and his
word was qiiickly proved by fifty men jumping the fence
beyond.
PACE AND BLOOD. 373
The road from By field to Hellidou was in itself bad faliing
ground to a tangled hedge and ditch — and a frightened horse
emphasised it by striking his prostrate rider with his heel.
(Nor was this the worst fall of the day into a road : for Mr. G.
Campbell came off almost scatheless as compared with Baron
M. de Tuyli later in the day. But the painful accidents which
too often form the black side of fox-hunting must never be my
theme — though a word of sympathy and regret cannot but slip
occasionally from the flippant pen). Within a mile of Prior's
Marston occurred the one brief check — which was more than
righted by the huntsman galloping his pack forward three fields-
to a cap uplifted. This set us on the spot where the Warwick-
shire stopped in their morning scurry from Shuck burgh last
week. But there was a stouter scent in the valley to-day ;
and hotly they ran it round the village of Hellidou and to the
edgre of Dane Hole. Too blown and heated to enter the covert,
he struck forward yet over the grass beneath Catesby House •„
climbed the upland between that and Staverton ; and strove-
hard for Badby Wood. "Yonder he goes" — the gladdest of alJ
sights and the most excitiug of all signals that pertain to the
killing of bold reynard. " Yonder he goes " through the sheep,,
yonder he crawls over the greensward on the brow. The bristling
ladies are savaging on his track, are at his very heels — are in
view — are on him. Who-whoop. And the big wood was only
two fields further.
Free from cares political and questions polemical, by no one
were the delights of riding to hounds more plainly evidenced
than in the person of Lord Spencer — mounted on a four-year-
old bred at Althorp. Lord Alfred Fitzroy, no doubt represent-
ing the noble master, was also in close presence and observance
throughout the hunt, which, if I mistake not, was a study of
pleasure to two gallant new-comers (I have put the sentence too
clumsily to admit of the additional freedom of appending their
names). But I shall add that the yeomen of the immediate
neighbourhood were very aptly and forwardly represented by
Mr. Waring on his well-tried grey.
374 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
And another of the same sort as Friday's was the Pytchley
gallop of Wednesday, Nov. 28. Two sharper bursts will not
belong to the season — let it even proceed with the happy energy
with which it has begun. Yelvertoft Hill- side gave us Wednes-
day's stirring episode ; and the scene was carried over the rough
gorges of Elkington, the steep highlands of Cold Ashby, and
finally the strong vale of Naseby — as fast and severe a twenty
minutes as ever was ridden, and afterwards they killed their
fox.
I need not go back to the morning, beyond saying that we
had been disappointed at Crick for want of a fox, and at
Lilbourne for want of scent. But by middle day, the first
rime-frost of the winter had melted away, the earth was warm,
the air was still, and we were very hopeful. But the tension
and excitement that belong to a first five minutes had to
be undergone for nothing- — -when we started from beneath
the covert beyond the canal bank. Our fox was headed home
by drain-diggers ; and sullen and sad we slunk back to
the upper covert. There was nothing here, though, to
hold him long : already the little ladies were warming the
oven : and a new anxiety arose, lest a chop should be served
for our midday dish. Now he leapt through their very midst,
squirmed and wriggled as he passed their snapping jaws, and
for dear life raced for the handgate by the canal bridge.
Crossing the bridge he had not ten yards in his favour, and
for a mile along the canal side there were six couple straining
for a mouthful of his blood-red fur. Twenty men scattered
over the bridge among the tail-hounds. Two hundred others
thundered down the cart track in their wake. Goodall, and
we within, extricated ourselves as best we might from the
entanglement of rabbit -netting and rail-guarded handgate ;
and now I have the picture before me- — a rough and narrow
green field sprinkled with scurrying horsemen — a struggling
chain of hounds hurrying to their leaders — a gate ahead, and
for an obvious and only course another gate and another
bridge, which the chase must cross to reach Elkington or the
PACE AND BLOOD. 375
Heniplow. "The devil take the hindmost" indeed ! Why,
he had them all but a foremost score — and the fastest of these
never got a pull till a four-mile effort placed them at Naseby
Woolleys !
By the back of the farmhouse below the gully of Elkington
Bottom went a thin stream of horsemen — headed, I fancy, by
Mr. C. Marriott and seconded by Mr. Wroughton and the first
whip, while parallel to them on the other side of the house a
second thin stream worked up the steep ascent. The former
crossed and recrossed a straggling hedge ; the two parties met
on the summit ; and the whole, led by the Master, wheeled
rightward to plunge into the steep gulch of Elkiugton Bottom.
No chance of tightening hold upon rein, except in tune with a
lustier squeeze from the knee. Gallop up the green houseside
we must. Blood and condition shall help us or fail us. Now
we are mounting Honey Hill — at an angle more suited to wild
Dunkery of Exmoor than to rich Northamptonshire. Thus
climbing, and straining, and striving, for the first several
minutes — then to choose between holding the lofty station
attained or turning downwards to the pack now sinking the
valley beneath. Mr. Adamthwaite alone chooses the better
part, darts through the overhanging bullfinch, and joins hounds
on lower ground. Even then he can barely keep his hold — so
sharp and unflagging is the pace, as they rise a last little brow
and give him quick practice of the old subject, " in-and-out-a-
road." Nor is it the only sampler of similar subject — for-in-
and-out-a-plantation comes next, and in-and-out-a-rickyard
i m mediately afterwards.
Now the " upper succle," as dear Jorrocks dubbed them,
swoop down from their high estate, and take head in the fray
— Mr. Mills bringing up his juniors and leading them all, along
the valley land, past the left of the Reservoir and up to the
plantations amidst which nestles the house of Naseby Woolleys.
The Master, his huntsman and whip, Messrs. F. Langham, G.
Cunard, Pender, Wroughton, Marriott, Mills (tertius), Forte,
Sheriffe, and several others, were all with hounds at this time ;
376 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
but, if I may be permitted to say so, no one was better placed
than Mrs. Cross, who rode this trying gallop wonderfully. Well,
their fox at all events was blown — and some forty minutes
afterwards (most of which had been spent in or about the
coverts) hounds were on him in a ditch near by. I trust I
may not have made much of little — but this was truly a fierce
bright scurry, making a fitting final page to my diary of a week
of high sport.
A RUN LOST.
Events cannot all be of one pattern when we are hunting the
fox — fortunately, perhaps for readers of story, fortunately or un-
fortunately as the case may be, for us the actors and participa-
tors. We have our merry days and our black days. I have my
pen in hand on an evening that is dark and melancholy. Even
dinner has had no power to efface memory or to brighten it. To
state the point plainly — we (and in saying we, I mean all who
went forth in scarlet and pride, and a community, too, with whom
I am proud to include myself) we lost a run — not a great run,
but all the sport that the day contained — and there is gnashing
of teeth from Harborough to Daventry to-night. For myself, I
can only employ an expression from over the water — I have been
"kicking myself" since two o'clock — and I shall continue to
kick myself till the Grafton cheer my stricken soul on Monday
morn. Rend my garments I cannot afford to do — let the pro-
cess be ever so consoling — since they are already in a state of
decadence in keeping with a decade's wear, and most of them
carry a diffei'ent button. (In charity and sympathy you may
forgive a man almost anything — even a pun, who has been chew-
ing the bitter cud of disappointment for some hours, and is
scarcely likely to get rid of the taste for some days.)
I'll tell you how it happened — and now you may compose
yourselves for a story — " in three words," I promise you. Badby
Wood is a great covert belonging to the Pytchley. And there
A RUN LOST. 377
they met and hunted on Saturday, Dec. 1st. Good men and
many better by half than good men, came from far and near —
very smart, very keen, and more or less experienced. Twice at
least did they make a start from Badby "Wood, rode round and
about its immediate neighbourhood — spoke out their opinion
forcibly on the subject of a very ringing fox, laid down the law
explicitly as to when one hunt had begun and another taken up
the thread — and in fact had spent the bulk of the day very
busily, very unsatisfactorily, and very confusedly. About
1.30 a fox was either "fresh-found" or newly-found, close to the
place of meeting ; and there was a new start. We dashed over
the Newnham Brook by the straitest and narrowest ways we
could find, thought ourselves in for a gallop, and returned once
again by way of the village of Badby into this mortal wood.
Threading our way through farmyard and by-lanes, we could
accept no other conclusion than that our village fox meant to
hand over his feeble brush at once : so sauntered into the oak
jungle to resign ourselves placidly to fate, and possibly to
luncheon. The latter may or may not have been an accompany-
ing coincidence. Hounds were within earshot, and we felt safe.
They were running a beaten cub. What could happen ?
What did happen was this — as I gather since from a trusty
eye-witness. An old red fox, sauntering up the woodside near
the well-known beech trees, altogether put a spoke in the wheel
of the existing chase. Hounds touched his line, and finding it
warm, fresh, and strong, sprang into it with a vigour that the
day had not yet seen. Goodall himself nearly missed their
departure, as they dashed over the hill into Fawsley Park.
Then he kept his horn going for a mile. But the brow of up-
land was between him and his listeners, and never a sound could
reach them. Indeed, it was in many cases half an hour before
they had a suspicion of the fact that the pack was elsewhere than
in Badby Wood. Messrs. J. F. Goodman and A. Fabling once
again reaped reward of their accustomed perseverance and
attention, and with Mr. and Mrs. W. Blacklock and Mr. Warinsr,
alone joined huntsman and first whip across the wide open
378 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PR A HUE.
valley to Mantel's Heath. Passing the right of this, they
galloped with hounds up to Little Preston ; and crossing the
road between that hamlet and Preston Capes, embarked on a
pretty and rideable line to the village of Maidford. Thus was a
quick, straight gallop carried some four or five miles into the
Grafton country. It is thought their fox went on into Plump-
ton Wood, as a couple and a half of hounds found their way
nearly thither. But they lost him soon after passing Maidford.
And one of the best fields of the new season was left at
Badby.
Had I, or you, disconsolate friends, been second whip, of course
we should not have been left behind — or equally of course should
have been well trounced for neglect of duty. But in our case
pleasure too often takes the place of duty, and so we lose grip of
both. And, besides our predilection and laziness, we are bound
to remember (in some hunts made to remember) that the per-
sistency necessary to the occupation of a whip is on our part
altogether unwelcome and superfluous. We cannot all hunt the
huntsman (though many of us do run the poor man very hard,
particularly when he gives us a chance by working across his
own foil), and still less are we expected, or welcomed, as a
satellite to the minor constellation (be he of first or second
magnitude). No, we must "take our chance with the rest,"
accept our mischances with a pleasant grin, and vow attention
and pertinacity in the future. What to do in the event of fail-
ure is another question — which you must answer for me. T<>
post yourself on an eminence — looking into space as provided by
a great green valley and a blue distance with a mocking sun
dancing in your eyes, is no pastime. But it is almost as pro-
ductive as galloping into nothingness — riding hard for a Will o'
the Wisp — not half so plausible an undertaking as tilting at a
windmill. You may hang back to preserve material for a
possible event of the afternoon, or at any rate of another day.
You may stand on the hillside sighing — your flask and case
gone with your second horse — store up a chill of .liver and lung
— and finally join hounds just as they are going home.
A BROKEN RECORD. 379
On the whole, I think there is more dignity — and possibly
more honesty — certainly more chance of deception — in towelling
on while information keeps you on the line, and in putting in an
appearance after the fox is broken up — and with your horse very
nearly as tired as other people's. Yes ; this is the right policy
— unless you have strength to adopt a better, viz., straightway
to go home. In future I shall go home and write for The
Field.
A BROKEN LEG.
P.S. — Dec. 3. There are worse things after all than losing a
run. To lose two months' hunting just as the season is in full
swing, is certainly a sorer trial — mitigated though it be, I may
gratefully add, by kindly condolence and manifold sympathy.
My diary is closed for the present — though if great sport
happens, good fellows will tell me of it, and I will pass it
briefly on.
A BROKEN RECORD.
There has been ample sport during the past fortnight— as
should be in the month of December, with the weather open
and a four-seasons' accumulation of foxes to play upon. The
Pytchley have kept the ball rolling busily. Their best
achievement would seem to have dated from Brock Hall on
Friday, 21st, when, starting from one of the spinneys behind
the house, they drove their fox merrily to his death in about
thirty minutes.
They came to draw Braunston Gorse in a fierce storm of
wind and rain. And now, for a brief while, I come in as eye-
witness. Non cuivls homini continglt adire Cori/mthvm —
which in this instance you may translate as " It is not given to
every poor broken-legged devil to look out upon Braunston
Gorse." But it has been given to me. And greedily I hoped
that the grand old play of Braunston to Shuckburgh, in one act
380 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
of seventeen minutes, might be performed while I was there to
see. But in vain I craned my neck from pillow to window —
like a young swallow hungering from its nest beneath the
eaves — and tightly grasped my wishing ring, in the shape of
Tom Firr's old crooked horn that has twanged from Bunker's
Hill, been dug from beneath him at the Curate, and has even
been taken to scare the jackals on the Nilgiris. The treat was
not to be — though it nearly came off. At least three foxes
were in the gorse, one of them set off for Flecknoe and the
side-hill that slopes from Shuckburgh, and they were within an
ace of showing me a point-to-point that would have warmed
my blood better than the Run of the Season in a plough
country. The village stands, a kind of Caesar's Camp — a nest
on a green peak — on the Warwickshire side of Braunston
Brook. How the land came to be so parcelled, I do not
pretend to say — but as a fact the farms of Flecknoe parish are
portioned out as divisions of a circle whose centre is the village,
and whose sector lines, each from each, are great boundary-
fences in the strongest and most practical sense of the term.
Thus, though you may ride up to Flecknoe from the brook on
a very moderate hunter — you want nearly the best in the Hunt
to carve your way across the concentric farms.
I look up from my paper at this moment on to the great
double that last spring scattered us all in the well-remem-
bered gallop from Braunston Gorse — all except (as I did not
grasp until a week after) Major Cosmo Little, who flew it in
one, and Mr. Pender who followed in two. Ah, I wish the
whole scene had been repeated this afternoon ! I warrant me
I had been carried over that country more blithely by my old
binoculars than ever I crossed it on quadruped. But Fates
were very contrary. While the squadrons on Braunston Hill
were being buffeted in the gale — now driven off in solid order
by the scourging rainstorms, now edging back to the gorse as a
brief lull in the hurricane allowed them to face about, and
detaching every now and then a deserter to gallop away
through the mist like a flying aide-de-camp through the smoke
A BROKEN RECORD. 381
of battle — a long delay took place within the fortress of thorn
and privet. The enemy lay close and declined the challenge.
At length there was a break-away in the most desired of all
directions — the horsemen on the hilltop closed up for a charge —
and it seemed Flecknoe-and-Shuckburgh for a hundred. But
hounds were otherwise occupied : and their object led them
forth another way, viz., towards Braunston Village.
And here I surrender the thread again to other hands.
Stay, but I have a parenthesis, before I close the window and
return to the solitude of crippledom. You have seen how it is
sometimes advertised " A gentleman having himself been cured
of this, that, or the other malady, is anxious to extend the
benefit to other sufferers, and will accordingly forward pre-
scription on receipt of stamped envelope." Now, my charity on
this occasion is genuine ; and I don't want your stamped
envelopes. Here is my recipe — not to cure, but at least to
palliate — insomnia, the worst attendant, the sorest phase of
broken bonedom. It is not the knitting of the fracture, it is
not the misery of imprisonment, it is not even the diabolical
action of splint and bandage, that wear the soul and strain the
nerves of the prisoner. But it is the ticking of the clock
through the long still hours, when thought is exhausted and
merely hovers over trifles, or settles itself upon some atom of
no concern. The weary eyelids and tired mind can no more
apply themselves to such reading as properly legitimises the
midnight oil, than the enfeebled patient may take refuse in
such sedative as a bottle of port. But to fidget the nio-ht
through — and night after night— is distressing as it is in-
jurious. How, then, brother fox-hunters — for surely you may.
any and all of you, be on the accident-list in turn ? And I
write knowing well, aye and with multiple proof on every hand,
that we belong nowadays to no such class as mere
. folk that love idlenesse
Anil not delite have of in businesse
But for to hunt and liauke and play in medes
And many other such idl« dedes.
382 FOX-BOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
So my recipe shall be no slur upon your understanding, no
insult upon your resource — while, I answer for it, it shall be
found to meet the occasion. When the night is at its longest,
when dulness is unbearable, and the demon Fidget is pulling at
every nerve-string — ring up a light, prop yourself for action,
and have Jorrocks brought to your bed. Open the well-
thumbed pages at random, follow him through a lecture,
flounder with him in the forest, struggle with him over the
dreaded open, accompany him to dinner and ball, mark his
education of Benjamin, and join him in his daily occupations —
as sketched by Surtees and pictured by Leech — and, believe
me, the clock will gallop round, black night shall have its
solemnity scattered, and the grey dawn shall break upon a new
man — content to laugh on, or soothed to a gentle nap such a&
came from Beckford upon Benjamin.
January 3, 1889. — As far as I can learn, the year went out
leaving every stable more or less crippled by the constant strain
to which it has been subjected, and by the trying ordeal of deep
ground. For some seasons past a cry has gone up against the
forced extravagance of keeping up a full stud when two or
three horses would have sufficed for all requirements. At the
present time a murmur, different but equally pronounced, is to
be heard, also on the score of extravagance. Every man is short
of horses. If the season resumes its swing at once, they must
have some more — or find pressing excuse for " business else-
where." Wet seasons more often bring sport, but they certainly
biing lame horses. To jump off a spring board is comparatively
a safe and easy process. To rise out of a slough is to court
sprains and blows, or punctured wounds ; for horses can neither
clear their fences nor jump in collected form.
With a hard frost outside, and consequently little or no news
penetrating to the accident ward, my subject is naturally at a
standstill — even if the immediate look-out left me heart enough
A BROKEN RECORD. 383
to write. Intellect and exercise are as inseparable still as when
the most practical of poets held out for mens sana in corpora
sano. Macaulay, we are led to believe, got through more solid
reading (and retained it all, too) during his voyage round the
Cape than most men digest in a lifetime. But Macaulay was
not seasick. Edmund Yates kept his pen busy throughout
his little holiday in prison. But they made his " cell " very
comfortable, and I don't fancy the journalist was ever a keen
athlete. (Still less were the charms of outdoor life the main
subject of his writing.) But to the inferior mind — and more
especially to the mind already acknowledging itself in bondage
to the sports of the field — it is a matter of impossibility to
work, or even think, seriously when the body is pent and in-
active from week's end to week's end. To frivol is the sole
occupation of ninety-nine men out of a hundred on boardship or
in crippledom. The busy man has always spare time, on a
pinch. The idler's clay is gone ere even begun.
There is little comes to me from outside, through the white
frost and the shadowy fog, save these murmurs of lamed horses,
and here and there a groan over an old favourite whose doom
is sealed and whose destiny is the Kennels. Worse than this
there have been several death records in the two months of
hunting already past. Be the owner rich or poor, he can ill
spare, and seldom replace, the picked one of his stable, in the
middle of a season : and, more than that, he is not made of
the stuff of which fox-hunters are usually fashioned if he can look
upon the loss of his old comrade as only so much money out of
pocket, so much temporary inconvenience sustained.
There is a little work, my fellow fox-hunters of the Midlands,
that is at least as open to you now as in the busier times when
duty calls you daily to the covertside. And most of you, I
take it, are still on the spot, waiting for this "cold snap" to
pass over. You cannot but remember exactly where several of
those little bits of wire remain that served to frighten you
during the past weeks ? Go and see about them. Ask that
they may be pulled down by the owner or by you (i.e., the
384 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
vilLage smith under your orders and owner's permission). You
will meet, I warrant you, with unvarying courtesy and seldom a
refusal. And you may be saving your best friend's neck in one
parish, while he is doing the same by you in another.
On Saturday the Pytchley battled the snowstorm, brought off
their meet at Daventry, and pursued the foxes of the imme-
diate neighbourhood under all the drawbacks of cold, damp,
discomfort, and semi-darkness. An excellent day's sport it was
— for the shoemaker of Daventry or for the cripple in a
carriage. And you, therefore, hale and well-mounted reader,
may turn the page over, an you please. Not a single boot, I
trow, was built in Daventry that day. The sons of leather left
their last, tied their dusky aprons round their waists, hitched a
bootlace to the collars of their cur dogs, and set forth in force to
see the fun at Braunston Gorse. Whether their over-keenness
here cost them their sport I am not in a position to aver. But
certain it is, hounds could find no fox ; and the shoemakers had
to foot it further afield. They had ample sport yet, though —
as far as they were able to witness it through the blinding
snowflakes. For even if they failed to reach the crown of
Staverton Hill before fox and hounds left at score — they either
came up to the hunt awaiting them, where the game was to
ground, in a road drain by Badby House, or five minutes later
they came face to face with the whole outfit careering back
over the fields towards Braunston Gorse.
Nor am I, unfortunately, in a position to declare whose was
the valiant terrier that shot reynard out from under the road.
I hope, though, it was no aristocrat's dog, but rather one of the
true Mont St. Crispin breed, of which there were a score of
specimens at hand — of sizes to fit every calibre of drain or
tunnel-pipe. Yes, and from the standpoint of wheels, too,
this was a goodly run. The fox unearthed led off for a mile or
two, within easy view from the road, and then in some fashion
or other reserved himself for another day — while the snow-
flecked cavalcade moved off to seek a fresh start. Of all
comfortless days this was surely the very worst. Had men
A BROKEN RECORD. 385
enjoyed the protection of an oat-sack apiece round their
shoulders (like many of their attendants on foot) they would at
all events have carried a look of preparedness. The honest
sacking- was altogether more suggestive of warmth than
the scarlet " extra superfine " which clung- coldly to shivering
shoulders. However, if there was no great sport, there was,
happily, constant movement taking place — and the day was
thus made just endurable.
About this point I may come upon the scene in the light of a
tenant farmer, who, by reason of the custom of the country —
and influenced, possibly, b}^ the fact that my landlord is a fox-
hunter — am fain to put up with the passage of a crowd of
horsemen across my holding. Is there not a popular little
handbook " My Farm of 20 Acres and how I made it Pay ? "
I have not yet perused it, nor do I believe it will enable me
to solve the question so far as my tenancy is concerned ; at any
rate the system of farming will have to be on very new lines,
and the cow and the foal must speedily give place to some more
paying class of stock. No, I must move with the times. First
of all, my landlord shall mend all my fences for me, lest I string
him or his friends up upon barbed wire, like so many eels on a
nightline. Secondby, he shall find me a complete new^set of
gates that open to a hunting crop, and swing to the latch of
their own accord. Thirdly, as I am about to buy some hens, I
shall require at once a substantial advance from the Hunt
poultry fund. Fourthly, and this on the word of a freeborn
Briton, no man shall ever again ride through my garden,
hounds not running hard, unless he stop to drink, whether I
be there or not. Under these conditions, and subject to such
other claims as I may from time to time have occasion to bring
forward, as, for instance, due regard to my arrangements for
shooting over the estate, will I lay 20 acres of sound turf at the
feet of the Pytchley Hunt
c c
386 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
WAFTED FROM AFAR.
Such a lovely winter has not visited us for years — was there
ever such a January ? I ask you. But let me be excused from
extolling its charms. Mine is the soberer task of transcribing
what is told me as happening on these delicious days, when
the sunlight brings gladness even through a window pane. Ah
me ! — were I but a duchess in a brougham, I too might be
happy. To my lower-class understanding, mirth is begotten of
activity, life is of fresh air and free movement. Sense and sight
are of no avail to one who must sit still. But to history.
No. / was not with the wrong pack on Friday last, Jan. 18.
Daventry, Weedon (Road Weedon, is it not ?) and the north
probably went to Brington and the Pytchley. How much
better off am I, to whom the postman brings my sport — some-
times in outline joyful and prolonged, sometimes in commentary
jerky and protesting. In either case the meaning is clear.
There has been a run, or there has been a day of disappoint-
ment. I haven't endured the latter. I can throw heart and
soul into the former. For my own benefit — not for yours, who
trust me for facts — I can incident the outline, fill in the by- play,
take my fun to the full — second-hand fun, maybe — but fun for
all that, and as for the failures, I throw them aside. I have
had no bootless days ; I haven't even a lame horse. I wish
you had been at Wappenham on Friday — you will go there
next time — and the Pytchley shall that day have the run of the
season, from Nobottle Wood (?).
Yet Wappenham is no far cry from the border line : and,
besides, does it not adjoin the very pick of the Grafton country,
Weedon Bushes (adjacent to Weedon Lois), Plumpton Wood,
and all their green surroundings ? There are two sides to
Wappenham — as there are two sides to every venture in life.
Here is what came of the chance on Friday ; and I would have
given — at this moment nothing that I have to give would seem
exorbitant — could I have ridden that day with the Grafton
pack (were they the ladies, Frank Beers ? I have a notion
WAFTED FROM A FAIL 387
they must have been. My ears are surety tingling now with
their dainty notes.) Ten miles, from Whistley Wood to Ever-
don Village, over the sweetest line the Grafton can map — and
for the last ten miles as straight as a bowstring, as far as I
make it on memory's chart, having no atlas before me.
One o'clock saw them at Allithorne Wood. Ten minutes
later they were away — for as fine a run as you will find in
the chronicles of Wakefield Lawn. Hounds never touched a
covert — though they passed many — in the next two hours and
more ; and at the end they pulled down as stout a fox as ever
did credit to woodland birth.
The line — slow and crooked to Wappenham, fast and straight
by Plumpton, Weedon Bushes, and Canons Ashby to Little
Preston. A beaten fox struggled along the valley to Snors-
combe, and was run into in the open under Everdon Village —
time two hours and ten minutes. Even the best of the horses
were more than satisfied, for the ground rode deep indeed, in
spite of a week of weather mild and dry ; and to see the run
it was necessary to jump a number of fences quite unusual.
A field of some seventy or eighty people saw the find at
Allithorne. About half of them rode through to the finish.
In fact, a goodly proportion saw most of the run — among them
notably being Lord Penrhyn, Lords Alfred Fitzroy, South-
ampton, Algernon Fitzroy, Capts. Jacobson and Greville,
Messrs. Fuller, Gosling, Knightley, &c, &c. And you re-
member what an afternoon it was — a day on which you might
see and hear and enjoy to the utmost the delightful science
of riding to hounds. Bear in mind, too, that these hounds
were the Grafton, that the country was such as you might
choose for schooling or elect for chasing, that the scent was
a working if not actually a brilliant one, that their fox was a
type of bold energy — and, tell me, what would you, ur I, not
give to have been there !
C C 2
388 FOX-HOUNJ>, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
WHEELS ON THE HILLTOP.
The weather — I must always begin with reference and report
on it, for is it not ever a prime factor, if not actually of the
sport, at least of its enjoyment ? This sunny January of '89
has been " away ahead " of all Januaries of the past quarter-
century. It has made fox-hunting a picnic — and a rich picnic
in the matter of sport. For why ? the ground has been wet,
underneath, and old foxes are still plentiful. Gently, hunts-
men—you are revelling in blood, old blood too, that is not to be
tasted except by skill and proud success, but old blood for all
that. We shall be hunting cabs for the most part if you carry
on your triumphs to the end.
I saw one of these veterans hunted down on Saturday,
Jan. 26 — witnessed the performance almost from find to finish,
and by means of an intimate knowledge of road and country
was able to take a forward or commanding position at many
critical periods. Pleased with my own performance, how could
I be otherwise than graciously appreciative of that of the men
of action ? Their doings, however — or perhaps I may be
justified in limiting the encomium to the one in office, the
huntsman — speak for themselves. With a strong fox, and on a
bad scenting morning, lie made a run and wound up with a kill.
Badby Wood the meet, Badby Wood the find. Amid a bevy
of foxes, hounds and foot-people singled one, and chased and
holloaed him heartily — till, when three-quarters of an hour later
he gained open country, the steel was out of the iron, and he
was a half-killed fox. Else could he have fooled hounds
according to his bent ? — for even on the pretty green valley
leading to Everdon they could barely foot him while he
travelled with the wind. And when he turned upward to
some fresh-ploughed fallows, it needed all of a professional's
perseverance to hold the line good. It was done, however, and
soon the chase dipped to Snorscombe and rose again to Everdon
Stubbs — while the onlooker might pull up on the brow, to
trace every movement, mark all the action, and almost follow
WHEELS ON THE HILLTOP. o<S9
individual exploit, while the pursuit freshened and culminated
in a horseshoe beneath his feet. It was plain to see how the
zealous, the plodders — and these are the men who see sport —
brisked up as they approached the wood ; how the dawdlers,
the easily discouraged, the ready talkers and the men of chalk,
loitered and sauntered after. " Bad fox — not an atom of
scent — bother Badby. I'll wait for the afternoon. Where the
devil's my fellow with the luncheon ? " — You might almost see
them passing the formula one to another. And already they
were pulling up, gathering into little knots on the edge of the
covert — while at that very moment the birdseye above them
lit upon a galloping whip (the smaller brother to him of that
denomination now promoted) who raced on beyond, with cap on
high, and shrill scream cutting the quiet air. Oh, for a seven-
league thong ! Get on ! Hanging about — ye men of little
worth and pudding heart — under the hill, are ye not ? Under
a cloud always will ye be till fox-hunting and you agree to
recognise incompatibility. The plodders, on the other hand, are
through, with the twanging horn and the silvery pack (for is
not a pack of hounds darting under distant sunlight like
nothing so much as a shoal of silver fish in the clear ocean ?).
And away into the valley goes the head of the chase with new
vigour and fresh -acquired pace. They are more distant as they
race down to the Everdon brook — (strong glasses would be
useful now — and of course are securely at home). But there
is a check, a flurry, a riding up and down on the part of the
many — while a dozen or two are galloping onward, and the
water is welcoming its own.
The huntsman, I learn, got in (and — this must be guarded in
parenthesis — I do not learn that each and every man who found
himself on the right side pulled up at once to offer his help,
and his horse, to one of the most popular servants and work-
men of the Shires. No, they were at liberty now — and every
liberty they took, or Queen's evidence is worth nothing. They
had the pack all to themselves, and they rode round and ahead
of it — and swore delightedly by their water-jumpers. Indeed,
390 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
that the position of hounds and hard riders had become
inverted, to a degree that would have gladdened a cynic from
the ploughs, was at this moment apparent enough from the
eyrie above Everdon — where, as Babes in the "Wood, sat the
child taking notes and a ragged infant whom he had impressed
into his service as gate-opener).
But, surely, business was afoot as the cluster thickened and
closed up, and Newnham Village was reached. There were
whips galloping round a willow bed and the village outskirts ;
there was a baying of hounds, a sudden rush inwards, and hark,
who-whoop, a finish, and the cry of victory. " Excellent
sport," they said : they forgave the wood and its first half-
hour, they ignored the dribble and uncertainty of the next, and
they piled encomium on the final thirty minutes. " Were
there ever such hounds ? " Oh, yes ; often. But " was there ever
a prettier country ? I say, old fellow, what were you doing at
the brook? You should have seen my new horse cock his
ears and go for it. He made nothing of it, and even Goodall
got in."
Now, the afternoon was all different ; and a galloping road
put all this in view, too. A turn round Staverton Wood and
its planted vicinity occupied ten minutes. And then we started
level — hacks and pony traps along the turnpike — the pack
flying parallel — John doing pilot over a strong country, Mrs.
Craven (may I be permitted to testify) giving a distance to all
comers, and the rest spread out. It took only ten minutes
from covert to kill. But he was a wicked old fox, with scarcely
a tooth in his head, and he paid the penalty.
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS.
Then Monday's run with the Grafton was also admirably
suited to the movements of one who essayed to see sport through
the saddening medium of road and harness. And this is meant
by no means to convey a slur upon the merits of the run itself.
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS. 391
It is easy to understand that if hounds follow a figure of 8, and
intersecting roads are only frequent and convenient enough,
they need seldom be long out of sight of those who would save
distance and pace on the macadam. So it was now — the better
for me, and the better for all second horsemen, worth their salt.
I should be sorry to hint that any of these belted squires do not
attain to so meagre a valuation ; but then, whereas a proper
second horseman is acknowledged to be worth his very weight
in gold, we know not to what price the Salt Syndicate may
shortly raise the humbler article. And indeed the worthies in
question do vary considerably in point of excellence. One of
these days we shall see them all marshalled under authority,
and moved by road from point to point — or they will have to
be left at home altogether — or they will have to carry a
special licence bought from the administrators of the Damage
Fund.
Monday's was an excellent hunt, in spite of its curly course
— nay, it probably afforded ten times the amusement it would
have done had it been all straight, or even all fast. It contained
beautiful, and continuous, hound work that could be seen by
everyone, at times and at most times — at times by him who
drove the inner line ; at most times by all who would keep
galloping on, taking advantage of inside turns or riding reli-
giously to the pack. There was no discomposing wind ; there
was no blinding sun. The note of hounds, or the happy
scream of the hedge-cutter, the ploughman, or of the villager
" doing his bit o' hunting afoot " — and each of whom was
privileged in turn to view the red rover as he passed — were
plainly to be heard a mile away, while at double that distance
horses could be easily discerned rising at their fences, and the
work of the glancing pack could readily be followed. As the
most poetical of modern prose writers and of modern sports-
men wrote, it was a dav that in England's winter " means a
green and grateful earth ; a sky of dappled clouds, serene and
motionless, edged here and there with gold ; a sleeping frag-
rance of vitality only waiting for the spring." It was a day
392 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
to be out of doors and to live ; to be vigorous and active, if
might be — and, above all, to be riding to hounds.
They had met at Adstone, and had been on their way to
draw the coverts of Canons Ashby, when, near the latter place,
a fox jumped out of a stubble field, and the hunt began.
For twenty minutes they went very fast, but for ten, I am told,
there were gateways to help them from grass field to grass
field — though afterwards men found all the big jumps they
wanted. Running southward for a couple of miles, they
crossed the East and West Railway ; then, leaving Plumpton
Wood within a left-hand loop, swung round it and Adstone
to regain Ashby and its wood. They had been at work for
some forty minutes by the time they came through the last-
named covert — and very rosy and well contented did the near
pursuers appear, as they clustered alter the huntsman, and
gave the lady pack all the room he needed for them. Grave
and preoccupied, however, as is fitting and usual with men
intent on letting never a chance slip them, never a false turn
beguile, never a mistake hinder them, never a moment of
apathy spoil the memory they mean to hug to their bosom
this night. Men thus settled and in earnest seldom go wrong
— in the brief but absorbing task of riding a run. Nine
times out of ten in such cases our failures are to be con-
nected with flurry at starting, or with culpable carelessness
between times. Thus it is that a huntsman is very, very
seldom out of a run — though, like many of the best hounds
of his pack, his presence is often all the more valuable because
it is not constantly prominent.
Three converging roads, round the apex of which the line
now circled — in place of continuing forward for Preston Capes
— brought the scene charmingly within reach of a tolerable
roadster, and allowed the whole following of the chase to join
the front. The green lower-land (it is hardly a valley) from
here to Maid ford Village was now the arena, pleasantly visible
from the road that follows the ridge. They found some
ugly fences here ; or why did the little crowd several times
A ROUGH DAY WITH THE GRAFTON. 393
break up, apparently to ride directly away from hounds? In
the clear air methoughtl caught distinctly a brown form flitting
across the wide pasture next in front of hounds. They turned
to his very footsteps — so I felt comforted. I had viewed their
fox, tired, probably, and nearly run to death. So the lump that
had choked me while the music was rippling near and while old
comrades, all aglow, were lancing across the road, so near I
could see their eyes sparkle, gave way to a chuckle of satisfac-
tion and a chirrup that started the pony at speed for Maidford
Village. Arrived there, it was found that hounds had reached
the wood just beyond. Thence they went through Seawoll
Wood — some say changed foxes on the way — and ran to ground
on the railway embankment by Plumpton Wood. Already the
run had lasted for nearly two hours ; and had furnished fun,
and enough, for grateful and satisfied sportsmen by the score.
A ROUGH DAY WITH THE GRAFTON.
RUDE and boisterous were the elements on Monday last,
Feb. 4 ; but if the spell of happy weather had been abruptly
broken, the spell of fine sport was by no means yet completed and
booked to the past. A "disturbance" had reached us from over
the Atlantic ; a polar wind had stepped in to assist in our dis-
comfiture ; and forthwith our fickle little island threw aside its
make-believe spring, to resume its more seasonable, but far
less becoming, garb of winter cold and wild.
The Grafton met on a lofty ridge — so it seemed to those who
rode or drove up to Preston Capes from the Daventry direction,
and who in a blinding snowstorm (one of a series that enlivened
the day) essayed first to find their hunters, then to mount them.
Happy was he — and happy the horse of him — who reached the
scene at the latest possible moment ; thus avoiding exposure such
as no constitution short of that of the weathercock of Stornoway
could hail with any pleasure. The fierce storms, however, were
of tolerably brief duration — and possessed only a degree of pene-
394 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
tration that good leathers, a good habit, and a good circulation
might easily laugh to scorn. And between times the sun would
shine out, a rich blue sky would beam forth, and the whole
heaven frame itself into a warm apology for the rudeness just
done.
The woods beneath the place of meeting were drawn during a
very brief interim of calm. But, while a weak fox was chased
into the Fawsley Shrubberies and there killed, a far more vulgar
and uncompromising condition of weather prevailed. In fact, a
heavy snowstorm was raging — and the only thing that could
without difficulty be discerned was a very pronounced longing on
the part of everyone to retire homewards as soon as self-respect,
or opportunity, would allow.
Not so a quarter of an hour later, when great Badby Wood
was set alive. The field — about 100 to-day as against .300 on
the Friday before (though for comparison sake, and as a comment
aside, I am free to assert that on the Friday in question a full
third of the number who trod the turf round the township were,
very properly, townsmen. The lesser crowd of to-day were very
hunting men, equally hunting ladies, and regularly hunting
farmers — and these were all. Deduce what moral you like —
but ask not me to wield the pen of controversy. Rather prove
to me if further damage was done to-day, in two average runs,
than would find a single carpenter work for a week — and I will
wager you his wages for the sake of the County Infirmary).
The Badby Wood fox took the drift of the storm clouds for his
index ; and with both sheets aft cut the Fawsley Estate by way
of the House and the Preston Coverts — a line of grass, of gates,
and of small woods, altogether in contrast with what the other
side of the lordship provided, after luncheon. Down the wind there
wasn't half & scent. 1 could see that — when, with the cunning-
begotten of more seasons than I dare reckon, and more mistakes
than I shall ever have time or wish to recall, I sank the wind and
remained on the Fawsley uplands — preferring my own meagre
society for half an hour (with such extraneous aid as was forth-
coming from a wicker basket and a fat cigar case) to a tolerable
A ROUGH DAY WITH THE GRAFTON. 395
certainty of being within hearing of a find, but of seeing nothing
afterwards while I should be driving eastward or westward to
find a way to follow round. Here there was soon signal enough
to convince me that at least a fox — if not a man-eating tiger of
fierce degree — was abroad — or else that Fawsley House was
afire. The screams that came from the neighbourhood of the
mansion were enough to prove one of two things — viz., either
(1) that fox-hunting is the dearest joy that comes to the agricul-
tural population of Northamptonshire, or (2) that this county
has a vast starving majority tramping the fields on the chance
of a luckpenny. That the second supposition is foolish as it is
far-fetched it would need only a single glance at the " foot-
runners" to prove. A jollier, better preserved, heartier lot of
good fellows never wore shoe-leather than these keen skir-
mishers, ready to fling a gate or to answer a question, for
the love of sport and because they are English. Don't talk to
me, querulous one, about foxhunting being the rich man's play.
I tell you it is the poor man's recreation, and comes next to his
food, at least in the bonny Midlands — and / see a deal more of
the inside of the game nowr that my lines are cast in hard places,
i.e. the road — now that I am pinioned, a "runner," and one who
reads as he runs.
Well, I and the skirmishers were in capital position now.
Reynard ran round us — merely sheering off to the shade of the
hill coverts in response to the clamorous welcome that saluted
him. It was obvious that hounds could make no pretence of
really driving him ; and when at length they rose the Preston
hill it seemed they would dribble away into space, disappear
tamely towards Ashby, and leave us to make our respective ways
to public or Penates. But there was something better in store.
Fortune and self-consideration had brought us to a halt on one
of the highest points of the rolling greensward, but under the lee
of a small plantation and under the full glow of the intermittent
sun. Below and directly in front lay the little wood of Gan-
derton, in a green flat valley intersected by two streams of
water — the second and larger gleaming yellow in the sunshine —
896 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
while Hinton Gorse filled in the vista at some three miles dis-
tance. Crossing the belt of plantation leading to Ganderton,
horsemen could be seen closing upon hounds — gaily to leave the
lesser brook behind them. Closer still were they gathered as
hounds emerged beyond the yellow water — but suddenly now
did the movement and the order change. One, two, three are
over — while the spray flies up like the sudden spouting of a
whale on the starboard bow — another and another — a school of
them, spouting or splashing all of a row. Misfortune or sym-
pathy are checked on the bank — while success flies onwards,
singly, in doublets, or even in triplets, but certainly not in mass.
And, mark ye, how they gallop when over ! Surely the pack must
be racing now ! And it is only afterwards we get to understand
that this sudden access of speed was merely as it were, the
natural let-off of delighted spirit, the outcome of victory, the
spurt of exuberance. Don't I know it ? Don't you, reader, who
have been weak enough ever to permit such sensations as vanity,
competition, or pride of place to linger in your heart — of course
when I, and you, were younger ? For alas, ambition and ardour,
they tell us, have nothing to do with grey hairs or bald
heads. Then it must be something else (what is it ?) that pushes
maturity into the front rank so consistently wherever hounds are
ridden after, in the shires. And we know the opposite, too, do
we not — the surge of the water into ears and eyes, the pang of
disappointment far worse than the drenching, the angling for
bridlereins, the diving for stirrup leathers, the helpless stupidity
of a half-drowned horse, and the vapid shallowness of our
subsequent and carefully prepared explanations ?
Let me hinder you no longer. There was a way round, as
there always is. Otherwise the man who never jumps a fence
would not be able so often to testify to " as fine a run as I ever
saw." So we will go round, and imagine ourselves at Hinton
Gorse, whither some forty minutes had brought fox and hounds.
And the next thing we see of them is at Charwelton Osierbed,
where they are seeking another. The black clouds are gather-
ing again ; the north wind is rising once more ; but a jolly fox
THE RUN OF THE SEASON ON HEARSAY. 397
flings into the breeze and laughs at the snowflakes, which make
men and women weep and shake their heads. Was it for this
incapacity, I wonder, that so many of them were brought to
book — in other words, to muddy earth — in the sharp cheery
half-circle round Charwelton Village to Fawsley, where the
fences are all twice laid and the ditches are double. Provi-
dence, or the Roman dynasty, has directed a broad turnpike
road to pass through Charwelton to Daventry — and this makes
the gallery now, while the performers fly alongside, in excellent
and most obliging taste. Two greys are obviously giving the
time, for the pit-pat of each double jump ; while the pack drive
into the storm, and tax galloping powers to the utmost. The
one is but a pony, ridden, if I mistake not, by a farmer; but he
has evidently the faculty of both pace and prowess. Then
Captains Riddell and Atherton, and surely a lady or two, are
flanking or following Beers through the tall bullfinches. I
wrish I were there. It looks so easy — and a " double " never
means a real turnover ! Holloa — what is that ? Why, the
other grey — the best and best-proved hunter in all Northampton-
shire, Mr. Walton's immortal old horse, completely "rabbited"
— prone on his back. " Rabbited " indeed — caught in a snare —
wired ! Oh infamy, oh devilment — you set your snares, not for
the coward, not for the damage-monger, but for the first flight
and for the pioneer pigeon !
Now they are into my road — and if I scream " Yoi over, you
beauties " — who shall hear ? I know it is over — and forrard to
Fawsley, twenty-five minutes hot. And what a long story I've
made of it ! Put it down to the cherry brandy in the wicker-
basket ; assist me with it, and save me next Monday.
THE RUN OF THE SEASON ON HEARSAY.
Here is its outline, plain and unvarnished, but reliable to the
letter. The epitome may be contained in the words " An eight
mile point, over the very cream of the country. Time, fifty-
398 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
five minutes — almost straight — with Goodall's usual kill at the
finish."
On Wednesday afternoon, then (never mind the morning,
though they do say that the Cotesbach Brook has since been
the means of creating a new fondness for watergruel in more
than one fair home), they found a right good fox in Lilbourne
Gorse, as you shall see. (No time for comment — nor is there
much to hand for this post.) He broke towards Mr. Muntz's
house ; but turned to the left before he reached the Watling
Street road — evidently ever the ground that for one year formed
the scene of the Rugby Chases. Then straight to Crick Covert
— ve gods, what a line, and obviously all the wire was down.
Within one field of the gorse, he turned to the left, and made
for the wooded knoll known as Cracks Hill — where he was
viewed close in front of hounds. The latter dwelt but little
time on the hill ; but crossed the lane leading to Yelvertoft,
and ran on as if for Winwick Village. Bearing off a trifle to
the right, however, they went on over a fine line of country
between Winwick and West Haddon — rising the hill and cross-
ing the Guilsborough road, with their heads towards Ravens-
thorpe village. Just beyond the next bottom, they — for the
first and only time in the run — hesitated a moment. But
Goodall, catching a view of his fox, held them on ; and they
ran up to the road between West Haddon and Buckby Folly.
While hounds crossed it, and for a few fields ran parallel — the
field generally being very glad to take advantage of the road —
for by this time horses had in most cases begun to cry enough.
So with their fox ; for now he sank the hill, as though he
meant to reach the covert of Vanderplank, but, his powers fail-
ing him, he crept up towards Long Buckby Village, lay down in
the ditch of one of the large grass fields before reaching it —
and here they pinned him. " As good a hunt as anyone could
wish to see — hounds doing their work entirely of themselves,
and their fox never very far in front of them. The line was a
splendid one " (as indeed is easily recognisable). " Many of the
horses were very tired, and no second-horses were obtainable,
SADDLE AGAIN. 399
as the line was so straight, and there were few helping roads.
Though the country was almost all grass, it rode rather sticky
after rain and snow, and so gave hounds a better chance than
they might otherwise have enjoyed. A good many people saw
the run ; for, although there was constant jumping and no little
pace, hounds never really raced away from their field ; and the
obstacles were never more than a fair hunter could negotiate."
This is how a practised and excellent judge puts it — and his
words convey the idea of a delightful run that will be talked of
through the season and into the summer. The remarkable
straightness of the line taken by this fox is apparent from the
fact that it is difficult to make it more than ten miles as the
hounds ran.
SADDLE AGAIK
A FAR deeper hold on the minds of all who joined the
Grafton hounds on Monday, Feb. 18, than any thought of the
day's sport, had the news just bruited of Lord Penrhyn's
resignation. The step was totally unexpected — at least by the
bulk of his field — and sadly aghast were they when the blow
came home to them. Surely the withdrawal from office of no
Master of Hounds in England at the present time could excite
more heartfelt and widespread regret. It is not merely that
men have learned to be grateful for his liberality, and sensible
of the superb completeness with which he directs the Hunt,
but there has grown up among them a warm, almost tender,
appreciation of the courtesy dealt forth so thoughtfully, yet so
spontaneously, to all — an appreciation that it seems hard
indeed should be disturbed. More than that, the while their
feelings are considered (an indulgence none the less welcome
that all plead guilty to being sinners in turn) their sport is
cared for, and, as far as may be, ensured by a master hand.
The Grafton Hounds have never shown better sport than under
Lord Penrhyn ; and assuredly the Grafton field have never
looked up to a more popular Master.
400 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
To turn to the day and its sport. Monday was warm and
still, by no means the two most insignificant attributes of
a hunting day. We only go out in a brisk North-Easter
because it is a duty ; because other fools besides ourselves are
ashamed to stay at home ; because, forsooth, Ave are restless ;
because we have a horse fit to go, and every day's hunting costs
on a very moderate calculation at least a tenpound note ;
because, perhaps, our new habit (with, of course, a waistcoat
entirely novel in colour and original in cut) has just come
down — anything, in short, but because it is joyful and amusing
to seek sport in a wind that completely bars it, and that
pinches and pierces us till we could cry aloud. Yes, Monday
was altogether pleasant — at least, so it seemed to one who for
many weeks had looked vainly, wistfully, now and again even
bitterly, towards a saddle as a starving man might towards a
throne. The air may possibly have been heavier and warmer
than horses could inhale with freedom ; for after twenty
minutes' galloping they panted and perspired remarkably.
The meet was Preston Capes, but no fox was roused until
well after midday. The Fawsley estate is widespread ; and
so are its foxes, after being industriously looked up by two
packs of hounds for four months past. But they are there
even if odd nooks and corners have now to be sought out. As
I have noted before, the presence of hounds in this neighbour-
hood puts a very severe tax upon — no, that is not the term,
oives a thorough oiling to the machinery of — agriculture. It
takes all the grating, all the roughness, off a week's labour ;
and the wheel of work runs much smoother and happier on the
other five days in consequence. There was a cluster to-day on
the hilltop between Woodford and Charwelton that might
suo-o-est anything between a prize fight and a statute fair (by
which we of Northamptonshire understand the ancient festival
of Mops, and accept it as one of the rites instituted and
bequeathed by the Danes ; but which the outside world, who
know nothing of hiring servants in the market-place, believe
to be a mere fable of the past). Nor were they gathered in
SADDLE AGAIN. 401
vain, as has since been told and toasted in every public for miles
round. A great rusty fox jumped forth at their very feet —
and the next moment the heavens were cleft with the uproar.
For once the clamour did good service. It drove the game
across hounds, and set them going open-mouthed, in view.
Some may say, let hounds start cool, undisturbed, unexcited.
I venture to refer back to many a thrilling gallop and suc-
cessful run, and to meet such maxim with a tempered contra-
diction. No, let them start with their bristles up, if you can.
Let them settle when they must — but for Heaven's sake, give
them room to do it. With their blood afire, they will do their
best. Cold blood never killed a fox, any more than cold blood
ever cut out the work over a strong country. But I did not
mean to pass from hound to man — though excitement is the
motive power with both, restrained and modified by instinct in
the one, by reasoning and self-command in the other. For one
run we see worked up to, there are twenty we see made at the
start. The credit of performance belongs all to the former
case, and is more often due to the huntsman. Hounds will
achieve the latter. It is for him merely to set the machine in
motion, to watch it going, and bide his time.
I don't fancy Monday was quite a scenting day. It was
muggy and close — conclusive, if one dare risk even a guess
upon scent, of ready evaporation. But a fox, never five hun-
dred yards to the good and with some twenty couple all in
a fury for his brush that just now swept their very faces, must
leave a scent — where the turf is old, and that turf is renowned
for its holding properties. So they raced — which hackneyed
term here applied means that in a level pack the tail hounds
never caught the front, till a first quarter-hour brought them
to the verge of Badby Wood. Ah, it was sweet to see them
drive across the great spreading pastures — they rounding a
gentle curve, we striking a bee line on the upper ground, by
means of a line of wide gates that I for one never before
regarded quite so heartily, so gratefully. We always accept
them, as you know : and are well aware that we could not
D D
402
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
cross Fawsley quickly without them. Now I could well realise
the paradise they open to age, to crippledom, to the thousand
accidents that may leave a man still fond of foxhounds, but
very careful of his own safety. I tell you, Sir, this gallop was
luxury, rank revelry, sheer delight. I speak as a fool, and as a
cripple. But I speak for myself; and I wish you nothing-
better than that it brought half the warmth to your heart that
it did to mine.
We careered to Fawsley House, and past it to the big covert
— our fox in plain view, not 300 yards ahead. The mile of
woodland was threaded in another five minutes ; then, more
slowly, the run went forward by the brookside to Everdon.
And only at Everdon did jumping begin, or rather the necessity
for it — for, though apparently at least one good man had
already clad himself in a muddy coat, there were some scores
who like myself saw the whole run, bar the one quarter of a
mile while we rounded the brook, without being committed to
a single fence. The little Everdon Brook came in sight at the
exact spot whereat the Pytchley crossed it some weeks ago,
CROSS COUNTRY ONCE MORE. 403
when they killed their fox at Newnham Village. It runs
through some pretty meadows; is in itself but a neat jump
that may be taken at a stand ; and yet, given the opportunity,
many horses invariably prefer to jump into it. I stayed only
to see a grey horse splash the water aloft, and a brown
disappear from view, while a black went on with a clever
recovery wrapped round his neck. I wanted to get on after
hounds ; so, not being paid to make fun of other people in
misfortune which I dared not share, I left a scene that I am
told lasted at least twenty minutes longer, and galloped in
excellent company to the nearest bridge. This took us beyond
the village, and up to Everdon Stubbs. By the time we were
through the little wood, hounds were rising the hill as if for
the bigger covert of Stowe. But their fox could do no more.
The first twenty minutes had beaten him : after that he could
never shake himself clear of hounds — and they killed him in
fifty, the point being some five and a half miles. Of a large
field the following were some few : Lord Penrhyn, Miss
Alderson, Mr. and Mrs. Blacklock, Mr. and Mrs. Craven, Mrs.
Hunt, Mr. and Mrs. Knightley, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, Mrs.
Whaley ; Lords Capell, Euston, Alfred Fitzroy, Fielding ; Sir
Rainald Knightly, Sir W. Humphrey ; Revs. V. Knightley,
Evans ; General Magennis, Major Palmer ; Captains Black-
wood, Close, Atherton, Jacobson, Greville, Faber, Orr, Riddell ;
Messrs. Atherton, Apthorpe, Burton Byass, G. Campbell,
Clark, Bulwer Flower, Fuller, J. Fitzwilliam, Douglas Pennant,
Corbett Holland, Hartopp, Mildmay, Grazebrook Bromwick,
Key, Colledge, Goodman, Oldrey, Manning, Jennaway, Russell,
Waring, Watson, Waterfield, Roper, Palmer, Sheppard, Parsons,
Whitton, Scriven, Watts, &c.
CROSS COUNTRY OXCE MORE.
Wintry beyond all that could be held appropriate to the final
week of February was the look-out on Monday the 25th, at the
hour that men (and I suppose the purer sex too) mostly choose
D I) 2
404 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
for their morning tub, and for seeking such signs as the window
and the weather-glass may afford them to decide how they shall1
be clad for the day Extra flannel and as much of it as waist-
coat would hold, or habit would stretch to, was the unmistakable
bidding of snow-hidden fields, of a weathercock glued to N.E.y
of a black sky and a lowering glass, on both these mornings.
And even then the blue tint, that year by year becomes on
most human features (however ordinarily hearty) a more posi-
tive index of weakening circulation and of sensitiveness to cold,
had a very general hold upon public appearance at the covert-
side.
The Grafton came to Adstone, allowed a fair margin of time
for the weather to improve (of which, however, the weather was
distinctly slow to avail itself), found very few people there to
meet them, but picked up stragglers and recruits during the
next two hours. A poor morning's sport was before them —
though for months past their indifferent days have been few
and widely separated. What might have happened in the later
evening, from Seawell Wood, it is impossible to say. On the
way thither Beers met with a fall that completely stunned him,
and hounds were taken home.
Tuesday, February 26th, was chosen by the North Warwick-
shire for a meet at Rugby. From 11 to 11.15 a general and
determined struggle was enacted between the rival forces of
chill and cherry brandy — resulting in a pronounced and wel-
come victory on the part of the latter. Mr. Ashton and his-
staff then rode into the crowded market place ; and before chill-
had a chance of reasserting itself, the order was given for hounds
to move off. This they did by a route that eventually led to'
Clifton on Dunsmore, followed by a prolonged train of riders
that fairly rivalled that of a Pytchley Wednesday — and that at
once set one wondering how it were possible, in case of a run
beginning before the long column should have deployed into
line, for more than one-twentieth of its number to see one yard
of such run. Of course they wouldn't ; and as a matter of fact
they (or I ought to say voe) often don't — for by no means every
GROSS COUNTRY ONCE MORE. 405
run begins from a covert-side or when we have all cried out
that we are now ready. Even then, you may add, we are most
of us to be found riding after coat-tails rather than at the tail
of the pack. And this is the fortune of war in the Midlands.
Believe me, sirs, you will find that hunting here is a very over-
rated amusement. There isn't room. So say those who should
know ; and Unlimited Emigration hither is to be discouraged.
On the other hand, so many people have brothers, sisters,
cousins — and, I was nearly adding, sweethearts, but that
wouldn't be true — resident in the country, whom they must
perforce come and see. It may be that the visit is only for a
day, but for that day they must bring a horse — or what attrac-
tion can the visit offer ? As well trip it to a grouse moor with-
out a gun. The reasoning is false, of course ; but it is a vein
of reasoning that has been acted on for many a generation :
and ephemeral visitors there will be, especially in spring time,
so long as hunting is welcomed, and whether their hosts own
the land, farm the land, or pay their footing handsomely. But
" on the other hand," with which apology the above sentence
began, is a gate to a field of argument far too wide. As well
ask me to explain the Elysium of upper servitude as contained
in the phrase " settle down and take a quiet public," or to sug-
gest privacy and perfection of sport as embodied in " hunting a
quiet pack of harriers " in a boot-making district. No need to
continue the subject. It is under debate elsewhere — and that
debate a very solemn one.
My sketch of Tuesday had only reached the little hand gate
beneath Mr. Muntz's spinney — a point at which some of the
big concourse may be struggling still, so insufficiently did the
meagre exit serve, when horn and scream were calling them
through. A fox that had been seen to enter the covert at day-
light was now away whence he came ; and the lively lady pack
wasted no time in darting after him. Sharp, varmint, little
hounds are these — and very level withal. Wanting, of course,
in the grand reach and classic forehand of the Grafton of
yesterday ; but very neat, very active, and very keen. Mr. Lort
406 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Phillips always expressed the highest possible appreciation of
their powers of driving and hunting ; and he certainly left the
pack anything but the worse for his term of mastership. But
of the run, or rather of the brief, brief scurry just inaugurated.
Two fields brought us to the Watling Street road, about oppo-
site Lilbourne Gorse ; whereupon our fox took advantage of
both bridges, to cross the railway and the river. He left the
hamlet of Kittenthorpe (an outwork, as goes without saying, of
greater Catthorpe) on his right, crossed the Rugby road, and
dived into the Newton valley, with its well-kept meadows and
its pretty trout-stream. There was a scent here ; and the little
ladies took hold of it with a will. A hundred to one on a run,
as they swung over the well-cut brook and rose the hill for
Coton — Mr. R. Leveson Gower proving each sturdy fence in
advance of a hundred followers. Hounds dashed over a lane,
while the rush came in with clatter and flounder that told
loudly of the unexpected. Their fox had gone down it — and
going down it slipped his pursuers effectually. That is to say,
by the time his line was recovered, it was worse than luke-
warm ; and they could barely trace him past Cave's Inn to
Shawell. But those minutes were very stirring, very jolly, and
well placed.
THE BODDINGTON GALLOP.
A fhont place, please, for the run of Saturday, March 2nd,
when the Warden Hill Hunt did honour to Northamptonshire
grass, and credit to the union of Bicester and Warden Hill.
For, far from Bicestershire proper (charming and varied as that
shire may be) is found a tongue of fair country for which
hounds are kennelled at Thorpe Mandeville. Fair country,
did I say ! The fairest, the sweetest-scenting strip that
hounds can work over, and quite as strongly fenced as we care
to find it — even now when not a bramble still boasts a leaf, and
many a hedgerow is almost transparent. Nor is it treason to
proclaim it thus ; for it is so placed that you who are now at a
THE BODDIKGTON GALLOP. 407
distance cannot slip down by train on a hunting morning,
nor can you there pitch your tent — unless you do so very
literally, for neither towns nor hunting-boxes are found near
the spot. Attainable indeed it is by road from various out-
quarters — remotest of all perhaps being the town of Bicester
and the home kennels. You had only to follow the master's
eye, looking back along the thickly-packed lane at Boddington
Gorse, to satisfy yourself of that.
Boddington Gorse has been renowned throughout 1888 and
1889 for a veritable " Old Customer," who has shown a positive
passion for the sport — an affection for good country and a
delight in straight going — and who has seldom failed to be at
home to the legitimate caller. A word as to locality. The
Gorse is, as its name implies, a snug artificial covert. It is
ensconced under Boddington Hill, beneath and in front of
which lies an absolutely perfect valley — good enough to " carry
a bullock to the acre " or a hundred flying horsemen to the
same measurement. A mile on the right, looking downwards,
is the village of Wormleighton ; a mile to the left are Upper
and Lower Boddington ; another mile to the left is Aston Le
Walls, above the basin of verdure ; and yet another mile to the
left is the wood of Red Hill. Imagine a bow. Let the string
© ©
stretch from Wormleighton on the west, via Boddington Gorse
and Lower Boddington Village, to Red Hill. Then for the run
of the day follow the arc of the bow from Wormleighton to Red
Hill ; come back along the string ; and you have it as nearly
as possible. If you can be satisfied with a run that, with
everything else absolutely good, has a double point thus —
then Saturday's event should surely come up to your standard.
Further, fit an arrow to the bow if you will, and the arrow shall
represent the long narrow plantation, among the feathers of
which old Reynard was found — while the shaft constituted
a leading feature among the obstacles of the burst.
Boddington Hill for the time being was as Napoleon's wind-
mill at Waterloo. It commanded the situation — more than
that, it became the centre point round which the scene revolved.
408 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
And all England held no happier men than those mustered
thereon from six parishes round.
The meet at Lower Boddington had been prolonged till
twelve, that the frost might relinquish the ground, while
Mr. Cowper's hospitality filled in the interim. Hounds, too,
were there — " the big pack." How closely and sharply they
did their work I crave leave to tell you presently. For the
moment it is enough to learn of what blood these well-
conditioned and in many instances shapely hounds are consti-
tuted. Several of the elder dogs are imports — the produce of
the Belvoir, Warwickshire, and Blankney kennels, from which
last (Lord Henry Bentinck's or Mr. Chaplin's strain) Lord
Chesham brought in a strong and most valuable addition to
his lady pack when, two or three years ago, Lord Lonsdale
sold off. Some few of these were present to-day, together with
a certain number of the bigger ladies of the old Bicester
blood — to whom the younger dog hounds are chiefly akin.
So much for the hounds. This was no day on the flags.
And now we come to the announcement — the Old Customer
not at home. Sad indeed this. But rumour promised a fox,
and we were taken southward to find him, along the arrow of
plantation that was later to cause such confusion. Result —
only the passage of two hundred unwilling jumpers where
there was room for one at a time, to cross the said plantation.
Now back by Boddington Gorse, to seek elsewhere — when,
breathless and hungry for his half-crown, a runner met the
Master with " A fox just gone to the spinney, my lord — not
five minutes since ! " The spinney so called was a clump on
Boddington Hill, continuing along the ridge to Priors Hard-
wick like a perch's comb of tall fir-trees, or as the feathers of
the arrow we have assumed. How often is a travelling fox
again seen or heard of? So we asked ourselves, to still ex-
pectancy and quell anticipation — till a hound opened, another
and fourteen couple more ! Better and better — a yell, a chorus
of discord from voices ahead ! Tally ho ! out he came, the very
rascal we had hoped to see an hour ago.
THE BODDINGTON GALLOP. 409
The Old Customer had little law given him ; but he never
looked for law any more than he expected quarter when his
time should come — as come it was about to do. He had
stretched his limbs ; he had shaken his fur ; his ear was
cocked. His brush too was carried aloft, and he knew his
ground too well to dream of trailing it in mud or loading it
with clay during the struggle for life. For all that, he scuffled
off in ungainly fashion when the whip met him face to face
at the plantation end. The fallow field doubtless spoiled his
action : and he was a bulldog rather than a greyhound fox —
short in the neck and thick in the back. I can see him now,
and I'll see him in my better dreams for many a month to
come. He was furred like a Pomeranian, and his robe was a
dark blood red.
Hounds came out in a mass, and in a mass they ran till the
deed was done. Now to turn to ourselves. We were strung
out at this moment four abreast, for four hundred yards and
more along the plantation side. When the break -away crossed
the van, we closed up and crowded up, a cloud of horsemen
hovering on the hog's back, while the pack went as it were
from under our feet. The)'' were gone in the sunlight before we
felt they had started. Leisurely and foolishly we clustered to
the fringe fence that borders the green declivity leftward. A
little hedge and a parapet beyond on which to land ; so we
frittered timidly over. Dear lady, dear lady, whoever you were,
and if you will forgive me — 'twas a little cruel, it couldn't have
been cunning, of you to shriek " Wire," when you and a dozen
more were safely poised be3^ond, and the wire after all was only
on the ground ! Your silvery alarm bell didn't stop, it only
frightened us ; and, with back upon saddle-croups, we slid and
scrambled down this Devil's Dyke, to the road that leads
from the Gorse to Prior's Hardwick. Thence we filed out by
gap or gate, and knew we were on the great Wormleighton
pasture, where gates are many and where fences at double
distance are doubly grown. In this great open country three
fields go to a mile, and the ridge-and-furrow rolls as deeply as
410 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the Atlantic in its more peaceful mood. Hounds were gone, is
all I can tell you — Blame me not, if I beg indulgence down the
wicked hill, or crave a little time till warmth has released a
rusted paddle.
A first forty-acre field has given play to such action as may
serve the pressing need ; and now the work, the fun, the
struggle indeed began. But, alas, the next thing to note is
a catastrophe — a trap, into which many of the best men of the
Hunt (nay, of four Hunts) rode blindly, to become victims of
their own undoing ! The canal faced them, and the canal had
a big staring bridge — open to all. Into it they galloped like
elephants into akeddah,tobe trapped and tamed and saddened.
For hounds, that till this instant had headed for the Warwick-
shire covert of Watergall, now followed their noses to very dif-
ferent purpose ; for they swung sharply to the left between
a high bullfinch and the canal bank, and flew fast up the slope
to Wormleighton Village. The huntsman alone of the bridge
party perceived his mistake. The moment he missed hounds
coming on he wheeled in his tracks, to dart round upon theirs.
By this time all the left wing of the big battalion had flocked
down upon the line of chase, and formed an ever-increasing
flood flowing afterward. Thus up the broad green acres — gate
leading to gate, and the pace all that men could raise, while
hounds raced ahead as they can do where the hedges are open
and widely intervalled. The village of Wormleighton was left
just to the right. More great bullock pastures were beyond the
road ; but a still further leftward swing brought the scene on
to very different ground, where incident and variety cropped up
at every minute. Horses were by this time well warmed ; men
were wound up ; and they darted over a first stake-and-bound
with keen avidity — to land in a light fallow field, having as its
farther boundary the long narrow spinney that runs from Bod-
dington Gorse to Wormleighton Reservoir. Six horses almost
together. The grey leading, Mr. Corbett's big black and Colonel
Wodehouse's brown nearly touching each other in the air. All
well over ? No, Mr. Fabling down, but with them again as
THE BODDINGTON GALLUP. 411
they trooped into the broad double of the plantation-belt.
Quite strong enough was the jump in : awkward and hindering
was the jump out. You landed in among pine-trees, and ran
your head into a wall of briars. Mr. Corbett had slanted off to
the right, but with little better success, for he too was to be
seen harboured helplessly among the timber, till young Cox
(acting as first whip during Bonner's unlucky absence — and
acting the part right sharply and well) came cruising down the
trees and spotted an outlet good enough for the little black
mare and her gratified following.
Meanwhile the Master and his section (the Master having
already forgotten the pain and bruise of a badly-crushed leg)
had pierced the bulwark on the left, and now came across the
front in full swing — Mr. Beatty still leading, and a farmer, or
some one in mufti (I wish I knew who) on a very miniature
bay making a trio to Lord Chesham and the hog-maned black.
Mrs. Whaley, too, joined in ; and the four sailed on, dipping in
and out of the close ridge -and -furrow like seabirds on a chop-
ping sea. The Old Customer was on familiar ground. So
were we. Was not this the line, fence for fence (and all the
easier no doubt for previous encounter), that we rode more than
a year ago from Boddington Gorse ? But after the first few
meadows, the wheels seemed to leave the ruts, i.e., the gaps
disappeared, and the country stood out in the full honest
strength of which the Boddington farmers rightly boast. " Did
you find it strong enough ? " I heard one of them query after-
wards, with a laugh all over his jovial face. " Strong enough" —
yes, indeed, but for the pace. And pace, somehow, never fails
to bring the easiest places handy. Across the flat meadows
(Hat all but for their contrary ridge-and-furrow) scent burned
brightly as ever, but the thick hedgerows rather hindered the
eager, jostling pack. So there was time to pull, almost time to
breathe — time enough, even, to allow of a good man dismount-
ing to a broken gate. " Not bad for a first and only day with
the Bicester." This from Major Tomkinson, as he passed to
the front on a tall striding bay, that to my eye looked like
412 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Leicestershire rather than Cheshire. Three more fields after
bridging the "canal feeder." and the lane was struck that
connects Lower Boddington with Clayden or Cropredy. Jump-
ing in from the left, they rode down it to the right — with the
result that the right division plunged hotly among the left.
The huntsman had already assumed position at the head ; but a
later than he, riding up from the rear and all furious still with
memory of that hapless canal bridge, came into the lane with a
final bound that nearly took Wilson and himself through the
high black bullfinch beyond. The mealy bay steed knew
better ; but the impetus was awful, and for fifty yards down
the lane the new-comer was supported only by the huntsman's
warm embrace. (Is not " a pound a minute " below the value
of a gallop like this ? what say you, then ?)
Forrard it is, too, as merrily as ever, right into the wind and
up to the brook. Wilson, on the glorious brown mare Comedy,
fairly flicked over it in his stride where little bushes fringed
either bank ; Mr. Faber, Mr. Boyle, and a small succession spun
readily across at the same good place, or achieved the deep
chasm at a less enticing spot. Then ensued refusals, and
sudden confusion. But the road was close by (under the
village of Aston Le Walls) ; hounds bent left to it — and here
was Lord North already in position to " cheer on the thrusters,"
when Mr. Boyle upon Redskin (I am told, and can well believe,
the best hunter in England, out of training) crashed a last great
fence for very pastime, and the others galloped gladly through
the open gateway beside him. In they trooped — all those with
whose names I have made free, confident of good feeling and
impelled by an occasion that does not come every day — with
Mr. Grosvenor, Mr. W. Blacklock, Mr. W. Walton, and a few,
not many, others to join the road party. And on went hounds,
across the railway, and over a whole cluster of open drains only
too well known to foxes and men, up to the wood of Redhill.
Keeping downward beneath its lower edge, they ran its whole
length before turning into the covert — forty-five minutes since
the opening note.
THE BODDINGTON GALLOP. 413
This was the first part, and the quickest part. But there
was no pause. The Old Customer was allowed no rest.
Possibly he might have held forward to Eydon had the coast
been clear ; but having elected, or been forced, to enter the
covert — where twice previously, if I mistake not, he had set up
a substitute — they gave him no peace, but bustled him through
and drove him forth again at the top. And so, by the way he
had come he descended the red hill ; but took ground more to
the right as soon as he reached the railway ; then, making his
route under Lower Boddington Village, he recrossed the flat
straight to the Gorse — hounds running heartily, if not quite so'
fast, as on the outward journey. There was a scent they
couldn't leave ; and they drove along it for blood. The world
of foot-people on Boddington Hill shouted a paean in his honour,,
and then, like so many sheep in a fox's path, set off one and all
to run, while he staggered into the covert at their feet. Wilson
galloped hounds a few hundred yards down the road, to set
them on still better terms at his weary brush. They sent him
one hot turn round the gorse, ousted him again to the same
great pastures of Wormleighton, drove him across three of
them — then held him in a double hedgerow — and, a minute
later, the Old Customer was laid out upon the turf.
An hour and ten minutes it was, from when hounds first
threw their tongues till the who-hoop went up in the still
frosty air ; and of that time the Old Customer had been called
upon to do at least an hour at his best. Quicker, better
hound work was never exampled. They never threw up, and
they never wanted help. (That moment's ready assistance in
the road being only to clear them of the crowd.) We may
have seen hounds go even faster, but very seldom, and for
such time ; and none but an exceptionally stout fox could
have stood up so long. They were glued to him from start to
finish.
PRAIRIE LIFE.
Prairie life has many a hardship, many a shortcoming,
and none too many recreations — indeed, I heard a cow-hand
aver with solemn philosophy, as he held out his tin plate for a
third helping from the cook's frying-pan, "A square meal is my
only recreation in this country." The intensity of work, the
struggle not to be "left" — to do a great deal with very little help
and at least possible cost — these allow the regular worker who
has chosen the prairie for his sphere of toil very scant leisure
beyond his daily occupations, and certainly limit his capacity
for extracting pleasure entirely to his vocations. It would be
wrong to assert that only a loiterer can afford to be apprecia-
tive of the beauties of nature ; but it is safe to assume that a
man over-busy, pre-occupied, somewhat fatigued, perhaps sadly
unsettled, derives less delight from their contemplation than he
PRAIRIE LIFE. 415
who is as it were in training for the reception of passing-
impressions. All the poetry is out of such a man. His finer
faculties are necessarily dormant. To put it plainly, his mind
is for the time brutalised ; and for a while he is on a level with
a beast of burden, overtaxed, spiritless, joyless save at the sight
of his food.
But such crushed condition of the mental powers under
physical strain is happily only occasional, accidental, and
temporary. There are other times when the contemplation
of Nature, in its prairie aspect — the most inartificial of all
its guises — is not only solacing, but invigorating : when the
heart beats all the happier, the mind is refreshed, and thought
becomes lighter, even sanguine. The .cool sweet breeze, the
rough but picturesque mountains, the fresh green foliage of
the wooded valleys, and the bright verdure of the grassy slopes,
act as a positive tonic to sense and manhood and to apprecia-
tion of life. The grasp of the rifle and the grip of the saddle
then intuitively tighten, and lend themselves naturally to an
Englishman's instinct.
Now, no one would kill a stag in May. The code of the
country forbids it, we are aware : and the conscience of a
sportsman rebels against such an act, you will say. Ah, yes !
but " this is a free country " wherein no man may starve ;
and as for a sportsman's conscience, wait till that is dulled
by a week on salt pork. Bacon, as we know too well, is never
■out of season — though we playfully vary its denomination,
now as " chicken," now as " meat," now as " hog." Why then
fresh -meat ? I fancy you have no close time for beeves or
even for muttons, have you, my gallant gentlemen who sit
at home at ease, and wash down your juicy steak with Perrier
Jouet, or your cutlet with Lafitte, while we aggravate our
thirst with alkali water or commingle our salted rations with
muddy coffee ?
With some such thoughts and in some such frame of mind,
I saddled old Smoke for a saunter, in the sunny afternoon
of yesterday — soon to find myself crossing familiar ground, while
41 6 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
trifles of the past and sundry troubles of the present chased
each other, only to lessen and vanish quickly under the in-
fluence of surroundings. It was the first stroll of the present
year for Smoke and me — Smoke having acted the part of
shooting pony for five previous years, during which he had
carried me on the Big Horn Mountains and the Rockies, and
had chased down the last elk of Mizpah Creek. Apropos of
this latter episode comes in a tragic sequence. One Bronson
had been my hunting comrade in that wintry chase, when the
snow lay frozen crisp with the thermometer 40° below zero at
night, and we had shared our buffalo-robes against its intensity.
Jim Bronson was a New Yorker ; but had served a long
novitiate in the West. Nothing came amiss to him, from cow-
punching to log-hewing. Brought up to the sale of hardware,
he had adapted himself with true Yankee versatility to very
different occupations. He could make his own windlass and
dig a well, or would tie a flour bag round his waist and fry
buckwheat cakes, while another man would be thinking
out his preliminaries. And all the time he would whistle
and sing till one quite envied the little fellow his wondrous-
spirits.
Last winter Bronson, having fixed up all that was needed
about his own ranche — where a few cows, a few mares, and his
homestead (some thirty acres broken against the spring that
was never to come to him) constituted his personal wealth —
then betook himself to earn his forty dollars a month assisting
his neighbour. His wages were to be for hauling lumber, i.e.,.
boards, from the neighbouring sawmill ; and through December
he went to work with his team — daylight just allowing him to
make one trip per diem to the mill and back. Gaily and
happily, under such circumstances as would have chilled the
heart of most men, he plodded daily through the snow with his-
horses, while whistle and voice rang cheerily out, to the shrill
accompaniment of the wagon wheels (whose quaint singing as
they cut through the frozen snow could be heard a mile through
the clear, still atmosphere).
PRAIRIE LIFE. 417
Of all circumstances that try the teamster none are so pre-
carious as taking heavy loads clown the steep slopes, on the
summit of which the pine timber is found. In winding round
the gulches and wash-outs, the wagon has constantly to run
at a slant; and the greatest judgment and experience are
required to guard against a "tip-over" — a mishap which will
occur occasionally even under the deftest management. It
then becomes a matter of pulling the wagon back on to its
wheels, replacing the load piece by piece, and, as the lumber-
wagon of the country is not easily hurt, very little harm usually
results beyond an hour's extra work and one more page in the
driver's record of " things better not said." He himself has
probably on such occasions been walking on the upper ground ;
and the wagon accordingly rolls away from him — while, as to
the team, it is well used to such little incidents, and stands
quietly, until unhitched for the next move in the game.
One day, however, Bronson's natural caution would seem to
have deserted him. The wagon was slipping alarmingly on
the sloping and glassy road (for wherever a wagon has once
been is termed a road in this primitive region) : his previous
journeys had been made without mishap ; and he was anxious
to reach home while daylight lasted. So, as the load swung
and quivered and the balance was threatened, he lent himself
in over-confidence to a course that might have found favour
with a " tenderfoot," but was altogether out of keeping with
the practice of an old teamster — one who had hauled loads in
all weathers for years past, and who had even driven the
Deadwood mail (of Buffalo Bill notoriety) through a whole
season of winter nights, across the almost trackless mountains.
He walked on the down side of his load, pushing, and sup-
porting it to maintain the equilibrium. An extra jerk, a heavy
roll — the load of planks swung over : the poor lad's strength
and activity availed nothing against the ponderous weight —
and in a moment he lay under the mass, his limbs crushed
and pinned from waist to feet. Miles from any house; no
hope of search before morning — or even then, for he had more
E E
418 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PMAIIUE.
than once remained the night at the sawmill camp — winter
darkness coming rapidly on, the thermometer already many
decrees below zero, and numb Death already gripping him by
the waistbelt ! What plight more awful ? What misery more
intense? Whither in his agony thought carried him shall never
be known. Conjecture we easily how a life's course would well
up, how all that was dear — all that was now finished — would
thrust itself forward — appealingly, piteously, despairingly.
" My God, my God, is this the end ? " would be the poor
sufferer's helpless wail. His pockets held a pencil. This was
between his teeth the next day. But the pockets, every one of
them, were turned inside out in evident quest of paper — that a
line, a word, a farewell might go home to those dear ones back-
East. His whip was in his hand ; and its long lash of raw hide
suggested at all events an eud to this hopeless torture. A
double twist formed his death-cravat. The coil was drawn,
tight round his windpipe with the nervous fingers of a
desperate man : the same sure knots were tied that in years
previous he had taught me would hold a broncho in his wildest
struooles — and he strangled his life out. Who shall dare to
blame him ?
But back to the brighter present — the line of hogbacked
hill, the handy little Winchester, and the thirst and thought
begotten of bacon for dinner and bacon for breakfast. The
rouoh red " bad lands " sloped right and left to meet the green
valley on either hand. Deep fissures, broken gulches, rocky
chasms yawned in wild extravagance of shape and colouring
adown the ridge side. "Just the place for blacktail," I
muttered — and the last syllables were still between my lips
when, popping along the divide ahead, three tufts of cotton
went o-lancing — each in rear of a lusty deer. Blacktail they
call them, lucus a non, because their tails are white. As a
matter of distinction, the white-tailed deer have tails twice as
lone and twice as white — so let that pass. The wind was
blowing half a gale along the ridge, from them to me ; there
was still a chance of getting up to them — and a fat buck might
PRAIRIE LIFE.
419
yet adorn the larder. As they turned a corner and were
hid to view, I had the spurs into Smoke, and reached the point
ere they should have gone barely a hundred yards beyond.
Peeping quietly round the rocks — there they were, already
grazing and apparently undisturbed. The three pairs of long
ears went up, however, as Smoke walked into view — rider
I laving meanwhile slipped down on the near side, saddle-rope
in hand. Deer seldom mind a riderless horse : so Smoke and
they stood calmly gazing at each other while I crawled to the
end of the thirty-foot rope and carefully appraised the deer-
meat (no, sir, not venison. There is no such word in Western
phraseology.) An old family doe. She won't do, for reasons
heavy and obvious. The big buck is a fine fellow — tough
probably, and with his horns in velvet of course. The third is
verily a " Little Billee, young and tender. Little Billee. Yes,
let's eat he." And a downhill shot took the yearling between
the shoulder blades, and handsomely made meat of him. I
felt like a man who has committed charity — and that charity
the best of all, for it began at home, where six bacon-fed and
blood-thirsty mortals awaited my return.
E E 2
420 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
But the fun of the evening was not yet ended. To the crack
of the shot there rose on the next hill the flowing manes and
mobile necks of three startled horses ; and in a moment more
the whole of the little bunch — five head and a foal — were on
the brow, gazing about them in fear and curiosity. (A
favourite plan, by the way, amid rough land, is for the horse-
seeker to fire a shot from his revolver — whereupon any horses
within hearing will certainly peep hurriedly over the peaks.)
The bunch was readily recognised. It contained a galloping
mare with her first foal. They had already evaded capture for
a fortnight ; and it became a point of honour that they should
now join the herd at home. Horses are easily stalked — how-
ever wild — and the broken ground now favoured close approach.
Moreover, once quietly ridden round, they will always submit to
inspection — until the time arrives for moving them on. Then
may the difficulties — at all events the excitement and the
struggle — begin. A mare with a young foal will do all she
knows to distance, or double on, her pursuers. She will start
at a tangent for the roughest brakes, where she may before
have found shelter and evaded pursuit ; and fast as she may
stride over rocks and scrub, the little one will keep pace almost
under her flank. Away like the Avind, that flings her wild
mane in the air, and that waves her long tail level with her
back. With a snort of defiance she is fifty yards to the good
ere your spurs can go in — while her comrades swing round to
her signal and dash off at her heels. Now you must ride and
ride at their very tails — for once they get clear of you on this
tumbled-up country you will surely never hit quickly the
beaten trails by which alone the cattle and horses and deer can
travel the bad lands. Now she dashes for the wildest and
most dangerously broken ground, wherein a goat only could
crawl, and crawl slowly. She must not reach this, or the
laugh will be all her's and pursuit soon hopeless. Head her you
must, at all hazards. There is just room to pass, just space on
the ridge to do it. As you rattle past her the little horse
under you catches the infection, and strains every nerve, as an
PRAIRIE LIFE.
421
Arab going in at a boar. He seems, in his dash over rocks and
crannies, as if he had four spare legs under him — so quickly
does he change his stride, fling his leaps, and vary his foothold.
Now you are past her — up flourishes the little Winchester to
arm's length, while a shout goes home to her ear and Smoke
stops short in a single stride. The wild mare is turned : and
her head is now for the green and smoother valley, where she.
and her " outfit " may be managed more easily. Still " she
scours the plain like a creature winged, I swear," and Smoke
has little respite while he maintains such terms as will prevent
her again doubling for the bad lands. So down the rough
hillsides and on to the prairie-dog towns (like so many rabbit
warrens) beneath — the pace never slacking, but reins loose on
neck and everything left to the little horse's honesty. As a
matter of fact these prairie-bred horses scarcely ever put you
down. Even when going at apparently top speed, they retain
such command over themselves that they stop, wheel, jump, or
drop quietly down a declivity — never hesitating, but moving by
a quick unerring instinct that never fails them. You must of
422 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
course leave all to them when embarked on a headlong gallop
over such ground : and depend on it they will not betray you.
The main difficulty is to sit tight — in an English saddle I
mean, not in an American "cow saddle" with its great main-
mast of a pommel standing up before you. An excellent
saddle, too, is the latter — for rough work and for roping
(by which is meant lassoing) — but not the saddle for a horse-
man to begin upon at forty, while again the lasso is more for
the cattle business than for horsework. Well — we drove in
the wild mare, felt all the better for the gallop, and took a
packhorse for the " deer-meat " in the cool of the morning.
THE NEW FOREST IN SPRING.
FOX-HUNTING.
For pleasant springhunting amid charming surroundings
give me the New Forest. " I speak of things as I found them,"
and base my impressions on this hypothesis.
If you don't fish and you don't race ; if you care for hunting
for its own sake, and dislike idleness for its consequences, what
are you to do during the latter weeks of April ? The New Forest
answers the question. You may there hunt six days a week, with
a very moderate outfit of horses ; you may see hounds run hard
with fox and deer, and you spend your days amid forest scenery,
that is none the less beautiful, none the less appreciable, because
her Most Gracious Majesty is good enough to keep the roads
perfect, and the turf ridings firm and safe for the use of her
grateful subjects, of both high and of low degree. How King
Rufus managed his hunting — even afoot — it is hard to imagine.
But for Her Majesty's care and expenditure the loyal citizen —
for whom the Forest now exists, free for all, no matter whence
he comes, or whether to gather flowers, to picnic, or to sport with
hounds — would find it difficult to wander far into some of the
more picturesque depths of the forest, but would have to pull
up, again and again, for stream and swamp. Hundreds of
bridges, often primitive but always effectual, have been built ;
many hundreds of bogs have been rendered passable by
means of faggot and gravel ; and the National Park of Old Eng-
land is thus thrown open and made practicable for all who
would wander through — on wheels in many directions, on foot
as far as such method of exercise is likely to prompt, and on
424 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
horseback everywhere. Leaf and glade, flower and scenery,
appeal to the tourist ; the wild animal, whose province and use
is that he be hunted (and that money be spent and employment
remain in our merry country) attracts the sportsman — and
attracts him all the more because of its absolute wildness and
the natural beauty of his home. No need of artificial preser-
vation. The deer are hunted to be killed — for nominally they
have no existence here : and the authorities shoot them down
as closely as the wide extent of their haunts will permit. Foxes
are hunted — well, because they like it — but in any case because
their numbers must be kept down ; and, if to kill them, it
requires many couple of dogs, and many men on horseback with
whips and thongs and pocket-pistols and holsters, who shall
blame the loyalty and self-abnegation that prompt the toil ?
To check the increase of the devastating deer, and to extirpate
the red fox — the universal robber, if one may believe a tithe of
the tales that elsewhere are told against him — no less than three
packs of hounds are needed — the expense of these by no means
falling on Her Majesty, but borne entirely by her faithful and
generous subjects, for very loyalty and the mere love of venery.
One of these packs pursues the deer — and of this I hope to say
more anon. The other two undertake the Sisyphus-like task of
exterminating the fox. And for this purpose — a purpose it must
be admitted almost as impossible of final attainment as the
reclaiming of gypsies, or the extirpation of wild flowers and
butterflies (at the hands and nets of great hordes of foreign
invaders at certain seasons) they divide the Forest pretty equally
between them — the River Lymington the boundary. The whole
area of this great People's Park is, I take it, undergoing a gradual
transformation — owing to the Deer Removal Act of 1851 —
when it was determined to do away with both red and fallow
deer, to cut down as many of the old oaks as possible, and to
thoroughly vandalise the ancient forest — as if the people had no
right to a playground and it were better that all the world should
be penned within brick walls. The axe was at length stayed
by popular outcry ; and, whether as a result or coincidence I
FOX-HUNTING. 425
am not at this moment sufficiently well posted to say, great
tracks were fresh planted with oak and pine, and fences were
run up (palisading and iron hooping) to protect the young trees
from the forest ponies and the "extirpated" deer. Thus
the heart of the Forest, especially within half a dozen miles of
Lyndhurst, is chiefly taken up with these Inclosures ; and most
of this lower land has assumed a character more like the pine
woods of Western America than the old English forest of beech
and oak.
It was in this very woodland country that the New Forest
hounds hunted on Tuesday, April 21 ; it was on upland moor and
heather that Mr. Mills' foxhounds were mainly at work on
Wednesday — the days on which it was my privilege to see them
and to reap right good reward for my journey. To my mind
such surroundings as those of forest scenery — unhindered by fear
of harm to crop or damage to stock, and leading to no thought
of fence-breaking or fence avoiding — are far more in keeping
with spring hunting than anything we can obtain in the suffer-
ance districts. The ordinary woodlands of a cultivated country
answer the same purpose, ivJtile you are within them. But at
any moment you may be out — when you in all probability find
that there is no scent to hunt a fox, and that it is far too hard
to ride after him if there were. With shelter within and
heather without, you have a far better chance. There is likely
to be moisture enough for both fox and horse, and hounds can
generally run gaily.
For the last week there had been a great scent in the New
Forest. On Monday the staghounds had run their fallow buck
for moi-e than an hour (the first twenty -five minutes racing pace)
and killed him, without help throughout — while on both the
following days the foxhounds went like wildfire. After the
recent rain you could gallop along every ride — and there are so
many of them that you need never be wide of hounds, while the
undergrowth is seldom enough to hide them from view. Outside
the said " Inclosures " you may usually gallop the track of
hounds ; and but for the fear of bog and morass that come across
420 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
your path about once to ten times that you imagine them there,
you may ride right up to the pack. For such purpose you must
have a handy horse — if possible a Forest horse (no pony, though).
Or you may find a variety in being banged against a tree, swept
off by overhanging boughs, or plunged into a holly bush. But
he must be able to gallop, and be able to stay; he should be
ready to change his legs in a moment, and when he plunges
into a wet place he should do so with his forelegs advanced one
before the other, like a fighter preparing to counter — not like a
Leicestershire horse flinging himself shoulder deep into a second
ditch.
Brockenhurst Bridge was the meet of the New Forest fox-
hounds on Tuesday — the 8.5 train from Waterloo puttingit within
morning reach of the metropolis, whose bricks and mortar have
been shed forward by the wayside marvellously during the past
decade. Soon will the cold-meat train, of dissipated memory,
carry the soldier to his morning parade along a continuous street
to Aldershot. And soon even will the seclusion of the New
Forest itself be tapped, unless the holiday-ground be kept
rigidly guarded against enterprise. The quaint little town of
Lyndhurst wears at this time her best apron : welcomes the
coming guest with invitation to Apartments and Stabling, by
placard on every unoccupied window ; and is busy adding to and
improving her existing accommodation. Lyndhurst, indeed, is
aiming at becoming a woodland Melton. " She is fair. Beware"
— lest her prices grow proportionate. At present she is modest
and homely, comely withal.
Hounds had gone some little distance into the woods to seek
their fox, ere I and my mentor reached them among some of
the southernmost Inclosures of the country. We were in time,
however, to hear the first halloa, to join the first rush, and to
find ourselves splashing along a succession of wet rides, with a
hundred other people as bent upon galloping as ourselves.
There was a capital cry, as was fitting from a pack made up
chiefly from the kennels of Milton, Atherstone and Mr. Harding
Cox.
FOX-HUNTING.
427
As I have said, the rides were so handy that you could almost
twist and turn with hounds. Now and again you might venture
to plunge in among the fir trees, and gain ground by following
the pack — a risky experiment, however, for the inclosure-fences
are not all to be jumped, though in the course of the day I did
see Povey, the huntsman, clear an iron-railing unhesitatingly at
one place, and the Master, Mr. Stanle}7, Pearce, take a most
awkward and slippery stile at another. Briefly, there was a
burning scent ; and for twenty minutes we galloped hard — from
the inclosure of Stockley, by Lady Cross to that of Frame
Heath, then across the railway into that of Stubby, when their
fox was completely blown by the pace. He turned back through
Woodfidley, and recrossed the railway to be killed in Frame.
(Have I got it right '?) They ate him, too, without who- whoop
or ceremony ; and only a jawbone and an ear were recovered,
to tie to the saddle. Second fox was a vixen, and was left.
No. 3 also came out of New Park, near the place of meeting, a
428 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE
park and lodge said to have been set apart by Charles I. for the
due preservation of a herd of red deer sent him from abroad.
But we, as a multitude, are not monarchical, nowadays, with
regard to forests — let our individual and broader sympathies be
what they may. Well, they gave Tertius a dressing for twenty
very sharp minutes, after which he went to ground — no earths
stopped after March, and very rightly. Quartus gave a more
elaborate hunt. Gritnam Wood, I learn, was the name of his
holding. He looked outside and they ran him ; came back and
they ran him better — over Lyndhurst Hill, and by Emery
Down, past Northerwood House on to clean heather and
common, to the Manor House (the seat of Mr. Compton, one of
the mainstays of the Forest) — rhododendron bushes, fox headed
from further inquiry into Lyndhurst precincts, some clever hunt-
ing to recover line, and reynard won the parti. An hour and a
half of useful hunting — very rough riding — trees and broken
country — stables and gruel close at hand.
On Wednesday Mr. Mills's foxhounds were at Ocknell Bridge
— to reach which from Lyndhurst one followed for some distance
a hogsback commanding a glorious view of all the northern
forest. A sea of trees stretched far away to the right ; rolling
moorland, broken here and there by patches of dense inclosure,
carried the eye forward and leftward as far as it would reach.
A strong cool breeze drove across the hill — giving one the idea
that in midwinter this must indeed be a bleak region. Already
the roads were drying and dust occasionally flying ; but scent
was no less keen, and hounds ran as fast as yesterday.
Albrighton and Belvoir blood, I learn, form the bulk of Mr.
Mills's pack, and very sharp, active little hounds they are.
They were first taken for a cruise over the open moor, Sears
moving quietly through gorse and heather, while the two whips
were thrown wide down wind as scouts. A fox not being forth-
coming, the Inclosure of Holly Hatch was about to be entered ;
when, ere reaching it, we suddenly found ourselves embarked in
a rush through trees and bushes — the horn twanging cheerily,
hounds throwing their tongues noisily in the jungle ahead, and
FOX-HUNTING. 429
our heads, hats, and eyes being beaten and battered to a con-
fusing tune. Soon we issued on to a good grass ride — to find
that two ladies and three or four men had already forced their
way through the foliage, and were galloping in view of hounds
whose tongues were our only link. Rides diverged and hounds
shifted their course. Now one section of the party rode by
sight, and now by hearing ; then another took up the running
among the open timber. Now
They came to where the brushwood ceased, and day
Peered twixt the stems ; and the ground broke away
In a sloped sward down to a brawling brook.
It was an honest little streamlet, though, and boded no harm
with bog or swamp ; so the gallopers rode onward with the
pack through holly shrub and gorse — darting round the bushes
with all their energy, lest hounds should slip them and their
start be lost. Now they were in covert again (in Broomy
Inclosure) and through the clear woodland they went a tre-
mendous pace — among the nearest to hounds being a young-
lady on a strong black horse, taking for her beacon, probably,
one of Lyndhurst's quickest riders (Mr. Powell), also on a
striding black (and who seemed to me at all times to leave as
little unnecessary daylight as possible between himself and
hounds running). Coming forth again, they were once more in
the open ; and with a much-increased attendance went into
Milkham Inclosure, took a turn within it, and came back to
Broomy. Hard as ever they ran till they reached the main
earths — twenty-five minutes, as fast as hounds often go.
A second fox went to ground quickly. But a third, found in
the open beyond Ashley Lodge, gave half an hour's good sport
before he, too, went under the heather. The last ten minutes,
after leaving Amberwood with No. 3, were across rough open
ground — a merry scramble among bushes and bogs. No one
was stuck ; but horses pulled up pretty thoroughly blown.
So ended two days of bright wild foxhunting. On both days
were hounds quickly and cleverly handled. What surprised me
430
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PEA HUE.
more than all in the Forest is the facility with which one can
sret about, and how much more one can see of the work of
hounds than I had been led to suppose. And if, during the
excitement of the chase, a stranger is impelled towards danger
or difficulty, the courtesy of the habitues is invariably exercised
to stop him.
'J*, w. /'j ZV s>?*\ ™$L* CD .
I must crave permission to complete my jottings with the
addition of some few names. Among the field on the second
day were, Lord Londesborough (who drove Major Candy to the
meet on a prairie buck board), Lord Raincliffe, Lady Raincliffe
driving, Mr. Brad bourne (ex-Master of the New Forest Fox-
hounds), Captain and Miss Kinglake from Exmoor, Mr. and
Mrs. Proctor-Baker from the Duke of Beaufort's country, also
Mr. Harford from the same Hunt, Hon. R. C. and Mrs. Trollope
from Somersetshire, Mr. Esdaile (present Master of the West
Somersetshire) and Colonel Esdaile, Col. Powell and Mr. Powell,
Mr. Wingrove (Hon. Sec. N.F.F.H.), Mr. Bathurst, Major Otway
(who during the day experienced the alarming predicament of
HUNTING THE WILD FALLOW BEER. 431
being hung by his stirrup), Mrs. Austin, Messrs. Blake, Taber-
nacle, Anstiss, Dallas, and Dickson ; and on the previous day
Hon. G. Lascelles (Deputy Surveyor of the Forest), Mr. Water-
house, Mr. Miles, &c.
HUNTING THE WILD FALLOW DEER.
Whan shaws been sheene, and shraddes full fayre,
Itt's merrye in the fayre forrest.
And never is the greenwood merrier than when, in its first
greenness, it resounds to the horn, flashes to the passing pack,
and re-echoes to the cry.
'Tis of to-day, May Day, I write — after hunting, after a long
journey by a dolesome train, after such slender supper as work
may warrant. The " Octagon Chamber " of my club is my
midnight refuge — where no one comes but to "play" a solemn
chess, to peruse a love story or meditate on his own, to com-
mune with fate, or court the solitude of the moment. Mine is
the last-named happiness, and I buckle to it cheerfully and
hurriedly — my theme the New Forest and its staghounds, vernal
scenery and the hunting of the deer, at a time when wood and
moor are beginning a new year and when most men are seeking
some new existence — frock-coated or binocular-bound perhaps
(it is hard to say how they divide themselves — for this is the
period of plans and changes, of medical advice may be, or ol
pecuniary thought, of labours resumed — the countryman's
Maytime, the idler's December as much as it is the city man's).
Read The Field and other authorities — there is no business in
life beyond the finding something to slay and how to slay it
properly, as behoves an Englishman and sportsman. Read the
Daily Parliamentary and Financial — all is strife and struggle.
Give me a few horses, some few books at home or accessible,
and a shilling in pocket for a gateway or for a sickly urchin, I
would far rather watch the spring proclaiming itself in green
leaf and young life than have it brought home only by bill of
432 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
fare, by change of garb, by the herding together of summer
associate, or even by the wolfish yell of two-to-one-bar-one.
" There be airs which the physicians advise their patients to
move into, which commonly are plain champaigns, but grasing
and not overgrown with heather ; or else timber shades as in
forests." — Where will you find such airs better than in the New
Forest, when a cool breeze is blowing under a May Day sun,
through clouds of tree blossom and over beds of bloom, and
when active sport may be had amid a very revelry of nature's
fresh beauty. I will tell what I saw, taking it for granted
that you, too, know nothing of hunting the wild fallow
deer — as I knew nothing this morning, and now only know
enough to wonder at the science and skill that the sport
needs.
For some twenty years I have heard of Mr. Lovell hunting
the buck. Every year doubtless has added to his knowledge of
the craft ; and of late years his pack has been greatly improved.
Now he delegates a huntsman of his own teaching (Allen) to
do the bulk of the svork.
The meet of the staghounds to-day was at Ocknell Pond ;
and thither about midday we sauntered under the sunshine —
the air gradually cooling and freshening as we emerged from
the blossom-decked orchards of Lyndhurst to mount the heather-
clad ridges above. Hounds were already on the spot — with
their green-liveried attendants on horseback and on foot — when
the Master rode up with Mrs. Francis and Miss Lovell. A
very sturdy workmanlike pack — Bramham all over, and notice-
ably so, afterwards, in their pushing and undaunted vigour
upon a lukewarm scent. It seemed odd to a new comer that
each hound should have his neck embraced by a leather collar
— bringing to mind irresistibly the double-all-round throttle-
kerchief with which young England loves to force his, or even
her, eyes out of their sockets, lest anyone should fail to perceive
that he, or she, is of sport, sporting. In this case there was of
course some better reason — not, as in my ignorance, it first
flashed across my inquiring thoughts, a compromise with the
HUNTING THE WILD FALLOW BEER. 433
Muzzling Order, which condemns all Lyndhurst dogs to go
about with their unhappy heads in cages — but that, while the
buck was being sought out and separated by the tufters, the
body of the pack should be led in hand, at convenient distance
— instead of being shut up in barn or stable as on Exmoor.
Huntsman, whip, and attendants, accordingly, each carried a
strap with steel catches.
At the meet, or with hounds soon afterwards, were, among
others — Lord Londesborough, Lord Raincliffe, Miss Denison,
Mr. Bradburne, Hon. G. Lascelles, Misses Meyrick, Miss Stan-
dish, Captain and Miss Kinglake, Hon. R. C. Trollope and Mrs.
Trollope, Mr. and Mrs. Tabernacle, Col. Powell, Miss Gilchrist,
Major Talbot, Miss Talbot, Messrs. Charteris, Harford, Lloyd,
Marsh, Miles, Powell, &c.
News — they don't call it Khubber in the New Forest — was
brought to Mr. Lovell from more than one direction as to
eligible bucks. The report acted upon was that handed in by
Mr. Bradburne, of Lyburn, on the northern border of the
forest — whose keepers had this morning viewed three capable
bucks. (I am ready humbly to admit and to deprecate my
ignorance of the true buckhunting terms, trusting to be per-
mitted on future occasion to render myself more familiar with
the usage and diction of this good, wild sport.) Then the
pack were put into couples — or rather bunches — while there
were picked out Challenger, Perfume, Hermit, and Moonstone,
four steady old stagers, the first three from Bramham and
among them a Harpagon, the fourth a home-bred dog and a
grandson of Bramham Monarch, to be taken as tufters and
to certify the buck. To witness the tufting we (i.e. about
half a dozen of the more interested and as many more of
the novices) followed them and their huntsman under Mr.
Bradburne's pilotage down a hillside wood, where the deer
had been seen some four hours before. We had expected
to witness a long unwinding of a cold tortuous trail, cul-
minating in the sudden uprise of the buck from his lair. But
these bucks had been content to remain leisurely feeding in
F F
434
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the cool shade — and here were they suddenly pointed out by
our guide, not a hundred yards from the grass riding we
followed ! One was a noble fellow, his horns branching proudly
''iS^,-(X '£
from either coronet, as he faced us in surprise rather than
fear ; the others two fine young bucks that, well, would have
graced a larder though they had hardly yet grown to the-
dignity of fitness for the chase. (" Oh, for my saddle-Win-
chester!" was the sacrilegious prayer that jumped instantly
and all inappropriately into my backwoodsman-brain. Oh for
"fresh meat" for a week! I think I could have had them
all three — though I might have spared that grand old buck
for his dignity and his probable toughness.) The huntsman
(his mind on venerie not on venison) fairly feasted on the big
buck for a dumb half minute, then quietly sauntered towards
them with his tufters. Round went the three sets of antlers ;.
up went three white woolly tails (not brushes; I believe, gentle
foresters ?) ; and away through the pine-trees glanced the deer,,
with hounds at their very flanks. It may be merry to ride;
HUNTING THE WILD FALLOW DEEll. 435
ill the green, green -wood ; but it is not always as rapid and
ready a process as in the open. Deer and hounds could give
us any weight among the timber — or else we were too slow
at the drop of the flag. In a quarter of a mile they were
outside the Inclosure ; and as we hurried forth through a gate-
way, they were clean out of sight across the sunlit heather and
holly. But the next ridge was fully manned by skirmishers,
reserving themselves for the chase proper, and declining to
waste their strength upon preliminary tufting. So there were
halloa and signal to set the huntsman right ; and information
manifold to set him wrong — or at all events thinking, and
digesting. One man had seen three does, another had seen
four : a third had seen two bucks and two does : but, oddly
enough, no one seemed to have seen three bucks. However
Allen galloped on, to news of sight and note of hound, and
presently, the great buck bounced across his path — and, a
minute later, the two couple were caught up and on leash,
Moonstone dropping to word like a well-broken setter. But
somehow the deer got together again, consultation and new
action had to be resorted to, eventually tufting began again,
and once more the big fallow buck was set going. Without
detailing the process further, suffice it to tell that, at about
2.45, Allen had his buck fairly separated, and Mr. Lovell gave
the word to lay on. A curious occurrence verified the hunts-
man's impression, and went to justify the signal. The deer, in
jumping the iron-bound fence into an Inclosure, had knocked
off both his antlers, and there they lay, that who would might
witness, and as if he had stripped for the fray. Nor is the
occurrence so singular as it may seem. Remember, this is the
month of May, when every buck is shedding his horns ; and
when he is often known to drop them during the fury of the
chase. Sometimes he will be viewed into a wood a lordly buck,
and be described on his exit as a fat doe. For without his
antlered honours who shall tell him by a distant glance ? And
so it was to-day. Hounds changed somewhere ; but no one
knew exactly where ; and in the end they killed a doe.
f f 2
436 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
They were laid on, then, outside King's Gam ; then hunting
very slowly for a while through the wood, suddenly found them-
selves close upon their game — for it is too seldom the custom
(is it not ? I ask as one, who for many years has occasionally
seen the deer hunted by almost all the English staghound
packs, but pretend to no continued or practised experience) for
hunted deer to put at once as long a distance as possible
between themselves and their pursuers. Now hounds buckled
to their work, drove him through the woodland, and issued on
to comparatively open forest. At a great pace they ran through
Ocknell Inclosure ; then embarked on wild upland and heather —
one couple having slipped their comrades for a while, and
leading them far across the open and down by the water side.
(After the fox it should have been the duty of any who could
to stop that couple ; but what the etiquette may be with buck
I aspire not to know — and far better, I should say, on such
occasions is sin of omission than that of commission.) For
half an hour of moor and woodland it was warm and cheery
fun. Then we sank deeper and deeper into the great timbered
basin that extends from Puckpits (itself a nice little covert on
the map, but in wooded reality some 1,700 acres) to Lyndhurst,
and I don't know how far beyond. Question not my ignorance
as to how, or by what route or series of circles we attained
Lyndhurst Hill. Enough for me to say that we were all the
while in woodland, and most of the time galloping hard on
smooth grass rides, the tinkle of a hound's voice in the distance
our occasional guide, but more often our faith pinned blindly to
the movements of some such pilot as Mr. Lascelles, to whom of
course the mazes of the New Forest are as simple and familiar
as a ship's machinery to its engineer. Just when one was
growing dizzy and bewildered in the labyrinth, and when a
thought of time and train (a sportsman's most hateful bug-
bears) had begun to intrude, the chase all at once took an
unexpected and convenient turn. The deer appeared on the
scene (buck or doe, we must wait for the kill to tell) ; soon
afterwards the leading hounds also crossed the ride, with the
HUNTING TEE WILD FALLOW DEE 11. 437
others hunting them up in near proximity. We had left
Holmhill Inclosure, and now we were close to Lyndhurst Hill.
The deer lay down in water, jumped up before hounds, Avas
chased back into the woods she had left, and after one more
turn was pulled down — a doe. They had run about three
hours, and they had come some five or six miles — across the
map. I maintain we thus spent our Mayday cheerily — aye,
and profitably, for we were making the most of the fresh air
of Heaven and the picturesque beauty of Nature. For the
sport, and the studies it suggested, we have to thank Mr. Lovell,
its generous and skilful exponent. I will add of to-day only
that as the green foliage, that already is hiding all the brown
treetops of a week ago, assumes its place, the Forest Inclosures
become at once more difficult for hearing and for seeing, and
even for getting through. You can hear less of hounds, see
less of them, and can certainly take fewer liberties in plunging
after them. But those great good rides are an ever-failing help —
with a pilot's assistance.
Early in the present century the New Forest would seem to
have been a great breeding ground for hounds — as it was, too, a
resort for the elite of many hunts when a May fox was to be
killed, and when the Prince of Wales would come to hold court
at the King's House, Lyndhurst. Mr. Nichol, I fancy, was
Master of the foxhounds in those days ; and the blood of his
Justice, largely adopted at Badminton, has been made famous
throughout England. The pack was sold in 1828 for a
thousand guineas. Justice is written of as a hound of immense
bone, and was described by his owner as being '' as big as a
deer." If there were good walks enough for one kennel in
those days, there are not enough for three in the present :
consequently the greater part of the yearly entry in each case
is now made up of drafts. Even then, it is said — and I cannot
help quoting the paragraph intact — " Mr. Nichol's hunting and
houndbreeding, well as he understood them, were conducted on
a very rough principle ; and digging a whole afternoon, fifteen
feet after a fox with his black and tan terriers, was the style of
438 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
thing he liked best. This, however, was of rare occurrence, as
the foxes used to breed in the morasses among the alderstools,
and lay curled up there till the hounds, who got as black as
ink, drew right up to them, and then jumped down in view,
without any head of earths to fly to." It is better now — fewer
morasses, more earths, and no digging. The staghounds of the
Forest in the present day are almost entirely of Bramham
Moor origin, and take to their work with all the vigour and
clash that marks that pack upon its more legitimate game. It
is to Mr. G. Lascelles, Deputy Surveyor of the Forest, whose
father Lord Harewood was long time Master of the Bramham
Moor — that the predilection for, and attainment of, this good
blood is mainly clue.
Exceptionally favourable, no doubt, was the spring of '90, for
hunting in the Forest. The cold winds of April kept it back,
till the time came for copious rain to fall. The ground then
softened ; and the moistened earth, while exuding lavishly its
own sweet perfumes, retained a scent for hounds — testifying
plainly that flowers and fox-hunting are not so wholly incon-
sistent as we were brought up to believe.
I am told the Forest can get very hard in a dry spring. All
the more thanks, then, for its recent mood, which allowed of our
seeing sport under gay sunshine yet upon elastic carpeting.
Hounds have been out for the last time ; and the fallow buck
and Reynard the fox are now to be left to their summer
holiday. The Forest is now for the tripper, the botanist, the
painter, and the turtle cloves. Already the last-named have
been seen hovering round secluded hamlets and meandering
through the quiet glens in the neighbourhood of their tempo-
rary nests. They might almost succeed in passing for some-
thing else — but that their plumage is invariably so brand new
and their mutual content so obvious and untempered. A very
Garden of Eden is the Forest for them. " Ah ! the lovely days
HUNTING THE WILD FALLOW DEEll. 439
when on a warm bank crowned with flowers we sate and
thought no harm," sings the most lovesome, and the most
proper of our poets — though, if I remember the context right,
even he for one brief moment nearly strayed in the intoxication
of fancy and surrounding.
By no means the least attraction of the Forest lies in the
fact that its animal life, or at any rate all its game life, is
wholly wild and natural. The gorgeous cock pheasant that
starts up from your feet or struts the rides before your horse is
no coop-raised bird ; and it goes without saying that the
blackgame (for some reason or other not nearly so plentiful now
as two decades ago) are as absolutely untamed as the wood-
cocks that wend their way thither in autumn. So fully indeed
do the woodcock appreciate the liberty and scope of the forest
that they, like the turtle doves, will occasionally even remain to
nest. As example it is told that one recent spring a wood-
cock's nest with its quantum of eggs (however many that may
be) was found at the very spot where a buck had just died
before hounds.
But of Monday, May 4th, and the staghounds. (By the way,
save me from entanglement of speech, and answer me this —
Why do these staghounds hunt the buck, while her Gi*acious
Majesty's Buckhounds hunt the stag 1 — for I learn that in.
forest parlance a stag is always a red deer, a buck a fallow
deer.) It is possible to reach a Forest meet by morning train
from the metropolis, though with existing railway-service such
a journey is scarcely a pastime of itself. The Crown lands
cover no great area ; and, indeed, its wild animals of every kind
must all listen to the horn at least once a week, for eight
months of the year. From Lyndhurst or Brockenhurst you
may ride to any point in little over the hour ; while Stony
Cross, a village centre of the higher ground, is, so to speak, but
a stone's throw from Ocknell Pond, whereat on Monday was
held the last meet of the season.
Morning had broken in a rainstorm ; but midday was
wrapped in sunshine, and wood and hill stood out freshened
440 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and brightened by the cleansing showers. Quite a large field —
for the New Forest, wherein, I am told, a dozen is a more usual
winter number. And they were moving off along the heath ered
ridge as I reached the trysting point. Several carriages were
following the cavalcade, with many a parasol to proclaim the
spring, as denoted, too, by the cool straw-hat of more than one
equestrian. The heath fairly splashed with recent rain ; and
the gay gorse-bushes sparkled and dripped. Under the light
grey clouds your eye could roam for miles over the clear,
sunlit landscape. It was a perfect day for a view, a good clay
for hearing, a goodly day to live, and in no way a bad day for
hunting. The drawback to May, as instanced on the previous
Thursday, lies in the fact that the buck are then shedding their
horns ; and it is thus most difficult for the huntsman to keep to
his proper quarry.
The earlier stage of hunting the fallow buck, viz., rousing
and separating him, is by no means the least fascinating. The
first rush of the antlered beauties, the scurry with the tufters,
the headlong dive through wood and covert in their wake, and
the practised skill of Master and huntsman that enables them
to keep touch of the tufters and to distinguish between the
several deer afoot — all this is matter of interest and excitement.
Though the tufting is here not enacted on such rugged ground
as with the red deer on Exmoor, one ought to have two horses
out, to compass the double work with tolerable ease. Thus
many people remain with the pack ; but — speaking as one new
to the game, yet appreciative of all I saw — it seemed to me
that the preliminary gallop with those three or four old hounds
is as jolly as any part of the chase.
Thus tufting itself is by no means without its charm ; though
it has the disadvantage of putting extra strain on the stable
resources of all who would take any part in it. For instance,
you can hardly gallop about for an hour or two with the tufters,
and then expect the same horse to be at his best and freshest
when the pack are laid on. Indeed, as a young gentleman
explained it to me in his own vernacular, " If you want to play
HUNTING THE WILD FALLOW DEER. 441
the Duke you must have two horses out. If you can't run to
that, you had better sit tight till the tufting's done." Person-
ally. I prefer to modify his excellent principles by seeing some
little of the tufting-work and the find, while keeping in mind
that the main trial is yet to come. However, this by the way.
I am not as yet sufficiently advanced to act the part of school-
master.
The prolonged trailing up to deer that have moved, often
forms another part, full of interest and beauty, of their morning
task.
To-day the deer had been closely and recently harboured.
So, after a two-mile saunter along the hill top, we were taken
to a wood, within a certain quarter of which they were known
to be still grazing or reposing. Open heather and hillside was
on our right ; and out over this they came bouncing forth —
four lusty buck, the leader and biggest carrying but a single
horn, the other three, full antlered but comparatively young,
bounding after him in single file. One of the tufters — old
Moonstone, who would seem to have a special talent for this
portion of the work, being a close line hunter, full of tongue
yet free of action — was at their heels : the other couple, of the
same two that figured on the last occasion, followed forth to the
cheer, and were soon straining over the heather in pursuit of
the flying deer. The latter paused half-way up the slope for
one more look ; then flew forward again, and we had a rough,
cheery gallop of some sixteen or seventeen minutes, pulling up
on a sudden at the ironbound fence of Puckpits — and below us
to all appearance the whole world wood. The sound of hounds
had faded out ; and to a stranger it looked as though Hercules
himself could not have handled such a task as clearing those
huge woodlands, and therein deciphering the course of hounds
and the choice of deer. When, previous to 1851, Mr. Lovell
first inaugurated the chase of the fallow deer, there were none
of these great pine inclosures. How glorious must have been
the Forest then ! Now, to the ignorant stranger, it is nothing
less than a marvel that these great woodlands can be tackled at
442 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
all — that the tufters do not often get away for the day, or the
whole pack for the night.
What may have happened to the four deer and the three
hounds for the next few minutes I cannot say — though I am
inclined to think that the whole of both parties were all the
time within a few hundred yards — while most of us rode
aimlessly about, and the huntsman bided his while. For all at
once the brake seemed alive with buck and with hounds. A
white-gravelled forest road skirted the covert side ; and across
it in opposite directions came a single buck either way, then
from different directions the tufters— to be stopped, while
consultation was held.
Soon it was determined to follow with the tufters the buck
that had broken back for the more open country towards
Sluflers ; to force him, if possible, well away from the heavy
mass of Inclosures into which the others had dived. (At least
I presume this was the object.) Accordingly the trio of old
hounds were laid on, and their voices were soon going among
heather and holly (the latter, be it explained, the chief under-
growth and shrub of the forest). On reaching Sluflers (how
curious a nomenclature belongs to these woods !), not only a
buck, but several does were before them. A grand old fox
showed himself, too ; and gazed with wonder — maybe with
scorn, according to his light — on the curious function. But he,
of course, passed unnoticed by hounds or spectators — though
he fairly winked in the face of Povey and the whips of the
New Forest Foxhounds ; and the latter gentleman had to fall
back for revenge upon tuning up to a deer crossing the main
ride. A hunt servant as a looker-on is always a pleasing sight.
He is a very boy on a holiday. No one so keen, no one so
appreciative. The only parallel I know is a playactor
scrutinising a first night from the stalls.
The value and whereabouts of the deer was now the conun-
drum which the tufters were given the task of elucidating.
One hound was shortly stopped on a doe. The other couple
then gave sharp chase to something unknown, but seen from a
HUNTING THE WILD FALLOW DELI!. 443
distance to break in a fitting direction. Some yeomen foresters
dismounted, pipe in mouth, to deliberate aloud, and in west
■country tongue, upon the sandgraven slot — giving it as their
opinion that 'twas a small pricket or else a doe. But this
testimony did not appear in evidence. The afternoon was
waning, and orders were given that the pack should be laid on.
This upon the road twixt Ringwoocl and Romsey — near the
sixth milestone, if I remember right, from the former place.
Whatever the deer was, it had not gone more than a few
minutes ; so there was every chance of a scent and likelihood
of a run. Quietly they were unbuckled, and quietly carried to
the line. They wanted no telling of what was in prospect, but
at once dashed at their work with the eagerness of highbred
foxhounds and the readiness of taught staghounds — a pack, too,
be it remembered, that is accustomed to taste blood almost
every time it goes out.
Swinging into the trail at their second fling, they caught the
direction in a moment, and were away at high speed over the
smooth moorland, till they struck the timber at Sluflers, and
threw their tongues heartily under the trees. Their deer had
waited for them ; and pace and chorus grew hot as they dashed
after him or her, unantlered ; while we rode and zigzagged our
best through the hollow pine-wood. Out over a boundary
bank and ditch, down into the little valley and across the
streamlet, up the yonder slope in deadly fear of rumoured bog.
They who know the country may afford to ride for point ; a
stranger's only chance is to keep hounds in view as long as he
can — or surrender all individuality of action from first to last.
Providence, too, generally grants immunity to the ignorant —
and is forbearing to those who trust her. Have we not seen
it in many a hunting field and on many an occasion besides ?
Ah ! Here it is : now we are in it : too late to go back, yet
evident peril ahead ! Flounder and struggle — prayer and
imprecation. Hold up, old fellow ; we are safely out. Lucky
you know how 'tis to be done. A Leicestershire horse might
Lave been lying there now. The yellow moss wasn't visible
444
FOX -HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
two strides away. (Those are trying moments when the
heather seems to vanish before your gallop, when you look in
vain for tuft and hassock, and when nothing remains but to
« hold your breath — and the head of your struggling beast as he
1 . ! :
/writ ''//*/< '
»>v)\,
isr
^m
U. « -/'
plunges into the green, dank morass. How grateful you feel to-
him and to the directing cherub, who watches over the cross-
country rider and his fortunes quite as staunchly as over
seafaring Jack, when a last heave and a final gasp land you»
once more upon heather firma !) In a few minutes we were in
Bolderwood, one of the highest and most picturesque of the-
Inclosures, and a favourite point of excursion from Lyndhurst
and other tourist-centres. At the present moment a coach had
just driven up, and deposited its load for their picnic. Hounds;
and deer were soon again in sight as we galloped on ; and our
progress was now among the dark rides of the woodland. To-
shorten my story, it will be enough to tell that our deer, a
young pricket, broke his foreleg as he jumped the high railings-
to turn back towards the open ; and that a few minutes later
hounds pulled him down within the coverts.
GRASS COUNTRIES.
Season 1889—1890.
a memorable winter.
A FLUTTER FROM ALFORD THORNS.
The Pytchley once again in full flower. Saturday with this
pack at Clipston, has left in my brain one of those quick -
fleeting memories that I love to rehearse upon paper, that
belong to the Shires, and of which my regular readers (if I
possess any such) must have had more than their fill during the
years in which I have thus caught at incident in its course, and
thrown it by handfuls in their long-suffering faces. You are
•a fox-hunter — and thus indulgent, you know ; and you love to
feel the stir of the chase, the vigour of a ride to hounds. And
here is such to be found — I mean not in one Hunt, but where-
•ever good grass and honest fences form the basis upon which
fox and hounds are called upon to work and men are invited to
ride. I'll cut off the beginning of my little tale of to-day, and
set you going half a mile from Alfoi'd Thorns, with a bad start,
a flying scent, and hounds almost out of sight. The showers of
a troubled night have left the grass wet and slippery, for another
still, misty day ; and steep, sloping turf, gives you a greasy
welcome as you dash into a gully, and take the handgate grate-
fully from an old friend * — whose absence from the last month's
gallops has been as the loss of an eye to the prow of a junk
(simile more fitting than elegant). " Fresh as a bridegroom
is he ; and you feel more at home as you mark his shoulders go
* Mr. Gordon Cunard.
446 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
up, and grasp of his whip shorten six inches towards the thong.
Tis business now. John has just turned from a five-foot rail —
not because he found any fault with it, but because the young
one declined to cope. But he has a gate swung, and you are
greatly obliged to the young one. Fifty acres and another
gate : fifty acres more towards Waterloo Gorse, and yet another
gate — also Mr. John Bennett, on one of the thoroughbreds, not
big enough for Newmarket or Doncaster ; and the pack are
glinting in front, speeding faster than horseflesh. Rightward
they swing from a band of footpeople, and one's head almost
whirls with the pace and the curl while we scratch through a
bullfinch, mutter hard and earnest oaths at some demon unknown
who all but caught us in his infamous wire ; then cruise down
the hedge for a loophole, and ride away hotly with a tail hound
as guide. A double, they tell me, that reaches a mile, and
jumpable only in one special spot — but this is a spot that a
fox always chooses — and safely and readily it is left behind by
some six sets of hoofs, and I know not how many more, while a
gallery of footpeople (heaven can tell whence) yell delightedly
as each horse rises and lands. There is a road from Clipstone
running westward ; and here hounds "chucked it" for a few
brief seconds, while Mr. Baring and Captain Middleton sat still
to breathe. The pack swung to it just as Goodall galloped up ;;
and the burst went on to Marston Hills, dipping downwards in
slower measure to the vale beneath. The coverts were left on
the right, and the first quarter of an hour held the cream. But
it was some forty minutes in all before their fox was hunted into
the grounds of Marston Trussells, and into a rabbit-hole.
GRIEF WITH THE GRAFTON.
The Grafton deferred their opening day — as far as uniform
and their best country are concerned — beyond November's first
Monday.
In mufti and merriment, though, we commenced the month :.
GRIEF WITH THE GRAFTON. 447
and the first Friday of November with these hounds was cheery
in the extreme. The turf is now like a fresh-dipped sponge ;
scent hangs richly upon it, and hounds revelled on the green ;
wet ground is now a certainty, scent a probability for the open-
ing season. Already the middle ride of Plumpton Wood was
found with power to put the brake on, as we struggled up its
miry length to reach hounds and holloa at the top. We have had
many supurb hunting days of late, and into such an one had
Friday developed, after dashing storm after storm upon our
Avindow-panes, and bidding the cowardly come forth if they
dare. The rain swept by, the heavens opened ; we were glad
to cast waterproofs to second horsemen, or into a wayside
cottage, and the landscape displayed itself so sharp and clear
you might have viewed a fox a mile away. There were new-
comers of high degree, a field that was bent uj~>on seeing sport,
and there was the Grafton ladypack to show it them. High spirits
and sound legs prevail in November. The five months' future
has a merry look. Who cares to foresee its drawbacks, its
difficulties, or its disappointments ? Get away ; hark, hark 1
The ladies are gone
" Where music dwells,
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die ; "
the horn is ringing its sharpest command; and there's no room
on my crupper for you, dull care.
Thus at Plumpton Wood, where were faces new to the
Grafton this autumn, to wit — Mr. Walter and Lady Doreen.
Long, Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, Messrs. H. Bourke, H. Bull, G.
Campbell, Grazebrooke, Macdounald, &c. It was too early
in the day for sandwiches ; it ought to have been too early in
the season for coffee-housing, and yet more people were left
in the wood than went out with hounds. All sorts of things
they thus missed. They missed the chance of following a
soldiers' lead into a brook, or of bringing on to him his
billycock of brown, for which he himself waited not to fish
(no such reckless extravagance next week, young sir; the
cheapest silk hat costs a guinea). They missed the opportu-
448 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIIUE.
nity of rolling into the brook field with a second horseman,
and, like him, rolling out again over the water. And they
exchanged five minutes of fun for as many of clattering
agony, while they beat the road's unsympathising surface in
their mad gallop to reach the front. This they achieved at
Grumbler's Holt, once more returned, and set forth again
from Plumpton wood ; so to the well-fenced neighbourhood of
Blakesley village. Oh ! for a stable-Aladdin, and new legs for
■old ! And, " oh ! how full of briars is this work-a-day world,"
and its ditches ! The Blakesley brook, too, a gentle stream, no
•doubt, and a tiny rivulet here and there. Then why should it
ask for a 20-foot bed, and for the shelter of a dark stake-and-
bound as it flows under the village ? Only, I ween, that it may
bring' men to shame and hoi'ses to grief. I am told that the
hunstman himself has here been caught more than once,
;and that one of our hardest and straightest has only once
wot to the other bank after counting four failures. Let these
former incidents pass, the first essayist of to-day met the usual
fate ; but fished his horse out so quietly that the next, contented
to accept the lead with such confidence as is inspired by good
example, merely drove his spurs home to make assurance
doubly sure. He said afterwards he dreamed little or nothing
•of water, till the grey mare took off a length and a half from
the fence, and the chasm gradually loomed out as they went
into upper air. Her best effort brought her barely to the
further bank. For a moment she was poised upright on her
Jiead, the girths flashed amid a blaze of white and sparkle of
iron, and the next second she completed the somersault. Now,
I regret to say on the best authority, she is poised on three
Jegs for awhile. Well, it might have been worse over wire.
This, too, had to be submitted to a while later on — not at the
same hands or heels, it is true. But the caution came home,
fhe lesson was read and bitterly digested — though no great
harm resulted now. It was in a very sharp scurry from Tite's
Copse, amid what was long held to be the prettiest patch of
ithe Grafton country — till, first, an evil spirit suggested a railway
THE WHITE TROUT. 449
being thrown across it, and, later still, this barbed invention of
the same personage came into vogue, on one side to promote
malice, on the other to pander to carelessness. The pack on
this occasion made a flying circle over the grass, nearly by
Bradden, then with a swing across the valley towards Seawell
Wood, back by Blakesley village to Tite's Copse, which they
reached in sixteen minutes, having run right away from their
field throughout. Gates, and gates only, fell to the share
of their galloping followers, till, with a bright sun in their
eyes, they approached some easy uphill fences on the way
back. The wire rang out like a banjo as three horses rose at a
hedge together. Mr. Campbell and his black horse were flung
into the next field, while two other couples kept their legs with
a struggle. The wire was so hidden by sun and thorn that
others who came next would scarcely accept the warning of
shout and clamour, and almost rode open-eyed to their fate.
Yet the farmer meant them no harm. " A capital fellow " they
say he is ; and only wanting his memory jogged. Such in-
stances await us on all sides. Too many good fellows are
asleep ; and the awakening may come with a terrible casualty
at their doors. Now, in the next five minutes hounds had
raced two foxes to ground — the pack dividing, and both sections
chasing in view. So the day ended.
THE WHITE TROUT
Suddenly the snow faded away and the season re-opened on
Monday with a southerly wind and a cloudy sky — and with a
glad warmth that sent one to covert in a glow of content,
surprise, and anticipation. Frost and idleness had lasted long
enough to make the outlook oppressive, the present tedious,
and the future gloomy. " Quiet to quick bosoms is a hell ; "
and a sluggish existence, so sudden and so early, was almost
unbearable.
But of Monday — a different tale. The Grafton enlivened
o u
450 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the reawakening to a fitting tune. They had met at Maidford ;
and, after minor episode, had set a ringing fox to ground with
an hour's work — while men and women freely bestrewed the
half-thawed earth, and half-a-day satisfied half the field. Then
ensued an hour's real gallop, the better of which they will
scarcely see this }rear. They found their fox in Tite's Copse —
the staunch little planting by Blakesley — and towards the
latter village he broke as the only way open to make his way
over the pastures to Brad den — scent and pace all that could
be wished ; fences few and gates many. An angel in disguise
of corduroy and smock drove him back from the too customary
earths by the hamlet ; and hounds' heads were now to the
south-west, whence last night's charm had brought the wind.
So they improved occasion and even pace, till some hock-deep
arable held them lingering a moment, then leaving Tite's Copse
just on the right, they entered upon a sharp succession of wild
grassfields through which their fox might have bestridden a
galloping hack, so amiably did the gates come, while the pack
tore on for Weedon Bushes. Beneath this lies a brook, lightly
fenced, snow-swollen now, and not badly bridged. But there is
one among us to whose thirsty soul such cool waters are as
" glad tidings from a distant land." So he dipped in, but rose
refreshed, to reappear at next occasion of a hungry flood. We,
meanwhile, had risen the brow — Apthorpe's village spire now
prominent on our left — crossed another road, and had gone
westward still, more rapidly than even emigration's flow. A
miniature field had remained, or the little gates had been
choked. Hitherto it had been nearly all galloping and gate-
shoving — proficiency in which double duty (no mean capability
either) has been said to be as of the arm and whip, rather than
as of the heart and spur. This matters not. It was a gay
gallop ; and had the devil been offered the hindmost, he could
scarcely have poached on the foremost.
Thus up the valley, past Weedon Bushes and 'twixt Weston
and Wappenham, where we struck a brook at its angle. Some
three men went straight on, to accept the swollen difficulty as
THE WHITE TROUT. 451
it came — Avhile hounds (and others) bent rightward, and the
brook came again. Very yellow, very rapid — ordinarily very
small, to-day very assertive — was the swift running streamlet ;
while horses had forty minutes and a fortnight's frost now
telling upon them. Mr. G. Barrett — already penalised seven
pounds with a cropper over some strong timber near Bradden
village — didn't hesitate. Others did — while he gallantly worked
out the contrast between hard ash rails and soft snow-water.
Never mind ; he landed — and the rest looked for something
better. They hoped for it, it seems, from knowledge of a
narrow channel through which the water was wont to run only
six feet wide. But the water was all abroad to-day. Mr. Fuller
found the place but couldn't find the bottom : so his plucky
example only served as a warning to the others. From the
rear now rode the resurrectionist * (I know him well enough to
anticipate his pardon) and by way of annulling the ill effects
of one ducking bade his wood horse face the chances of another.
Again he took a fall, though not a ducking this time — and yet
no key was found. So far from personal observation. Now
for the hateful pronoun I. But / comes in handy, when some-
body has to instance misadventure. When I make a fool of
myself (no uncommon occurrence, I grant) I can deal with / as
I choose. Well, I was averse to remaining there. Wistfully I
glanced for the huntsman's directing form, but he too was for
the moment nonplussed on the bank. So, with a fat mare and
a fainting heart, I took the plunge — for hounds were already a
furlong away, fairly laughing at us with their merry cackle. I
hated to get in ; but I should have hated myself far worse had
I turned away. Or, to put it otherwise, I hadn't the pluck to
funk though I would. You shall hear it out — for it is from
fool's mishaps that men become wise.
The steeper bank was on the side of the hounds : the mare
could not climb it ; and all hope of progress was dashed to the
waters. The little band of horsemen — intent on their own
* Mr. C. Adamtlnvaite.
G G 2
452 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIFJE.
escape — had hurried on up stream in search of a bridge (which,
by the same token, they found only a field further on !) — and I,
like " the last rose of summer," was " left blooming- alone." One
young gentleman, to do him justice, came back, and had a flick
at the mare with his lash. But, finding this of no avail, he
gladly availed himself of the invitation to go on. A rustic
stood on the farther bank — but the mare of course had to be
got back whence she came. " Capital — so glad of your help !
Get over quick, and here's half-a- crown." The rustic forthwith
ran up and down the bank like a terrier seeking for water-rats ;
and the mare meanwhile subsided like a dead log, as blown
horses in water always will. " Get over, you fool ! She's
drowning ! " — and with a one-legged hop I placed myself on
the shore whereon I meant to beach her. But Rusticus stayed
where he was ; and neither entreaty nor plain speaking would
make him venture the water. He merely scratched his head,
and shook it, murmuring " I'd be watchered (Anglice, wetted),
I ca'ant joomp that fur." From entreaty I went to objurgation ;
and, as the mare played dolphin in the deep water — hemmed
in, too, by bushes growing on either bank — I grew angry, and
sinned. In a state of fury almost excusable, I emptied my
vocabulary (no slender one, but enriched from travel in many
countries) at his cowardly head — till horrified and terror-struck
he slunk off and disappeared. Now came another phase of the
situation. The afternoon was fast closing in ; and all around
was solitude and silence, save for the chirping of the busy pack
as — not half a mile away — they hunted backwards and forwards
on a tired and dodging fox. Slipping one stirrup leather round
her neck, and lengthening my hold with the other, I hauled the
mare's languid head on to terra firma ; and then proceeded to
review the position. The watch told me it w7as now close upon
4 p.m. — the date being near the shortest of days — and it was
forty-five minutes since we had left Tite's Copse. Not a living
soul within sight ; the evening still and dark and warm ; good
day for a wetting, anyhow. Let me see, how much did she cost
me ? Halloa, there's a man cutting a hedge only three hundred
THE WHITE TROUT.
453
yards away. Hey, you ! Now for a view holloa. He's sure to
hear : or, who knows, perhaps it may fetch hounds back for
news of their fox ! Tally ho ! Yoi ! ! Yoi ! ! ! Help, you fool.
Why the fellow's deaf ! Of course he was deaf — did you ever
know a man mending a hedge or a road who wasn't ? He
never moved, nor even looked up from his work ! In sheer
despair I soused the mare's head under water ; and implored
her by all her ancestry and by the soul of St. Patrick to make
an effort. She made one, or two — then subsided lower than
ever ; and I played her by the bridle as if she were a great
white trout. Again I lifted up my voice, and holloaed — I
think I should have wept, had not I been so angered with
Rusticus and his base cowardice. I holloaed to the rising
moon, I holloaed to the dim grey horizon, and 1 bawled to the
unknown distance. And the latter at length gave succour. A
whole village-full of wreckers suddenly dashed into view,
bringing at least willing hands and sturdy hearts. Six men on
to the stirrup-leathers ; a crack with the whip, a pull all
together — and the mare was on her legs on the turf, her back
454 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
up and every fibre quivering ; but alive. A quart of hot ale
and a handful of ginger quickly brought back the circulation :
and so ends my tale of woe. Their fox escaped to ground.
Time, just an hour. Some people prominent in the run were
Lord Alfred Fitzroy, Mrs. Simpson, Messrs. Adamthwaite,
G. Barrett, Byass, Cazenove, Craven, Grazebrook, Jarvis, Onslow,
Sandham, Thursby, Vaughan- Williams, Captains Faber and
Orr Ewing.
THE BLACK FOX OF BERRY DALE.
I am often asked, is it not a trouble and an effort to write of
sport that is past ? Is it not like paying a tailor's bill when the
clothes are worn out ? No, and for every reason. 'Tis a posi-
tive, eager luxury thus to go over events — delightful events —
recently happened. I pay for the clothes while they are new
and fresh. Take to-day, Friday, December 13. Do you sup-
pose I would sink it in my dinner, or throw it aside with the
boots that are soiled, or send it to the wash as draggled linen,
to come up as the washerwoman of chance and of fate may
permit ? Far from it ; let me bore others as long as they will
stand it ; as long as the tree will bear fruit ; as long as the fruit
in these precarious times is permitted to grow and to ripen.
What would life be without uncertainty ? Unbearable. Were
there no dismal times how could happiness (its contrast state)
ever supervene ? Why, yesterday nine out of ten of us were
down with the influenza of frost, and all prospect of hunting
seemed limited to the chase of the microbe. See what there
has been to-day, and how we come out of it — swearing by fox-
hunting and averring that life is after all a bright and lovable
thing ! A sufficient dinner, a light cigar, and — let me whisper
it. as one who might be greybearded but for the razor — barley
water for an after quench : tell me there is no fun in going
over a run a second time ? My dear fellow, a time will come
when you or I would give a month's income for even such an
after taste.
THE BLACK FOX OF BERRYDALE. 455
Frost had gone, and the Pytchley had come to Maidwell.
Twenty minutes were given to our hosts. Then for Berry dale
and a black-red fox afoot soon after half-past eleven. The
thaw astonished Northamptonshire. London had heard nothing
of it. So a score of riders made the meet, and three score the
day's field.
But let us get on, over the green brow whereon the sheep
had already bunched up together ere the black fox passed.
Straggling out, men and hounds, from the hillside copse. Do
you notice that the dog hounds — of each and every pack, I
mean — never tumble out so blithely, or drive into it so viciously
at starting, as do the sharper sex. In my ignorance I murmured
for a mile or two, " There is only a quarter of a scent," while we
rode the Cottesbrooke estate. But dog hounds, once together
and once in fling, can kill a fox on a fair scenting day with
more certainty than the little ladies, so say the huntsmen, and
so am I, an outsider, bound to concur. Within Cottesbrooke's
green sweeping basin, we are prone to think ourselves swim-
ming within a circle — working within a mystic ring as it were
— just as one's eyesight can be spun round by Pears' magical
red radiant in the puzzle which, with so many other devices,
goes to advertise his soap. Well, men forgot the basin and its
environs to-day, and they rode the well-fenced arc rather than
the gates. Scent warmed, the pack were well in front, and the
black fox within distance. Before Purser's Hill he was to be
seen streaking across the valley, while hounds drove on his line,
and we trotted across to regain first wind. Over the next hill-
top and " into the country " northward, John and Mr. Jameson
demonstrating the said country to be more easy than it looked.
"How did it ride to Hazlebeech?" " Excellently, my lord ,:
(eighteen minutes). And more excellently still Hazlebeech, in
a half circle to Scotland Wood (thirty minutes). And yet by
the way he touched the fowlhouses of Hazlebeech one might
have thought he was a dying fox. He was only seeking the
evergreen squire. Finding him not, he displayed the next valley
to such substitutes as he could find to wit, those above-named,
45G FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
with, among others, Mr. Gordon-Cunard, on a novice (but a
priest's novice, from Ireland), Messrs. Pender (on the old hog-
raaned brown from Lord Lonsdale's ante-polaric stud), Harford
(on a chestnut four-year-old with a few snaffles in his mouth),
De Trafford, Sheriffe, Harford, F. Langham, Captain Atherton,
Miss Hanbury, Miss Czarnikov (with apologies for unwittingly
forgetting to give place aux dames). This part of the gallop
was across a charming — not a trifling, but quite a possible, quite
a shire country. It would have been big with a lesser scent.
Thus thirty minutes took us to Scotland Wood. A blown fox
could not stay a moment, but hounds came right through with
his line by the main ride, while we clustered rather too close to
them, and a holloa was going shrilly in the field across the road.
Half a dozen cold fallows served to cool matters down for a few
minutes, but the pack kept holding the line in spite of other
holloas on their right till Goodall took them in hand and made
his fox good beyond the wooded dell of Maid well Dale.
Forty-seven minutes, and e'en better, believe me, than '47
port. Goodall had a death-grip on the black fox now, for all
the steel was out of him, and his last struggles were to be on
good scenting grass. The doomed one gained nothing by touch-
ing Berrydale, except to complete his circle. Hounds dashed
through it into the green basin again, and drove him towards
Brixworth. A wide second ditch turned loose two of the best
horses, and set afoot two of the best men of the Pytchley Hunt.
But the little bay mare * looks for such a catastrophe about twice
a season, and accepts it ungrudgingly on each occasion as acci-
dent unavoidable — the necessary lot of one who is called to
tempt Providence so many times a day. And " more power to
your bright eyes, lady fair ! Sure it was Irish taching that
brought you over the double-lep as it should be done." Three
more great grass fields, and we were by Cottesbrooke Hall. The
pack went clamouring and scrambling over the wall by the rec-
tory, shouting aloud, as it were, for the prince of foxhunting
* Mr. Jameson's.
A REMARKABLE WEEK. 457
churchmen. But echo only answered Where, and the field, now
gathered and reformed (the last word in a military not in a
penitentiary sense), went on together to the next palish, that
of Creaton. Here our fox was crawling into a garden, and
whose should that garden be but that of the talented author of
the Pytchley Cookery Book ! Sixteen couple of hungry guests
rushed in, and then and there was served up a dish dainty
enough to set before a kino — a ragout of the black fox of
Berrydale. An hour and twenty minutes it had taken in the
cooking. Now we wiped our foreheads, and said a hearty
grace.
A REMARKABLE WEEK.
Dec. 19th, 1889. — Read as little of the following as you
choose, as much as you will. It has been my fortunate lot to
see sport in the last four days that might fairly suffice a month,
and that alone might make a season memorable. The Grafton,
the North Warwickshire, the Pytchley, and the Warwickshire
have made their mark in turn, for our grateful benefit, as you
may see crudely sketched below.
Sport every Monday is the present happy lot of the Grafton,
and consequently of all who have the luck to hunt with them
on their Weedon side. Monday, Dec. 16, was marked by a
fifty-five minutes' gallop over the best of their ground ; as 1
will sketch briefly to-night in its turn, before three other packs
and their doings in succession shall have clouded my chronicle.
A warm morning, and a great good field, first witnessed the
killing of a brace of foxes on the Fawsley estate — over which
we galloped to full content of ourselves and first horses. To
complete the day, the glorious lady pack (there is no exaggera-
tion in the epithet) was taken on to Knightley Wood — and
were drawn out at 3.] 5. Home, of course ! Mantel's Heath
cut down, and nothing nearer than Canon's Ashby to draw.
The five minutes' deliberation was broken in upon by the best
of interruptions. Hark, holloa! Hark holloa!! An old fox
458 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
had stolen away at the bottom ; but had reckoned without his
host, the second whip. There had been a passable — no, a
galloping — scent all day. In the cool of the evening hounds
had a hold on their fox wherever he went, and wherever he
turned. And this fox was a good and bold one. I fancy
to-day's run was better even than the previous Monday's. I
will make my sketch mainly for local reading ; and local men
shall judge. Hounds settled admirably — free and unshackled
along the grass valley beneath Mantel's Heath. Indeed,
throughout, this gallant fox held his way over chosen ground —
taking the middle of the grass fields, and at length shaking off
his tormentors by beating horses rather than hounds. In the
fast early mile or two, who was more prominent at the tail of
the pack, tell me, than that tiny girl on the tiny grey pony ?
" Can't steer him ; I must go," she explained happily, as she
spun over the fences and twisted through the gates. A more
astonishing performance I never witnessed. This was while
the pack flew the valley between the villages of Farthingstone
and Litchborough. Then they turned uphill for Maidford
Wood — and the field squeezed its way through an orchard
which was also a great black refuse-bog. No chaff on this
occasion, please, gentlemen. Some mischances are too serious,
and too exhausting, for laughter. Ah, what a boon is good-
fellowship and unselfishness ! He is a true Christian who
helps another from the Slough of Despond.
Maidford Wood was tempting, one would have thought ; but
our stout fox, like Gallio, cared for none of these things. He
shied away from it, to keep on the turf, and to leave Maidford
Village just on his left. The Maidford Brook was forded —
one at a time, which is a painful dilatory process, except for
the first man. Running on- — a capital pace, but no positive
race — hounds passed to the right of Adstone Village, and went
on to the railway about half-way between Plumpton Wood
and Canons Ashby, when they suddenly divided, and it was a
matter of luck whether you were caught tripping to the fresh
line or held forward with the acknowledged chase. In either
A REMARKABLE WEEK. 459
case you had time to join in after Plumpton Wood, and to put
in appearance at the check beyond Grumbler's Holt, there to
join a steaming and dismounted group. I fear that Mr.
Stevens's smart little grey jumped his last fence about this
period — for they tell of a broken back at a wide yonder ditch.
To the check was fifty minutes by the watch, and over six
miles by the ruler on the map (extreme points). For five
minutes more they ran hard. But at Western Spinney a brace
of foxes were just before them ; horses were nearly at a stand-
still, and night was drawing in apace. So Beers decided to
give in to his fox, though holloas were going loudly in the
village of Weedon Lois close by. A splendid run, with never a
check — altogether over deep wet grass — and completing, as an
unexpected windfall, a fine day's sport. Some thirty people
saw the run — among them Lord Alfred Fitzroy, Mr. and Mrs.
Douglas-Pennant, Mrs. Byass, Lord Capell, Baron M. de Tuyll,
Major Riddell, Messrs. Campbell, Fuller, Thursby, Jarvis,
Adamthwaite, Church, Vaughan, Rhodes, St. Ives, Jenner,
Shepperd, Weatherby, Geddes. By the way, may I — as one no
longer subject to the majesty of military law — venture to
query, Are not the powers-that-be keeping the soldiers
unusually tight ? Of the Standing Orders of 1889 I know
nothing. But I do remember to have heard what the Iron
Duke said, and what the Royal Duke of the present day holds,
about fox-hunting and its advantages. I know full well also
that the Weedon training seldom falls to man's lot twice in a
lifetime.
Now for " the timely dew of sleep." But I can't help wishing
we had seen that fox brushed. I fear we changed by Plumpton
Wood.
On Tuesday, Dec. 17, the North Warwickshire were at
Clifton, by Rugby ; and sport continued. The thermometer
stood at about 50°, and scent was warm as ever. An immense
field appeared to include representatives from nearly every
Hunt in the kingdom. Suffice it to mention as pleasant
instances Lord Ribblesdale and Count Zborowski, the latter
4G0
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
bent on drawing his own comparisons between Northampton-
shire and Leicestershire. Then, Clifton being almost at the
junction point of three counties and three adjoining Hunts,
the Master may be said to-day to have been catering for at
least half the natives of the Midlands. (The parallel of
Barnum holding his three great shows in one arena naturally
suggests itself, but would be less graceful than apropos.)
The afternoon saw quite a bright gallop from Cook's Gorse,
and bore out what has just been said about scent — for hounds
could turn with a fox that twisted, and then force him afield
whether he liked it or not. From Cook's Gorse they spun
sharply over the fields, at first towards Willoughby, then after
crossing the brook (which we bridged) swept leftward toward
Hilmorton, till they rose Barby Hill. Excellent fences, and
just pace enough for testing or teaching a young one — all
except that jump on to a canal towing-path, which had too
much of the Mayne-Reid and Indian horsemanship flavour to
be altogether welcome to the timid fox-hunter. They made
Braunston Cleaves in some thirty-five minutes ; and there
A REMARKABLE WEEK. 401
their fox probably got to ground. A pretty gallop, men said —
and so say I. Surprisingly well the turf rides now ; and so
will it, I hope, continue.
Wednesday, Dec. 18. — Fifty of us are happy to-night over
the Pytchley gallop from Swinford Old Covert. Lord Braye
found us a gay fox and a gallant arena ; and we one and all (I
can answer gratefully for one) cracked a bottle in his honour
to-night as blithely as we cracked his good ash rails this after-
noon. Forty-five minutes hard running, and a kill — a run that
most of us could see, and all who saw will treasure, as forming
part of an extraordinary week (we are only half through it yet,
and have scarcely begun to count casualties). I must be brief,
though I would fain be lengthy, and would for my own sake
love to spell it out again field by field. Swinford Old Covert
is a little thicket, having river and railway to southward. Fox
and hounds went for the water and the iron road, and carried a
following after them — till the water, this being the young Avon.
We meanwhile — i.e. the less courageous and such as pride our-
selves on knowledge of country (often the most dangerous and
littlest of knowledge) — went for the hard road and the station
crossing. The hound followers were for the moment cornered —
all but one, a stranger whose name no one ever learned, and
who retired ere the lists were ended and the laurel wreath was
ready for presentation. Like the black knight of Ivanhoe, this
darkly clad horseman won his triumphs and cared not to claim
acknowledgment from the proven adversaries he had fairly
vanquished. To the skirters of the road there was given a
gallant sight — a single rider bearing down upon the river's
unjumpable breadth. The water flew up in foam and spray
two fathoms high, as horse and man went under. Next
moment on the green bank rose the pair, dripping but un-
separated — their feat achieved and honour sustained. Who
was the bold stranger who thus set the Pytchley field and left
us wondering, admiring, and envying ? All honour to him, say
all of us.
The rest of the hound-division, meanwhile, had struck a ford
462
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and broken its guard-rail. Terrible confusion, some language,
and some delay the steeplechaser made, I am told. And all
came together at the railway crossing or after the next fifty
acres, when hounds hovered a few seconds at the first whole-
some oxer. (I never forget a fence, I must interpolate. I can
go back to this fence for one of my very earliest reminiscences
— and still see Charles Payn, Captain English, Rev. W. Benn,
and Mr. R. Fell owes, all taking it in their stride, but everyone
leaving a pair of hind legs behind him. For, unaltered to this
day, it has its first ditch, its hedge and ox-rail, and then its
second ditch. Yet I saw no loose horses thereat this afternoon,
for the timber broke honestly, after Mr. Goodwin and his bay
rnare had left it intact, and the farther ditch was well cattle-
poached. For Heaven's sake don't clean it out, my lord, against
our next coming !) The following fence, if I remember right,
was very much akin ; but the rail only yielded to the weight of
threescore years and a short-backed sorrel. (How these fathers
of families forget their responsibilities, when hounds really run,
A REMARKABLE WEEK. 463
and when they don't mean the said responsibilities shall take
the shine out of them !) Hounds were now racing up the sweet
flat valley for Kilworth Station, along a narrowed area we often
cross but seldom follow. John turned aside with hounds across
an ugly reeded bottom. Others willingly elected to ride parallel,
and to lift three easy-swinging latches. They swooped on the
scene now by the score. Yet everyone seemed at top speed ;
and three fences hence they tackled another sterling and liberal
oxer to a wider front than, I think, I ever saw granted to the
old sweet combination. ('Tis such an enticing contrast, in its
open ruggedness, to the almost invisible snare of modern devil-
ment.) Believe me, sirs, the Pytchley is a riding field. Yet
there was no crowd, and very little pressing upon the hounds —
after twelve o'clock to-day. Goodall begged for his hounds a
moment's grace as they crossed the canal by a bridge, under the
Fishpond Spinney of Hemplow ; and we rose the great hill with
all the vigour we could now muster (sixteen minutes from start-
ing, and every horse breathing almost audibly against his
girths).
The crest of the hill this good fox kept, while hounds made
never a halt — nor did they even when he crossed over and took
the Cold Ashby road for a mile, despairingly turned to the hill
again, and zigzagged to Welford. There was still ample fun
and the hardest of running, though description is limited to the
northern neighbourhood of Welford's long village. Scent to
view, and they killed the old fox very handsomely at the
Naseby end of the parish in question. The very last minutes
provided a strange necessity — not altogether unpleasurable, if
the instance of seventeen stone from Market Harboro may be
taken as legal evidence — to wit, the jumping of three fair brooks
at fifty yards interval one from another, and the jumping of one
of them back again. Certainly I for one never saw four pieces
of water negotiated in the Shires in immediate sequence of any
sort. Have I made myself clear ? This was a very fast run,
with no positive check, and over first-rate country — full of
enjoyment for all hands, and one that will help to glorify the
464 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
week, to add a leaf to the rapidly-increasing Pytchley wreath,
and to mark a winter notable for scent and sport. In the hasty
pencillings of an after-dinner sketch, the following names come
readily — most or all of whose owners were well in the run,
and who will well serve to illustrate a Pytchley field of 1889.
Others there were of course, but memory is a feeble staff to
lean upon, and especially feeble when the morrow is demanding
preparatory rest — Lord Spencer, the Duchess of Hamilton, Lord
Braye, Lord Erskine, Mr. and Mrs. Cross, Mr. and Mrs. Dalglish,
Mr. and Mrs. Simson, Mr. and Mrs. Kennard, Mr. and Miss
Ozarnikow, Mrs. Byass (notably to the fore on her chesnut
Harlequin), Mrs. Garnett, Miss Howard, Mrs. Pender, Miss
Langham, Miss Naylor, Mrs. Jones, Mr. and Miss Hanbury,
Miss Hargreaves, Miss Gilchrist, Majors Cosmo Little and
Williams, Captains Atherton, Middleton, Orr-Ewing, Williams,
Messrs. Atterbury (2), Adamthwaite, Bentley Bishop, H. Bourke,
Budd, Cassell, Cazenove, J. A. Craven, Close, H. Craven, Cooper,
G. Cunard, Douglass, the veteran Elkin and son, Ford, Foster,
Gee (J. and G.), Greig, Goodwin, Gilbert, F. Hanbury, Harford,
Hibbert, Hipwell, Jameson, D. Leigh, Loder, Mills and three
redoubtable sons, Muntz, Onslow, Parnell, Rhodes, Schwabe,
SherifTe, Stevens, Wheeler, Wroughton.
Thursday, Dec. 19. — The Warwickshire at Long Itchington —
and another gallo]}, as I will race the postman to tell. They
had chopped a fox in the morning at Debdale's thorny sholah,
and had found a second in the newly restored covert of Saw-
bridge — the farmers about which are bent upon having foxes
in their midst, let times be what they may. And it is a district
indeed for the game — this beautiful Warwickshire vale — level
and wild, grass growing and slenderly inhabited. But with to-
day's fox Ave could do little — except tumble about — this chiefly
by reason of a trebly built hedge-and-ditch-compound surviving
from some past century. But it was a Grandborough farmer
who rode it into shape for us — as he is ready to do wherever
occasion demands. From the Welsh Road Gorse the run came
off — a run that for direction reminded one strongly of a prece-
MERRY CHRISTMAS. 465
dent of five years back. A fox left readily — instantly — for the
Vale. And now the earth had warmed again from last night's
rime. A substantial field remained, though quite half its
number had retired— and the former were bent on a ride.
Well, if hounds hadn't room for the next fifteen minutes, it
was for no lack of pace on their part ; for it seemed to me they
had half a field to the good all the way. And such a country !
Equal to the best of yesterday — not timbered so strongly ; but
exacting enough in its blackthorn strength, though ever practic-
able. What a thud men make on the turf when they fail at
this speed ! and how tough must the human frame be to stand
such resounding shock ! (Dine yourselves sparingly and steam
your ribs warmly to-night, my two friends !) Thus to the
Southam and Shuckburgh road and across it towards Stockton
— the chief leaders being the Master, Messrs. B. Hanbury,
Goodman, Schwabe, Greig, and two or three more. There was
a minute's check on the banks of Napton Reservoir ; then the
lady pack went on of themselves by Calcot Gorse, and by them-
selves across the canal to Shuckburgh Hill. To follow them,
we had to cross the canal first by a drawbridge, afterwards by a
right or left de'tour — hounds running hard ahead for the east
end of the Hill, and completely round it for the Hall. Thirty-
five minutes to a check near here — more hunting, through the
wood and to Flecknoe and back, for another half-hour. A
delightful burst and an excellent hunt — how it ended I shall
only learn at to-morrow's covert-side. Motto for the day —
" Open rebuke is better than secret love."
MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Not the least happy part of all in my day's hunting is the
look-back of the after-dinner cigar. I would almost as soon
muse the day over then as ride it again ; or twice as soon as
talk it again. By myself I can draw my own retrospect, and
run through the salient points of what I have seen, with no
u H
466 FOX-EOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
side-issues to distract and no discussions to interrupt. What
you jumped, what / jumped. What a wonderful horse I rode ;
what amount of attention courtesy demands that I should ex-
tend, or pretend to extend, to you before I proceed to pour
further marvellous experiences of my own into your unwilling
ears. These considerations have no place in the dreamer's
bright vision. They belong to the pleasant surface — foam
brought into being by the flow of converse and the outpour of
comment, and that sparkles momentarily as the glass it accom-
panies. To the dreamer — given the needed solitude — the whole
panorama comes again, vivid, unclouded, and in sequence, as in
action it appeared to him — differently enough, possibly, from
how it appeared to you. In the fragrant dream of this Christ-
mas Eve — drowsy and slack though the day's downpour has
left me — I can twist and turn through this familiar country,
recall its hound work, its huntsman work, its field-play, its
features and its incidents, far more closely and at far greater
length than I should dare inflict upon you. I can see that
dripping crowd — not a great, but a very fitting, fashionable, and
representative little crowd — mustered at the edge of Crick's
classical covert.
A fox had been found ; but the fox wanted to go exactly
where late arrivals were coming from (and if you remember the
rain torrents of Tuesday morning, you will grant there was
excuse for late arriving). The poor brute sallied forth twice, to
be twice beaten back : and on a third occasion he was chased
home for his life by a black sheep-dog. How murderously we
felt towards that villanous col ley ! But even the best whip in
England can seldom wind his thong properly round these mar-
plot lurchers. A rare-hearted one was the Crick fox — a credit
to his surroundings, and to the farmers who have made hunting
possible and pleasurable again in this old-world paradise. For
— poetry and exaggeration apart — if all we have seen and half
we have been told be true, the Crick country may well be titled
the " land of lost gods and godlike men." And we "no-account
men " may well be happy and proud to take our pleasure in it
MERRY CHRISTMAS. 407
again. The wire is all down, and the covert holds. To-day's
fox, then, yet made good his way into the country from out the
thorn thicket. By this time we had nearly lost hope of a run ;
but soon were squeezing our way over the dangers of a broken
bridge into the Watling Street, where the Old Road runs green
and neglected through fields. And he followed it for a mile,
then turned across a pretty flat for his old direction, Crick
village and beyond. This beyond was eventually Watford
Gorse ; and to get there we had a jovial Christmas ride, where-
in hounds ran just fast enough at right times and the little
world seemed full of go. A Merry Christmas indeed, indeed.
No use have we for the old man in frost and icicles, for skates
and for sledges, and such like polar barbarities, or for idle
gluttony and patent pills. " A Green Christmas " may mean
" a full churchyard," though for the life of me I can't see why
— and of a verity it will not be of hunting-men for yet awhile.
They seemed to have tried hard for a place, too, some of those
who rode from Crick to Watford Gorse and thence to Win wick
Warren — if muddied backs and crumpled hats were anv testa-
ment to rashness. In no single case, I can aver, could blame be
attached to the horse ! For, with assertion pronounced and
instantaneous, came answer invariable to the query " Are you
hurt ? " — the formula " It wasn't the horse's fault at all, I
assure you." All the world's a mart : at least all the Grass
Countries are.
Whether a fresh fox, or not, from Watford Gorse I cannot
say. But he made the route to Winwick Warren very enjoy-
able, and dispersed for us all the drawbacks of a tempestuous
day. On arrival we were dry : and, soon after, having made
up our minds quite a quarter of an hour earlier than the per-
severing huntsman we were busy with the sandwich-boxes.
" Luncheon " they call it nowadays, as well warranted by the
leather edifices that rise up, drink-and-food containing, half
way to a second-horseman's shoulder-blades. A fortnight ago I
chanced to take out for his first day's hunting a youth from
school. The day at an end I asked him what he had seen.
II H 2
468 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
" Ob, everything, till they stopped in the middle of the day for
luncheon " he put it — adding, to prove that he had done his
duty and to put in a claim to my approval, " I went on in the
afternoon too, till the mare couldn't gallop any more." I have
only to add of this Pytchley Tuesday that the fox to Winwick
Warren beat us last week on the neighbouring ploughs ; and
Tuesday afternoon did nothing further, than bid us be thankful
for our open Christmastide.
THE PLACE WHERE THE OLD HORSE DIED.
Saturday, Dec. 21. — Hunting is not all frolic. Still less is it
all smooth sailing, or unbroken reliable gladness. Like all ex-
citements, it has its blacker moments — so black that all light is
for a while eclipsed, and the sun of existence is temporarily hid.
Mere discomfort, such as Friday's, when, wet and cold, we went
through the greater part of the day in positive physical pain, is
regarded only as variety — as one of the forms in which we elect
to take our pleasure. But now and again a blow falls, a cata-
strophe steps in that curdles all the milk of happiness we have
lately so contentedly swallowed as our natural food. Ah, well,
such blows have many degrees of weight, and it is good philo-
sophy at all times for the smitten one to straighten his back,
and to protest as cheerfully as he may : " It might have been
worse." But I defy any man — who is a man — to go to bed
without a heartache, under whose knees a favourite horse has
that day come to the ground for ever. He may gloss over the
pain that he won't acknowledge, while others are there to see
and to sympathise (for foxhunting brotherhood is a very kindly
tie). He may talk of the fortune of war, of a usual average of
one dead horse a season, and of the old hunter having long ago
paid for himself. He may even turn with no diminished force
to the meal of the evening and to the pleasing distraction of
laugh and converse. But he is a harder brute than I am if he
does not wake in the night to a vision of the old horse's up-
THE PLACE WHERE THE OLD HORSE DIED. 469
turned imploring head ; or if ho is not haunted for many a
day by the memory of the agonised, wondering, eye, appealing
to him for help he could not give, and that seemed to beseech
him not to move away, as he left the scene while another fired
the miserable shot. A really bold, a really generous horse is
not under one every day — let the exchequer be ever so well
supported, or the stud ever so carefully and lavishly compiled.
A horse for whom no fence is a terror, but for whom timber,
water, and blackthorn have a like fascination, for whom hounds
seldom run too fast, and whom other horses can never pound
(riders being willing and equal), is priceless 'property, I tell
you, to a man who loves a fast run and rejoices in a grass
country. It is not a little debt to owe you, old Hercules, that
you carried me as a nurse would carry a crippled baby, when I
clung to you across the Boddington Vale — in that best of gallops
last winter with the Bicester — and when a crushed limb and a
bed-enfeebled frame was your burden and responsibility. We
came through it all right, old fellow ; God bless you for it.
(For why has not an honest horse a soul to bless, as much as
any vice-eaten man ?) And for many a thrilling gallop and for
many a forward place am I indebted to you, old horse, who
knew not the meaning of fear, but begged ever and hard at the
bridle to give you leave and liberty to go. We were caught in
a trap, old friend ; a trap that I ought to have known. The
pace and your gallantry did it. A coward would have halved
it in safety ; your pluck was strength and your doom ; but you
died within sight of the kennel, and your brave spirit shall go
with your bones, in the good cause of drive and of dash and of
killing the fox.
That daring spirit knew
The task beyond the compass of his stride,
Yet he faced it true and brave,
And dropped into his grave.
It was the double fence under Berrydale Gorse — the double
that only a week ago floored two better men, and, perhaps, one
as good horse — the little bay mare of Cold Ashby. Of course,
470 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
I can tell you no more, nor would I if I could see the paper, or
were publishers' guineas piled on it by the score this night. But
they ran back to the very " place where the old horse died," and
blew hounds out of covert just as the gun went.
THE BATTLE GROUND OF NASEBY.
The feeling uppermost in one's mind on Friday evening,
December 27, is, Thank God for a good day's hunting. If a
man could not enjoy those two cheery days, he was either
clumsy, badly mounted, or by nature unappreciative ; and, in
the latter case, the sooner he is put to the plough the better.
Those runs take more thinking out than I can pretend to give
to them to-night, while the cold, stinging breeze still clings to
one's eyelids, and but little remains in the after-evening save a
sense of drowsy, grateful satisfaction. A long drive (in my
case) in the teeth of the wind, " nor'-east, most forbiddingly
keen," opened the morning prospect for what was to come,
and sent one's blood to innermost recesses, thence, happily, to
be brought, coursing and warming, to reanimate every vein.
The cold winds of Old England are more piercing in their
intensity than all the low figures of Transatlantic thermometer.
They cut through you, however well wrapped, in dog-cart or
buggy. When I'm a millionaire, a brougham and the morning-
paper shall suffice for me. Now I only start out on wheels that
I may come home less tired, and that I may get astride old
Pegasus without stiffness and without a groan.
The scene of the day was the highest tableland of England,
the battlefield of Naseby and thereabouts — the aneroid of one's
blood registering plainly each mile of the climb to the higher
level. How good a field came to do justice to the good things
of the day you may in some degree judge from the following
incomplete and random list. And most of these were helping
themselves gratefully to all that came in their way — making
THE BATTLE GROUND OF NASEBY. 471
out a happy Christmastide, and seeing the Old Year out with
honour and satisfaction.
Naseby Covert is a great thorn thicket planted on the deep
clay that dragged down the war-worn horses of the Cavaliers, and
did more to place a Royal neck beneath the heel of Demos and
beneath the cruel axe than aught else in the career of the
rebellion. But it was only the pleasantest image of a fight
that was to be enacted to-day ; and I will unravel its somewhat
tangled threads as quickly and as lucidly as in me lies. Our
fox was first driven back by a crowd of footpeople ; but
10 minutes later he found a rift through their midst, and by
some means or other made good his dash for liberty. And now
we were carried past the village of Naseby by such garden and
suburb route as a wily determined fox would choose. Soon
we were riding on, scent freshening, adown the dells and
gorsey dingles that pave the way to the rough hogs- back of
Purser's Hill, and rounding its extreme right corner found
ourselves creeping rapidly along its wooded summit to the left
and east. Taking the greener slope of the Cottesbroke aspect,
we rode fast to an easy line and a fast running pack, past the
hillside coverts of Blueberry, &c, nearly to Berrydale ; then
bent still more leftward for the best of the pace and the best
of the run. Even on the red ploughs, scent was excellent
in the cold easterly wind ; and as the pack dipped into the
rough, and usually scentless, hollow of Maidwell Dale, it
became necessaiy to edge carefully on, if one would not miss
the dart and delight of the next quarter hour. Lord Spencer,
Messrs. Jameson, Wroughton, Harford, Muntz, Hanbury and
Mills (pere), and some half-dozen others, were far too well on
the alert to be slipped (a fate that temporarily befell a number
of good men at this period), and these former jumping quickly
from the cart road of the arable to the free turf on their left
hand, were soon over the hill and the road twixt Scotland
Wood and Hazlebeech — to plunge downward again with the
screaming pack over the sweet-scenting pastures to Tally-ho
Covert.
472 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
I think 1 am right in saying that this part of our wide, merry
circle was the cheeriest and fastest of all. On the ploughs
beyond Tally-ho hounds checked for some moments ; but ere
we reached Naseby Covert again (just an hour from the find)
every horse had his lungs working at high pressure, and every
rein was wet and slippery with the damp of exertion. Yet
horses are fit and muscular now as the winter is likely to find
them ; and the upper ground we had crossed had none of
the stickiness of Naseby field. The brook beneath Tally-ho,
and the timber-built fences roundabout, were very delectable
jumping, and, say what you will, by no means the worst of
Northamptonshire is the going quickly and gaily from one green
field into another. Else would Brighton Downs command a
crowd, or the Craven be one of the popular Hunts of the
kingdom. And this glorious attribute must be maintained,
this priceless characteristic must not be marred, whatever the
cost, whatever the effort, on the part of all to whom country life
is of value. But this can be effected only by combination, and
on a basis broader than any yet promulgated. To continue my
story : — The Naseby fox had made his way right through the
covert, and also through the spinney of Longhold beyond —
hounds driving him, with their bristles up, nearly to Clipston
Village. Now came the luckless part of the run. A fresh fox,
it seems, almost met hounds face to face at the Clipston road.
Their utterly beaten fox crawled the hedges for the next half-
hour, unable to leave the immediate vicinity. But, albeit
Goodall got back to his line at length, he failed to pick him
up on the foiled ground — though told afterwards by a labourer
that " all the while he was watching the fox lying down in a
double hedgerow ; but dursn't holloa for fear he should be
doing wrong." A wholesome principle, but in this new instance
acted upon with a result that robbed a fine run of its merited
finish.
Then of that quick ring of the afternoon, when for 45 minutes
we were bustling, tearing, straining on — whirling round till we
were fairly giddy. Again it was from the little gorse of Berry-
COLD AND WARMTH. 473
dale, and it began with a curl in the Cottesbrooke Basin. Such
a scent was there that hounds raced madly one against
another — turning and darting wherever their fox had gone,
and sometimes even driving with equal intensity and music
along both sides of a fence he had followed. For our horses,
Ave never got a pull until Maidwell Dale had been pierced
again at the same spot as in the morning, and a momentary
check gave us breathing time as we issued. Then forward over
the road, to the left of Scotland Wood — Mr. Wroughton and
Mr. Harford again giving us the lead — to Kelmarsh Dale.
Through the gully they hunted, then forward suddenly and
furiously again over the rich grass uplands, with Captain
Middleton, Mr. Jameson, and Mr. Pender pointing out each
loophole as it came. So by Tally-ho covert again, over the little
brook, and up similar pastures, at similar pace, to Hazlebeech
village, and on to Maidwell Dale once more. This plough -girt
ravine always seems a sad spoil-sport. It is true that hounds
had flown through it twice to-day. But now its depths were
foiled, and a halt ensued which cost Goodall his fox. He made
him out eventually into Berrydale, and there left him in
possession of his home. Such a scenting day I have seldom
seen.
COLD AND WARMTH.
In the first old book I pick up — when weary with gazing on
the bleak colourless prospect of what should be one of the
greenest and fairest views of Midland scenery — instinct guides
me, all unawares, to the following —
" As when the wintry winds have seized the waves of the
mountain-lake — have seized them in stormy night, and clothed
them over with ice ; white, to the hunter's early eye, the billows
still seem to roll. He turns his ear to the sound of each unequal
ridge. But each is silent, gleaming, strewn with boughs and
tufts of grass, which shake and whistle to the wind, over their
grey seats of frost." It is translated from old Irish, in which
strange as it may seem, grand poems were once written; and
474 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
in which some of the loftiest imagery of war and of the chase
have alike been couched. Is it not a picture of Winter's
sudden desolation 1
There is something almost appalling — quite subduing — in
the stillness of a fog-frost following immediately upon the rush
of action and excitement belonging to recent weeks. Sport —
high-class sport — had become a matter of daily routine. We
seemed to wrap ourselves in it each morning as we donned our
coat of colour or fixed our spurs for the fray. We even grew
hypercritical and captious ; were satisfied only if pace, country,
point and finish were, all and each, completely to our liking ;
and thought ourselves ill-used if now and again we only tired
one horse in the day instead of two. Practically emphatically
— and thankfully — I for one declare that never, in a quarter of
a century of hunting in Shireland (put the beginning as young
as possible, please) have I known such an autumn — such two
months of brilliant, consecutive, sport. Every pack was running
hard nearly every day. No matter where you placed your
choice, you were never successfully met on the morrow with
" Ah ! Where were you yesterday ? You should have been
with us to see a run ! " It is no just reproach that, like the
rest of common mortals, you can only be in one place at a time.
Yet this should be the only drawback to the memory of Novem-
ber and December, 1889, at least for those whose stables with-
stood the pressure. If in all cases it was not the only one, has
been clue to individual accident, having no bearing upon the
season in its abstract perfection. Hunting men and women no
more than others — less, probably, than any others — wear their
heart upon their sleeve, or flaunt its cuts and bruises to the
crowd's inquiring eye. Every skeleton is left securely locked
in the home cupboard ; and beaming vivacity and lighthearted-
ness reign supreme. Has not the principle been grasped and
worded long ago, by the pen of all pens that is lost to us —
It is good for a heart that is chilled and sad,
With the death of a vain desire
To borrow a glow that will make it glad
From the warmth of a kindred fire.
COLD AND WARMTH. 475
And if warmth and distraction could not be found in these first
merry months, of a season that is now, alas, near midway on its
fleeting course — then is fox-hunting no specific, a ride to hounds
no panacea. Honestly do I believe that — till that fickle and
mysterious attribute Nerve disappears, taking with it the taste
that few other disasters can subdue — the fox-hunting enthusiast
is at times more nearly in touch with perfect, regretless, happi-
ness than any other being that runs his earthly allotment. Of
the fisherman's frenzy I confess to knowing little, and of the
botanist's bliss still less — though I am led to believe that each
has its ecstacies. It is even said that golf has its moments of
furious joy ; and that the solemn lictors who walk round with
their bundle of sticks are at times the most jubilant of men.
There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know.
■&
Our particular pleasure has been taken under conditions
more than usually facile and enhancing. Nowhere has there
been a scarcity of the game we sought ; seldom have we been
beaten about by the elements ; and not even yet, after such
storms as have swept over us, have we been called upon to
ride through ground deep and holding. The last fact in itself
means double enjoyment, half the number of falls, and half
the number of lame horses.
How quickly and readily is a vista formed. I mean not the
bright, or speculative, vista of the future, but the misty, fading,
channel that takes us to the past ! How other minds may
be constituted is only a matter of surmise. But to my
mediocre temperament the past is so quickly swallowed up,
and lost, in the present, that only by an effort can I bring
to temporary life what is shrouded in a few days' forgetf ill-
ness. Well, if the bright things stood out in all their bright-
ness, surely the black and gloomy incidents — the disappoint-
ments that make up the bulk of existence — would overcloud
the picture. It is best we should see it dimly ; and best of
all that we can work memory's machinery to call back what
476 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
we cherish. What we hate, and what we regret, will crop
up unbidden — exorcise them as we will.
But to-day, Thursday of the New Year, fox-hunting has
gone back into its case, as it were. The telescope, through
which we prolonged the view and pierced the distance while
we could, has gone to with a bang ; and now we pace the
quarterdeck with never a sail in sight — nothing living between
us and the horizon, of the sphere we have chosen for our
winter's cruise.
Saturday was the beginning of the end, of the round of
sport belonging to 1889. To Badby Wood came all the
Christmas crowd — not so much of horse (for surely fields are
smaller this season) but of foot and of chariot. The hunt
commenced admirably for these two latter great divisions,
whose zest for fox-hunting is eveiy bit as keen as belongs to
those on saddleback. For in five minutes a fox was killed
in their very midst. Ten minutes later the chase had gone
from them, had swept across the Newnham Valley, and dis-
appeared over the yonder hill — the red-sand peak that over-
looks Daventry and peers across to Coventry in distant War-
wickshire. Stragglers marked the route for half an hour
more, as is customary from Badby Wood, in whose depths the
art of self-interment is practised to a degree beyond compare.
Then the chase and its every vestige had gone for the day,
to complete a twenty minutes' road-and-grass scuny to ground
at Dodford, and next to journey by cold slow steps yet farther
afield — half a dozen miles as the crow flies (and the crow,
you know, is no flyer) to Althorpe Park, and to ground. I
thought, by the way, that I had learned something of soldier-
ing ; and I remember well that the Goosestep and Extension
motions constituted fundamentary lessons in the art of war.
But I never knew till to-day that these martial exercises had
any useful application to the gentler pursuits of peace. They
have, though ; as you might have seen for yourself had you
formed part of the Pytchley field of Saturday, completely
blocked from a road by a flock of sheep huddled in a gateway.
A CURE FOIl INFLUENZA. 477
Why, sir, two veteran dragoons set things right directly. Dis-
mounting on the instant, and throwing bridle-reins to the
nearest comrade, they thrust themselves between the sheep
and the gate — and with shout and holloa played goosestep and
third-practice-extension in the faces of the astonished ewes.
The performance was over all too quickly. The whole flock
turned in terror from balanced legs and waving arms, and fled
precipitately.
A CURE FOR INFLUENZA.
Wednesday, Jan. 8th. — A very Hemplow morning. Let not
this expression be misconstrued into any aspersion upon what I
would rather term the backbone of the Pytchley country. But,
personally, I don't like these Pytchley Grampians in a morning,
after Christmas. There are too many people on such occasions
for quiet mountain hunting. They get round the coombes and
sholahs, and give a fox but indifferent chance of making the
country. They envelope the slopes and summits as in a
cavalry fieldday on the Fox Hills, of Aldershot's school-field. Yet
a first fox went before they had fairly manned the heights ;
and for a quarter of an hour afterwards they trooped down to
the drain that had given him shelter, half a mile off. Of the
second fox I remember most that the pack could hunt him
splendidly along a road, and very little elsewhere. What
became of him ? — bother this epidemic, I forget. But I can
recall that, with a scent suddenly freshening, they fairly raced
another fox from Lord Spencer's covert across the gated two-
mile course to the Hemplow. And yet, by some ingenious
iniquity the mob were at the far end of the hills before him, to
drive him back to a rabbit-hole. " Oh, for a Master. Oh, for
a man !" Another lucid interval reveals to me the flying start
from Yelvertoft Fieldside. Our fox had swum the canal from
covert to the spinney beyond ; and hounds were skying across
the meadows before men had realised there was occasion to
478 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
move. A small division was on the high ground above the
covert. These had to sweep to the left hand bridge, strike for
the line of chase from that starting-point, and take their
chance at the Yelvertoft Bottom as they met it here. It was
negotiable, at the pace — and may possibly be so in cold blood
too. For there is virtue, I am told, in cold blood ; and better
valour in cool calculation than in hot impulse. But it isn't
given to the foxhunter of ordinary mould — nor, truth to tell,
does he crave it. (Was it not rather mortifying, though, to
hit this wide nullah off at a spot where there was just room to
land on the further bank, but impetus failed to carry over, or
break through, the rails beyond ? High timber is not readily
to be jumped at a stand ; and the position forbade much choice
of action. How relief ever came to the predicament is some-
thing I have yet to learn.)
The next fence had also a wide and woolly cavern in front ;
and the flyers rolled over it by twos and by threes. Up the
gentle slope towards Yelvertoft Village the leaders were
rapidly getting on terms with hounds — the left van headed by
one, " in mien and garb a youthful chieftain ; " while to his
right, making strong play, was a proven warrior " yet a very
man, not cast in mould too fine for human love." * But the old
hogmaned charger had been enjoying nearly a moon of
honeyed idleness ; and round he came from sheer friskiness —
to be cautioned with a double crack on his fat ribs that
sounded like a brace of pistol shot. A shepherd turned our
fox. (No shepherds, no grass countries. No grass countries, —
the deluge, again, as soon as possible). So the gallop was
rather nipped in its bud — to blossom again awhile in another
direction, which brought us back to the Yelvertoft Bottom —
this time with an assisting or deceptive, hedge before it. Two
men got down ; two men just got over; while the public again
sought a bridge. Then we had several merry minutes by the
left of Yelvertoft Village, to ground not far from Crack's Hill —
* Our bridegroom of the year.
A CURE FOR INFLUENZA. 479
the country superb, the pace good enough, and not a youth going
more gaily than the veteran Mr. Gordon, of the Fitzvvilliam. Our
fox might possibly have done more for us yet, but the terrier
had him out so quickly, that we had not cleared the course.
And poor Reynard, starting as it were before the flag fell, took
the wrong course and was met by hounds. Thus ended the
fourth hunt of the day. But appetites were only whetted.
Just the opportunity for Crick Gorse on the quiet. And
thither we went. Yet so long were hounds in covert without a
note that even the little party were soon diminished by half,
and only a forlorn hope remained. But the off-chance came
off this time ; and suddenly we awoke to Goodall's horn.
Hounds had more than their legitimate start (an ncertain and
attenuated quantity, too, in these times and places) ; and were
speeding ahead, with the two good yeomen Messrs. Cooper and
Martin in nearest pursuit. Then I remember a gate that had
every appearance of being locked, and half-a-dozen men pulling
up to fumble. With the ready eye of one who has no fear for
a few thorns but a wholesome respect for the stronger forms of
impediment, I went for the gap immediately alongside — to
undergo, while in the air, some such sensation as a swimmer's
at the sight of a shark. About five feet from the ground a
bright barbed wire stretched from side to side. What became
of it I know not ; for it was gone with the shriek of agony that
I made believe to be a caution to comrades, but that was in
reality the outcry of a terrified soul. And I merely mention
this episode as showing that even in well-disposed districts a
dangerous strand may be left here and there — the shepherd
arguing that such and such a spot will never be chosen to
jump. After a slight check on the Crick-and-Lilbourne bridle-
lane we went forward blithely — a strong, but clean-cut and
charming, country opening to our front — the beautiful valley,
in fact, 'twixt the villages of Lilbourne and Yelvertoft; and
across which, you may remember, we rode with so much happy
zest about the end of last season, from Lilbourne Gorse. We
had now a bold hearted fox before us ; for he crossed each field
480 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
as he struck it, nor turned aside once for a sheltering hedge.
Nearly every fence had been newly laid ; but every fence was
within compass — and they varied from oxer to double, from
timber to bog. Yet I saw no grief, and I believe that little, if
any, happened. I tell you, sirs, it was fun. But would that it
had lasted longer. The}' shepherd their flocks very closely in
this region of Yelvertoft. Our friend of the crook was in the
way again ; and so limited our career, at speed, to some fifteen
minutes. Through the epidemic's bleared memory I can scarce
tell off even so slender a roll-call as comprised the evening's
attendance on hounds. But, besides the Duchess of Hamilton,
Mrs. Dalgleish, and Miss Hanbury, there were, if I mistake not,
Captains Atherton, Riddell, and Soarnes, Messrs. Adamthwaite,
Arkwright, Baring, G. Cunard, J. Cooper, Foster, Greig,
Jameson, Langham-Reid, Martin, Mildmay, Pender, Rhodes,
Wroughton. And the greatest of these, I take leave to say,
was Mr. Jameson on the grey.
Overheard during the run. Injured and indignant official,
to shepherd whose colley has just returned panting from
pursuit of the fox — " Can't you keep your dog in ?" Response
" What are ye a' talking of? My dog's just as much right a'
running on him as yourn 'ave ! "
An incident of the morning was the sharp collapse and com-
plete somersault (I believe, and hope, unattended by any serious
result) of two hardriders simultaneously at an apparently easy
hedge-and-ditch, and immediately afterwards, of a third, in a
still more unlooked-for manner. This last jumped out of a
road with entire success ; and his horse went on without
dwelling. What then ? Did he leave the saddle 1 Not a bit
of it. But the saddle left the horse ; and the two component
parts of the turn-out that remained together went on a journey
of their own — describing a parabola at about right angles to the
original line of flight. The girths had parted in the effort of
the jump. It is a matter of wonder that this does not more
often happen. People treat themselves to new stirrup leathers
pretty often — partly because they show sufficiently to speak
A CURE FOR INFLUENZA. 4SI
for themselves, as to their trustworthiness. But it is not so
with girths. Owners seldom look at them — still less at the
weak and easily-rotted webbing to which the girth straps are
attached. And even grooms, you know, are little better than
mere mortals. For my part, with the nervous caution of a
child who has been burnt by many fires, I treat myself to new
girths, new webbing and straps, and new leathers, directly my
old saddles require them — considering this outlay more
justifiable than that upon a new yellow saddle when mine
grows black and unsightly, and arguing that of all falls,
voluntary and obligatory, none is more unpleasant than one
brought about by broken harness.
Tltursday, Jan. 16. — Kill or cure was a day's foxhunting ;
and a few lines shall describe the cure — the recipe being
Ladbroke Gorse thirty minutes. Sumat celeriter cum impedi-
mentis. W. de B.
The above taken hot, and on a young one that wanted
expanding with a cutting whip all the way, constituted a
medicine that I can conscientiously recommend to all influenza-
stricken patients, and that is obviously more palatable than
watergruel, hot bottles, and a general course of reflection and
misery in a sick bed. Yet the latter proffered itself as
Hobson's choice (a point I mention only as apology for a very
meagre letter) until the morning came out so warm, so quiet,
and hunting-like. The Warwickshire were in their wildest,
grassiest, country ; and a great field followed upon the Hunt
Ball of overnight. Ladbroke Gorse has this season been
subjected to mange and consequent costly thinning-out. But
it held a brace of foxes to-day — one for the refreshment of the
ballgoers, the other for that of the hungry pack. The latter
chopped their game in covert, while an earlier fox was stealing
his way over the country. Thus it was only after a few wild
fields of the bridle path towards Shuckburgh that hounds really
took up the going. Then for some twenty-five minutes more
they led us over a level and enjoyable line much akin to that
of the last gallop from Welsh Road Gorse. Passing to the
r i
4-82 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
right beneath that covert they went pretty straight, and fairly
fast, to Stockton Village, where he worked us out of scent. I
hardly like to speak in fun of a runaway — for the position of
the unwilling passenger is serious, exhausting and bewildering.
But in kindness to others, and in consideration for the manv
trials a huntsman has already to contend with, I venture to
suggest to the owner, or victim, of the brown horse who zvould
(jo, that the next time he takes part in the uncomfortable
performance, he should at once head for the covert he came
from, or, failing that, for the brow of Shuckburgh Hill. In my
experience hounds seldom go fast enough to admit of a bolter
being galloped down in direct pursuit of them, added to which
the unprepared public is slow to realise that a shout from their
rear means instant clearance or deserved annihilation.
SNATCHED IN THE SNOW.
February the first is to the hunting season very much as
his fortieth birthday is to a man — the Divide of his career, the
summit of his hill of life. From this point there is less pleasure
in looking forward, probably less satisfaction in looking back.
The cup is half empty : we shall soon see the bottom, or arrive
at the dregs. In hunting the fox there is fortunately — at least
to the real votary — no weariness, no loss of zest, no knuckling-
under to disappointment. As long as a man can sit in a saddle,
he may be as happy in old age as in boyhood. It is the holi-
days of summer that alone make him count his }^ears. And with
February 1st come the earliest signs of a waning season. The
weekly fixture cards, always sacredly preserved, have accumu-
lated almost into a pack : forelegs, that in November were fine
as stars and clean as the heavens on a frosty night, have now to
be bound and guarded with unsightly bandages ; " calls of busi-
ness " frequently rob the covertside of keen men whom nothing
but want of a horse would keep away — these are some of the
tokens of an open winter and of three months wear-and-tear.
SNATCHED IN THE SNOW. 483
(Three months ! It is as yesterday we palled on our boots
for the opening day !) Soon we shall hear about lambs : and
already the hound-puppies are being sent in for fear of damage
to the flocks. The violets, it would seem, have migrated to
London en masse : but the turf is ready to shoot forth in new
green to the next warm sunny day. Our second winter — last-
ing but twenty-four hours — only seized us on Wednesday
morning last. We had read of heavy snow and of frost intense
all round the world ; but our tight little island was spared, and
fox-hunting went on, careless of rainstorm and hurricane. But
on Wednesday we thought our turn had come. By road to meet
the Pytchley at North Kilworth was a journey awesome and
perilous ; for water was everywhere, and that water was now
ice. By rail was a sorry period of anxiety and ignorance — a
full consciousness of the disagreeables of early rising and a dis-
like of the position (the possibility of going by train not to hunt).
Yet the railwa}r is allowedly a convenient and often economical
-covert-hack ; and the Pytchley country is a wide domain.
Hounds came to covert at a leisurely walk. It was difficult
to imagine they could travel the ploughs — while, as for our
jumping the fences, surely that could not be: for the turf was
hidden by snow and the gateways were as rough granite ! You
shall see — as quickly as I can get this knocked off, within my
.allotted limits.
To-day again our master was unable to put in an appearance,
•even on wheels. This open and brilliant season has brought no
pleasure to Mr. Langham, who so long has catered admirably for
the sport and pleasure of others, and to whom we owe gratitude
and sympathy more than I can attempt to express.
About noon we walked on to Kilworth Sticks ; and of the
-earlier part of the day it will do to note that a brace of foxes
were hunted into North Kilworth Village — there apparently to
avail themselves of the same drain. The run came later, when
we had almost tired of kicking snowballs in each others' faces
and the most sanguine had nearly abandoned hope — when we
had little to think of as far as the day was concerned, except,
i i 2
484 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIL.
perhaps, to wonder which of all forms of impediment is the
most disagreeable for a big field, and in the end awarding the
palm (1) to red-ribboned tails (the kicker's badge), (2) to single
gateways and sidling horses.
I can tell you where the gallop began, but for the life of me
dare not aver where, or when, the hunt commenced — or of how
many pieces it was formed. There is a square spinney by the
canal side about half-way between the villages of South Kil-
worth and Welford. As the lengthy caravan drew towards it,
hounds were to be seen in the sunlight drifting over the hill
towards Welford, unaccompanied and even unfollowed. They
had put the canal to their good : and, for all we could help it,
might be away on their own account to Sulby. This meant, of
course, a travelling fox — and, luckily for us, this fox was well
forward. I will not ask you to dawdle with me round the skirts
of the Hemplow, or to slip uselessly about its snow-covered side-
hills. A fox long gone, on cold snow, is no better than hare.
Yet I think you too might have pricked your ears had you seen
Goodall gather his hounds for a dash forward beyond the
Yelvertoft end. Mr. G. Gee had a theory at once. He knew of
a fox that lived on the canal bank. " Depend on it. He's afoot
already." And I believe he was right. The suggestion, too,
was endorsed by the most fox-hunting carter that ever loaded a
" muck-cart." " He come out just here and slipped back again.
Very like he's doubled along the canal bank." That man was
born to be a huntsman. The miserable humour of fate had
alone condemned him to substitute a dung-fork for a hunting-
horn. His fox had, indeed, slipped back — Goodall left the little
ladies to explain how — and now, I say, the fun began. Our
new-found fox couldn't possibly make the Hemplow. A string
of two hundred on horseback cut him off from that — and
promptly he showed what other country he knew. The snow
seemed at once to melt from beneath our feet, the heavens
brightened, and the world seemed warmer. For why ? We
were away up wind, with a drive and an earnestness that the
day had not yet known. A few minutes later we were travers-
SNATCHED IN THE SNOW. 485
ing the fair line that we rode, you remember, a month ago
fSwinford Old Covert to Welford it was then). We even struck
two of its gaps — for the quickest of gallops seldom fails to leave
in each fence a hole that a half-a-crown would scarcely mend.
But we held north this time instead of south, and faced the
freezing breeze, as it blew from South Kilworth Covert. The
railway that plays havoc with this Garden of Eden had all the
wickedness knocked out of it at first encounter. " It'll do there,
John ! " And the ever-ready John made it do, by going in and
out cleverly on the baldnosed bay — giving confidence to a vast
number of us who would no more have thought of attacking a
railway than of riding a steam engine barebacked.
Things went on happily till we reached the water beneath
the covert. I read that all the streams of Europe are in full
Hood this week. The young Avon certainly is. We looked for
a ford but found none. But the local pilots went at once for a
bridge. Our fox cared nothing for the covert ; threw it on his
right hand, and pointed for Misterton — the pace continuing, and
the ground growing wetter and sloshier at every stride (thank
Heaven I am now no man's valet — though I took my turn as a
fag at Rugby). This was no crucial burst that calls for my
hazarding statements as to who cut out the work here, who was
near the pack there. Everybody was busy ; and a large number
were close to hounds — never pressing them, however, till a great
rearguard came up with a rush at North Kilworth (for by this
time hounds had turned right, and should with any luck have
pursued the even tenor of their way to the death). We were
taken to within a field or so of Kilworth Sticks (perhaps a four-
mile point) ; then a crawling fox was hunted up to a holloa
behind the village. Isn't this a delightful country ? And — by
the way — are you old enough to have seen Charles Kean in the
" Corsican Brothers ? " He was a clean -shaved, square-faced man,
was he not ? (No aspersion in these adjectives, I trust.) But
he never thought of such sympathy of instinct as I witnessed
to-day. Two brothers came into a field from very diverse
points. There could be only one outlet — yet the world looked
48G FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
for it in vain. The brothers had it in a moment, by a common
prompting that could have suggested itself only to one of them
— and to that one by an intuitive talent shared by no one else.
" He pitied his poor brother Fabian, and laughed as he raced
for the gap."
Much more to the point was the retort of two burly farmers
of Kilworth — on foot both of them, but radiant with kindly
pleasure as they holloaed the beaten fox and held a gate open
into the road. To them the passing sinner, having broken at
least three flights of rails during the day, and knocked down all
the loose thorns he could find. "We've given your land a rare
dressing to-day. Hope you don't mind ? " " Quite right too I
We love to see you come across here ! ! " Show me better
feeling than this, gentlemen ; and I'll admit there is a better
land than the Shires !
Our fox made good the canal-spinney by Welford Station, ran
its length, and then there was holloaing in two directions.
Hounds kept a line ; but here it must have been that they
changed from their quarry. Forty-five minutes, or thereabouts,
up to Bosworth Park — dating from the turn back from Hemplow
and the sudden accession of pace. Human prescience could
scarcely be expected to prompt the ordinary subject to dive for
his watch at such exact moment. It occurred to one that they
might now run, and we hurried on upon the off chance. But
that the next half hour should be excellent, and three-quarters
should be all hard-running, seemed anything but likely.
In the spurt of the first early minutes across the vale, I can
remember seeing Mr. Hipwell (and who with better right — for
did we not riddle his fences heart ity three times that day ?)
Messrs. E. Baring, B. Chester, Guthrie, Jameson, Sheriffe,
Atterbury, and Adamthwaite, with the huntsman and five or six
more, in the far van.
They followed a fresh fox from Bosworth up into the high-
lands of Marston, where the snow, and his start, fairly beat
them.
GREAT RUN OF THE RYTCHLEY FROM KNIGITTLEY WOOD. 487
GREAT RUN OF THE PYTGHLEY FROM
KNIGHTLEY WOOD.
Remarkable as the great season of 1889 — 90 was for long
runs (especially in the Daventry neighbourhood) it had nothing
to compare with that of the Pytchley on Saturday, Feb. 18,
when they made a sixteen-mile 'point in two hours, and ran a
hrace of foxes to ground at the finish !
Facts unadorned by fancy are fortunately the most suitable
diet for the sportsman's digestion ; and these I am able to give
him, as rendered by reliable witnesses and participators. He
can then draw his own conclusions, or adopt their encomiums if
he thinks fit. For me it remains merely to locate the scene and
convey my information as a score of kind friends give it me.
The Pytchley, then, had held their yearly meet at Weedon
Barracks, with a view to the at least annual draw of the fine
woodlands, just south of this soldier's elysium (as it may, and
ought to be, deemed). Woodlands they scarcely are; but,
rather, detached little woods, such as foxes and huntsmen alike
appreciate — where the former can scarcely be disturbed by
sheepdogs or terriers, and where the latter can always be with
their hounds. Dry and quiet and warm are these : and this is
the time of year when travelling foxes come to them from afar.
Yet already the Grafton (in whose hands the hunting of them
is mainly left) have had at least two runs — fast and far — from
Knightley Wood, the source of Saturday's almost phenomenal
chase : the two led them a long distance upon the track of
Saturday.
The " run of the century " an ex-master deems it — and no
better judge than he. " The finest run I have ever seen,"
write several trusty members of the Whitecollar Hunt. " One
of the best runs that ever occurred in the memory of any living
sportsman," is the enthusiastic testimony of a staunch and
straightgoing yeoman. " A marvellous hunt," is the verdict of
a capital soldier : and " the straightest, most engrossing, and
(for a long run) the quickest I ever rode " is the opinion of
4S8 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
another tried sportsman who has had experience of many
countries.
What an absolutely perfect day for sport and for pleasurable
riding was Saturday, I can testify from the breath of its balmy
quiet — as I sat for five minutes on Weedon platform (when
carting my damaged limb Londonwards), and they told me of
the great meet that had just taken place.
Knightley Wood is but a stone's throw (well, a quarter of a
mile) to the south of Mantel's Heath (a similar wood) : and
Knightley Wood had been entered from the east as if to keep
Reynard within Pytchley dominion. How far it succeeded you
will see. Past Mantel's Heath runs a road east and west,
Stowe-to-Preston ; and this was blocked with equipages and
loiterers. Thus Reynard lost, I should imagine, several minutes
in breaking through ; for he touched Mantel's Heath, then had
to make a short detour towards Everdon Stubbs before sinking
the valley of the Everdon Brook and getting his mask in the
required direction (westward or leftward). And if the tempo-
rary difficulty hindered him — how much more it would seem
to have hindered the bulk of the great field of the day ! Most
of them wavered in the road ; many went down it towards
Everdon Stubbs (the map will be of service to you now) — while
hounds were wheeling beneath them, and their confusion was
already assured. Instinct, knowledge of country, or the luckier
fortune of war, however, induced Mr. Craven and Mr. Walton
to turn in above Hen Wood and dash down the slope for
Snorscombe Farm — there to strike the bridle road for the
Fawsley home estate, and soon to cut in with the pack on its
flying course thither. Meanwhile Lord Annaly, Mr. Byass,
Major Little, Mr. Wroughton, the younger, Mr. Craven, and
about a dozen others had followed Goodall and John in the
track of hounds : and turned with them below the brow. Even
aided by ready and sufficient gates, and with the turf riding-
like velvet on springs, riders could scarcely gallop fast enough
to keep with hounds across these great feeding-pastures, as
they swept by Hoggstaff Wood and went with a curve to the
GREAT RUN OF THE PYTCHLEY FROM KNIGHTLEY WOOD. 489
right to the patch of gorse on the hillside by Church Char-
welton. Just previous to this — among the double hedgerows
wherein, as some of you may remember, the Grafton a couple of
years ago killed three foxes almost together — a brace were
before hounds. Probably a fresh one jumped up as they
passed : for they went on paying no attention to him in view.
Rounding the church and its plantation (where culminated the
great Braunston gallop of two seasons ago) the little party
struck the bridge across the brook-dam — two amenable double
fences coming in their way just beyond. And so they held on,
over wide, wellgated, bullock grounds still, till they hit a single
field of arable by Hiuton House — and hounds had to put their
noses down for a moment, while riders took a first brief pull at
their horses.
The pace at starting — after slipping the crowd — had pre-
vented any connected following ; so that, after the group of a
dozen or twenty in front, there were scarcely links enough to
bring on the lengthening tail, though there was the bridleroad
close handy on the left, and the Daventry-to-Byfield turnpike
on the right — each within one field of the line of hounds. The
latter went on unassisted ; crossed the main road just men-
tioned, and left Byfield to their left — running hard and well on
the right of the road to Upper Boddington. This too they
turned over short of the village and just beyond the reservoir —
the little stream feeding it having caused more than one fall.
Mr. Waring on his grey — having at his heels little Miss Byass
on her chestnut pony — was there to cheer them over, a few
men jumping out of the road to cross the brow between Upper
and Lower Boddington, the rest taking due advantage of the
still convenient macadam. The Bicester meeting-place (where
I regret to learn, the good veteran Mr. Cowper has been for
some time kept within doors) was passed — that and the little
village remaining to the left, as also the parallel lane to
Claydon, which was most useful after crossing the East and
West Junction Railway. Besides those above-mentioned, there
490 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
were, amongst others in the front about this period, Mr. and
Mrs. Pender, Mr. J. Cooper, Mrs. Vaughan, Mr. Burton, Captain
Atherton, Messrs. R. and S. Loder, Mr. Mackenzie, Captain
Little (9th), &c. After leaving Claydon Village behind him,
their fox ran the road for quite two hundred yards in sight of
the huntsman, though unfortunately hounds did not catch a
view. He then crossed the Great Western Line, and a slight
check by Mollington Village gave him fresh ground — a fourth
and final piece of plough — out of the whole distance — causing
the hesitation. Mr. Mackenzie's horse was now in the condi-
tion already attained by many more ; but, making sure the end
must be at hand, he tied him up in a barn, and set forward
upon foot. Half a mile further Lord Annaly got a severe fall,
but was able to remount at once. But in spite of the sound
ground, and withal that lanes and roads and gates had rendered
such frequent assistance, progress had become a matter of
general difficulty. Goodall was fortunately on his galloping
grey, but, it may be mentioned, Mrs. Byass was riding a four-
year-old, and Mrs. Vaughan only a hireling. The tiny brook at
Mollington was not sufficient to stop them ; but the steep
ground beyond, as they faced the hill to Warmington, induced
several of the heavier weights to use their own legs to the
summit. Hounds then turned again down hill, sharp to the
right and entered the fox covert — two foxes being at this
period immediately in front of them. One had gone out at
the top of the gorse ; and was immediately followed to ground
at the spinney on the hilltop adjoining. Intelligence, however,
was brought up by Captain Longfield, that another, thoroughly
beaten, fox had also left the covert, by way of the double fence
on the lower ground. Goodall took hounds back at once ; but
was unable to come up with this (probably his original fox)
before he, too, got to ground — at Rattley upon Edgehill
(actually dodging past the whip to crawl into a badger earth).
Time, just over two hours. Among others up at, or soon after,
the finish, there were, I understand, Count Larische, Mrs.
GREAT RUN OF THE FYTCHLEY FROM KNIGHTLEY WOOD. 491
Cross, Miss Hargreaves, Miss Judkins, Mrs. Jones, Messrs.
Asquith, Entwisle, Hanbury, sen., Crawley, Capt. Faber, and
several more.
The Annual Meeting of the Pytchley Hunt took place on
Tuesday last. " Mr. Langham resigned the Mastership, after
having hunted the country for twelve seasons — a longer period
than any Master has kept it during this century. A cordial
vote of thanks was given him, and Lord Spencer agreed to take
the country again."
The vote of thanks is indeed one which all who hunt with
the Pytchley very heartily endorse. Great and consistent sport
has signalised Mr. Langham's many seasons of Mastership. He
has raised the pack to a very high standard ; and he has main-
tained an excellent feeling among the farmers, landowners, and
the Hunt generally. The debt of gratitude we owe him is a
great one.
Sadly I dip my pen once more to touch on the sudden
removal of another old comrade to still happier hunting
grounds. Shocking to us — melancholy indeed for the hundreds
who knew him and cared for him — but not sad, surely not sad,
for him. Far be it from me to write flippantly, or think care-
lessly, of the death of a friend so valued, so consistent and so
true — the most kindly even-hearted gentleman that ever wore
Her Majesty's uniform, sported silk, or rode to hounds
conscientiously and for love of hunting. But a man's end must
come, and had better come thus quickly and unawares in the
midst of happiest surroundings — mind and body still capable —
than in a gloomy sickroom, a burden to himself and of no value
to others. When he has had his innings, when in a fair
measure " the fruit has been gathered, the tale been told," he
may well be content to make room for younger plants, rather
than exist on until he cumbers the ground, a withered and
barren trunk. And well indeed for him if he can leave such
memory behind him, so many friends to regret and think
lovingly of him — so few, nay, never an one I should imagine
492 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
to think hardly of him — as Captain Barclay. The deepest
sympathy, from all who knew them both, is for the brother, who
has lost the companion of his life.
BEDRIDDEN.
Better than boardship, anyhow ! Green turf is fairer than
green water ; and the point of view of a tressel bed is at
least not much worse than that of a deck chair. A flock of
starlings — covering the grass to the very window sill — is of far
more interest than a bevy of Mother Carey's chickens on the
dizzy waters ; and a couple of foxhound puppies are more
laughable in their frolic than any school of dolphins in the
Atlantic. Nature and her history are almost of necessity the
study of every countryman's life. But, it happens, there is
beauty of pencilling and nervous grace of movement among
these birds as they work a grass field after a shower, that needs
an opportunity of close and leisurely observance, They hurry
over their food as eagerly as hounds at the trough, or cowboys
at their midday meal. And so closely do they tread the sod, no
wonder huntsmen expect a check from their foiling presence as
readily as from the rush of a flock of sheep. Their bright eyes,
at such close quarters, may be seen to twinkle with rapacity as
they snatch the worms risen to the morning shower ; and the
glossy spots of their mottled backs sparkle like black pearls.
The puppies come racing by — the one with a helper's boot in
her mouth, the other racing for a worry. And the starlings
swirl up, to spread in skirmishing fashion, then wheel into line
and resume position, with all the method of a drilled battalion.
A few lazy rooks — reminding one of the idle mandarins who
dawdle after a regiment of Chinamen soldiery only as passive
spectators rather than as officers — flap lazily up on the outskirts
of the brisker flock, as the puppies tear past, a Belvoir Governor
with the boot and a Pvtchley Solomon snatching alongside.
BEDRIDDEN. 493
Suddenly the unsavoury plaything is dropped ; the ruling spirit,
of many a generation's inheritance, asserts itself; down go
their noses together ; and a new pastime bids for their whole
attention. The trail of a rabbit has crossed their course ; in a
moment they stoop and swing and are away on the line.
Bunny is not far off; and soon is to be seen scuttling across the
meadow — Warwickshire and Pytchley alike scoring loudly in
his wake. " Have a' at him, little bitches ! " I'll ride to your
tuneful voices yet, where the grass is gayest and the fences
are fairest. Make the most of your holiday, my puppies.
The kennel cart may be round for you any day now — and,
believe me, the early stages of hound discipline are not one
whit sweeter or gentler than a boy's first school-term (miserable
memory).
Sauntering hither some half an hour later, their noses all
plastered with sand — to tell the tale of their chase — the
puppies fling themselves down, to bask and rest in the happy
sunshine. They have long learned to take only a passive
interest in the career of the colts, now being sent lustily over a
chain of easy fences culminating at the lawn. So they trouble
themselves not at all as two puffing grooms go by, for approval
or correction, according to master's temper or progress. On
the present occasion these latter are let off with a mild request
for repetition — "both spurs in, and drop it on to his left
shoulder as he rises if you can " (of course they can't — but a
flourish may do something if it doesn't unseat them). And
round they come again — both horsemen attaining the lawn well
in advance of their saddles. " Capital, that will do. Don't
come through the window." Better than boardship, did I say ?
Ay, better by far than catching sharks from the sternwalk, or
hooking albatross in the vessels foaming wake (the two most
exciting phases I know of sport at sea) — a million times better
than that ghastly game of " bull."
Ah ! what is it, Portly ? what puts your bristles up and your
stern down ; and why throw your tongue in anger and fear ?
Are my eyes playing me false ? or what sickbed phantasy is
494 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
here ? Have you come to haunt me by day as you do by
night ? Nay. No spectral huntsman ! no visionary hounds ;
are these. Solid, ruddy, friendly, and true is that lusty form
on the sturdy grey : very lifelife, practical, and entrancing is
the lithe little pack at his heels. On their way to the Gorse,
are they ! And if that way is a hundred yards round you've at
least made me grateful for life. Dim and blurred as in a
dream the mass of colour and movement that follows. The sun
is strong and dazzling. Man is but weak, and weaker when
ailing. "I was afraid it might be too much for you," came
the kindly word next day. " Too much ! " how can there
be " too much " of fellowkindness, in a world that is rough as a
coral strand ?
The little side fences prove an attraction to a few, and a
welcome diversion to me, the onlooker. In place of threading
their way through the gate, half a dozen considerate spirits fly
the plashed hedge beside it ; and as these are headed by the
tip topmost of stud grooms, by an ex-master of hounds, and by
a practised farmer, you may take it for granted that this part
of the exhibition is practically faultless. Not altogether the
same is it with the after performers. Some horses decline to
lark : some men don't care about larking. But — if I may say
so without seeming ungrateful — it were better that the man
should express his own feelings first, not wait to acknowledge
them till the horse has declared his.
HACK-HUNTING.
Not even Melton can approach such qualification as we have
here for this week. Six packs for the six days, never a meet
beyond a dozen miles ; hunting to be had within six miles
every day but one, and all on the very best of grass ! For
mens sana I care not. For corpus sanum and six safe con-
veyances I would give, well, more than I possess. Such a
programme will not come again this season.
HACK-HUNTING. 495
I saw hounds on Saturday — and this too at the very city
gates — saw them kill one fox, and hunt another. But the one
tailed to get out of the wood ; and the other, after giving them
fast fun for seven minutes, either took to the railway or turned
to the canal towing path. So there needed little physical
power to see all this — to see it sufficiently, at all events for the
fulfilment of the ordinarily accepted definition of vision (not too
literally), as it is construed for the doings of hounds.
A great game is foxhunting — a very wide and various game
happily — of which the looker-on may see much but not the pith,
not the kernel, none of the heart and life of it.
Alas, there is none of this in the background — any more than
there is in fielding long slip at cricket, or in guarding the
baggage when the corps is to the front. That there are other
gratifying, genial, pleasures here to be found is not to be
denied. Besides, does it not " bring people together who would
not otherwise meet, and do much towards improving our un-
rivalled breed of horses, my lord ? " In such position you may
at all events run and read, look and learn, mark and digest.
Yet for the life of me I cannot, even after an hour's ride home
and a full hour's evening smoke, understand why, when a fox
breaks in full view in one direction, viz. to the immediate front,
the mass of people should break up and hie away in at least five
separate different directions — only a very small proportion going
for the hounds, the rest apparently speculating upon the fox's
intentions as they might (with more legitimate excuse ?) with
stag. The fox's intentions were as usual directed mainly by
the prompting he chanced to meet on his way. And, it is
almost needless to add, four-fifths of the starters, quite con-
tentedly, never saw a hound again until the check. Yet, there
is a marvellous knack in getting over a country thus in the
dark. I can generally follow a tail-hound — especially if there
be fifty fellows riding at him, ahead of him, and over him, all
the while. But to steer without a beacon, — going as fast the
while as the thrusters in front, who turn not aside, even to
catch their neighbour's horse — and in so steering, to hit off un-
49G FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
hesitatingly a line of gates or a chain of gaps, is a truly wonder-
ful instinct — a talent beyond compare. And the next great
desideratum, a quality even more enviable still, is — not to care
two pence what the bounds are all this time doing. These are
the gifts to lighten a fox hunter's old age. Let him acquire
them at any price — or as Cavendish quotes of Talleyrand on
another hobby, "Pauvre jeune homme, quelle triste vieillesse
vous vous preparez ! "
But you men and women who ride in the van — you little
know what we see, and how we chuckle, who ride behind. The
comedy of a summersault over timber, the absurdity of White-
leathers' legging-it up the meadow after his horse — the romance
of beauty awaiting the return of cavalier, or of his rival, with
her hunter, while skirts that are all too patent pin her to a
standing posture — all these, and many other things, you see
nothing of, in your mad career — "your eye upon hounds," for-
sooth ! Come with me, see the run, as others are content to
see ^ — " D the hounds ! " and remember this is Bromley
Davenport's say, not mine (As a lord may wear shabby clothes
— so can a great writer take license that a humbler daren't).
Talk to me no more of riding. Slow hunting, say I. Bow-
wow-wow. That's what a sportsman loves. So they have told
me from my youth up. And I never believed it till now.
I left off hunting as it seemed in mid-winter — yet only five
weeks ago. Now I crawl out to find it almost summer. Then
hounds were whipped off at 4.30. Now they may hunt on till
dinner-time, or exhaustion — though, with the ground almost as
dry as a maidan (save that the snow showers have gently
damped the surface) it is difficult to see how exhaustion can
ensue to horse or hound or fox — which in some degree accounts
for the great points recently made. February, indeed, is the
month that raises the blinds, turns winter into spring, sets all
things multiplying (this is a theory, though, that with instance
and exception is altogether too wide to follow out here, and I
am thinking of lambs, lame horses, and I don't know how many
more things), and if only free from broken weather is invariably
HACK-HUNTING. 497
(as far as my brief experience goes) the best month of the year
for real sport. The country, too, is easier to get over now,
gentlemen, than it was in November — is it not ?
Monday morning broke with warm rain splashing against the
window-panes — with March put back a peg or two — and fox-
hunting set on its legs for the remainder of the season. The
Grafton met at Farthingstone ; and, though they had not, like
some of their neighbours, advertised for noon, Lord Penrhyn
gave nearly the same indulgence. When March is once in, I
doubt if any single member of a field is at the rendezvous
punctual to time — if that time be earlier than midday. Monday
was a refreshing day on which to find oneself hunting (possibly
I may speak with some little bias on this score — being at length
released from the kindly thraldom of mere heai'say. There are
times when a man may heartily thank God for pure fresh air
and for the happiness of being — and never more heartily than
when existence is found in the presence of hounds and in the
pleasures of the hunting-field.) Of the sport — well, the usual
Monday run had not come off while I was there to see, or to
suppose it from a distance.
It was different on Tuesday, with regard to the size of the
field — the North Warwickshire at Dunchurch, on a breezy
spring morning. Mr. Ashton found himself in command of a
perfect corps d'armee — gathered from far and near and every
side. By the way — whether it is because the great body con-
servative of English foxhunters have been so nauseated by all
that is Irish, except horses, or for some reason yet unexplained,
the custom of " capping " at the meet has never taken hold in
this country — even where it would be most applicable. And if
the question be not impertinent — where could a more suitable
meet be found than at Dunchurch — an instance of a most
popular fixture near the junction points of several Hunts.
(This is no exaggeration — for to my own knowledge there were
good sportsmen present, who had ridden from home, and from
no less than seven different countries.) The bulk of the field
indeed was made up of others than North Warwickshire men :
K K
498 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and each and all of these (not already being contributors)
would, I undertake to say, most gladly have put a sovereign or
at least half a sovereign apiece into the cap, had it been held
out to them. They would thus have been afforded a grateful
opportunity of making some return for the rails they might
break or the hedges tbey might knock down. The proceeds of
two or three such meets would suffice to pay the whole damage
and poultry cost of the Rugby side.
If sport is a lottery — it is never more so than in the month
of March. Tuesday began unluckily ; for, with a leash of foxes
at Bunkers' Hill, hounds got on to the vixen, while the other
two rovers took each a beautiful line across the valley — the one
for Shuckburgh, the other for Braunston. But better fortune
attended the draw of Causton. A good fox took some rousing ;
but, once clear of the covert, he never shirked the wind, but
took them gaily into it for some three-quarters of an hour.
His course was the heath of Dunsmoor (at least I suppose it
was a heath, till, finding that corn could be grown at a profit
even there, the wise men of their time cut great deep ditches
across it and ploughed the land thus drained). This upland
plain forms of course the most striking contrast possible to the
green level vale to the south of Dunchurch. But there is much
sport to be seen over it for all that — as to-day furnished by no
means a bad example. Hounds ran but slowly for the first two
or three miles I was told — though, being myself in company
with the steadier second horsemen, and a good many others
steadier still (" Oh no, we never mention " them), I imagined
they were going fast. What a fund of imagination is the
proud property of those who ride behind ! So they went on to
a little covert dignifying itself with the " high-toned " title of
Fulham Wood, where a shepherd dog — so they say again —
chased the fox and turned him leftward to the breeze — and to
us. By this time I had endorsed the conclusion I have
come to long ago, viz., that I should make the worst second-
horseman in England — for the farther I follow at a pace that I
am weak enough to believe my own much-abused varlet adopts
HACK-HUNTING. 499
as his own, the farther I invariably fall behind, till at last it
seems as if the world held nothing but me and my horse — oh
yes, and always one other twain (much more hopeful and
beaming). But never mind. Tired of giving reign to my
fancy as to what might be going on where a hundred pair of
shoulders were shrugging, and all seemed brisk and easy, as
they danced to the music that led them — I kicked in the one
spur that misfortune has left me, struck a line of gates, flustered
through hole and gap, and flung forward with an energy and
success that would have done credit to Mr. Jorrocks or a
butcher boy. So I saw hounds enter Frankton Wood, pulled
out my watch, and mopped my forehead with the best of them.
Five-and-thirty minutes I marked it down — then heard with
some misgiving (I am bound to confess) the holloa forward and
away, and realised that the run was not yet over. They drove
on a mile or two to Frankton Village ; then, turning down the
wind, could move only slowly to Baughton — near which village
their fox beat them, at the end of about an hour from the find.
K K 2
THE ROAD.
A FIRST STAGE BY SEA.
If you would enjoy a trip by road — I don't mean with
tandem or with the high-flight coach, but with the humble cart
or phaeton — you want no groom stuck by your side or perched
behind. You should " run the whole outfit " yourself ; be, in
fact, " the cook and the captain bold and the mate of the Nancy
Bell," and be prepared to look after things yourself. To do this
you must start, of course, by being a practical stableman.
Further, you must keep your temper (is there any position in
life wherein that difficult feat is not desirable ?), carry the prin-
ciple of suaviter in modo to a degree nearly approaching sys-
tematic blarney, and that of fortiter in re to a pitch that
includes the insisting that every pig-headed, half-drunk, or
wholly inefficient ostler shall carry out to the letter your orders
as to grooming, feeding, and watering. It is a meek, or, at
least, well-controlled, spirit that can put up with each one of
these gentry in turn treating as wanton impertinence your
intrusion into the mysteries of horse treatment. Horse-skimp-
ing would be a better term for the neglect that, at their experi-
enced and unprincipled hands, attains almost to a fine art. To
fly out is often justifiable, is occasionally even advisable ; in
fact, if a careful horse-owner did not " loose off" now and then,
I can see no alternative but that he must burst or give up his
self-imposed task altogether. Standing over these gentlemen
while they grudgingly perform as much of their duties as they
are obliged I take to be the chief drawback of a road trip. It
would be far easier, far more agreeable, and, probably, no less
A FIRST STAGE BY SEA. 501
effective, to strip to the shirt and do the job yourself, although
such a proceeding might hardly be deemed compatible with
dignity — the cheap peg on which hang position and esteem.
Yet it does one good occasionally to break the ice, to dip below
the level we deem our own, to be rubbed the wrong way by the
coarser forms of life — and to thank God afterward that England
still retains some little class distinction. Strangest of all, you
never realise the existence of this so fully as when ruffianism
pulls itself up short on the verge of insult, and turns away from
a border-line that in many countries it is held excellent to
breach.
Now I will take you at a plunge to a lowest experience of
compagnons de voyage and road travel.
A first stage from the Isle of Wight Londonwards brings in a
sea transit — Ryde to Portsmouth.
There are some big hotels at Ryde, as is in keeping with
autumnal and annual influx of visitors. But these visitors come
to boat, to pier-parade, to look through one-eyed spy-glasses —
anything, in fact, but a-horseback or in carriage. Ryde is
marine. The flush of the sea-foam tints the Naiads who lend
life and delight to sea- wave and shore ; while the main ambi-
tion of the yachter by profession and by clo' — as distinct from
the pukkah enthusiast, who, by the same token, is likely to
haunt less ostensibly maritime centres — is to be brown, weather-
oeaten — the old tar, the merry salt. Horses are apart from the
Isle, as regards extraneous intrusion. The Wight people need
them for their own use — to work the excursion drag in summer,
and to hunt the fox in winter ; for the Island is by no means
without hounds, and but for its railways would be a snug little
country. But that has nothing to do with you or with my
instance.
The Isle of Wight evidently prefers to depend upon her own
resources. She wants no traffic with the adjacent little island
of Britain, and she certainly expects no autumn visitor to come
armed with a horse and trap, that of himself he may explore her
inner beauties. So it comes about that an application for pas-
502 FOX- HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
sage across from mainland to mainland of carriage and horse
would seem to take her officials entirely by surprise, though it
is but fair to add that they are quite above showing any signs
of being startled or perturbed. They simply regard the sugges-
tion as a trifle scarcely worthy of consideration. Cattle, sheep,
and pigs are taken over twice a day, and that is all that anyone
seems to know. The captain of the boat receives all moneys for
conveyance of live stock, and the transaction, as far as other
officials are concerned, may now be considered closed. Even the
senile ostler who presides over the hotel stable knows nothing
of such ventures, but apparently looks upon it in some such
light as he would regard a voyage across the Atlantic in a sail-
ing ship, as an unnecessary and unprofitable freak. However,
he accepts charge of the casual horse, is much annoyed at being
checked in the act of immediately administering a bucketful of
ice-cold water, and is still more hurt when called upon to wisp
her over outside instead of sweeping into her manger what dust
he can dislodge from her ears and forehead with a coarse dandy-
brush. When it comes to a question of feeding, he is bound to
admit that the hay is too mouldy to be eaten, but proposes to
give her some chaff cut from the same material, on the principle
of Punch's bachelor housekeeper, who, being informed there was
no bread in the house, cheerfully ordered toast as a substitute.
Inquiries from rail and steamboat officials, as well as from
ostlers, being obviously of no avail, there was nothing for it but
to £0 for the " man-in-the-street."
The latter came to the rescue, and, under promise of beer,
pointed out what was known as " the Slip " — a vague and
meaningless term that we had already heard, but without the
slightest explanation or hint as to what influence the article in
question was to have upon our fortunes. " The Slip " turned
out to be a sloping causeway leading on to the sandy beach —
or possibly, at high water, into the sea — though what its title
to the name of Slip might be, except that it was a little bit
greasy with seaweed, I failed to discover. At any rate, as the
result of two hours' search, we made out that this was to be the
A FIRST STAGE BY SEA. 503
starting-point ; and, better luck still, the ancient mariner chew-
ing his quid was " the captain " of the ferry, the Charon, into
whose charge we and our fellow passengers were about to com-
mit ourselves. And who were our fellow passengers — already
on the spot, awaiting their turn, he told us, since morning ? A
score of black porkers, two calves, a yearling heifer, and, lowest
of all — not even redeemed by unintelligibility of utterance — a
couple of pig-drovers. " No use to come yet," explained Charou,
though it was already half an hour after supposed hour of sail-
ing— two o'clock. " All this lot's to be got in yet, and they
haven't swilled the boat down after landing them sheep. Bring
yer veicle in half an hour. My chaps '11 help ye aboard. So
in the hot summer sun we drove round Ryde's already half-
deserted precincts, for were not the island regattas all com-
pleted, and Society accordingly out of serge for the year. The
Canoe Pond remained, but its company was at low tide. Only
an odd craft or two broke its surface, and the Esplanade was
given over to a few nursemaids in charge of encumbrances
requiring more sea air while their mothers needed change
elsewhere.
Returning to the Slip, we were now made aware of what was
before us. The sea was fully a quarter of a mile out, with a
stretch of wet sand thickly strewn with seaweed leading to it,
while some fifty yards within the shallow water lay the flat-
bottomed barge which was to be our transport. The porkers
were already half-way to the water's edge. Their drovers,
stripped of boots and stockings, and with trousers rolled up,
followed after them with uncouth noises and muttered blas-
phemy. They were yet to make it loudly apparent that even a
western mule-driver, in his most exasperated moments, would
not, on their own ground, be " in the same street " with them.
Indeed, I question if either mule-driver or cowboy (well-broken
and untiring as the latter is in the trying ordeal of " rustling
ca'ves ") would have gone through with the job they now
encountered. And yet everything began so glibly. The
astonished swine, hustled suddenly into the water, found them-
>04
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
selves half blinded by the spray they thus created, and, rushing
forward into the sea, with none of the advantages of a steep
place to tilt them over, found themselves face to face with the
floating platform at the boatside. Gladly they scrambled into
the dry sty awaiting them. All but one. He was a pig of
independent spirit. He would have been an agitator, but that
he had missed his opportunity, and his followers were now
safely confined to barracks. But he was still a wild, irrespon-
sible rover, pork O'Brien, bent upon opposing to the utmost the
tyrants armed with authority ; and, if he could not fight in
concert, he would fight alone. So with snort and squeal he
headed for land, dived between the legs of his nearest oppressor,
the latter, instinctively closing his legs to field him as he would
a cricket ball, being tumbled flat into the briny. Foam and
fury flew heavenward ; the other drover in no way mending
matters by laughing uproariously, while the little pig trotted
off for the landing-stage, grunting complacently as he went.
But the fun was not nearly finished. He was soon overtaken,
but it was quite a different thing from getting him near the
boat again. For an hour he dodged his pursuers up and down
the beach, slipping round and between them even as they
A FIRST STAGE BY SEA. 505
headed him for the barge, and scorning their attempts to hold
his slender cnrly tail. Piggy, being neither a beer-drinker nor
a smoker of black cavendish, was in excellent wind. It was
otherwise with his assailants, who, moreover, lavished all their
spare breath in unbridled anathema. At length he had them
done to a turn, and might, I imagine, have sauntered back to
the island without further hindrance on their part, but that
help came from an unexpected quarter. The O'Brien was
pounced upon by a new and irresistible foe. The shepherd,
who had recently crossed with his sheep and his dog, and had
since watched the contest with close interest, could stand it no
longer. Suddenly he, too, took action. Jumping from his seat
he ejaculated, " Let's see what my old dog '11 do ! " and ran
down to the combatants. In a moment the scene was changed.
The wave of his hand acted like the stick in the nursery fable
of the old woman, her pig, and the stile. The collie went for
the pig, and pinned him fast by the ear, in spite of his squeals
and contortions. The drovers and their new ally were thus able
to seize piggy by the heels, and, carrying him in some such
fashion as the police adopt towards a fighting drunkard, to bear
him helpless into the barge.
Meantime the afternoon was waning, and we were no farther
forward in our journey than at midday. But now the ancient
mariner turned his head, and gave permission for our watery
pilgrimage to begin. That a spirited, shore-going horse would
thus readily consent to take the water, was a matter we had
long ago made up our minds to discredit. But there was
nothing for it but to try or else to sell the whole turn-out
where it stood, to be applied hereafter to purposes of island
excursion and suchlike. The old salt declared, in tones and
words of such honeyed politeness, that a suggestion of largesse
fairly stuck to them, " Bless you, sir, if it hadn't 'a been for
them blamed pigs you might ha' been aboard ever so long by
now ! " " Them blamed pigs " were doomed to be the scape-
goats of our voyage. When anything went wrong, it was " them
blamed pigs." Even when they lay quiet, they curled them-
selves one atop of another in a solid mass, whose weight pressed
506 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the fore-end of the boat into the sand, and prevented her float-
ing for an hour later in the rising tide. So we should have
been little better off had we been already enjoying their society
in the barge. Now we found a friend in the driver of a Chaplin
and Co.'s goods-truck, who, volunteering the observation that
perhaps our horse would not like the water, offered us a lead,
as he was bound for a load from a cargo-boat lying half recum-
bent in the low tide. (Never did I welcome lead at strong
timber or blind ditch more gladly than this kindly help.)
Our trapper followed the cart cheerfully, snorting only now
and again at the patches of seaweed, and giving a single wild
plunge when she felt the first wavelet ripple round her fetlocks.
It was at the moment that he turned us, as it were, adrift, by
shooting on beside our barge, that a sense of danger and in-
security really fell. " When in doubt, play trumps." Down
went the unaccustomed lash. With one spring the mare landed
on the platform, and, wild at a second stinging cut, flung her-
self, and the trap after her, into the barge — to pull up, with
nostrils expanded and forelegs extended, right among the pigs.
For a moment there was a panorama. The pigs took the offen-
sive, became a bristling, squealing mass of upturned snouts, then
formed square, and elected to defend their own corner against
the intruder. The calves on either quarter were much more
aggressively troublesome. Finding they could not break their
lanyards, to which they were tied, they went head down against
the wheels, making the phaeton rattle from stem to stern and
the wdiole bay resound with their bellowing. The mare soon
recovered herself, submitted peaceably to being unhitched and
stabled with the trap between her and the swine — and we
thought the voyage was to begin. Not yet, by any means, " all
along o' them blamed pigs " again. They weighted the boat
down so obdurately that for an hour she could not raise her
head, while we kept the stray swine from among the wheels,
and the pig men smoked placidly, or jested according to their
bent. A standing formula they passed continuously, and I
leave it to your superior acumen to determine whether it was
intended to be suggestive, or was merely a sarcastic lament on
A FIRST STAGE BY SEA.
507
the position of " water, water everywhere, and not a drop to
drink."
" 'Ave a little drop, Bill, just to clear yer throat. Must be
dry running arter that there pig-"
" No, thank you, Jim ; I don't care about it just now. I
never drink at sea. Shouldn't mind some when I get's
ashore ! "
Perhaps they might have led up to something tangible, but
that on any other topic they were quite unassailable and un-
communicative. Even on the subject of pigs they were reticent
of information ; on the matter of transport, probabilities of
weather, and suchlike casual topics, they gave one no en-
couragement. So conversation never ripened, their mysterious
suggestion was never inquired into, still less acted upon, and
instead of the pig-drivers going ashore with drink in their
pockets, a dignified and distant attitude was preserved between
them and us, and we parted as strangers.
In its own good time the barge floated, a steam-launch took
us in tow (one of the pig-drovers only just escaping tying him-
self in a half-hitch in the tow-rope), we made Portsmouth, and
landed live-stock and wheels in good order.
THE NEW FOREST IN AUGUST.
England is only a little country after all. To drive, therefore,
from the Midlands to the south coast is but an easy three days'
trip, is a little cheaper, perhaps, than going by rail, and is
certainly less monotonous. To do it by train takes a whole day
— and a very wearisome one. Besides, if time has to be killed,
there are worse ways of doing it than by means of a driving
trip. 1 am not about totrespass upon Mr. Black's province, with
a new edition of Adventures of a Phaeton. But I may be
allowed to commence with the fact that for reasons of which
perhaps the chief was innate idleness, I compromised the first
stage of the journey by sending forward Abraham, with horses
and trap, a day before, and cutting in with him the next
morning at Oxford.
Abraham, be it known, unites in his fatherly person the
positions of second -horseman, valet, and occasionally of gardener.
It is only fair to his caste to add, that in the last capacity he is
an utter, though amiable, failure ; in the middle capacity he is
decidedly indifferent and brings much misery on himself and
his master ; while in the first-named he is — well — a mixed
quantity — his virtues being admirable, his shortcomings only
such as of necessity belong to the race of second horsemen and
the grossly unfair requirements made upon them. That is to
say, he doesn't drink beer by the wayside ; he doesn't gallop my
horses ; and he certainly daren't jump them. On the other
hand, he does not invariably arrive with his horse — the latter
cool and unruffled, sans dire — at the end of a run, quite as
soon as the first-flight men who have ridden neck-and-crop
with hounds throughout ; and he is not always in one's pocket
THE NEW FOREST IN AUGUST. 509
at the moment that one's inner man happens to suggest lunch
or a drink. Added that Abraham positively enjoys being
sworn at ; and that he is the father of seventeen children by
the register — you know enough of him for all purposes of my
little story.
I didn't see him start that morning, I rejoice to say : for the
struggle took place while I was yet sleeping the sleep of the
idle. But as he had one horse to lead that was very stubborn,
and another to drive that was free, Abraham appears to have
begun his journey by being almost torn in two and by as nearly
as possible upsetting the whole outfit into a ditch. However,
he reached Oxford all right ; and was to be seen there next morn-
ing very beaming, very important, and evidently delighted with
the idea of throwing off for awhile the responsibilites of an
overgrown family, that to my certain knowledge, by the way, he
has never seen for years except in the dead of night and on
occasional " Sundays off."
Before leaving the home stables it had been hinted that a
" respectable appearance " Avould be required of him during the
forthcoming trip ; so he had prepared himself for every occasion
— how do you suppose 1 — in lumbering the phaeton a yard high
with extra clothing for himself and for his horses ! As he was
to be away for at least a week, he had equipped himself with
two stiff hats (in bandboxes) besides the billycock he wore as
undress and the stable cap he carried in his pocket. And as
it was the middle week of August he had elected to guard his
horses against the cold by bringing along two thick fawn rugs
apiece. Where my modest luggage was to be packed had
formed no part of his calculations. Needless to say, a large
bundle — the core of which was one of Abraham's hat-
boxes — went back forthwith as " Returned clothing. Paid ; "
and the phaeton (no — it was only a buckboard, by no means
the worst, and certainly one of the lightest, of conveyances for
a long country drive) looked a little less like a carrier's cart,
and travelled all the easier.
Under these improved circumstances we moved pleasantly
510 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and leisurely on, under the hot sunshine and over the corn-
clad fields on which the Craven hunt. Now we were fairly on
the Berkshire Downs, where wheat and turnips and soft felt
sheepwalks mark their own boundaries, and fences have no
place. For miles we travelled thus — the ruling passion e'en
in summer asserting itself in contemplation and comment.
The Quorn pack, as bought by Mr. Coupland, came from the
Craven country — and could hunt. And heavens, what a school
ground ! No wonder they could put their noses down — even
to leaving no stone unturned for a possible scent beneath it.
I' faith, with all deference and respect to the keen sportsmen
who make the best of circumstances, I would not eke out my
remaining hunting years with the Craven — no, not even were
my horses found, and the run of my teeth besides ! Even its
roads are gruesome ; and the preparation for winter-metalling
ghastly — here a heap of grim blanched lumps resembling
nothing but skulls ; here, in the next stage, the flint rocks
split into pieces such as would have served the ancient Britons
for hatchets and spearheads. With no slight gratulation I
remembered that my trapper was shod with stout leather form -
ing a flint-proof covering to her sole. Nowhere better than in
the milestones was advertised the cutting-power of these
razor-edged implements. Every letter and figure had been
erased at the hands of stone-throwing urchins — and for all
practical purposes, beyond assuring one that a mile is a mile,
their use had departed.
Newbury came as a break : and a well-parked lower country
as a change. Thus to Whitchurch — a tiny old-fashioned town
through which runs the Test, the queen of trout-streams, and
raved of by Charles Kingsley. Afterwards a wet, woful day's
drive along the border line of the H H., the Hursley and the
Hambledon ; so to the New Forest.
A wholly different aspect does the Forest now wear to that
in springtime — when last we saw the fallow buck hunted under
the greenwood shade. Oak and beech, of course, are in heaviest
foliage : but what strikes the eye more promptly is the depth
THE NEW FOREST IN AUGUST. oil
of green bracken and the new sufficiency of grass. The forest-
ponies look almost fat, and their young offspring sleek and
happy — little recking of the cruel wintertime ahead. The
Deer-Hounds have summered well, and looked muscular and
ready on this early byeday at the New Park — as well they
need be, to fight their way through the choking mass of fern.
How they could get through it at all, if a southerly wind were
blowing and the sun of August had its proper power, is beyond
conjecture — and fortunately matters not now, for to-day a cool
sea-fosr was drifting aloft and the air was more autumn than
summerlike. Grass and heather were dripping with recent
rainfall ; and the ground was fit to trust almost anywhere — the
turf rides of the inclosures sound but pliant, and open forest
and the commons alike well watered and safe. The old natural
— or apparently natural — woodland is the most fascinating part
of the New Forest. The old timber is never thinned out for
conversion into income ; the Royal Navy no longer claims the
best oaks ; Nature has it all her own way; and accordingly the
modern Briton may here find his only remaining native forest
thrown open in its happiest form.
As I rode up, with customary unpunctuality, the scene by
Brockenhurst (Rhinefield Walk, I fancy) was picturesque,
almost mediaeval, and just breaking into life. Groups of horse-
men and ladies fair were scattered under the trees along its
edge ; the hounds were mustered in couples held by their
attendants ; the huntsman was galloping up, with horn at
mouth and tufters at heel ; while the woodlands opposite were
ringing to lusty and repeated view holloas. A brace of buck
(are they brace or couple ?) were afoot, had left the bushes for
the wood, the Master had given the office, and the pack was to
be laid on at once. If hounds are eager and excited when
blown out of covert to a fox away — when already they have
been working at liberty, perhaps for hours — how much more
trying to their keen temperament must it be to find themselves
suddenly freed from leash with the certainty — as they know
well — of the burning scent of a deer awaiting them ! But they
512 FOXHOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
flashed over it now — scarce a moment, then swung into the
woodland of Poundhill after their quarry, and their deep notes
at once rang gaily forth from the sea of fern into which they
plunged. Good play, too, they made through it ; and we had
to gallop to keep within distance, by means of the green rides
that came so frequently and so handily. Now and again we
were glad to pull into a trot, where the ridings appeared to be
little used and so less carefully tended ; but on the whole it
was goodly galloping — while to drink hound music once again
was alone a revel. In twenty minutes we were warmed to the
heartcore — when, as we pulled up at four cross r'ides, the buck
suddenly rose from the stream where it cut the path some fifty
yards in front. Glorious he looked with his broad-antlered
front, as he halted and gazed — his red sides just heaving with
the exercise and summer condition. Hounds were not a hundred
yards away, and a few stragglers hurried promptly to the horn.
But " chance and change 'tis folly to rue :' — a little doe jumped
up in their midst almost immediately ; hounds changed to her ;
were subsequently stopped ; and of sport and story there be-
longed nothing more to the day.
A GALLOP.
Obligingly that buck allows me to follow on — and to a
climax. A veteran of some eleven seasons, it seems it had
long been his custom to haunt the precincts of New Park. He
had shifted responsibility on the Thursday, as told above. But
Mr. Lovell had not done with him yet : and Monday was
ordered for a second attack. My question directed to our
respected oberjager had been on the Thursday, " Will a fallow
buck, like a fox, run straighter and readier next time for being
bustled up ? " " Probably," said Mr. Lascelles : but, un-
fortunately, he was not there on Monday to see the probability
fulfilled.
The meet was at the Lodge Gate, New Park, at the whole-
A GALLOP. 513
some hour of 11 ; and the morning alternated rapidly twixt
sunshine and shower. It will be, as it were, but repeating an
axiom to mention that I came up late. (May my worst enemy
suffer in perpetuo what I have in minutes and moments when
seeking hounds !) I can't help it. Trains never fit ; horses
don't come round to the door ; and procrastination is inborn.
Yet a kind providence seldom permits me to be altogether too
late. This morning the road from Brockenhurst was thickly
dotted with the autumnal visitors who with good judgment
make the New Forest their resting place. There were many
young couples. To these I ventured to address no such earth-
born inquiry as related to the mere whereabouts of hounds.
There were two or three artists with greenery canvas in hand.
They did not look promising — " female of sex," and plain at
that. Nurserymaids in abundance, and children in triplets.
At last a bicyclist — desisting for a while from the merry
pastime of whisking past horses' noses, and now harmlessly
smoking his pipe, while his war cycle lay prone by the roadside.
From him I gleaned that hounds had moved " straight up the
Lyndhurst road twenty minutes ago " — and thither I hurried,
oblivious of the fresh forest scenery, careless of tint of leaf or
colour of flower, wondering vaguely how all these people could
be aimlessly straying through the glades, when hounds were in
their very neighbourhood. (The melancholy Jacques, in truth,
was a merry jester as compared with a late-comer in his
moments of misery.) Now over a gentle rise I came upon
horsemen moving — some in one direction, some in another. I
gathered, by frantic, hurried, questioning that the deer had
been found and that the pack had been laid on ! Where no
one seemed exactly to know ; but they galloped all the same.
I and others, galloping all, went a complete circle at racing
pace, round and within the Inclosure of Pondhead — to find at
length in wondering gratitude that all the while we had been
galloping round Master, huntsman, and hounds. It came out
afterwards that the old buck had been harboured, and without
delay roused in Pondhead, and that ten minutes later the pack
L I.
514 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
were upon his trail. He had lain down within the Inclosure —
hence the momentary, friendly delay — and now they were away
at his very heels.
Monday's sport, let me assert now, was altogether of a typical
kind, complete in every detail — to wit, a splendid deer to begin
with, a quick find, then a capital scent, a rideable country (grass
and heather for hoofbeat), forty-eight minutes' hard galloping
with only two trifling checks, and, to end with, a handsome kill
in the open ! How could you better it — as a sample of noble
wild sport ? And this, too, remember, in August — a month that
in the south is held to belong to tiller, tarpaulin and serge, in the
north to trigger and rod, while the riding-man may rust as he
best can. Here's the prescription, and here the solvent — under
which the rust will wear off and the joints move suppley, by
which the blood-current can be set going and the liver of sloth be
roused ! For 'tis Forard Aivay through the green -carpetted
forest — fourteen couple, or thereabouts, driving hard under the
hanging timber, plain to be seen, easy to be followed, through
the thin undergrowth — but flinging their tongues the while only
casualty, for, if my scattered but repeated experience goes for
anything, hounds seldom throw their voices very freely upon
deer, whether carted or wild. The holly-bushes below, and
the beech-boughs above were but slender hindrance through
the old forest. Yet I thanked my stars earnestly, as we swung
through Whistley Wood, that on this occasion my mount was
within Galloway standard and was ready to be checked, twisted
and turned as bush or bough demanded. And I thanked the
forest authorities, too (the oberjager above mentioned especially),
from my very heart, that, where the woodcarts had left deep
tracks and our forelegs pitched into what seemed nothing but
quagmire, the saving faggots gave a foothold at bottom, and we
went on our way without fall or overreach. The Charcoal-
burners' camp was passed ; and the great Inclosures drained by
the Lymington River were ahead, when a bevy of boys and men,
apparently on some bachelor picnic — possibly one of those
plausible junkettings solemnised under the name of reading-
A GALLOP 515
parties — stood in the way, and headed our buck from his point.
Major and Miss Talbot had, however, viewed him, as he turned
leftward ; not a moment was lost in regaining his line ; and
onward we scrambled through the mazy forest as fast as we
could dart and zigzag. The Brockenhurst-and-Lyndhurst road
was recrossed after skirting New Park ; and the chase went on
through Hollands Wood, the Lawn, and by the Victoria Tile
Yard. The names are, I believe, correct ; but in my own mind
and memory there are stamped only a headlong career through
gorse, heather, and holly ; then a several minutes' dive through
open woodland — the pack well together, and driving alongside
an inclosure paling — then a turn into one of these big inclosures
— Mr. Lovell, in spite of one arm, being quickest thither and
quickest to swing the gate, before bringing his horn out to cheer
on the stragglers and the field. Then a hurried mile or two by
broad green rides, with a wealth of pinetree-jungle on either side,
and then, outside, a minute's check, where a woodman had driven
the buck back into covert, and the eager pack — running breast
hisfh — had overshot the mark. Allen was off his horse in a
moment to clear the iron fencing. Hounds swung deftly back to
him ; and immediately a deep-toned note proclaimed that the
line was Forrard once more. (All this in Stubby Copse.)
Now the railway (L. & S. W.) was reached. A broad grass
track lay between the high wire fencing and the adjoining wood ;
not a bridge opened a loophole beneath the line ; and the buck,
forced clean away from home and water, had nothing for it but
to hold forward for life — or death. For a mile or so the leading
couples raced hard along the rank turf — the tail hounds,
momentarily slipped by the recent check, struggling hard to
make up their ground to the Master's horn and Miss Lo veil's
cheer. " There he goes ! " — the old glad signal that has prefaced
death, and glory, to many a hundred reynard. And there, up
the greenride was bobbing the white flag of the prize ahead.
Through the topmost corner of Woodfidley he disappeared ; and
we cut the plantation-angle to issue upon Denny Bog and its
wide vista of red heather and swamp. Ye tally ho ! Out he
L l 2
516
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
bounces not ten yards away — bis tongue lolling, his broad antlers
laid back, and every spot on his dappled red jacket showing
vividly in the sunlight. The leading hounds are almost at his
quarters, and chase him in view down the moorland. Now he
bends along the bogside ; now he meets the body of his pursuers ;
now he turns to bay in the open, beats them off once, twice.
^*op ^. rA^sm>\ p^/n' n>.
But the third time they pin and hold him — three couple on his
quarters, as many more on his neck and shoulders — till the knife
goes in, and the gallant old buck goes down upon the turf.
No such fun have I seen for many a month — and never a
truer, cheerier sport. It was all over by one o'clock ; and the
world shone bright for that day at least. These are the glimpses
of sunlight that silver a clouded sky. Such are the touches of
gladness that make life as a sparkling rill, rather than as a
gloomy current in monotone.
It is difficult — nay not possible — for me, a stranger, to add
who shared in the sport of Monday. But I know that, besides Mr.
Lovell, Mrs. Francis, and the Misses Lovell, there were at least
Major and Miss Talbot, Messrs. Arden, Bathurst, Heseltine,
Matchem, Newman, Waldo, and perhaps a dozen more.
GRASS COUNTRIES.
Season 1890—91.
LATE AUTUMN.
A day's hunting should be occupation sufficient for man or
woman — for that day at least. But is it, when it begins soon
after daylight and ends before luncheon — any more than dancing
at a ball for four hours, with only a single check, is sufficient
for the whole twenty-four ? This is no argument against early-
morning hunting — though frequently an excuse for shunning
it, on the part more often of men who would do nothing all day
if left to themselves. On the contrary, the same pleasant
lassitude that the average Englishman — while as yet not
included in the rollcall of Homburg nor arrived at a regime of
Vichy and Apollinaris — naturally welcomes with his after-
dinner coffee, is equally a comfortable sequence to cubhunting.
It forms, indeed, a charming excuse for a lazy afternoon.
Laziness when not a crime is a luxury. And the man is a poor
thing who, feeling he cannot afford it, has not the energy to
shake himself clear. No, in the matter of cubhunting dis-
inclination is more often a matter of fashion. Were the pastime
fashionable, fewer drawbacks would present themselves — and
we should all go a-hunting in the early morn.
Thank goodness, it is not so ; and so those who care for the
sport on its own account, see a great deal of fun without getting
in each other's way. But the ground is as yet too sunbound to
admit of complete enjoyment — though, with the glass now
galloping downhill and the forecasts prophesying unutterable
things, this Monday may prove to have been the last- summer
ol8 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
morning of the year. Sunny and oppressive it was, after the
night clouds had drifted off, and day had fairly asserted itself.
The grooms of Rugby would seem, as is right, to be early birds.
They were returning from exercise while the air was still cool,
and we yet within doors ! Strings of half-a-dozen, a dozen, and
even fifteen horses, all still undipped, trooped past the window —
setting one to gape and to covet, when one ought to have been
struggling to get into a boot or outside an untimely breakfast.
They tell us good horses are scarce. There never was a time
when so many men possessed them. And a vast proportion of
these fortunate owners are, I am led to believe, quite ready to
part, at a price.
The amateurs were hardly so prompt, to the call of daylight
and duty. And to make it, in one sense, worse for themselves,
through some misunderstanding they straggled into Bilton
village about the time hounds (North Warwickshire to wit)
were drawing the spinnies of Bilton Grange. Only, in one
sense, though ; for, if they did miss a twenty minutes' gallop,
and gnashed their teeth loudly in consequence, at least they
avoided the risk of using-up a hunter just carefully summered.
The ground was noisy, even under the long grass. To gallop
was sinful; to jump was extravagantly reckless — except, of
course, under the impulse of duty, so-much-a-week, and horses-
found-for-you, none of which grateful incentives come my way
or probably yours. There were men out — or groping their way
to hounds through neighbouring parishes — on old hunters with
renovated legs, and on young hunters with brand-new under-
standings. But for neither order was the ground befitting —
though some galloped and a few jumped, and the late arrivals
were sore at heart. By the side of Rains brook is one of
Mr. Parnell's little osier-beds ; and here three or four of the
Cook's Gorse foxes (some fifteen to twenty in all by last week's
count ! ) had laid up together. Brightly they " lolloped " forth
over the dewy greensward — a verdant carpet spreading almost
unbroken to distant Shuckburgh and lofty Staverton, the arena
of many a brilliant run and many an exciting struggle. Like
LATE AUTUMN. 519
the fling of a thoroughbred horse is the loose easy bound of a
fox at half-speed. There is a latent, idle, power in his leisurely
stride that tells of resources kept in reserve, and bids us
remember what he can do when the pinch shall come — when
the scent shall be breast high, and the goal forty minutes away.
To the third debutant the master sounded his horn ; and some
twenty couple of the bigger ladies of Kenilworth were sent to
the front. Gladly they took to the task ; and now we had to
realize that they — and we — were hunting the fox. For my
part, I realised it very quickly, and realised, moreovei', that this
was Warwickshire — not Hampshire, where last my hunting
lines were cast. For there was no way out of the second field.
With discretion almost akin to wisdom — or at any rate first
cousin to parsimony or cowardice — I had alread}' sent horses
home and betaken myself to a pony. Else had my craven heart
lacked the moral pluck (excellent term that for " craning " ) to
stand aside, when the huntsman galloped up to the low strong
timber, and went on. So we rode round by the nearest gate,
and the next, and many more — striking hounds again as they
crossed the Hillmorton Road by Bilton Grange and betook
themselves over the country to Bilton Village. Incident in
plenty was there by the way; as there always is, could one
but catch up and rechauffer it in appetising form. How
we cheered a thirteen-hand pony as, hampered with no ac-
coutrement but his own shaggy wool, he took a fifteen-hand
gate in his stride — how we took liberties with a padlocked gate,
and craved permission (with inclosure) by the evening's post ;
how we watched with keen delight the old Fitzwilliam and
Belvoir bitches cast for themselves beyond a dusty fallow — how
we spurred bloodred to reach a turnip-field across a Dunsmore
ditch — all these were part and parcel of a pleasant scamper, and
helped to mark the minutes of glow and jollity. And the cub
beat us when we reached Bilton Grange again, though he had
found earths closed in his face as he travelled round. He will
be a good fox yet. Blood enough was then found, in a brace of
young foxes from the turnip fields.
520 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
We have found a new use for the whistler's throat-pipe — the
tube with which Mr. Jones of Leicester enabled a roarer to
breathe freely. At the present moment many an old favourite,
■who might long ago have been consigned to the kennels, is still
carrying his master over the Shires, and remaining a useful
member of the stable — though blowing a clarion-note through
the metal pipe in his larynx. But the new application thereof
is so simple and apparently effective, it would be the height of
selfishness to limit its adoption to the one person yet benefited.
The proprietor, then, of one of these mocking-bird quadrupeds
went into a certain farmhouse to refresh — the occasion being
this morning when hounds had turned homeward, and the
host, being landlord, had a private and sufficiently-stocked cup-
board on the premises. The rider, his duty done, issued to
remount. The ploughman held the tubular one by the head,
but succeeded in backing him into a barrow. Whereupon
Mr. Foreman — the best of good fellows and as fond of fox-
hunting as Tom Moody himself — hastened to the rescue. But
old Blowhard wouldn't stand still — not a bit of it — though
Mr. Foreman spoke soothingly and Proprietor roared im-
patiently. With Foreman as pivot, Blowhard went round and
round, and Proprietor danced wrathfully after. The situation
was perplexing, and threatened to be prolonged until lunch
time — till a sudden and happy thought struck into the idle
brain of one alongside, and took root. " Look at his neck
beneath the jaw," quoth he to the perspiring Foreman. "Don't
you see the metal mouthpiece ? Whistle into it ! " There was
no gainsaying the staid suggestion. Foreman glanced upwards
but could catch no suspicion of a smile — so gravely he rounded
his lips and whistled softly down the tube. "Now's your
time ! Whistle louder ! " — as the would-be rider made another
fruitless shot at his stirrup. Louder he whistled — fairly taking
old Blowhard by storm, and forcing him to stand still for very
astonishment. Up jumped the pleased proprietor — and all ye
who happen to have a fractious favourite with a perforated
throat are welcome to the wrinkle thus given.
A FIRST HAINY DAY. 521
A FIRST RAINY DAY.
Never — even after a frost — did I welcome a wetting so
heartily as on Tuesday last. The soft cool drops fell not only
on a thirsty land hut on a glad spirit (mine only as sample of
many). The Master beamed ; the hunt-servants looked en-
tranced— even the breakfastless amateurs shivered contentedly,
and made believe to smile. For the steady downpour meant
salvation, release, a new era. Fox-hunting, hitherto in a dry
dock, was to be launched on the waters. The transition was
rapid, but had its stages, even after the gathering of the clouds
for days past, the rumours of rain in north and south, and the
prophesied " depressions " — whether of atmosphere or of liver
(the most sensitive of all barometers) the oracles forbore to
explain. We started for covert with the dust flying, and for
an hour gazed wonderingly at the black scud streaking the
heavens. A quarter of an hour later we were gratefully
drenched to the skin ; then the ground became so slippery
that horses could scarcely keep their feet ; and before we
turned homewards the turf was apparently in fair riding order
— or at least the surface-jar was gone, and the rattle had
ceased. How little impression had really been made, it was
easy to judge when one rode out for exercise next morning in
the sunshine.
The North Warwickshire were again on their Dunchurch
side, for a first visit to Wilcox's Gorse. Foxes were in pro-
fusion. So they had little difficulty in getting hold of a cub in
the gorse, and another in Line's Spinney.
And then we had a little hunt. Another fox bethought him-
self that the North Warwickshire country was worth clinging
to, even in preference to the Atherstone WToods of Coombe and
All-Oaks that bade him come over the waters of Avon. He
chose to climb the railway embankment to work inland ;
though, as with the Thames of to-day at Richmond, he might
almost have crossed the river-bed dry-padded. Now, I must
tell you, anything rather than wild adventure of riding was in
522 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the minds of the drenched and dawdling crew (if they will
forgive the alliterative epithets), who sauntered after hounds.
But somebody jumped a jump — always an infectious, foolhardy,
proceeding, when it is just as easy, and twice as safe, to "go
round " ? Then another did ditto, and another and another.
And all had a lot to say on the subject, as soon as they issued
scatheless. Who would have thought it — " My old crock . ."
" My new four-year old . ." and so forth. You all know the
style in which we bound through the paper hoops of our first
fence of the year. They were all off the spring-board together.
And the next thing the Mutual-Admiration-Society found them-
selves opposed to was the L. & N. W. Railway. Under ordinary
circumstances this should have been a stopper — to progress, if
not to discussion. But the first shower, and the first jump, of a
season don't come every day. Here was a little " cock-hedge "
(inverted commas to convey Leicestershire parlance), such as no
new-fangled line would venture to depend upon. (I am told
the Metropolitan Extension, that has its fangs already at the
throat of Warwickshire, meditates nothing less than treble
strands of best barbed.) How could the adventurers help
themselves ? They hopped in for very exhilaration, scarcely
giving a thought, till it was too late, to the awful problem of
how to get out — the latter being invariably the crucial, bitter,
trial in crossing railway or river. They swarmed up the em-
bankment, and surmounted the glistening rails. But on the
farther brink the telegraph wires were hanging at pony height
above the ground. It was necessary for riders to raise the
lowest strands that they might pass under, while descending at
an angle of 45°. One, two, and three of the party effected this
unharmed : for at that hour in the morning the telegraph
offices are scarcely in full play, and the chance of executing a
stray foxhunter by the new process was fortunately missed.
But Number Four in rotation was protected from the risk by
man's best friend, his horse. The latter, fearless no doubt of
timber or thorn — and certainly of such a mild barrier as dis-
played in the second little leafy hedge below — would have
A FIRST RAINY DAY.
523
nothing to do with dipping under dangerous electric wires.
Spur and whip he didn't mind — but no Harness batteries for
him ! So he shifted all further responsibility — on to his rider
— in whom henceforth the whole interest centred. Not even
the Iron Duke himself, on his original pedestal, ever held a
prouder or more prominent position than did the hero in
question. Like him, he affected, for a while, a nonchalant
pose — as if the scene beneath him were not worth joining.
Those below were whipping hounds off, to give colour to his
role. Observed and observer had changed parts. The Ob-
served thought to retire at the back of the stage ; but the
noble animal that so determinedly befriended him declined
that mode of descent also. Vestigia n\dla retrorswm, was his
motto ; and Medio tidissimus ibis his parable, which he pro-
ceeded to illustrate by suggesting a trip up the railway, quite
content that his Master should have full command within those
limits. Accordingly Observer set forth for Coventry. But no
outlet appeared in that direction : and it suddenly struck him
524 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
that the up express was about due. So, fleeing from that, he
set spurs Londonway and held the embankment at speed as it
flashed across him that the Birmingham mail would leave
Rugby within the hour. Had it been in November, the pre-
dicament would not have been so grave — for at least he would
have been wearing his own danger-flag, in a coat as yet in Mr.
Walding's hands. But in a wet shcoting-jacket there was no
hope. Not a moment was to be lost. And so thinking (we
suppose) he clapped spurs to his too-intelligent beast, and went
hard for Rugby Station — " thence to box himself home," ex-
plained the chief wag among the spectators. The kind Un-
known must extend his indulgence yet farther, and forgive my
having thus retailed Tuesday's only mirthful incident by flood
and field.
Only on Tuesday, October 21st, did Northamptonshire begin
in any degree to accommodate itself to the requirements of fox-
hunting. A ride forth that afternoon brought the comforting
assurance that the turf was no longer wholly a green rock bed.
The drizzle of overnight, following upon the day's rain of a
week ago, found a greeting in the yielding ground, and every
raindrop told — while the russet and gold of a lingering autumn
lightened the scene. In fact, it looked, and felt, far more like
hunting than it has yet been this fall. No alternative but to
hurry home, and order a box for the morrow. I confess to
being averse, and unwont, to take train in the month of
October. But we have had no hunting ; life is very short ; and
a season is shorter still. What has it been hitherto ? Walking
about on a pony while a cub has been killed. (Even the foxes
are backward this autumn of 1890.) And the interval days
have been spent by hunting men (by which I mean the men
who grudge every day that is lost and would rather see one fox
handsomely killed than e'en " twice twenty cock pheasants ")
in mutual commiseration, in dawdling preparation, and in fitful
occupation such as best becomes a frost. That the season is
approaching was evident in every corner of westward London
last week. Men, whose line of life is unmistakably the chase,
A FIRST RAINY DAY. 525
dropped in upon the club from far regions as naturally as the
early woodcocks speed southward with the first chilly breeze.
From Oxford Street to Piccadilly was a skirmishing ground for
healthy-looking manhood of a class quite different from that of
the pallid townman. You could not turn in to your boot-
maker's without stumbling across some old acquaintance on the
verge of apoplexy — tugging and purpling to induce a quart of
heather-grown calf to enclose itself in a pintpot boot; while the
" Snob " smiled deprecatingly, assuring that the lasts were the
same and that the "leg would soon fit the boot." Generally it
ended in cramp, a howl on the patient's part, and a volley that
rattled every shoe on the shelf. Or had you occasion to look in
at your tailor's. It was a hundred to one there was Smith,
with whom, three nights out of four the winter through, you
ride back from hunting, now perched on a wooden horse, and
sampling a swallowtail scarlet. Painfully aware was he that
the Bond Street trousers were scarcely in keeping — indeed
were supremely ridiculous in the multiplied mirrors around
him. And he grew as red in the light as if caught in the
dark — and felt bound to explain, that, well, he had thought he
would try a new shape. The breeches-maker's place of business
was a reproduction of the bootmaker's, — only more so, for they
are merciless hands that wield the buttonhook. He, too, means
to make the man. Altogether, the dandy of the hunting-field
has, I imagine, about as good a time as a maiden being fitted
for the summer season— and has, moreover, to pay his own bills
into the bargain. Verily, there is vanity in foxhunting — and
vanity let there be. Tis half the show. We don't all go out
to slaughter the fox, nothing else. Who would go hunting if
all were morose, and all were in sackcloth — with their sins and
their souls on the sleeve of their coat of misery ?
Northamptonshire is just pecking its way through its shell,
next week to emerge in full life and smartest appearance.
52G FOX-HOUND, FOREST, ANT) PRAIRIE.
Only within the past few days has it made its existence in any
degree actively evident. It was not until then that men had
given thought to jumping a fence or riding a gallop ; but, if
they visited the covertside at all, it was for little else but to
lounge, while, by hook or by crook, some cub-flesh was served
forth to the young entry. For themselves — if from day to day
they practised with fair impunity over the open ditches
obligingly laid out for them in every thoroughfare of London
W. by the Electric Light Companies — they felt they had
availed themselves of all the opportunity offered. (Some of the
younger members of the fraternity, indeed, had gone a step
further, and seized upon the indulgence as a nightly means of
qualifying for Melton's annual moonlight steeplechase.)
A capital scent marked the final week of October, and put
life into it — as you would have allowed had you, like me, from
the comfortable security of a gateway, to-day watched twenty
men and women abreast skim a drop fence into a furrow.
Honour bright, it was like nothing less than the patter of the
drums at tattoo — or hailstones dropping on the roof of an
Aldershot hut.
On Monday the Grafton had a " small-and-early " at Stowe
Wood, and so succeeded in catching the rime in full bloom. It
was indeed a wintry morning, such as should have no place
before our horses have begun to screw up, before even our
jackets are shed or our hair calls for cutting. Two or three
mornings such as these, and a frozen-out foxhunter will become
a thing of October — a lusus naturoa as startling as a white
bear in Piccadilly. Somewhere about ten o'clock (they had
begun an hour earlier than that) hounds were to be seen
glancing under the morning sun, as they feathered from field to
field 'twixt Stowe and Weeclon. It seemed but a stone-throw
to reach them — on the part of a cloud of late-comers kept abed
by the untimely cold. So these latter skirmished into the
valley and sought to rejoin hounds on the Weedon heights.
But the gates didn't fit, or weren't open, and so the fun began.
The impetus of the occasion was wholly insufficient : the state
A FIRST RAINY DAY. 527
of the ground was enough excuse ; and after a first few
casualties they actually fell back from the hill they had essayed
to breast, and returned to the wood, for a safer road round.
But they had sustained a shock that autumn systems had not
the vigour to bear. Even as the fall of Harold scattered their
forefathers, so turned they and fled when disaster overtook
their leader. He was a veteran of discretion, but was cruelly
used by fate. Tragedy on occasion will merge into comedy.
In this instance it fairly, and happily, gave way to it altogether.
Harold found a breach in a blackthorn wall ; and, having found
it, had a perfect right to do as he chose with it ; he accordingly
climbed the breach on foot, while leading his charger after him
and while an anxious band of followers awaited their turn and
the completion of his daring feat.
Harold is not a big man, if a great one. He all but gained
the top of the breach — when a treacherous abatti tripped him
up, and forward he plunged into the ditch beyond. No thought
had he for further glory ; no care for the brave band he
captained ; no wish for the trustful charger hovering over his
ready-made grave, save that the beast would not try to occupy
it with him. But Harold was held by the heels. Both spurs
were tangled in the reins ; the bay charger snorted with alarm,
raised its head in terror ; and Harold was set in the position of
one of Dore"s fallen angels being cast down from Heaven.
What his feelings were could only be guessed from the frantic
play of his little legs in mid-air. They twiddled and shook
with dazzling rapidity in their efforts to speak or their longing
to be free. Surely such a topsy-turvy hornpipe never was
figured before, certainly never one that called forth such
rapturous applause. Great is Diana — but she was not in it
with Terpsichore. The chase went on, but was clean forgot in
shrieks of approving laughter till Harold's heels slipped out of
their fastening, or the bay charger grew tired of fishing him,
and breathless and blue-in-the-face bold Harold clambered
back to his friends. Hounds meanwhile had nearly reached
Everdon, the village in the next valley. Had we seen them no
528
FOX -HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
more, 'twould have been Harold's fault only. But they had
pulled up at a drain ; and the few people who were with them
had the satisfaction of watching the stragglers making their
way downward. The green slope was greasy with frost : and a
mild hedge or two was unavoidable. But all the fire had died
out of their hearts after Harold's disaster, and they crawled
down the hillside in the dilatory unwilling fashion observable in
connection with the first early fences of a young season.
In the brightest sunshine but chilliest wind hounds worked
on over another valley, and the little brook, to Newnham
Clump. How very small that streamlet is — and yet how
viciously did half a dozen credited hunters decline it ! They
would not have it even at a stand, the hardness of the ground
perhaps combining with the long delay of hounds upon the
brink to institute, or to accentuate, their evil-minded aversion.
With no thought of profanity, I ask, can you not at such times
understand, and repeat heartily, Balaam's longing for a sword %
And a six feet brook the only lion in the path ! Maddening.
A FIRST RAINY DAY. 529
The little field got together on the brow ; hounds hunted up
to another range of open earth ; and were then taken home.
It only remains to bid their new huntsman, Smith, success and
good fortune, and the talent to carry worthily the mantle of
Frank Beers. Of the hitter's retirement I have said my few
words elsewhere ; and would fain be excused from again
dwelling on the subject here. It is one on which I feel
strongly and sadly. I will merely add that if ever huntsman
carried into his retirement sincere sympathy and affectionate
regard on the part of his field, it is so in the case of Frank
Beers.
The return of warmth on Wednesday brought with it a
phenomenally sudden fall of the leaf. The ash-trees were
positively raining leaves ; oak and elm were divesting them-
selves more steadily but equally determinedly ; while the hedge-
thorn was dropping its garments as fast as it could. From
mouth to mouth one heard the expression pass, " The hedges
will no longer be blind." But, I submit, there is no special
subject for congratulation in that. On the contrary, when
horses can once see through their fences they are only too apt
occasionally to run through them, imagining them, especially
under the prompting of pace or incomplete condition, weaker
than they really are. Else why are steeplechase fences in-
variably thickened and blackened ? Leaves constitute no
strength in a hedge ; but horses, except Irish novices who
sometimes assume the erection to be a green bank, will
generally rise well over them. The ditches on the other hand
(it is no consolation to add) will be blind until Christmas — up
to which period the crowd, more or less, is content to stay
away. No, give me leafy hedges and clean ditches, if such a
combination be possible. I see no advantage in leafless hedges
except that they allow one a chance of seeing what is on the
other side, a matter of more need nowadays than, well, when we
were all younger.
And next week we begin, in the panoply of foxhunting and
the absorption of a daily pursuit, nay, of a life's occupation, of
II M
530 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
life's best elixir, of life's happiest distraction, of life's pith and
kernel, say some. Contradict them according to your bent.
Not for me is it to gainsay their words or scoff at their frenzy.
Heart and soul, in precept and in practice, I am with them,
until the good green turf shall be my coverlet, as it has
ofttimes been my bed and my unfailing friend. Make the
most of your opportunity mesdames et messieurs. But do not
all patronise the same shop. Distribute your custom, or the
goods will go up in price while declining in quality ; and even
the shopmen will hint that there are too many of you, averring
they " have only enough to supply their home customers " (a
principle that by no means expresses the spirit of foxhunting).
A WEEK WITH SIX PACKS.
In the full swing of hunting at last — not even time to skim
the morning paper. Sport day by day with one pack or
another. You ma}', or may not, have been with the right one
daily. But, taking your turn fairly, you must surely have
shared in much that was cheery and pleasant, something that
was exciting and satisfying. For my part, I have endeavoured
to carry out a not altogether irksome duty, by hunting six
consecutive (week) days with six different packs — within road
distance and in, perhaps, the best country of each. Gratefully
I tender my thanks to the six kindly Masters ; and in all
humility I offer my diary of the other five days.
Friday, Nov. 7, the Atherstone at Coton House, the roughest
morning on which I have seen hounds take the field since the
great gale of Oct. 9, somewhere early in the eighties. Horses
would scarcely face it, with your road to covert lying up the wind ;
and it must have been pitiless work getting back to Atherstone
against the storm. Yet both Mrs. and Miss Oakeley braved it
— putting to shame many featherbed sportsmen living much
closer to the scene. I grant that the early outlook was not
tempting, if one's bedroom window faced the north-west, for the
A WEEK WITH SIX PACKS. 531
rain drove against the panes like spray against a fo'castle port
— shutting out from view even the dense black clouds drifting
inland from the Atlantic. (Unconsciously one's thoughts
recurred to that stormy pathway, and one's sympathies went
forth to " those in peril on the sea.") But a wetting on dry
land, if a paradox, is no great hardship, and as for being blown
about, are there not living men — said to be sane withal — who
keep private ships (at the cost of a pack of hounds, forsooth ! )
to ensure themselves that very luxury ? * Not a nice day for
hunting, doubtless. But what would you do at home ? — knock
off all your letters by one o'clock, eat an ill-earned and exagger-
ated luncheon afterwards, then, perhaps, smoke yourself silly,
and lounge about grumbling — or not impossibly, swearing — at
the weather, a prey to " undisciplined inaction," " and the frivo-
lous work of polished idleness." A rough-and-tumble with the
elements, in a tarpaulin kit — or something as much akin to it
as civilisation will permit — is surely better than this ?
Of course it was, by rights, a Shuckburgh hurricane, and
should have come twenty-four hours earlier. But it happened
to be late for the meet, and fell foul of the Atherstone. So
yesterday the wholly unaccustomed spectacle was to be wit-
nessed— of huntsman and field listening placidly on Shuck-
burgh Hill, while every hound note floated distinctly to the
summit. And thus it was only last night that my after-dinner
musing took the form of reflection upon the absolute advan-
tages of foxhunting as a soothing refreshing process, tending
more to invigoration and clear appreciation of life than all the
German waters, or all the tonics of home pharmacy — or even
the most Spartan regimen of diet and training. The frame is
never more fit, or the brain less burdened with cobwebs, than
after day-to-day hunting — stipulated always that long railway
journeys or ultra-Meltonian dinners are not superadded to the
day's work. Fairly good living is essential, for mind's and body's
sake alike. Sybaritism is antagonistic, and will knock away the
* Needless to say tins was written previous to news of the sad incidents of the
storm in question.
M M 2
532 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
very keystone of the arch of robust vigour. Postprandial reflec-
tions these — outcome of the satisfied serenity consequent upon
a fair day's sport, a satisfactory ride, and a sufficient catering.
At such moments the world looks peaceful and unaggressive —
as the blue Mediterranean between its squalls. The muser
rises, in a measure, to the halcyon frame of mind of Gerald in
the White Rose, when he suddenly leaped out of poverty — "the
world seemed so lovely," I have had happiness out of hunting.
Believe me, I have had more entrancing happiness still in
dreaming it over. And why ? Because it keeps one fit, and fit
to live, and makes life a thousand times worth living.
Take this for my Apologia vitw, and come back with me, for
a very brief while, to the covertside of Coton. If an old fox and
a brace of cubs come scuttling past you, never mind, you are
within your rights and have come by the road that the Romans
made before the fox took the place of wild boar and wolf.
Besides, these freegoing fugitives care nothing for you, and
scarcely turn aside. Alas, the whip comes down the tempest
like a Will o' the Wisp — bringing many a storm-clad galloper
in his wake — and fetches back the couples that we thought to-
be the van of the pack. The horn is playing up the wind : and
the call of business is elsewhere. On such a day the golden rule
of the school of which I am but a humble disciple, viz., " Get
away on the back of the first fox that breaks covert," is only to
be applied with the help of great luck, and may often, as now,
be an impossibility. So we hang about the Park and spinnies
for a while, shrug our wet shoulders at one another, and mark
who are our neighbours of the day. The following names nearly
make up the roster, viz., Mr. E. de C. Oakeley, Mrs. and Miss-
Oakeley, Mr. and Miss Hanbury, Capts. Asquith, McCalmont,
and Wheeler, Messrs. Angelo, J. Baring, Flint, Gilbert and
son, Gillespie-Stainton, Ivens, Loverock, C. Marriott, Muntz.,
Nicholson, Oldacre, Powell, Schwabe, Young, Watson, and
Wedge.
Finally, we left covert down the gale, and embarked upon the
good country of Shawell and Swinford. But, as ill-luck would
A WEEK WITH SIX PACKS 533
have it, struck the line of one of the foxes now fully twenty
minutes ahead. Yet — curious to say — in spite of the hurricane
there was no failure of scent. Had we been on terms, I am
open to believe there might have been quite a good run ! It is
impossible to suppose that any body-scent could have remained
amid the boisterous gusts : so it must have been purely a pad-
scent that guided hounds, and that even now they could puzzle
out without much difficulty. Upon this they took us along — at
times almost prettily — by the left of Shawell Village nearly to
Swinford. The gravelpit-earths, where Mr. Gilbert had watched
a litter through the summer, were shut in our fox's face : so he
bore leftward to Shawell Wood, and beat hounds. For the next
hour or so they sought a fox in vain. But the driving rain and
the pattering leaves had made life aboveground unbearable ;
iind Reynard was not to be found until, at a comparatively early
hour, the shivering crew were dismissed homewards.
On Saturday, Nov. 8, I was a little out of my ground ; but
■dropped in for the brightest brief scurry I have yet seen, and
found myself among the smartest and sharpest field on this side
of Harboro', the Bicester to wit. The run was not quite long
■enough or straight enough to justify my applying for special
permit regarding it. It was nearly becoming a gallop of
equal class to two or three others already on the books of the
pack in question, for the month past that with other hounds has
been so generally barren. Even this quarter-hour's item was
the first proper warming-up I have yet experienced — and of a
truth it was very evidently and practically appreciated, by a
party of men well suited to the occasion. Seeking safe pilotage,
my eye suggested choice between the noble Master, and a cer-
tain Leicestershire lord — whom I had ofttimes seen carving the
way over his own broad acres (Lord Lonsdale). Here he was
on strange ground and carving with a borrowed weapon. But
none the less deftly did he carve. Both were giving me and
most of us a couple of stone : and both were fitly mounted and
caparisoned cap d pie for the occasion. Accordingly, first I
pinned my faith to the former — but he soon left me in a bull-
534
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
finch that blacked and bloodied my only still presentable
feature. So I turned to the other ; but he shortly played me a
wicked trick — for he swung over some great wide-ditched timber
and left me to slink ignominiously through a hole at the side.
So I came to the conclusion that, sincerely as I esteem and
respect blue blood, I was far from "loving a lord " as a pilot ; and,,
staunching my own common carmine as best I could, elected to
take my own line of gaps in comparative safety. For the first
time the grass was excellent going, and the plough was almost
deep.
Monday, Nov. 10, found the Grafton in full panoply at
Preston Capes, on a beautiful hunting morn — with a very
representative field — all victims to the tailor's homoeopathic
creed of putting all possible weight on with a view to taking
weight down. Here are a few names, with every apology for
omissions. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas-Pennant, Major and Mrs.
Blackburn, Capt. and Mrs. Allfrey, Capt. and Mrs. Paget,.
A WEEK WITH SIX PACKS. 535
Mr. and Mrs. Craven, Mr. and Mrs. Byass, Mr. and Mrs.
Thornton, Mr. and Mrs. Blacklock, Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan-
Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, Mr. and Mrs. Church, Mr. and
Mrs. Peareth, Mr. and Miss Burton, Mrs. Clerk, Mrs. Martin,
Lord Southampton, Sir Rainald Knightley, Sir William Hum-
phery, Gen. Clery, Col. Fife, Capts. Askwith, Faber, Riddell,
Messrs. Adamthwaite, Baring, Campbell, Elliott, H. Gosling,
Holloway, Johnson, Knightley, Lees, Macdonald, Manning,
Riddey, Roberts, Roche, Tibbets, Walton, Waring, Wellesley,
Wilder, Wiseman, &c.
Beginning a week late, the Grafton have in the matter of
appearance, a distinct advantage over their neighbours. Hence
so much irreproachable completeness on every hand this day.
A week of dress rehearsal had rivetted the joints in many an
armour that hitherto — if only in the too conscious eyes of the
wearer himself — may not have knitted closely. Ah ! the gift
that we really need in the pretty world of the hunting field
is not so much "to see ourselves as others see us." That might
be altogether too unsatisfactory. But rather to realise how
little the inquiring minds of others go beyond the impression
they have very recently carried away from the home looking-
glass. On the other hand, it is very safe to say that these
self-conscious units all go to make up a very pleasing whole — a
field of dainty horsefolk — an assemblage that, from its very
brightness, helps more than all to maintain foxhunting as a
brilliant and popular institution.
But about the sport. Twenty minutes racing by gateway
from pasture to pasture. Then Badby Wood — deeper even
now than for the last half-dozen years, though the turf outside
is still almost hard — round and through, backwards aud for-
wards, for an hour. Then outside, for two little fences. Horses
had at this time so entirely set aside all notion of such
diversion, that they tumbled in a fashion only to be defined as
haphazard. Enough smart men were soon running about in
the track of hounds to have made a field for a pack of foot-
beagles. And, by the way, of all the woe-deploring faces I ever
536 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
saw worn by human being, save on the gallows or at the gun-
wheel, the most pitiable was that of a well booted and breeched
second horseman, when ordered to give up his mount to his
master and to set off afoot to Daventry — there to seek the latter's
riderless runaway. It is only fair to add that his master first
lightened his load as much as possible by distributing the
contents of a sandwich box, the size of an overland trunk,
among his circle of friends. But I think I shall long recall
that pitiable face, and picture the white-leathered limbs
trudging wearily away into the dim distance.
Their fox was pretty well worked to death before he con-
sented again to leave Badby Wood. He then only crawled up
to Badby House, and there died — two hours from the find, the
intermediate time, as I have described, having been divided
between the richly-gated pastures of Fawsley and the muddy
mazes of Badby Wood (I refer only to some further bypaths,
and am far from intending to cast the faintest aspersion upon
one of the most valued and invaluable coverts in the two Hunts).
It is rather late to say where our fox was found. (I fancy I
have mislaid a page of MS., or perhaps used it to light my last
overnight cigar, when I shied away the pen at the welcome
promptings of sleep.) But the foxes — two brace of them
together — were found late. Not till we reached Charwelton
Osierbed, and it was thence that we galloped the gates for our
lives, over the wide green domain of the revered house of
Knightley. Tis on a miniature scale, the Aylesbury Vale of
Northamptonshire. The Grafton lady-pack were in great form,
whether darting and twisting over the greensward, or chirping
and driving hard round the deep woodland of Badby. There
was a sparkling scent.
Tuesday, Nov. 11th. — The North Warwickshire at Dun-
church. The morning came in with a storm that seemed a
duplicate of Friday ; but that eased off, with a shift of the
wind, till one's wet-weather-kit became superfluous to the eye
and distressing to the body. We had a run — a capital run —
having only one drawback, on which we will dwell as little as
A WEEK WITH SIX PACKS. 537
possible. To most of us the treat was altogether new. Our
•ears had been tickled with stories of " a dart with Mr. Fernie,"
and "a clipper with the Pytchley." We had said Yea, and
hoped for our own turn. It came in very fair fashion with
Mr. Ashton this Tuesday afternoon. Prior to one o'clock a
.pleasant scurry had been scored from Cook's Gorse ; and a
brace of foxes had been killed in its immediate neighbourhood.
It remained for the afternoon to provide the pith of the day —
from Hilmorton Gorse. It is early in the season ; but there
was a little world of riders. A score of years ago Mr. Little
Gilmour assured me that twenty men were now riding hard
to one in his youth-time. The ratio, I make bold to say, has
■completed itself again since then. Else am I beginning to viewr
bravery in the form of mere freedom from causeless fear.
Perhaps it is so. But there were no spectres worse than a half
rotten ox-rail in those days.
To history. 1.45 by the watch when hounds issued from
Hilmorton Gorse, a minute after their fox. An hour later they
had him in the open. My estimate of the Crick country is first
founded upon boy's experience under Charles Payn — and may
accordingly be an exaggerated one. But, to put it mildly, I
esteem it as second to none in the Grass Countries. So,
when — under orders correct and pronounced — we pulled up for
a moment in the Watling Street, small wonder there was half-
assured happiness — not to say, nervous anxiety — pourtrayed in
fifty faces — faces as yet set and concentrated, by no means
effulgent as with the glow of a run in full fling. In plain,
•unbaptized English, we are at such times " in a devil of a
hurry," — afraid of being choked off, interrupted, or led astray —
.afraid of we hardly know what. For the indefinite is before
ns — and possibly we are not quite sure of ourselves. So it
was almost like a jest at a ghost seance, that the spell was
momentarily broken by a distracting trifle. 'Tis hardly worth
telling. But when a bold stranger leaped his way into the
road — (Only strangers are bold. We who know every fence,
and would like to know a great many more gates than we do
538 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
are mere skilful shirkers) — it was funny to see his little horse
play with a big one as we are led to believe a rhinoceros fights
with an elephant. He landed with head very low — happily
for him — tucked it completely under a big horse galloping
across him — lifted the other's girths to his own topmost
height — both spun round on their respective axes, and both
went contentedly on, in the proper direction. But I shall not
get through the run at this rate — Hounds left the Old Road
where it enters the fields, and, on a good scent, drove, almost
of course, up to Crick Covert. But, without entering, they
skirted and held on — swinging risrhtward from the gorse. The
top of the hill divided the better men, who knew not or would
not know, the country, and the more clever gallopers. And
the former competed closely among themselves as to right of
breaking the ox-rail on the summit. (Blessed and pure is a
good ash-rail in these iron times.) No great hurry, but fast
hunting, over and beyond the new railway above Kilsby — ■
where the pace freshened and difficulties thickened. Oh, what
a country ! But you had to take it edgeways, and corner ways,
and roundabout ways. Give us a chance — good farmers, good
fellows. Let the blacksmith go round. We can only live once-
and die once, it is true — but it would be no pleasure to you to-
have a man carried dead to your door ? Yet hounds ran
charmingly ; and we rode to them where we could — the sturdy-
timber and blackthorn seeming quite strong enough to need no-
extra protection whatever. Who made the best of their way
'twould be impossible to say. There were veterans of the soil —
of all sizes and weight — may I say it? — from Mr. Muntz to
Mr. Wedge. There was an ex-master pinned down by his coat
tails after a cropper at timber, and fair ladies fluttering over
sizeable oxers as lightly as if habits were wings. There were
newcomers from Ireland (and I shall take the liberty of
appending a note of admiration to the name of Captain Steeds) ;
there were men who had learned to ride in the Harrow Vale ;.
and there were strangers in mufti, apparently underhorsed, but
very obviously capable.
A WEEK WITH SIX PACK'S. 539
Beneath Kilsby and Barby — almost to the canal side — hounds
pressed their game hard, brought him back to and through Kils-
by and ran him down fiercely among the hedgerows.
Wednesday, Nov. 12.- — The Pytchley at North Kilworth, on
a morning that put the bright and sunny side of life in vivid
colour before one. Nor do I know that anything throughout
the day came specially to dull its brilliancy, unless through the
healthy medium of fresh earth and new coats. I read some-
whore " To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the
body." But I would qualify the quotation. Earth is a kindly
mother. But she should kiss her sons only. To imprint a rough
salute on her daughters is doubtful kindness, needless attention
— and there were two or three who bore her sharp imprint to-
day. We rode a delectable country. Each fence stood up
clearly, and not awfully, though the ditches lay shrouded some-
what indistinctly. But in neither was the harm. It was found
rather in the excessive vigour of the phalanx that swept over
them. Everybody was on the ride. They ride exceedingly fair
— to one another (I say nothing about the hounds, that is a
business between them and the Master — and it must be added,
all listen instantly to his word). But anxiety brings close
quarters, insufficient scope, excessive and unnecessary grief.
Good horses and gallant men to-day were down to a merry tune.
I believe, and hope, that neither men nor horses were hurt.
But there will be repairs to be made good, by both purveyors of
horses and makers of coats.
From Kilworth Sticks we had a trifling run — after finding-
some lively foxes. Half an hour sufficed for the killing of a
young one in Bosworth Village. But, heavens, how we started
— a false start and a fair start, the latter remarkable for being
three fields after a shepherd dog. The shepherd dog was right.
But that is hardly sufficient excuse. One man had got a
magnificent start — meant to keep it — and we meant to have it
out of him. But he held his own till he had circled over five
fences to come back to the pack.
In the false start there was nothing more edifying than the
.140 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
flight of backs — black backs, scarlet backs, brown backs, steel
backs, and pepper-and-salt backs. I know them all by their
backs — the advantage of habit and place. And I know, as I
gallop, pretty well what position those backs will occupy twenty
minutes hence. The majority will be with me. Some won't be
■even there.
The truest sport of the day lay, as often, in the afternoon —
South Kilworth Covert the source. Scent was what I may term
of a squeaking description. Hounds ran a field, stopped,
squeaked, and the world rode. A catchy scent was an accepted
fact — or should have been — in the first two miles, at most. The
world was incredulous ; and the moment a single hound squeaked
again they were in for " thirty minutes without a check."
There are positions in which to be an object must be far happier
than to be, perforce, objector. Objects care little — 'tis the duck's
back and the water again and again. But the objector, re-
spected and obeyed though he be, has to find the water. Small
blame, if some with less command over their resources, temper
that water strongly.
With a hunting scent hounds took us round South Kilworth,
amending the pace considerably as they moved on for Misterton.
By the bye, it was just this line that the Pytchley took at the
commencement of the greatest run of their annals. You who
have Mr. Nethercote's history of the Hunt will find it on page
161 ; and it is worth }7our turning to. I happened to spend
Jast evening with one who rode in it (thirty-six years ago, the
Crimean November) ; and heard much of how Charles Payn ran
one of Mr. Gough's Scotch foxes a sixteen mile point and a
twistiDg course of thirty-two miles.
To-day's was no great run but an excellent hunt — by Mister-
ton Covert, Swinford corner, to Swinford Village and Shawell —
an hour and a quarter. Their fox seemed all but in their mouths,
when hounds suddenly struck two lines — the one up a road, the
other at an angle across the adjoining field. And they never
deciphered the double turn. The feature of the day really was
the prevalent and intense desire of everybody to jump as often
A WEEK WITH SIX PACKS.
541
and as quickly as possible, with results in many cases as above —
or as below.
I carina tellV, I carina tell a',
Some gat a skelp, and some gat a claw,
Some gat a hurt, ami some gat 11:1110.
Ane got a twist o' the ciaig,
Ane gat a bunch o' the wame,
Symy Haw gat lamed of a leg,
And syme ran wallowing hame.
It is not my business to be personal. But sometimes I ven-
ture a liberty with old and tried friends. Among our blithest
riders, our keenest sportsmen, is one who, besides having — or
assuming through the medium of an early family — the age of a
senator, has three stalwart sons. These all ride admirably, but
not a bit better, or harder, than " the Governor." He doesn't
mean to be beat ; Avhile, with them, the sentiment of respect is,
• —1 " </
*****
_. 1
in the field, to a certain extent commingled with that of laudable
rivalry. The Governor got down. In a moment one hopeful
landed within earshot — i.e., a hand's breadth — while the other
two pulled up just in time to leave the parent with a whole-
542 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
skin, and to do their filial duty. This they accomplished by
bidding the Governor get up as fast as he could, and flinging a
long shot of denunciation (and self exculpation) after the flying
brother. Who shall say now that foxhunting is not a levelling
pursuit 1
It is said that a certain fashionable congregation were recently
■soundly trounced for taking their ease on the day of rest with
their sporting paper as befitting literature. The reproach shall
not lie upon The Field. Here is a Sunday story, and a, fact of
to-day — which will, besides, serve to show that the young fry of
the Grass Countries are brought up not solely secularly. The
small son of one of the very good yeomen who form the back-
bone of the Pytchley Hunt was to have his ride with hounds
■at North Kilworth this morning. When kneeling to his prayers
overnight — his little brain glowing with thought of the morrow
— he said, " Mother, will it be wicked if I pray I may get the
brush 1 " " No my boy," replied the sensible matron ; " you might
•do worse than that." " Then I will," said the little one ; and
he did, in all earnestness and piety. This morning he appeared
at the meet on his shaggy pony ; his father told the episode to
the Master, and when the first fox was killed at Bosworth, His
Lordship, with true kindly feeling, presented it to the boy. You
•can draw your own conclusion, as to the virtue of innocent
•dreams and prayers.
MUGGY MORNINGS.
Granted that weather is an important factor in fox-hunting
— its friendly help has been with us in the week past, enhancing
each day's outing, putting a pleasant aspect on all we saw and
all we did, and pushing optimism, as it were, down our throats.
You and I love hunting for hunting's sake — in fair weather and
in foul ? But fair for choice. We would rather not be blown
about ; we would rather not be chilled to our toes ; we would
rather not curl and shrink from a stream of cold water down
MUGGY MORNINGS. 543
our backs. No, a warm sun and a hothouse atmosphere are
better than these, though we had rather have been habited for
the occasion. A cashmere jacket would better have suited
either sex for this November — flannel and super-Melton are
altogether out of season. We melt under them ; and dwindle,
whether we can afford it or not.
I take Tuesday, Nov. 18th, for my first sample and excellent
day's sport, provided for us by Mr. Ashton and the North
Warwickshire, almost wholly on the plain of Dunsmoor — a dis-
trict that will readily interpret itself as a moorland at the back
of Dunchurch. Not that it is by any means moorland nowadays
— if it was, as I believe, almost within old man's memory. Its
light soil has been ploughed and grass-sown in pretty equal
proportions : and arable and turf alike are separated field from
field by the deep wide ditches and hazel-covered banks origi-
nally employed to drain the waste and to partition its enclosure.
These ditches are at the present moment so many bramble-hid
graves. But horses, like ourselves, have a keen perception of
the awful ; and to-day there were very few falls, though I may
safely affirm there was occasion in one hour to jump as many
blind ditches as all the rest of the week is likely to insist upon.
And Dunsmoor as far as my experience goes (which is that of
several Masterships) is very fair scenting ground. Added to
which, it is this season exceptionally foxed.
A morning's drizzle was the prelude to our daily Turkish
bath — the latter operation lasting about fifty minutes, and send-
ing us home, well-satisfied, before three o'clock — the climax of
the process being the steaming tub, from which Phryne herself
might step down glowing and ravenous to a hunter's feast. A
•thirst that is worth fifty pounds, an appetite that allows no
leisure to study a menu, and that menu a befitting one. These
may be trifles : but they are the gift of a day's foxhunting — and
good sport gives zest and flavour to the whole.
The meet being at Wolston, the run of the day was from
the little covert of Fulhani Wood, adjacent to the Coventry
.railway. A blacker fox never showed himself than the furry
544 FOX-HOUKD, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
fellow who was so nearly chopped in covert, and then coursed by-
hounds for three fields. He crossed the railway, and hounds-
dived in and out of the deep cutting almost under the bridge on
which we stood — a pretty sight if a perilous chance. How we-
went and where we went is scarcely worth precisely puzzling
out. The merit of the run was to be found in sharp, pretty,
hunting, a fair scent, and a pleasant ride, rather than in any
boldness or pluck on the part of the hunted one. He only ran-
straight wThen he grew tired. Then he led us across grass and
plough by Causton, by Bilton Village, to Overslade. The bitches-
were then running for blood : and in a few minutes more they
coursed him down, on the very confines of Rugby town and near
the house once Mr. Pennington's, now Mr. Clay's.
" Ride him close up to hounds and see if he will do to carry
me ! " These were no doubt the home instructions of the morn-
insr. And the lad carried them out to the letter. But it was a>
little hard, was it not, on the poor boy that he should also have-
to carry a new yellow belt and an equally new sandwich-box of
very fashionable proportions ? And it was a little hard upon
our feelings to have to wait an extra turn at every fence for that
sandwich-box. The farmers of ] 890 let us come : but they
would gladly draw the line at second horsemen — who, once again
I protest and reiterate, ought to be marshalled and led, in one
mass under one keeper, by road and bridle way. And, under
whatever obligation as to a lead we may gladly place ourselves
one towards another, we don't want it from a sandwich-
box, eh %
A MEDLEY AT LILBOURNE.
Wednesday was hotter than ever — the most chokev day for
man, woman, and beast I ever remember. After a quarter of
an hour's gallop we gasped like fish out of water, while our
horses panted and dripped as if they had been swimming for
their lives. Not a becoming day, even for those whose youth
and freshness make them more or less independent of the acci-
A MEDLEY AT LILBOURNE. 545
dent of temperature. We, who are middle-aged and elderly,
look our very worst when parboiled. Comfort, workmanlike
appearance, and dignity alike forsake us utterly ; and, accoixl-
ing to disposition, the individual is found either ludicrously
cross or profusely jovial. The latter aspect, I am proud to
assert, chiefly obtained on this piping Wednesday ; and a full
Pytchley field was to be seen at its warmest and jolliest —
steaming its way through bridlegate and gap, rushing along with
coat and habit body flung open (if so be the tailor would per-
mit), their faces ruddy, and (in the case of men) their hats
almost floating from their heads. I will pursue the picture no
further. Have you ever spent a summer in the plains of India ?
If so, you remember the melting mood in which, of a hot night,
}rou woke to the fact that the punkah-wallah had ceased his
pulling. Such was our condition the day through, and there
was not even a punkah-wallah on whom to wreak vengeance.
The Pytchley, then, met at Lilbourne — for perhaps their first
crowd of the season. Lord Spencer and his men were on the
spot at a punctual 10.45 — and the meet proceeded. For a
Pytchley- Wednesday-meet is a function. Abbreviation would
lead to turmoil — and turmoil never begins till a fox is found
and away. Amid such a mass of men and women all passing
their morning greeting anc\ amid a mob of horses similar in
multitude to that of Rugby's Martinmas Fair now proceeding,
it is marvellous that sorting is ever achieved. When each finds
each, there is still confusion. A rider who drives up discovers he
has more horses than men ; another, who has brought friends
upon wheels, has to send his cart home closely packed — and a
late-comer meeting that cart may be startled and edified by the
sight of a bevy of stablemen, fur-clad and cigar-blowing, whisk-
ing homeward an uproarious crew. Jones has got his kicker
for his first horse, whereas he had meant to leave his second
horseman to bear the protests of which he himself is now
deservedly the victim. Smith finds the young one is coughing ;
while, on a principle of his own, the old mare has been ordered
to leave her stable only at eleven o'clock, that she maybe in full
54C FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
fitness for a scurry from Crick Gorse. Brown is armed with the
wrong bridle, and Robinson finds himself in a new saddle upon
a horse that invariably curls his back at starting. Montmo-
rency's left boot releases itself with a healthy crack from its
breeches-button ; Mrs. Montmorency's elastics snap gaily under
her foot (her only skirt that won't sit without them) ; and Round-
head's gilded hatguard draws its staple out of his beaver. This
is a world of small woes. Depend on it, if man or woman
look really happy and disinterested before hounds move ofY,
they are people of great minds or of great good fortune. They
have heavy trouble at home, or the accidents of life are to-day
all on their side.
After all had mounted, when an unusual number were found
upon kickers, and one and all were nervously awaiting their
turn to be kicked, the cavalcade, lately set in motion, again
pulled up to wait. A caravan from Harboro' had just steamed
into Lilbourne station. To save the road journey, thirteen
horseboxes had been loaded. The unloading was an evolution
that the Horse Guards had done well to witness. In ten
minutes there was not a pink coat on the platform. All had
ridden up and fallen in. Forward, to Lilbourne Gorse — whence
half the greatest gallops of the Pytchley have originated. Yet,
how a fox ever makes a country from here it is difficult to
understand. River, railway and crowded road block him as
remorselessly on the one side as Sir William Harcourt does the
Hares Close-Time Bill. The beautiful Crick-and-Hilmorton
vale is the only available ground : and to reach that he has to
dash over the open, past a screaming multitude, and across
another well- manned lane. This morning our fox had time to
storm the former impregnable position, and be flung back among
hounds ere they had followed him over river and rail. He came
back through them and through our midst like an angry wolf —
a great, raking, " varmint " with ears back and jaws wide open.
By pluck he regained the Gorse; and by pluck he attained the
other route, southward. Twelve minutes only we then rode :
but it was a gay scurry by Lilbourne Village and over the valley
A MEDLEY AT LILBOURNE. 547
to Hilmorton Gorse. No mutual arrangement existing by which
the one pack stops its earths for the other, he found safety under-
ground
By this time one realised in a measure some new-comers of
the day. The Duchess of Hamilton was there ; also Lord
Lonsdale, Lord Molyneux, Messrs. Murietta, Mr. Stokes taking
a winter-holiday from America, and many others besides the
corps d'armee of the Pytchley already assembled.
I might have been tempted to add more on the subject of the
country and the way it was taken — had not the gallop been cut
short in its bud, and the end come just as the run had fairly
begun. Encomium on a district that contains the old Grand
Military Course would be out of place as an oft-told tale. After
some twenty minutes to cool, the field were led off straightway
to Yelvertoft Field Side — and there drawn up on a bridge, as
many as the bridge would hold, a sight for gods and for men.
It was rightly ruled that the fox should have a chance given
him. For this cause the field were securely packed — three, four,
and five abreast — regardless of how they might find themselves
assorted, approximated, or endangered. I heard but a day or two
ago of an instance across the Atlantic where detective and
detected were called upon for nights together to share blankets
on a journey. There was room for similarity here, if for nothing
else. Your pet enemy might for fifteen solemn minutes be
pressing you knee to knee. Your bosom friend might be tempt-
ing destruction by allowing his underfed beast to lunch off your
ticklish mare's tail. You could neither withdraw from the one
nor protect the other. It was a positive relief when two hard-
riders continued their almost daily duel across country by
tangling and fighting free — all unwillingly — in the mid-crowd.
The one's reins became tightly tucked under the other's weighty
tail. The tail closed down like a vice ; the reins jerked sharply ;
the hinder horse struggled to rise on his hindlegs, the front horse
lifted himself on to his fore. One rider had all he knew to
keep back in his saddle, the other to keep his own balance
and his horse's at all — the crowd was scattered, and the
x x 2
548
FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
front rank delinquent sent forward to watch for a fox breaking
covert.
This diversion was scarcely over before a fox did break : and
a rush was set going. Three fields and a plough team — then
half an hour's gate-and-hill-galloping to the Hemplow, that told
its exhausting tale equally on horses and on men. I believe
this was a great fox, had he not been driven back from the Cold
Ashby brow. A rough highland is the Hemplow district ; and
thereon we rose and plunged for nearly an hour in all — hounds
changing more than once, and thus missing a kill, for there was
a fair scent in spite of the muggy atmosphere.
On an early day of the present week a special train brought a
strong body of Cambridge undergraduates to hunt with a North-
amptonshire pack. The district was one in which the presence
of an extra score or so of ardent riders was in no way incon-
venient ; sport and country were quite equal to the occasion ; and
the visitors made the most of it. "Never saw gentlemen enjoy
themselves so much" described the huntsman, as he narrated the
circumstance this morning. Questioned as to who they were, he
replied in another pithy sentence (for quick, keen, huntsmen
have no time for decorative language) "Couldn't justly catch
their names ; but they was all going to be dukes some day."
A CHECK BEFORE ITS TIME. 549
A CHECK BEFORE ITS TIME.
So this is what was meant by Monday's scent, that burned
fiercely everywhere — a coming frost and an early winter ?
Wednesday has dealt us a slap-in-the-face, Thursday confirms
it with a knock-down blow. On Sunday we could not bear a
fire. To-day we cannot get near enough to one ! Under little
more provocation I shall take my twenty thousand a year to
Pau ; where, besides a pack of hounds, there is said to be a
small field and an equable climate. I had it on my very lips
to urge six days a week till further orders — and here are the
orders thrust in our face, " No Parade till further notice ! "
Friday, Nov. 21. — We should hardly have been so pleased
with a mere fifteen minutes' spin, had the first three weeks of
November been in airy degree rich with sport. By no means
had they — so men made the most of their little ride, and swore
it was " capital fun." Besides, it came to them unexpectedly.
They thought they were in Nobottle Wood for the day, and
were pleased as schoolboys when they were sent forth to
scamper awhile in the open valley beneath. The Pytchley had
met at Brock Hall ; had hunted a fox thereat with apparently
little scent ; and then found themselves in the big wood above
named. For once down and for once back the field were keen
and lively enough. Then, I fear, the majority settled, in many
instances, to luncheon. At any rate they were not there in
force when hounds spoke out that their fox was away under
Harpole.
A better scent in the open than in covert, which was scarce
surprising under this late November's leaf fall. (The oaks only
began to disrobe themselves during the week past.) There was
every incitement in the view of the grassy, well-fenced vale
below, with the glistening pack (you know how they sparkle
and glint in the blue atmosphere of a still day) driving into
their work, two big green fields away. To clamber the down-
slope, to accept the easy swinging fences, was easy, natural, and
delectable. A lady was readiest at start, and, I verily believe,
550 FOXHOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
gave an impetus to the possibility to be realised. When my
time comes to go a-hunting afoot, I shall go for a hill- top —
Robin-a-Tiptoe, Hemplow, Staverton Hill by turns — that I may
still conceive the chase in full sweep, throw my whole heart into
its vanishing enchantment, and go home to an evening's dream
of men and incident, bygone. Leave such for a refuge. Post-
ponement of fate (ill philosophy though it be) is often an
essential principle. Why, we are not yet at Christmas. 1890
is still our year of gladness — and the season is young.
In common decency I cannot prolong a quarter-hour scurry.
I remember in those brief minutes a dozen early ridge-and-
furrowed fields — a vision of striding horses that made almost
smooth weather of the chopping sea, so evenly did they glide
over it— and I remember a few cheery fences that failed to
interfere with the stride. Do you notice — if not, do so hence-
forth while you ride to hounds (one gave me the office years
ago — no other than George Whyte Melville of sainted renown)
that fox or stag almost invariably takes hounds where man may
follow ? It was instanced to-day. Our fox, rather than wet his
jacket, at the last moment skirted the little lofty-fenced brook
that runs to Floore, that he might cross, dry-padded, a shep-
herd's bridge with a hand-gate. The bridge was frail of struc-
ture and honeycombed. But it bore a led horse. The hunts-
man then, with a ready waggery suggestive of good times and
a sterling mount, rode over to the remark, " Speak well o* the
bridge that carries you over." The rest, separated by a fence
that it was better to have gone over than to return by, demurred
a second while the question of creeping or flying was under con-
sideration— and solved it both ways. Meanwhile Reynard was
struck by an after-thought, which did him no credit. " Too hot
to last ; I'm to ground." And he was- — in a spinney and its
earth, short of Floore village. It would be an impertinence of
me to say more than that I saw at least the following looking
gratified and glowing when I arrived at the scene ; but the
briefest tale unheroic is half complete — the absence of many
gives the opportunity of instancing a few, and I trust these few
A CHECK BEFORE ITS TIME. 55L
will allow me the occasion, viz.: Lord Spencer and his workmen,
Capts. Askwith, Atherton, Faber, Matthews, Middleton, Messrs.
Foster, Henley, Loder, Muntz, Walton, Mrs. Byass, Mrs. Cross,
and Miss Burton.
Monday, Nov. 25, was, I imagine, the best scenting day we
have seen this autumn. The Grafton ran all morning as if tied
to their fox, while next day not only was the air teeming with
tales of Mr. Fernie's doings, but they brought us from Melton
the story of a great day with the Quorn. With these latter you
may have been furnished from the spot. For me it remains
only to tell of a hard, ringing run, around miles of old pasture-
land, and through many dozens of gates. I am not ashamed to
confess I do not like gates — i.e., gates only — even though they
lead from grass field to grass field. Nor would I be misunder-
stood to vaunt a soul superior to gates — I lost that before I was
twenty. But gate to gate, with a crowd, is only second-rate
bliss — however prettily hounds may drive and spin, however
charmiug the turf and however delectable the mount. At least
this is our way of thinking in the grass countries — else should
we all betake ourselves to southern downs or northern heath
save our collar-bones, save our purses, and save ourselves much
of the inquietude of spirit that belongs to those mornings
whereon we esteem ourselves " not quite the thing." No, we
go through gates whenever we can, partly because it is cus-
tomary and correct so to do, and partly because it is safer.
But so long as we really enjoy riding to hounds in these blessed
regions of Mid-England, so long do we extract a certain amount
of pleasure (more or less mixed according to the individual) out
of being obliged to jump in order to get from field to field. Let
the jumps be well within compass, by all means — even of our
worst beast of the week. Let there be hedges with fair holes
in them or else of easy average height. Let there be ditches,
too — and let farmers not lose sight of the fact that good farm-
ino- includes clean ditches. Let there be timber — well, I am
not very strong upon post-aud-rails this Tuesday night* — so I
* After trying conclusions with a strong toprail.
552 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
will not insist too stoutly upon them, nor pursue the subject
much further. But glorious a manor as is that of Fawsley, I
wish half the gates were locked and the keys lost. Then should
we, somehow or other, find means of climbing over most of the
doubles, and should not, I fancy, suffer more bruise — certainly
entail upon each other less mortification from clumsy handi-
craft, than now. A man in a hurry, — especially if the wind be
high or the gate be wet, — is not always to be depended on.
Some, have not even eyes at the back of their heads. While
as to women they are (at a gateway) — a little variable. But
enough. Fences, obligatory fences, have not only their own
attractions to recommend them, but they give more 100m to a
big field of horse-people than is provided by any number of
gates.
It will have been gathered, then, that fast and well though
the Grafton hounds ran on Monday — after a Woodford meet —
incident was, if not altogether wanting, at least monotonous.
From Hinton Gorse and Charwelton Osierbed they ran down
two foxes, both over the Fawsley estate — gates and galloping
all the while.
BEGINNING THE WEEK.
There are ways and ways of killing the week. Hunting six
days is of course the only proper principle. But the week has
seven, and when the seventh has been duly spent it becomes
necessary to return to work. The North- Western Railway
admits the principle — and frames an indulgence — the only
indulgence of the week to Weedon, &c. It stops a train (under
due notice) that allows hunting men their dinner before starting.
But on Sunday last it forgot its programme, and its freight —
with the result that at 1 2 midnight, or thereabouts, it carried a
whole car-load of fox-hunters two stations ahead instead of
dropping them at Weedon. They had told all their stories ;
wrapped themselves in fur and slumber, wakened at the proper
time, restrapped their rugs, and prepared to descend. " A
BEGINNING THE WEEK. 553
whiskey and soda with me before you drive home ? " " Exactly
what I want." "A long time getting there, since Heyford's
Iron fires." " Heavens, they are taking us on ! " " Did you tell
the guard ? " " Of course I did. Haven't I travelled down every
Sunday for a score of years % " Misery — we are on for Rugby !
And on its platform they descended — a wrath-pouring crew,
magnificent in its disappointment and chagrin. The splendour
of magistracy, the majesty of the law, the power of commerce
and the flippant side of military-training were all brought to the
front — the dignity of the former being sadly hampered by the
irrelevant hilarity of the latter, to whom the making the best
of a bad job seemed under the circumstances the only alternative.
Thus by mute and mutual agreement the seniors were left to
pour thunder upon the officials ; while the juniors betook them-
selves to the refreshment rooms, to explode their squibs on the
sleepy and somewhat unappreciative fairies that preside over
the late liquor department. But the rest of my tale is vexy
sober, serious, and not altogether devoid of pathos.
The bar forsaken, the bar were conducted home — not in the
panoply of robe and head-apparel, still less of coach or even
special engine, but as mere adjuncts of a coal train — in a final
carriage upon which the shock, shock, shock of heavy trucks
struck at intervals as the clang of the night clock to doomed
malefactors. Tobacco is at such times a soothing instrument.
But when those instruments are six inches by one, the most
modern cigar case will hardly meet requirements so unexpected.
So cigarless, sleepless, and robbed of all attributes that main-
tain the dignity of men learned and reverenced, they merely
coaled it to Weedon, took ground in the pouring rain, and
thought themselves at home. But a Sunday staff has no
existence here. The platform was open and free, it is true :
but a platform without jury or audience is but a transposed
edition of a theatre by daylight. Persuasive eloquence,
magisterial tones, rhetorical displa}' had no field — worse than
all not a single listener. And the doors were locked, exit
barred. Cicero they say, practised at least before a looking-
554 FOX-ROUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
glass (and hence, one may assume, his exquisite simplicity, that
allowed him to be construed at sight). But — to continue to
balance pro and con — these infernal station doors had not even
a looking-glass. They were blind and deaf. " Tell you what,
old fellow, you are two years younger than I am ; you must
just swarm the spiked gate out of the coal yard." " Sir, you
are frivolous," responded the junior. " I'll bet you a City dinner
that you can't, whatever you might have done forty years ago."
" We can't sleep among the coal trucks," said the senior hotly.
" Give me your shoulders and I'll try." So they united forces,
and years. Senior left his coat on one side, and half his
overalls on the top bar, but went away with a lead, — only to
spend thirty minutes in full cry outside their common hostelry.
Junior was then rescued in such plight as coal dust and a
solitary ducking allowed — and the bar was fully and cheerfully
represented next morning at Woodford. Whether the impend-
ing; suit against L. and N.W.R. comes on for hearing or not,
depends much upon whether it be set down for chambers or not :
for the outer world is to have no such cheap fun — from legal
resources. But the incident has already been accepted as a
grave warning to hunting bachelors, not to spend their Sunday,
too confidently, in London-town.
Tuesday, with the North Warwickshire at Dunchurch, was a
strong contrast with its recent predecessor — a contrast of ride
and a contrast of weather. There was every opportunity and
occasion of jump ; and, when hounds were running, the more
ravenous of the party spent no small proportion of their time in
the air. The initial velocity of a body set in motion into space,
has, if I remember right, much to do, not only with the distance
it will cover, but with the period during which it will support
itself in mid air. Given, then, a free horse, very little friction
indeed between seat and saddle, a voluntary departure, and a
broad road on the landing side — how many seconds will it take
an average twelve-stone man to play the flying-fox across, and
reach the further turf on his back ? No answer — then we will
leave the question for future solution — and on the next occasion
A BRIDGE OF SIGHS. 555
endeavour to time the feat. Bunker's Hill and Leicester's
Piece were the two chief draws of the day ; and between these
two (a couple of miles or so apart) was enacted most of the
day's play.
But this is not Thorpe Trussels or Melton Spinney round
which we are shivering this treacherous afternoon ? Yet those
four figures grouped in yon gateway are surely Meltonian ?
One is Hon. Sec. to the Quorn, the others have worn the button
for many a year. Fool, your drifting mind has gone back a
score of years. It was 1870 when Mr. Ernest Chaplin worked
the home district for Mr. Chaworth Musters, and rode ever up
to hounds. Now the Juggernaut of Fortune has left its cruel
stamp upon his back — taking him for a victim who knew more
of hunting, and cared more consistently for it, than 'most any
one in the Shire of Shires. His glimpses of the sport are now
gathered from a pony-trap, while much older men, who love the
chase less and have studied it not one hundredth part, ride by
in happiness — knowing nothing, caring little, who may be the,
to them, stranger gazing after hounds so wistfully hour upon
hour. The contrast of such present and past is acutely
painful. I might better have spared myself, and foreborne
from inflicting it upon you were there not more vivid sympathy
in the woild of foxhunting than in other comminglement of
life. It is in some sense a relief to turn to the other three —
vigorous, active, participators still in what has to them been a
main occupation of life. These are Captain Boyce, Holland-
Corbet, and Riddell, who need no comment, but will accept
excuse and greeting from Brooksby.
A BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
It is not often that a thaw in good earnest asserts itself in
the country before making itself apparent in London. Thus
while many hunting-men were still casting dismal glances upon
the snow-covered roofs of the metropolis, the stay-at- homes were
5o6 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
on Monday, Dec. 1st, with the Grafton at Stowe-Nine-Churches.
Four or five days in London are sufficient to exhaust the
resources of idleness for most countrymen. The unaccustomed
regularity and solidity of the three meals per diem, the con-
tempt accorded night after night to the conscience — I mean the
clock of the club smoking-room — the lack of sufficient exercise,
and the substitution of yellow fog for clean country air, all tend
to undermine rustic manhood as surely and rapidly as London
rooms will shrivel flower or plant in a week. A London pave-
ment has its studies, and even its episodes — some entrancing,
some pathetic, and some, occasionally, comical. It would, I
venture to think, add no little to the attraction of the Pelican
Club, could they have transported from Bond-street to Nassau-
street a little incident of this morning. Two fur-enveloped,
frost-rosy damsels met from opposite directions — each with a
terrier at her pretty heels, the one English and old, the other
Irish and vicious. A furious fight broke out with never a
second's warning — and for no reason that I could discern except
that the younger dog paid passing gallantry to a third. Both
were partially muzzled, and might with advantage have been
completely so. But they made noise enough to convey death
and glory ; and cleared the pavement effectually — the fair
owners dancing round in agony, while their pets raved and
fought impotently. Hibernia snatched hotly at her champion,
while Britannia after the first scare let her old gladiator take
his chance, with buttons, as it were, on the foils. The scene
was so funny, and so apropos at the date, that it was plainly
nobody's business to interfere. And the wild exhibition of
spite did not last long. The combatants of this allegory of the
pavement soon parted, with bristles up — neither having bettered
his reputation.
Cold, cold, cold — whether shown in the ruddy beauty of fresh
young cheeks, in the touch of nature colouring the prominent
feature of more adult visages, in the yellow and blue of the
shivering crossing-sweeper, or in the rags and tatters of the poor
woman who — never without infant in arms — makes believe to
A BRIDGE OF SIGHS. 557
sell pencil or flower. E'en the beauty-pictures of the photo-
graph shops seemed to shrink and tremble in their semi-
nudity, and to enter mute protest against their exposure,
while in flesh and blood the originals whisked by, wrapped
brow -high in fur.
But the cold passed away from the Midlands sooner than from
the Metropolis ; and, as I have said, the Grafton were out on
Monday — with no great result, however — the best item being a
late little scurry between Maidford and Plumpton.
Dare I tell it ? Yes, I must — even though I expose myself
to a charge of ungallantry or frivolous impertinence. You
know that one of the most recognized characteristics of a
Northamptonshire field is its courtesy. E'en itself would allow,
perhaps, that its very haute jjolitesse is reserved for — or at all
events is most prominent — when hounds are not running, and
particularly when the first rush is not on. It was at a placid
moment that on one day this week a concourse arrived on the
Avon's bank with a view to crossing that river. The bridge
was na,rrow, with a hand-gate at either end : and the field pro-
ceeded to defile slowly across. Hounds, as I have said, were
not running ; and polished courtesy ruled the day. (It was not
exactly so, I remember, a month ago — but then a fox was before
us on that occasion.) Now, it was quite a case of " our skipper
ashore" — with his off-duty manners. "Ladies, please! Let
the ladies go ! " And they were passed into the pen, a string
of them together. The pen would just hold three couple, in
single file. But by some accident the leading couple went
abreast ; the gate in front slammed to ; and the gate behind at
the same moment closed on the last, thus enclosing seven in all !
The leaders, being wedged tight together, could not get at the
latch with their right hands ; their education did not reach to
using a whip with the left ; nor could they change their position
an inch. So there the whole party stood, lamb-like, for several
minutes, (while 200 waited too), till a gallant youth alighted,
and scrambled past them along the outside of the bridge. I
leave you to suggest what seven men would have said during
558 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
such imprisonment. I merely assert that not an audible
murmur broke forth from the ladies incarcerated upon this
Bridge of Sighs.
TO AND FRO BENEATH SHUCKBURGH.
This noon there is a keenness in the air,
"Which stirs the blood and makes the pulse beat high,
And the whole scene is most divinely fair.
All too much subject have I — in the initial day of the present
week alone — can I but evolve, at all clearly, scenes that to the
mind's eye already seem but as visions (hazier and hazier hourly
unless I can fix them). Here comes in the writer's prerogative,
privilege, and reward. To him it is given to grip and recall —
for himself if he fail for others — the life, the action, the stirring
incident that already, to most of the actors, have been shuffled
into memory's waste-paper basket. These others have lived,
have enjoyed themselves, were excitedly happy — thought of
nothing else, perhaps talked of nothing else, that evening, were
discursive upon it next morning. Another event, some other
interest, supervened. Yesterday is straightway forgotten — or
only remembered as a point scored, another item to the good.
I tell you it is, at times, a happy task to start the quill from
covert, to set it going upon the line, and, as far as may be,
keep it there, till the who-hoop goes up — and Pegasus is
handed over to the second horseman. Thus, you will forgive
me if I am prolix — and wonder not that I am wont to pick
up trifles on the way.*
Let me take you with the Grafton — who on Monday, Feb. 9,
were at Woodford, did a hearty day's work in their neighbours'
countries, and killed their last fox at dark after two hours' hard
running over the choicest of Shuckburgh's sweet surroundings.
Of the earlier atoms of the day's doings, it is enough to
* By one Godson it was said in 1770: — "The Paradise of an author is to
compose, his purgatory to read over his compositions, and his hell to correct the
printer's proofs."
TO AND FRO BENEATH SHUCKBU2101L 559
note (1) that they scurried, very fast and very brightly, for a
<lozen minutes from Hinton Gorse, before turning from the
grass, and the goal of Boddington Gorse, to run — over a
mixed, light country at lesser pace — to Warden Hill Wood
and to ground, some forty minutes, if my memory does not
play me false. 1 have it, at any rate, distinctly stamped that,
in the quicker commencement, no one rode to better purpose
than Mr. J. Goodman on his chasing black mare — in herself
an apt definer of " yeoman service," in that she carries him
round his own farm on most days in the week, across those
of his neighbours on two others, and pays her cornbill
from the spring steeplechases. And now for a few names
from the Grafton field on this busy day — Lord Penrhyn, Sir
Rainald and Lady Knightley, Sir Thomas and Lady Hesketh,
Mr. and Mrs. E. Pennant, Mr. and Mrs. Byass, Mr. and Mrs.
Simpson, Mr. and Mrs. Church, Capt. and Mrs. C. Fitzwilliam,
Mr. and Mrs. Craven, Mr. and Mrs. Dalgleish, Mr. and Mrs.
Thornton, Mr. and Miss Judkin, Mrs. G. Clerk, Mrs. Graham,
Miss Alderson, Lord Alfred Fitzrov, Sir Wm. Humphery, Col.
Fife, Major Allfrey, Major Blackwood, Major Blackburne,
Oapts. Askwith, McMicking, On-Evving, Rev. Mr. Evans,
Messrs. Adamthwaite, Barrett, Bulwer, Burton, Gresham,
< Jrazebrooke, Goodman, Gosling, Knott, Macdonald, Martin,
Milne, Peareth, Turner, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Webb, &c.
Last year it may be remembered the Pytchley had a sharp,
well-finished, run from a patch of gorse just outside Badby
Wood, and close to the Daventry and By field turnpike road.
The Grafton now drew the Gorse, and then two tiny plantations
close by. Result, a brace of foxes, and some eight or ten
minutes' fast fun to Dane Hole — the Bicester covert (or rather
<lingle, as they term it in Herefordshire) that adjoins Catesbv.
For the next hour and a half or so (allowing a quarter of an
hour for breathing time in Dane Hole) Reynard was shuttle-
locked from one side of the Shuckburgh Valley to the other.
A poor specimen of foxflesh, too — with a mangey brush, a
meagre carcase, and a very recognisable black patch on his side.
560 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
Yet a capital game he made ; and stood the knocking about,
with strength and endurance extraordinary — and he all but
scored in the final bout.
Now let us go with the riders. Dane Hole, then, being a
deep, dark nullah — to enter it is like descending into the hold
of a ship. You are at once lost to all sense of hearing, light,
and outward knowledge — and are never happy till you get out
again. On this occasion you were happy if at last you put your
head above deck in time to know that the boat was launched —
was, indeed, pushing off, and the crew " giving way," steering for
Shuckburgh. Catesby's old monastry ruins were left to the
right ; and the course was set over the green sea westward.
Perhaps twenty or thirty people were embarked in company :
and now the time came for individual action. Dropping all
simile, it was needful to ride at moment's notice where best a
way could be found o'er wattle or bottom — a succession of
awkward, strongly fenced, streamlets occurring in bewildering
propinquity. Over the second, or third, of these, Messrs. Milne,
Walton, G. Barrett, and Mr. Orr Ewing landed in quick
succession — in no case without a scramble — while Mr.
Macdonald, I fancy it was who went on almost as quickly,
after something more than a scramble. George, the first whip,
pulled a hurdle out for fairer exit some fifty yards away — and
to these was chiefly confined place of honour in the flutter to
Shuckburgh Hill (perhaps three miles thither as they ran it).
Scarcely had they led their panting horses to the summit than
they had to remount for the return journey. Their fox had
skirted the wood, almost reached the House, and then decided
upon returning whence he came — meeting many of the field on
his way back. (At this particular period your observant
correspondent had dipped below and behind the wood, looking
for a view forward — and so was left to ride a stern chase back
to Hellidon, where slackened pace on the part of hounds allowed
him to take post once more, with comparatively fiesh horse.
This much in parenthesis.) They hunted on now over Helli-
don's hilly, red plough (the village on their left) — then
TO AND FRO BENEATH SHUCKBURGH. 561
threatened the Byfield region, before swinging rightward along
the brow for Prior's Marston. Men were dropping off at all
points, content with their good gallop — or having done as much
as they cared to, for their horses' sake.
Lord Penrhyn, however, with Mr. E. and Mrs. Pennant, and
Lord Alfred Fitzroy, were far too much interested in the
chase to give in ; Smith was determined to kill his fox ; while
Mr. Milne, Mr. Orr Evving, and Mr. Church stuck to it "for the
fun of the thing " and for love of the sport. In Prior's Marston
Village their fox was dodging as if every moment were his last
— and as if at most he could only reach the little gorse on the
hillside. But, far from such case — Shuckburgh Hill again
caught his eye ; and, with hounds scarce a field behind, he
dared the valley once more. If his heart did not sink, I confess
mine did, and probably that of others, for Shuckburgh 's Vale is
no child's play, e'en at 12 o'clock noon. And it was now 4.30.
Mr. Milne was skimming ahead — all honour to him, in his first
red coat. He will remember this gallop when, like us, he is in
the sere and yellow leaf, and when all that remains of his four-
year-old shall be a silver mounted inkstand. The pace we could
just — but only just — attain : and fortunately the fences were
not wholly unkind. It was late in the day, though, young
gentleman, to attempt the big Shuckburgh double ! Not even a
noonday sun could have looked through that further hedge.
Welcome back, however — and forward, again, under the hillside
rightward — the ladies now running to kill, and each one striving
forward as if with the scent of blood in her nostrils. Mr. Mar-
tin's new gorse was entered and left by the same hedge-holes
as we made an hour ago, and then there dawned the first glad
glimpse of that finish that forms the happiest climax to a
gallop with foxhounds. Under the hedgeside stealing, a
struggling, bedraggled form — a fair prey, if you will, to the
fox-hunter's ferocity ! Ah reynard, you should be proud !
Yours shall be a noble fate ! Another minute, and they shall
have you — the reward of toil, pluck and endurance, the prize
for whose attainment millions of money are yearly spent in Old
o o
562 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
England ! Not much to look at are you ? But oh for the fun
you give, the mirth you engender, the good-fellowship you lead
to, and the sport of-all-sports of which you are the mainstay, and
the essential axis !
Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.
They did not " pick him up in the open." His end, if un-
poetic, was practical, almost comical. He found a five yard drain
in the middle of the next great pasture — a culvert under an old
cart-road, probably. And there he entered — at least hounds
said so though there was scarcely room enough, one would have
thought, to squeeze himself in. A pole was procured, hounds
taken on one side — but no response. The master knelt down
and could " see day-light through." So could his son. This
was conclusive. Fox must have gone through. Half a crown
for a pole-bearer. Good night. But the yokel, having pocket-
ted his beer-money, thought that he could not do less, in a
liberal spirit, than give one more poke in return for his pay. So
he thrust in his pole at the opposite end. If Old Nick himself
had suddenly appeared, I doubt if surrounding sportsmen could
have been more startled, than when a mass of red fur bundled
out among their legs ! Reynard himself sure enough. Tally-
ho ! He had found some side- chamber, but was taken un-
awares with a tap on the nose. Hounds had him before he was
clear of the field. The hour 5.10. Time since the find, two
hours. And apparently only one horse untired ; viz., that of
Mrs. Pennant, which she had ridden all day.
WHIFFS OF THE WEEK.
While the sun has been blazing in the Midlands, or fog has
been darkening London, hounds have been running daily and
running hard. The aim of lite on the part of the hunting world
has been to let no single day escape them. Thus busily have
they been making amends for the lost weeks of midwinter: and
THE PYTGHLET. 563
large fields and keen fields have been the order of each day.
A big field is no drawback if only hounds run : but a big field
is its own worst enemy when hounds potter or a huntsman
dawdles.
Being but human, and frail at that, I, too, must do as others ;
must go with the swim, and hunt daily — happy in good sport
and good company. In making the most of one duty, I plead
guilty in some degree to neglecting another. 1 have stuck to
the saddle and foregone the pen — in other words, have absorbed
my history for my own amusement. There have been events
every day — events, did I say ? — excellent sport, a run five days
out of the six as you will see pencilled below. And I crave
pardon for such hasty pencillings — mere whiffs from the
evening cisjar.
THE PYTCHLEY,
On Friday, Feb. 13, meeting at Long Buckby, had all their
sport from Sanders' Gorse. As if in reparation for temporary
inappreciation on their part during the autumn, foxes had
clustered there in ample number : and the day was signalised
by yet another capital gallop — a new line, and for the most
part a very choice one. A fox that will face his field boldly is
generally stout of frame and purpose : and it augured well for
a run when Reynard flourished his white tag so fearlessly
across a first thirty-acre pasture, careless of how many pairs
of eyes might be watching him. Nor Avere these a few,
you may be sure — though the Atherstone, the Grafton, and
Mr. Fernie were all in the field the same day. I will presume
you know the country — you will save me after-dinner labour if
I may. The Rugby and Northampton railway runs the valley,
at a distance of a mile or so from the gorse. Althorp Park
and its adjacent coverts are just beyond the line. Our fox
went as far as the railway ; but whether abashed by the plate
layers, or acting upon some course of reasoning known only to
himself, he did not cross it, but chose his direction along the
o <j 2
564
FJX-IIOUNJJ, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
sloping pasture-land stretching southward from East Haddon.
If it is always a luxury to ride over grass, how much more
when, as now, that grass is firm almost to hardness, when the
fences are clean almost to nakedness, and the ditches have
lately been washed and beaten down by snow and storm ! The
greenest horse could hardly make a mistake, where to take off
and what to do. If he failed to do it, 'twas another matter —
and one which could not but be of acute interest to his rider —
as was patent, ere the run ended, in many an earthstained
garment, an exceptional number in fact. No, sir, No ! I bear
you no ill will — but you chose the wrong day. When next you
come from afar to show us how the Grass Countries should be
crossed, let me, I pray you, have fair warning and you shall
willingly have the chance — if I can so arrange it, of finding me
^ : ■ 9^m
on a stickey or refusing horse. Then knock him, and me, head
over heels into the next field — and I may express my sense of
satisfaction and gratitude in other words, than when caught,
and thus dealt with, on a promising young one. But this
THE PYTGHLEY. 565
matter is purely personal. The public want only a brief sketch
of the gallop — of which I thank you, sir, you robbed me bul
little. We rode onwards towards Long Buckby (after rising-
tor a moment almost to touch East Haddon Village), then
descended the valley, to find a strong country brought to a
comfortable level by the felling of trees — their places as yet
unfilled. The tree-top railings lay in many cases all split and
ready. There will be no wire hereabouts, Benediclte ! Now
we crossed the railway and reached Upper Brington — a fox in
view. But was he the run one ? I wot not — or how should he
so flippantly leap a seven foot garden-wall ? Or, maybe, the
change took place at Nobottle Wood. No matter. A charming
forty minutes' ride, and a clever hour's hunt, had been our
portion.
In the afternoon we saw three more foxes found in " Sanders'
Gorse" — Mr. Sanders himself being at hand, upon wheels, to
holloa our subject away. And this fox we saw killed in Althorp
Park.
Wednesday, Feb. 18, the same pack at Kilworth House —
and again a run, in spite of summer heat, a glaring sky, and a
burnt ground. Never believe that a hot sun precludes sport.
A high glass and a steady one will always give a scent — even if
hounds have to plunge en masse into a pond in the middle of
a run. I won't say it is nice for men — still less for women —
to become overheated, and to look so. But this is apart from
foxhunting. If a fox can be run under sunshine, why should
we complain that we do not shiver, that we are not buffeted by
wind or drenched by rain ? Not I, for one. But then I have
outgrown a complexion — and am not too proud to fling my
coat open, to thrust my hat backward, or to mop an effloriate
face. Wednesday's field was half womankind. Never were so
many ladies seen taking the country as to-day. But they can
do it — aye, and accept their own part, hold a gate, and hold
their horses, with the best of us. Personally, I often find one
leg on either side of my horse an incumbrance in these gateway
squeezes. How haniicappa 1 are they with a pair on o:n sids ^
SG(i F0X-H0VN1), FOREST, AND VRA1R1E.
Yet they seldom murmur, generally smile — and think under
their breath. A soothing, quieting influence and example is
theirs. And with their presence men forget to be brutal.
I pass to the run of the day — South Kilworth New Covert
(new or old, the two are but a field apart) the point of origin.
Hounds started fast — and the ride began with the option of a
broad -set stake-and- bound, in which I fear, I descried, as I
skirted it, our best veteran on the proper side, his mare
engulfed on the wrong. But the twain were in full evidence
again ere the chief work began. The parishes of the Kilworths
were hunted out ere Goodall succeeded in forcing his fox
forward — at length, vid Kilworth House, Caldecott's Spinney,
and northward. Hounds lost no time (the Pytchley never lose
time) when they crossed the road where the Long Spinney
ends, and laid themselves out on the grass towards The Sticks.
Their fox was now game for the open. He bent westward
from the covert — a mile hence was in view — and the fun
waxed furious. Though in view, he was no beaten fox, but
went like a lamplighter to Kimcote Village — a string of
Pytchley men proper, such as Mr. Foster, Mr. Jameson (the best
man in England to follow with a young one), Capt. Middleton,
Messrs. Adamthwaite, Loder, a dark collared stranger, and
others, close to hounds as they threaded the bottom, and
bore for Gilmorton. A pretty country this — the privilege of
Mr. Fernie — and no wire, no red Hags, no sickening doubts as
to possibilities of progress. Plain sailing, in fact — fences
suitable and gates to encourage. No desperate venture as we
saw this morning — a leap at high wire, in hopes that a bold
horse would take top-timber as his office !
This thirty minutes of the hour was hot, happy and eager —
which is as much description as my diary will allow. Slower
hunting then to Misterton — a brace of foxes, and confusion,
when an hour and a quarter had been scored. This much
antecedent to Shuckburgh and the morrow.
THE NORTH WARWICKSHIRE. 507
THE NORTH WARWICKSHIRE,
On Monday, Feb. 1G, took mc into a grass country I had
never known before. When I ventured to put the " Hunting-
Countries of England" into press, this Birmingham district
was distinctly and essentially plough — as I might call Tom
Firr to witness. Now it has recognised its inefficiency as corn-
growing land, and has very properly reverted to grass. And
grass it is — broad acred, good scenting, well foxed, and lightly
fenced. I have it, indeed, in my mind's eye for approaching
age — an arena upon which hounds can fly, and on which
I shall be forced to face no terrors of top-binder or implacable
timber. In the morning we found a fox, we found a canal,
and we found a railway, all in the neighbourhood of Bush
Wood — and we played upon the three together for an hour
and a half, when fox payed forfeit. But this was not the wild
country. It was more immediately the country resort of
Birmingham, whose villa residences "reddled" every hill.
Keen sportsmen, too, are the men of Brummagem — their
spirits as yet untrammelled by any of the cares of personal
adornment, or the mere foppery of the hunting field. But
they are enthusiastic — and their share of Warwickshire is
worthy of their enthusiasm. Hob Ditch was the covert from
which my day's reward began ; and gratefully can I speak of
the next forty minutes, under a very summer sun. It was
not straight : but that was not our fox's fault. He was thrice
driven aside and backward. But he told off 25 hot and merry
minutes, when he came back from Liveridge Hill to Ullenhall,
and beat Mr. Ashton's clever, and driving, " big pack " by
means of road and village.
On Tuesday, Feb. 17, the smaller pack of the same kennel
were at Rugby, for the sake of comparison. Yesterday, a pony
and antigropolo field ; to-day, apparently all middle-England
under the banner of North Warwickshire. There were at least
three foxes at Hilmorton Gorse, and there was a run — that
568 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
should have been in the main delectable, but wasn't. Railways
are institutions beyond cavil. Else how could we hunt here
to-day, and do duty in the far-else where to-morrow ? But
there is a certain district, chiefly given over, as far as one can
see, to the nursing of young steeplechasers for the winning
of farmers' plates — subscribed for by hunting men. It is, to
say the least, a little hard that this district should be fenced
in by wire against those who cater for such profit and amuse-
ment— and I should scarcely think that the comments of the
local markets, even if they acknowledge the obduracy of the few
who set their backs against public opinion, can be gratifying
to the self estimate of those who congratulate themselves on
braving it. Hounds went ; but we could not, except by gate
and in constant peril. We might well repair gaps— and, again
and again I repeat, we ought to. But if all the country were
thus fox-hunting would soon be as the dead languages, a study
of the past ; and steeplechasing and all country life would go
with it.
CONTRASTS.
I take Saturday and Monday, Feb. 21 and 23, as illus-
trating, not the charm of variety, but the shock of intense
contrast — our climate to blame, and the two days being ab^ut
alike in the matter of sport.
On Monday, at any rate, it was happiness to live — on the
very same ground where, on Saturday, it has been painful, almost
difficult, to exist. Meeting, the Grafton at Preston Capes, the
Pytchley at Badby Wood, respectively on the north and south
borders of the Fawsley domain, it is not to be wondered at that
hounds ran identical lines from opposite directions.
Speaking first of Saturday, there was a cold white fog when
hounds were thrown into covert. There was almost a black one
when they broke forth, a few minutes later, a few couples at the
very brush of their fox, into Fawsley Park. The rest were
hindered for a second by the closely-built wooden railings ; but
CONTRASTS. 569
issued next moment with their huntsman — into outer darkness.
A few shadowy horsemen were standing or galloping along the
brow. These signalled Forward, and Forward plunged Goodall,
horn to mouth and blowing lustily, while plunging headlong
down the steep slope towards Fawsley House — the rabbit-holes
underfoot about the only things visible. At the laurels a shep-
herd shouted Forward still, and round the garden and shrubbery
we pressed blindly on, depending, for hope, only upon our sense
of hearing and our intimate acquaintance with this well-ordered
and well-gated estate. To the huntsman we all clung with
child-like trust — leaving him only momentarily in order to
skirmish off to some high point and strain our ears to the
irresponsive mist. A dead, dark silence — the gloom of a ghostly
shroud — was over the land, and enveloped and choked us in its
chilly folds. One skirmisher caught the tinkle of hound-voices
towards Hogstaff, and to the little wood we rode onward — there
to find Mr. Goodman, his pony stopped by the pace, and with
news that some tive couple had gone on with John and Mr.
Barrett not far behind them.
To the Woodford lane, then, we scampered — and there, by
good luck, the perturbed and anxious huntsman came up with
his hounds — after a dart in the dark of between two and three
miles. Their heads were up ; and, beyond taking a line into
Ganderton Wood, they could do no more. Then we progressed
from a state of hot fear to one of freezing misery. Gradually
we cooled down as we sauntered. Gradually it occurred to us
to turn up our coat-collars, gradually to seek under our saddle-
flaps for the woollen gloves which might or might not be in
ordered place, and gradually we appealed to flask and cigar.
It was no use. The icy fog was not to be denied, and it pene-
trated through every waistcoat and every layer of Jaeger,
blanched the face, and laid its cold fingers on one's very vitals.
And, besides, it caught us unawares. The warmth of the past
fortnight had set us singing the songs of summer. Now in
the sudden bitterness we were winter Cigales — half clad and
wholly unfitted to meet it, The situation had no comical
570 FOX -HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
side. It opens out the severest possibilities— a chill-on-the-
liver (the complaint of fashion and the keynote of most adult
maladies), the surrendering of hunting, the handing-in your
very life's papers, the snuffing out of your more or less worth-
less candle ! My own sensations, under this comfortless con-
dition of being, include few reflections on such abstract con-
tingencies. But in the misery of the moment I feel like
nothing so exactly as a trussed and unclad chicken on Mr.
Gilson's marble shop front — my liver tucked under one arm,
my gizzard under the other. The slender and more or less
inefficient garment in which many of us habit ourselves, under
the idea that it is smart and very orthodox, may not unlikely
be answei'able for such congealed vein of thought. A swallow-
tail is like the swallow itself. It takes more than one to
make a summer. And the sufferer under the single presence
cannot but feel woebegone and chickenhearted.
So I go home, and arm myself with a flannel shirt and a
thickest possible riding-belt (" stays," my valet cVecurie will
insist on terming it, as he hands up the mysterious garment)
ere I sally forth on Monday, to meet a burning sun and a well-
thawed field. The same people— or about half the same and
the rest similar— are very different indeed to the shrivelled,
unhappy mortals of Saturday. Laugh and quip and merry
greeting take the place of moan and sulk and half suppressed
grumble. Pleasure lit up faces that on Saturday were pinched
with pain ; and the whole world seemed different. In the
morning the Grafton hunted their fox down — an immense
great fellow — from Fawsley fishponds and round about to
Charvvelton.
As I sauntered homeward in the warm sunshine — wrapping
myself in a pleasant cloud of meditation and tobacco — -there
fluttered from the tall hedge of the laneside a bird that
belongs to the summer quite as much as does a swallow —
cuckoo, to wit. Many of my fox-hunting friends might tell
me they had seen a cuckoo on the 23rd February, and, while
accepting their statement in all courtesy, I should salt it with
CONTRASTS. 571
the mental proviso that they might have mistaken a hawk
for a cuckoo. But, being very country-bred and born, I pride
myself that I know a hawk not only "from a hand-saw"
but from a cuckoo. Many, indeed, has been the summer
evening of my boyhood that I have sat in the shade of Shawell
Wood, to watch the foxcubs come forth to play, and the cuckoo
swelling his throat on the bough above me — so close that I
could mark his every feather. And on the present occasion
the mottle-grey bird enforced his identity by darting twice
in-and-out of the hedge, almost within whip distance — as if to
jeer at a man riding in scarlet under a Junetime sun.
Wednesday, Feb. 25, crept forth from a frost fog again into a
bright, almost tropical midday. Indeed, it wanted five minutes
to noon when the Pytchley lady pack burst away, with a good
fox, from Crick Gorse. Twenty years it put me back at once,
to clap eyes on Captain Trotter's familiar back — that I used to
toil after through the holes he had bored and the timber he
had swept away ; his face, his hat, and his vestment eloquent
witnesses, as a rule, of the strength of Northamptonshire and
the determination of the Coventry captain. Then, as now (if
my dates are right), Lord Spencer would be riding close handy
— guarding his pack from pressure, and regulating the torrent,
as scarcely another can — with a velvet-gloved hand. And then,
as now, Mr. Mills would be riding hard and forward — among
his many juniors even then. And then — but no longer now —
the pride of position would be held almost invariably by Miss
Davy, who for years saw more sport day-by-day than any other
of the Pytchley ladies. To-day her place in the front rank was
taken by two almost strangers to the Pytchley — the one Mrs.
Bunbury, riding with all the accomplished confidence she was
wont to exhibit with the Grafton ; the other Miss Tennant,
whose sphere is more often Melton. And yet another was
sampling Northamptonshire — a lady from the north countrie,
Mrs. Fenwick. If they did not see Northamptonshire at its
very best, they saw at least what it can be — and often is.
A little more pace, and a little less frost in the ground —
572 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
and the hunt of to-day would have been all that we, or
they, could have wanted. For our fox took the good line of
old time — from. Crick, via Claycoton, to the Hemplow : no
closer description is necessary. It is the same course, almost
field to field, that the Prince of Wales rode the year before his
marriage — and when you and I were, I hope, in short frocks, or,
at most, upon ponies.
The frost of this morning, and the warm sun of this noon had
glassed the turf to a degree that was altogether inimical to
riding. Some of the best men were strewed in the open fields,
others went down as they landed in fancied safety over their
fences, or were shot into them as they rode to jump. When a
double came (the one that bounds the Stanford Hall estate
from Yelvertoft) every horse found three opportunities of slipping
up — and many did. It took thirty-five minutes to reach
Hemplow Hill, to ground. Had it been done in twenty-five,
with the ground good, we should have talked about it for many
a day. By the way, did you ever hear a shepherd answer, when
asked how long a fox had been gone — " It were a quarter-past
twelve?" Thus was the accuracy of the Master's watch and
arithmetic put to the test, in mid-chase.
STIMULATING EXPERIENCES.
On Saturday on which February took its departure, with the
sun shining even more hotly upon its last hours of daylight
than it has upon its whole career. Never, surely, has the
month been brighter and briefer than in '91. A nerve-
shattering day, withal, Saturday happened to be, as experi-
enced by the humble and luckless individual deputed to convey
his experience to print. He began by discovering a new and
tolerably effectual cooling process by which to counteract such
gentle fever and half regret as is apt to follow upon a sociable
and well prolonged overnight — viz., a whish through the air at
the heels of a runaway in harness. I warrant you such crude
STIMULATING EXPERIENCES. 573
tanning will waft away a head that sodawater could nut touch
nor pick-me-up exorcise — though the remedy, being rather of
the kill-or-cure description, can scarcely be recommended as
appropriate to very delicate or over-sensitive organisations.
People will tell you that in moments like these the person
most interested finds his or her mind making a hurried resume
of all past life. I doubt not that, if anybody had been seated
beside me on Saturday morning, he or she would have found
ample opportunity for such looking-back. For my part, I was
far too much engrossed in looking forward, for a soft spot into
which to upset the trap, to think of aught else, — unless it was
with a vague sense of pleasure to note the masterly way in
which the young runaway laid himself down to his gallop, and
to clear the rugs from round my legs. At the end of two miles
— as attractive to the country side as John Gilpin's notable
career — I found the soft spot in the shape of a high thorn
fence, and plunged the whole outfit into it with marked
success. Damages — one overcoat torn down the back, all
buttons stripped off knees of breeches, one wheel-spoke
broken, and one young horse spoiled for harness. Good get-
out — and, like all good get-outs, refreshing to the spirit and
encouraging to the nerve.
Equally stimulating was the next item of the day, quite as
fast and furious, and, for choice, rather more palatable. The
same kind kismet that had landed me into a soft thorn bed
brought me, on a farmer-friend's pony, in touch with hounds
at the moment they were being galloped to a holloa in the
Boddington Vale (Bicester), and allowed me to chime in just
as Lord Chesham, Lord Londonderry and several near
associates were popping out of the long spinney that bisects
the plain. Close at their fox, hounds kept their field at
fullest stretch alongside the railway — held them by 500 yards,
in fact, over the deep-furrowed grass, though gates were
frequent and fences facile. It was as a Belvoir scurry of old
time — a steeplechase upon the track of hounds, and hounds
having all the best of it. In a dozen minutes they turned
.)74 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
their fox, and rolled liim over — in our very midst. A seedy
fox, of course — or the gallop would have been greater. But it
was stirring and blithesome while it lasted. And we all love a
ride — who shall deny it. Had time and distance been doubled,
this ride would have been deemed a gem. Very delightful is
this Northamptonshire corner, of the lengthiest country in
hunting England ; very sharp and businesslike is the pack that
hunts it ; and very smart and capable are the field who ride
over it. A few names I venture from a most indifferent
memory to recall, as instancing some who hunt more or less
regularly hereabouts : the Master and Lady Chesham, Mr. and
Lady Rose Leigh, Mr. W. and Lady D. Long, Mr. and Lady
S. Larnach, Mr. and Mrs. Boyle, Mr. and Mrs. Church, Mr.
and Mrs. Blacklock, Mr. and Mrs. Peareth, Mr. and Miss
Laycock, Lord Londonderry, Lord Valentia, Col. Molyneux,
Capt. Allfrey, CajDt. Follett, Messrs. Cassel, Grazebrook,
Thursby, etc., etc. And an exceptional number of farmers
invariably turn out at these fortnightly meets. Take, for
instance, the following, viz. : Messrs. Scriven, Fabling, Knott,
Cooper (2), Russell, Goodman, Martin, Johnson, Wood, Sabin (2),
Douglas, Griffin, Wrighton, Bromwich, Eldridge, Gardner,
Reading, Addison, Ivens, Oldham, etc.
On a third episode of the day I shall not dwell. But for
tension of nervous excitement — in that you have to stand by
helpless while a fellow being is in extreme and prolonged peril
before your very eyes — commend me to the horrid sight of
man or woman being dragged across a field, head downwards
from a galloping horse. It is only marvellous that Providence
seldom fails to carry the sufferer through, alive. But were I a
Duke, hunting a country at my own expense, the first order I
would give, and insist upon, should be that no lady should
venture out except in a safety-skirt.
On Monday, the second day of lamblike March, the Grafton
met at Stowe Nine Churches, and killed a brace of foxes — the
first unluckily, the second by running him hard for a twisting
hour, till they turned him over in the open. A hot day
STIMULATING EXPERIENCES. 575
indeed. Even men from Australia were to be seen gasping in
the close heat, and old Indians to be heard fretting audibly —
as only old Indians can, when the thermometer is over 70° and
they out of reach of a punkah. Bronzed and sunburnt they all
looked — while the turf they galloped over was blanched and
faded by the same parching sunshine. The run was from
Knightley Wood, and hounds ran fastest over fallow Avith the
dust blowing over them.
Wednesday introduced us to an element to which we have,
happily, long been strange— to wit, a high wind. And we
liked it neither for itself nor for its effect upon the parched
earth. There will be lame horses to-morrow, and more than
one sorely bruised man and woman — for that horses were
afraid to jump their fences clean. Having brought myself,
and, as far as I can tell till morning, both my horses home
fairly sound, I shall forego to-morrow's hunt, and wait — at all
events one day — for rain. (It is too expensive, Mr. Editor, it
is indeed!) If no ram comes within a few days, there will be
no one in the Grass Countries to go hunting. Already the
giant fields of early spring are things of the past. On the
other hand, if rain conies freely the farmers will not want
much more of us — though, as one leading farmer expressed
himself to me only to-day, "hunting never hurt anybody's
farm yet ! " At present they are thinking chiefly of their
lambs and their seed-sowing — and the lambs want rain, and
eold, no more than do the New Forest ponies.
But in spite of drought, and wind, and haidburned ground,
the Pytchley worked out an excellent day's hunting — the run
of the afternoon occupying some three hours, covering a wide
tract of ground, and being an admirable instance of what a
patient, clever, huntsm m can do with a pack of hounds that
will keep their noses down. I have often ventured to assert
that a slow hunting run does not meet with favour in the
crowded Midlands — and why ? Because it is almost impossible
to view it in any comfort. But this does not apply to the late
evening when, as to-day, hounds have already travelled out of
576 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
their own country, and the bulk of the field has gone home.
Believe me, I have no intention of crowing because I happened
to be at out-kennels for the night, and therefore had not to
turn homewards as early as some of you. But you will not
grudge us our better luck, any more than you seem hateful to
us when you tell of a " clinker " that has taken place in our
absence — at least you don't unless you wind up with "You
ought to have been out ! Why weren't you ? " And there •
upon we no longer believe your tale.
The Pytchley, then, had met at Swinford, and had begun by
running under difficulties from Misterton Gorse, to Stanford
Hall and the South Kilworth coverts, where reynard accounted
for himself, like the young lady recently incarcerated at
Cambridge, by escaping. Want of scent stood him in the light
of an open door. After this half-hour's hunt, the order was
given for North Kilworth Sticks ; and a long dusty jog ensued.
How they found, and how for a few minutes they flew, is a
preface I take on trust — inasmuch as, for reasons that matter
not, I was not in my place as attache until they had worked
on from Walton Holt and were going slowly past Mr. John
Bennett's house, towards the Laughton Hills. Reaching these,
we mounted to the summit rapidly, then drew rein awhile and
o-azed our fill upon the lovely grass valley that separates
Mr. Fernie's territory from Pytchleydom, and the shire of
Leicester from that of Northampton. Having threaded the
whole length of the hillside coverts they hunted on for Luben-
ham, and hounds were with difficulty picking out the line
across a dusty wheatfield, when close in front of them jumped
up the fox — a fox — and they dashed on to the grass in view.
We had already learned that it was unfair, probably costly
and possibly dangerous, to jump the fences; accordingly had
resolved almost unanimously not to do so — and now, equally
accordingly, were impelled to do it whether we liked or not.
It is just that want of absolute unanimity of purpose that
sends most good resolutions to make paving-stones. In this
case I grant that it is annoying to see hounds rapidly dis-
VTIMUL \TING EXPERIENCED. 077
appearing like a Hock of pigeons out of shot, while you and
your cowardly, or careful, soul hurry off at a tangent to find a
safe gate. But it is ten times more annoying if one or two
reckless spirits make the venture, laughing your qualms to
scorn, and riding off to leave you in the lurch. It isn't to be
stood. Therefore, say I, if a man would be prudent at all let
him stop prudently at home. It is not worth while to be
hunting if you are to be persecuted all the time by considera-
tions of caution and restraint. In the present instance the
whole party quickly cast all such uncomfortable self-discipline
to the west wind, and followed it hotly across the Market
Harboro' country to Bowden, in spite of occasional ox-rails, of
wide ditches, and bony banks. Close to Bowden House hounds
came to a check, and once more to slow difficult toil. Already
we had come to a point of eight miles, and already we had
cordially accepted Mr. Jameson's hospitable suggestion that all
should moisten their dust-dried throats ere dispersing. But
we had to carry our thirst — or put it aside — for many a
mile yet. '
Our fox had laid up once more, by the canalside : hounds
started again on sight : and now for some reason — possibly that
they had been almost standing still for some minutes past —
horses began freely to fling their burdens upon the ground.
Falls ensued at the rate of about one a minute — for a while.
And as we had turned back into the wind, scent freshened, and
now and again hounds travelled fast. They made the return
journey to Lubenham in quick time, but to the Laughton Hills
again in slow, then dipped into the valley and went more
merrily than ever for a couple of miles along the base of the
hills. At the far end they got right up to their fox, but he
slipped over the brow, and they ran him smartly towards the
village of Laughton and rounded that of Mowsley — this, again,
some of the prettiest of Mr. Fernie's charming country. By the
way these men of " Billesdon or South Quorn " must be hard
beyond compare. It takes only a barbed wire, and very little
of that, to stop us of Northamptonshire very effectually. But
p p
578 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
if a farm between Lubenham and Bowden provides any
criterion, it takes not merely a thin barbed strand, or even a
quarter-inch iron rope, but actually chains, stretched for
furlongs together, to stop them I One of our number, with
forethought begotten of long experience, had provided himself
with a key to the single wire. But the iron chains and the
rope remain to be dealt with by home talent and influence.
After all, our fox had to be let go in the darkness. Arrived
in the neighbourhood of Shearsby, and pointing once more for
Walton Holt, it was found necessary to stop hounds as soon as
a ploughed field slackened their pace — though it was hard for
hounds and huntsman to give him up, when already three or
four times he had seemed within their grasp. At this time —
5.40 — they were, I imagine, little less than twenty miles from
kennel.
BOOTS AND BREECHES.
It was a happy thought on the part of Lord Spencer that
gave us another last morning's hunting and yet allowed us to
be present at the House of Commons Point-to-Point Race.
The Pytchley met at Weedon Barracks at nine, and thus a
busy week culminated in a double ration of sport.
At 9, in the morning of Saturday, March 21, the Pytchley
came to Weedon Barracks ; and, moving off with very little
delay, took some sixty or seventy early breakfasters with them
to Dodford Holt. Minute by minute, however, and hour by
hour, the others cropped up, till at length the Pytchley had
about their usual number. To see hounds thrown into covert
at that hour brought one back — only in mind and imagination,
alas — to October — when the country was not half as suitable as
now — when the leaf was on the thorn, when the ditches were as
pitfalls, but when we had five months' glad, and we hoped un-
broken, happiness immediately before us. Now the fences
seem, of a verity, to open their arms — to have flung off all
their covering and half their terrors. And, whereas some of us
BOOTS AND BREECHES. 579
would not ride ten miles to covert before Christmas, one and all
have woken fully to an appreciation of the hound, and will miss
not a day's hunting — no matter what the distance or the diffi-
culty. Every pasture, too, was manned by bootmakers intent
upon seeing the fun and shouting at the fox. Very sporting
fellows are the cobblers of Daventry : and more than any of us
do they inveigh against the short allowance of hunting that the
winter has vouchsafed. The Dodford fox, being neither stout
of heart nor strong of limb, favoured their views to the utmost :
and accordingly they were in the thick of the fun till he was
killed.
To snatch Braunston Gorse on the quiet was a delightful
chance, and hope ran high when we found it unsurrounded,
and knew it to be well-tenanted. Surely Shuckburgh and the
mid- distance never looked more inviting than now in the
sombre colouring of bleak March — the foreground in rusty
yellow, grid ironed by black bars, and the background dark and
sharply defined in hill and rugged woodland. Was the long-
looked-for run to come off? No. But it nearly did. Hounds
set their heads right, and we were bidden to go — till at the end
of ten minutes it was found that six couple of hounds alone
were on, with about as many riders, and that the rest had
slipped away, somewhere. In fact they had been carried back
almost to the covert, by another fox. Beyond these few
minutes — which had brought us upon the delectable country
just about to be ridden over by the Members of Parliament — ■
little good could be done, though hounds tried on nearly to
Catesby.
Then it became necessary to cross the little stream ; and a
convenient handgate and ford were found. Yes, but a crafty
old willow-tree had bent under the recent blizzard, and now
formed an archway exactly over the opening — its many small
and supple branches dipping almost to the water. The hunts-
man and his assistants, close-capped, and accustomed to push
through covert and thicket, proved that egress was thus possi-
ble ; and were soon sauntering unconcernedly up the green-
580 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AXD PRAIRIE.
swavd towards Staverton. Not so their hapless followers. The
Master was first pulled off his horse, then a lady, and then
there were men in the water and horses running up and down
the stream. Some then turned their attention to jumping:
but that it takes very few feet of water to frighten the hunters
of the grass countries, or even to put them down, was quickly
instanced by refusals and falls. No help for it. The subjugated
host had to pass under the yoke as best they might ; and a
season of confusion and dismay ensued that baffles at least my
feeble powers of description. There were men wading and
splashing and shouting: and womenkind shivering hopelessly
on the brink — till a happy thought occurred to the latter, and,
more or less reluctantly, was generally acted upon. A single
plank, close at hand, stretched across the stream. The ladies
with one accord made themselves into mounted infantry, left
their horses to be whipped or led through the horrid chasm —
and a minute later Busvine, Scott, Hbhne, and every other
known builder of safety skirt, were being gathered and hurried
in single file across the bridge. When they reached the other
side, so many loose horses, saddled and side-saddled, were in
stream or just out of it, that it took several minutes to sort
them. For my own part, as owner just now of only one at
all passable hat, I was glad to follow the example thus
set: and, my odd-job man appearing at that moment with
a second horse, I loosed him off at the outlet to ride one and
lead another, while I acted on the good old principle of " going
round " in leisurely safety. Needless to say, that as usual he
turned up smiling — having left nothing behind him in the
willow-tree but his cockade and his collar, both of them well-
worn properties, and already, he assured me, ripe for renewal.
But it was not a nice day on which to get wet, even to the
knees, as more than one good fellow acknowledged, when later
in the day he found himself a mark for the north-east wind on
the Staverton Hill to the refrain of
Oh willow, willow, willow !
Sing, oh the greeue willow shall bu nij garland.
CHIMNIED AND CORNERED. 581
Previous, however, to seeing the red -coated legislators set
forth on their journey, to reappear in chase of the grey mare,
foxhunters had another scrap of warmth dealt out to them —
to wit, a sharp, bright gallop from Staverton Wood to Badby
Wood — the pith of it comprised in the fifteen minutes between
Badby House, Newnham Village, and the main earth at Badby
Wood.
CHIMNIED AND CORNERED.
Depend upon it, if Everybody said it was a good run, it
not only was, but possessed the unusual advantage of being so
ordered that Everybody could see it — as indeed we did, and
enjoyed ourselves amazingly; were " at the top of the hunt"
throughout, and went home pleased with all the world and with
foxhunting in particular ! Did we not ?
And yet, who — forcing his way to covert that morning with
his head leaning against the half-gale, and his thoughts mourn-
fully bent upon the malignant and obtrusive hardness of
ground — and of fate, in that already, on the 6th of March,
hunting seemed almost at an end — who would have dared to
predict a scent, and a run ? Certainly not I — though I have
been at the game just long enough to learn that the unexpected
generally happens in foxhunting ; and that our allowance of
sport and enjoyment is almost invariably in inverse ratio to
expectation and prediction. You take your two best horses
(have perhaps been foolish enough to keep them in a day or
two beyond their turn, with a view to this very occasion) and
you take them to your best meet of the week. Weather,
country, good spirits and self-content all contribute their share
to the general sense of satisfaction and optimism that possesses
your soul. And what is the result ? Well, say, such a day's
sport as that of Saturday previous with the Pytchley — an
ungracious allusion only pardonable as illustrating to the
utmost the argument of improbabilities !
Foxes won't run ; foxes are headed — perhaps chopped. Oi
582 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE.
the right fox goes away, in the most desirable direction —
while a wretched victim holds the pack fast bound round her
home. I leave all personal contingency out of the question,
believing always that most of your own ill-luck is of your
own making. A huntsman, worth his salt, is seldom left
behind ; seldom makes a bad turn ; when he gets a fall seldom
fails to get up again, and without losing his horse. Why
should we — though undoubtedly we do ? I can partly explain.
We do not, one and all, come out with no other thought
than to keep an eye upon the pack and its movements. To
most of a crowd, the pack is an adjunct, not the main object
— and the adjunct is apt to disassociate itself, while we cling
to our object of the moment, whatever it may be, from coffee-
housing to competition. Given the opposite conditions — an
indifferent fixture, an unlikely day, a tentative mount — and
all goes swimmingly. You are pinned to the sport, intent
upon seeing all you can, and the odds are all in favour of your
taking home the bright, entrancing memory of a " clinking-
run and a jolly ride," therewith to warm the evening and soothe
the morrow. Tis the fortune of war and the chance of fox-
hunting. Vive la guerre, and Reynard the Fox ! '
No ; a less likely, or inviting, hunting-day than Friday, the
occasion of the Grafton meet at Adstone, it would have been
difficult to arrange. The wind was wild, and the earth parched
into rock, dust, and hardbake. So much for conditions — now for
results.
In Plumpton Wood — or rather in the little covert 'twixt the
Wood and the railway — they found the fox of the day. He
had an anxious five minutes in covert, a preliminary that I am
inclined to think often smartens a fox up — makes a free-goer
of him, inj'act, and knocks the nonsense out of him. At any
rate it warms hounds to their work. Tltey benefit by it ; and
they have a great deal to do with keeping a fox's head straight.
" Moves badly, doesn't he ? " Yes — but so will any fox when
going away at his leisure over a rocky fallow field. He's big
enough you'll allow. And with plenty of time to spare, hounds
GHIMNIED AND CORNERED. 583
having- a wide turn to make, ere dropped on his track. Plate-
layers on the line pointed the route, aud further information
from ploughmen and others helped over the ploughs to Maid-
ford. We need not dwell — as hounds were obliged. It was
only after leaving Maidford Village on their right rear — and
turning almost up the wind — that the run warmed up to life.
Then they found themselves on sweet turf, and then they found
a scent. Threading the Maidford Brook they went faster every
field up the valley, as they passed opposite Little Preston and
pointed for Ganderton Wood. Beneath Preston Capes they
swung upwards over the brow, then plunged, with the wind, on
to the Fawsley domain and its great acreage of pasturage and
gateage. Church Wood and Hogstaffe were left just to the
right, and the chase swept on heartily to Fawsley House and
through its laurels. On the grass, hounds were at top speed.
On the arid ploughs previously, they had proved their drive by
pushing forward of themselves even where they could scarce
own a line. For us, we were now in clover — on the old
herbage of Fawsley — for we were widespread enough not to
get in each others' way, but had almost a gate apiece. Nor at
any time during the run was it to any extent necessary to call
upon joints, sinews — or nerves — over an obdurate country.
But we are great gallopers in Northamptonshire : and so here
we were, big and little, male and female, all at best pace, all
wound up to hottest excitement, all bent upon being " in at the
death." And, as we swooped tumultuously into the last dip,
short of Badby Wood, death seemed surely nigh at hand. For
there was a big fox toiling up the ascent — scarce three hundred
yards before hounds — and coming back to them yard by yard.
But the frightened deer came athwart the trail ; and the big
herd stood in stupid wonder in the very path of the pack.
Music was quickly going again, as hounds were thrown into the
wood ; and through its hollow depths they rattled fiercely —
while it was easy to ride through the leafless covert close in their
wake. March and April are the months for the merry woods ! )
Unhesitatingly they drove their fox through breadth — and half
584 FOX-EOUND, FOREST, AND VRAIRIE.
length — of the woodland, emerging near the Bad by lodge-gate,
and racing for blood across the meadows towards Staverton.
As they dashed into a lane, Reynard flitted across the gateway
opposite. One young hound alone caught a view ; and, while
her comrades disentangled the twisted thread, coursed her game
in midfield. Three times she turned him, and three times he
swung his brush and doubled behind her — till he fairly beat her
to the hedge. For minutes then he was plainly discernible
making his way from field to field — the pack once more in
vociferous and combined pursuit. Despairing of the open, he
struggled round into the village (of Badby) — where from gar-
den after garden rang forth the view holloas that sounded his
knell. At length — and here our sympathies went up to poor
Reynard, and our nature for the moment was inclined, had it
been possible, to forsake its " brutal instincts '' — he jumped from
garden wall on to cottage roof, ran along the thatch of one till
he reached a higher, when finding, as he thought, an open earth,
popped headlong down a chimney — flourishing his white tipped
brush in triumphant farewell. But he had barely reached the
hearthstone before a strong hand gripped him by the flag he
had waved so defiantly. His sharp white teeth went promptly
into Lord Alfred Fitzroy's leg — a substantial top of dainty hue
only just sufficing to make the fangs harmless. A moment more
and he was flung from the door — to fight out the life for which
he had struggled so gamely.
An hour and twenty minutes the time — the last forty excel-
lent— and the point of an S-shaped run fully seven miles. And
he the eighth fox in four days.
THE END.
f
BRADBURY, AGNRW, & CO. LIMD., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARV
Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at
Tufts University
200 Westboro Road
North Grafton, MA 01536
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