"Hounds, Gentlemen, please!"

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"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!"

Plioto] [D'Arci/, Dublin.

The Late Mr. John Watson, op Ballydarton.

Founder of the Carlow Hunt.

(Died, aged 82, in 18G9.)

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN
PLEASE ! "

BY

COMMANDER W. B. FORBES, R.N.

("maintop")

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMX

r Vif i^v ■» t^n ■ \ V

INTRODUCTION

It is not very often, I think, that a sportsman who
is not a Master of Hounds is more deeply interested
in the breeding and pedigree lore of the foxhound
than my old friend, the writer of these pages.

That being the case, it was, perhaps, very natural
that he should endeavour, by his writings, to create
a wider interest in the foxhound in the minds of
those who follow him — an interest which may induce
them to give to that noble animal the fair play,
when in chase, that he deserves — and by doing so
help to lighten the burden of the M.F.H., who cannot
be expected to attend to the hunting education of
his field, in addition to his many other duties.

In every sport and in every game the beginner,
however keen he may be, is bound to make mis-
takes. For instance, at polo, in his first season he will
probably get a decision for "off-side" given against
him, and so penalise his own side. A tyro at fishing
will, to start with, no doubt muddle himself up with
his own cast, or fix it firmly in the nearest tree. But
it is reasonable to expect that after a year or two's
experience, even though the beginner may not have
arrived at the top of the tree in the particular branch
of sport that he desires to follow, he will, at all

vi *' HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!"

events, have arrived at a certain state of proficiency,
and will be able to avoid the most glaring mistakes
which he was guilty of at first.

For some reason or other, which I have not so far
been able to fathom, this does not seem to apply to
foxhunting ; and the man who consistently overrode
hounds, or talked at the top of his voice when they
were at fault in his first season or two, does not seem
to cure himself of these habits with maturer experi-
ence in the way one might reasonably expect of him.

Therefore, I feel sure that many Masters of Hounds
and other foxhunters will welcome this volume, and
will join with me in hoping that its contents may
be perused by the many otherwise good sportsmen
whose ardour for the chase seems at times to blind
their consideration for other people's sport.

In these pages also the humorous and social sides
of hunting have not been forgotten.

WATERFORD.

CURRAGHMORE.

PREFACE

At the request of many Masters of Foxhounds —
some of them old and dear friends, others kindly-
acquaintances — these sketches, which appeared origi-
nally in Land and Water and the County Gentlejnan,
have been produced in book form under the able
editorship of my friend, Mr. E. D. Cuming. Many
of the chapters were suggested to the writer by
Masters of Hounds, and his thanks are due in par-
ticular to the late Mr. Robert Watson and his son,
the famous Master of the Meath ; to Miss Somer-
ville, to Lord Waterford, Mr. C. F. M'Neill, Mr. W.
Selby Lowndes, Major Wise, Captain W. Standish,
Mr. H. L. Langrishe, Mr. R Burke, Mr. Nigel Baring,
Mr. E. A. V. Stanley, Mr. A. FoUok, Mr. Isaac Bell,
Lord Southampton, and many others.

W. B. FORBES.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!" . . ■ 1

CHAPTER II

ON GOING TO COVERT

21

CHAPTER III
A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS . . -33

CHAPTER IV

FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN : AMATEUR AND

PROFESSIONAL . . . . . .47

CHAPTER V

SHORT MASTERSHIPS AND THEIR CAUSES . . 61

X '^ HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE ! "

CHAPTER YI

PAGE

HORNS, HOLLOAS, AND DOG LANGUAGE . . .78

CHAPTER VII

OUR PUPPIES ...... 100

CHAPTER VIII

ON BLOODING HOUNDS ..... 113

CHAPTER IX

THE COLOUR OF HOUNDS . . . . .125

CHAPTER X

THE FOX IN SUMMER ..... 134

CHAPTER XI

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES . . . 154

CHAPTER XII

GORSE COVERTS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT . . 173

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XIII

PAGE

OUR ARTIFICIAL FOX EARTHS .... 187

CHAPTER XIV

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES • . • 198

CHAPTER XV

FOXHUNTING TYPES ..... 217

CHAPTER XVI
FOXHUNTING TYPES {continued) .... 240

CHAPTER XVII

HUNTING MISERIES ...... 264=

CHAPTER XVIII

SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE .... 285

CHAPTER XIX

CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS ..... 297

xii "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!"

CHAPTER XX

FAOZ

WHICH IS THE BEST MONTH OF THE SEASON ? . . 310

CHAPTER XXI

HUNTING ANCIENT AND MODERN .... 325

CHAPTER XXII

CHANGES IN FOXHUNTING ..... 340

CHAPTER XXIII

A PLEA FOR THE OLD RED RAG .... 354

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE LATE MR. JOHN WATSON, OF BALLY-

DARTON ..... Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

MR. W. E. GROGAN, M.F.H. . . . .26

AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS . . . .42

John Leech

FOX STEALS AWAY . . . . .42

John Leech

THE LATE MR. ROBERT GRAY WATSON, M.F.H. . 50

THE LATE MR. BURTON PERSSE, M.F.H. . . 54

MR. R. W. HALL-DARE, M.F.H. . . . .72

MR. BRIGGS . . . . . .88

John Leech

EXCESSIVELY POLITE . . . . .88

John Leech

xiv "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! "

FACING PAGE

AFFABLE AND AUDIBLE ..... 104

Earl Fitzwilliam's Coollattin pack: by Wentworth Rustic
from Anxious by Viscount Galway's Archer

MR. W. DE SALTS FILGATE, M.F.H. . . . 122

MR. ASSHETON BIDDULPH, M.F.H. . . . 136

MR. ISAAC BELL, M.F.H. ..... 150

MR. ARTHUR POLLOK, M.F.H. . . . .168

PUPPY SHOW AT COOLLATTIN .... 184

THE LATE MR. JOHN WATSON, M.F.H. . . . 200

JUDGING AT EARL FITZWILLIAM'S PUPPY SHOW . 220

THE LATE MR. ROBERT WATSON, M.F.H. . . 236

A CLEAR FROSTY MORNING .... 270

John Leech

MR. BRIGGS GOES FOR A DAY'S HUNTING . . 282

John Leech

GOING TO COVER . . . . . .282

John Leech

ILLUSTRATIONS xv

FACING PAGE

POX-HUNTERS REGALING IN THE '' GOOD" OLD TIMES . 290

John Leech

FOX-HUNTERS REGALING IN THE PRESENT ''DEGENE-
RATE'' DAYS . .... 300

John Leech

COUNTRY FRIEND ...... 302

John Leech

MR. BRIGGS STIMULATED ..... 302

John Leech

RUGGLES AND MASTER GEORGE .... 308

John Leech

DOING IT THOROUGHLY ..... 320

John Leech

THE NEW HUNTER ...... 320

John Leech

PREPARATIONS FOR HUNTING .... 350

John Leech

a

CHAPTER I

••HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE 1 "

I SUPPOSE it has been the unfortunate position of most
fox -hunters at one time or other to be laid up during
the hunting season by some mishap, and those whom
this misfortune has overtaken, I am sure, have grate-
ful recollection of the visits of their hunting friends,
who came to condole and retail the news of their
sport.

On one occasion, when so disabled, I remember
being rather struck by the fact that though good
gallops were often very vividly described, I seldom
heard much about the work of hounds. " Hounds
ran past so and so. Hounds checked and could not
go any pace after ! " was about the utmost I learned
about them. Sometimes it did one good to hear that
"you might have covered them with a sheet," or that
" you never heard such a cry " ; but it was seldom,
indeed, that the work of any particular hound was
mentioned. Noticing this I sometimes used to ask,
"What pack was out?" and the answer was usually
the same. " Gad ! I didn't notice, old fellow ! Bitches,
I think ! (or dogs, as the case might be), but anyhow
they ran like blazes — no hounds could have done

Hotmds, Oentlemen, Please, 2

2 " HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE ! "

better ; I wish you'd been out, you would have en-
joyed it!"

It may be, I suppose, that as one grows older and
the power of seeing hounds at their work grows less,
a keener appreciation of the pleasure that is soon
to be lost to us takes possession, and a good bit of
hound-work becomes as thoroughly relished and gives
fully as much satisfaction as the " feel " of a good
horse clearing a big fence used to do in the days that
are gone.

There are some^ of course, in every hunting-field who
have from boyhood been of a " doggy " turn, who have
loved to see terriers, pointers, and spaniels at their
work, and for whom the wonderful sight of a pack of
foxhounds carrying a scent for miles over a stiffly
enclosed country has, therefore, a fascination that
nothing can equal. In boyish days it was a delight
to watch how the terrier would hunt his youthful
master's footsteps inch for inch, no matter how he
doubled or what obstacles he placed behind him, and
the interest in this work has probably been the
making of many a sportsman.

Is it possible that because the retriever is the only
dog that many of the rising generation have ever
seen used with a gun, the fondness for the canine
race and their wondrous instincts is becoming one of
the many good things that have been ? If so, the
look-out is a bad one for the huntsman, and the
thruster of old in the Leicestershire story, who, after
larking home, exclaimed, " What fun we should have

if it wasn't for these d d hounds," will have many

sympathisers in the rising generation.

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! " 3

It is true that there are hosts of good fellows who
come out " keen as mustard for a hunt," who ride
like sportsmen, who are ready to help the huntsman
in every way, and who " take notice," too (as nurses say
of their babies). If a holloa is heard when hounds
are at fault, one of these cheery horsemen is ready
to inform the huntsman of the fact, willing, too, to
ride away and find out if the shout conveys genuine
information ; in short, to play as sportsmanlike a part
as he knows how to do. But in many, if not most,
cases, the check has been brought about by the field ;
or, if not, would have almost immediately been recti-
fied by the hounds themselves, but for the presence of
the field ; and what the huntsman wants is not help
that he may hunt the fox, but all to assist in letting
hounds have a chance of hunting him.

Let any one make a point of noticing the conduct
of the field when next a sudden check occurs after
a smart burst over a fair line of country. Hounds
have brought the line, let us say, well into a field,
and then suddenly throw their heads up. Motion-
less the huntsman stands, watching every movement
of his favourites, who, busy as bees, are flitting
hither and thither, casting themselves industriously.
Instinctively he holds up his hand, but in less than
a minute there is a crowd close behind him. That is
bad enough, for if a fox in flight (which is, as a rule,
a steady, self-contained pace), sees an object he mis-
trusts in front at some little distance he often runs
right back in his tracks before branching off to get
round whatever it is that affrights him, without
being seen. Hounds eager in pursuit and full of

4 "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!"

drive are, we all know, apt to overrun a scent ; here
on this particular ground, where the strong, fresh,
heel-line overlays the still warm line of his flight,* it
is no wonder that with even more dash than usual
they carry on far beyond where Reynard stopped and
turned. If there is a man in the field ploughing in
front of him, a shooter, or one taking his walks
abroad, the huntsman sees at once what is the mat-
ter ; but many an object he wots not of, a strange
shadow on a fence, a bit of white (probably a cow in
the next field) showing through the hedge, may be
suspicious to the eye of a hunted fox, and he will
turn back for awhile.

Now, if only the motionless huntsman were in the
field alone, and if his darlings were of the right sort,
round they would come with a systematic swing, and
it would require no holloa to tell him which way
the fox had gone. When such a check occurs is the
moment for the sportsmen who watch and care for
hounds to distinguish themselves, to implore their
comrades not to go on, but to stand together and be
silent. But here they come ! The hounds have
checked, they see. " What a nuisance ! " " What a
pity ! " " What an awful bore ! " " Just as it was
getting jolly, too ! Always the way ! " " But, by
Jove ! can't they run ! And did you see what an awful
ender old Juggins came at the mearing fence ? '
" That ass, Muggins, swore I crossed him ! " " Why,
you weren't within yards of him ! " " Hulloa ! what's
the matter with the old 'un ? "

Here the M.F.H. makes a little brimstony sort
* Technically termed the " counterfoil."

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! " 5

of speech which contains references to " chattering
magpies," &c.

" How cross he is to-day," pouts Beauty on the Bay,
for (print it in a whisper) the ladies are always the
worst offenders at a check. " What does he want us
to do?"

" Give the hounds room and stop that infernal
cackle," is what old Mr. Misogynist over there is
probably saying in his beard. Would it not really
be well for some one to explain that ardent, over-
excited hounds, carried on too far as it is by their
pursuers, cannot settle down to recover a line when
folk are wandering about close to them ; that laughter
and loud talking are apt still further to unsettle them
and get their heads up ; while the steam from per-
spiring horses moving about spreads like a fog over
the field and does not help the pack in their endeavour
to regain the scent?

But, unless a man be fond of hounds and their work,
he cannot, I suppose, be expected to interest himself
at this particular juncture, and will probably be con-
tent with hoping that " Old Blank will set them
going again soon, and not make as rotten a cast as
he did last time."

It is certain that on a bad scenting day hounds
get very little fair play ; but I am inclined to write
that on a good scenting day they get none at all,
unless they are able to run slick away from their
followers. For if scent be really good and hounds
run hard no one anticipates a check, we cannot
understand why they should check with such a scent,
and consequently we are all a bit excited, and too

6 "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! "

apt to press on to maintain our position when the
check does come. There are even evildoers who seize
the occasion to edge on, on either flank of hounds,
in deadly terror lest they lose their places, and
Robinson be defeated in his laudable endeavour to
cut down Snooks, who is a stranger.

" Always anticipate a check " is an old and very
true axiom of the hunting-field that has been printed
before now, and if borne in mind will, perhaps, save
the possibility of doing any harm. But it is when
hounds check on a road that their difficulties and the
huntsman's troubles are at their worst, and when, I
am afraid, the field appear most heedless and igno-
rant; and if the carriage brigade appear at this
most critical moment and mingle with the hard riders
of the roads and those who have followed hounds
over the fields, the babble of conversation and the
sort of senseless involuntary movement of the crowd
often becomes very exasperating to the M.F.H. I
recollect once at such a check our Master, all eager-
ness and anxiety, and looking as if the cares of
Europe were on his brow, was holding his divided
pack, some in the field to his right, some to his left,
and so jogging carefully down the road, when
suddenly a hospitable dame in a commodious wag-
gonette came round the corner, charged past the
M.F.H., and pulled up as the field, who were follow-
ing the huntsman at a respectful distance, approached.
" Oh, I'm so glad you've stopped ! " she exclaimed
joyously; "I've lots to eat and drink here — how
hungry you must all be." A reply made by the late
Mr. Victor Roche on a somewhat similar occasion —

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! " 7

one which only he could, have framed — rose to my
memory, but not to my lips.

Incidents such as these crop up so often during the
hunting season that one is set wondering what many
people imagine they have come out to do when they
leave their homes for the meet — not that any one
objects to their ideas, whatever they may be ; for
we claim for hunting the superiority over all other
pastimes, inasmuch as it affords more amusement to
more people, many of whom enjoy themselves equally
but for totally different reasons ; yet all are supposed
to be " hunting the fox."

Nevertheless, I do think that the pleasures of the
chase would be enhanced to many of its followers
were they to train themselves to take a little more
interest in hounds. Most Masters of Hounds of my
acquaintance — and I am proud to say it is a pretty
extensive one — are glad to show the pack to visitors,
and if the M.F.H. observes a real interest taken he
is generally anxious for the visit to be repeated.
Now a visit to the kennel and a chat with the hunts-
man generally leaves food for reflection, and a
keen desire to see and notice some hounds that have
been admired at their work in the field when next
we go a-hunting. It is well also to learn the names
of at least some of the champions of the pack, the
real "reliables"; for it may chance during a season
that you may notice a hound away on a line when
nobody else is near, and if you are able to tell the
huntsman that "old Chorister showed a line outside
the wood," or that "Tell Tale had it back beyond
the road," the mention of the names of these sages

8 "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! "

will cause him to act on your information without
a moment's hesitation, and probably you will be
thanked and will become the hero of the moment.

But ere you may venture to tender aid to the
huntsman, it were well to know what is expected of
the follower of hounds in his private capacity.

The story of the young gentleman who proceeded
to thrash the hound his horse had kicked was a
very good one ; and being also true it deserves to
be repeated in order to point a moral, and illustrate
the pitiful ignorance of the sport displayed by so
many who go out hunting nowadays.

The youth's horse " lets out " at an unfortunate,
and probably very valuable, hound, and kicks him.
" Hit him ! " cries a spectator, irate at the proceed-
ing and meaning, of course, that chastisement shall
fall upon the horse. " By Jove ! I will ! " replies
the rider of the offending steed, who thereupon sets
to work to flagellate the hound as hard as he is
able. He thought, I suppose, that he was doing a
perfectly legitimate and sportsmanlike act. He carried
a whip — why shouldn't he use it ? Why should the
wretched hound come so close to his steed and make
him kick? And he vi^ould probably have been most
indignant if the M.F.H., as in Leech's picture, had
sung out, " Mind the hound, sir ; he's worth twice
as much as your horse ! "

" What matter a hound or so ? It's a poor concern
that won't stand a h'und a day," quoth James Pigg,
with withering sarcasm. " Differs from Pigg there,
though," notes Mr. Jorrocks in his Journal. But
really hounds sometimes receive such unworthy

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!" 9

treatment and such scanty notice from the field that
one is almost disposed to believe that many people
who hunt hold them in as small estimation as did
the victim of Mr. Pigg's satirical explosion.

Still, it is through ignorance they err — sheer un-
adulterated ignorance ; they have never been taught,
they know no better. How should they? Many
youths, who by the time they come to man's estate
have learned how to ride and sit a horse over a
fence, who have perhaps played a game of polo or
joined a regiment, come out to hunt, and before
their first season is over they imagine they know all
about fox-hunting, and are satisfied they have become
fox-hunters and sportsmen. I wonder how many of
them know anything about the value of a hound ? I
do not mean his intrinsic monetary value, but the value
of a good working hound in the hunting season to
the master of the pack. Indeed, how few that come
out hunting ever think how much care, thought, and
expense has been bestowed upon every single one of
those forty or so of well-bred foxhounds that we see
jogging on to covert round their huntsman's horse?
The care and thought began before they appeared as
puppies into the world in which they receive such
small consideration from many of those for whom
they are to provide such glorious pastime. The pedi-
grees of their parents have been carefully studied
before they were mated, their working powers and
peculiarities considered, as well as the structui-e of
their frames. It has been, perhaps, no easy matter
to procure some of the sires from whose goodly loins
they have sprung, nor has it been an inexpensive

10 " HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE ! "

matter either. How many selected bitches have
proved barren? How many whelps have succumbed
before they even reached puppyhood ? How many of
us who hunt ever tried to get a litter through an
attack of yellows, or other ailments of whelphood?
Not to speak of the unceasing attention and nursing
that distemper itself surely brings — that fell disease
which invariably carries off the best.

Then how many of the " bruisers " who ride so
jealously close to hounds have any idea of the
difficulties about quarters ; the walks for the puppies,
which we who live in the country well know are
yearly becoming harder to obtain in times when the
very members of the hunt seem to fight shy of walk-
ing a puppy, though they do not suggest how else
the strength of the pack is to be maintained, nor, I
notice, do they volunteer subscriptions to procure
valuable drafts? Who knows what bitter disappoint-
ments are in store for the M.F.H. when these puppies
do come in from quarters? Can this crooked, fiat-
sided object, with no more bone than an Italian
greyhound, be the progeny of his matchless "Name-
less," by the great Lord Blankshire's "Nonsuch,"
whom she visited after as much negotiation and
interest as would be required to get a boy into one
of His Majesty's own regiments of Guards ?

Then there is the drafting for shapes of this or
that youngster, and the further drafting when
cubbing has begun and irreclaimable vice appears.
How little the keenest of us ever think of all the
troubles of that training period with the pack, and
all they have to go through. The rounding, the

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! " 11

teaching (often most troublesome) to carry couples,
to learn their names ; their education to free them
from all riot, the accidents that generally befall some
before November arrives, the work to get some of
them home after getting away with a fox in a wild
and distant country, when, indeed, some never return
at all.

The above details only give a slight notion of the
trouble and expense that has been bestowed upon
every hound before he begins regular hunting at all.
People seem to think that a hound at best is only
worth a few sovereigns, so can be replaced at will.
Can there be a greater mistake ?

In the hunting season if a good ivoi'king hound
comes to grief he cannot be replaced at all. What
huntsman, worth his salt, was ever known to part
with one of his real, reliable fox-catchers in the
middle of the season? Few even of hunting men
realise the enormous amount of trouble hounds give
to their huntsmen before he gets them really handy ;
they require training as much as pointers or retrievers,
and we should be very much annoyed if any one set
our best young retriever to course as lightly- wounded
hare that had been " tailored " by shooting too far
behind. Yet thoughtless people keep holloaing on a
huntsman and his hounds to foxes whenever they see
them, whether they are sure it is the hunted fox or
not ; getting their heads up and making them wild ;
indeed, utterly spoiling them unless the huntsman
takes precaution and handles them quietly. It takes
a very long time to make a bad pack a good one,
but a very short time will make the keenest and best

12 "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! "

hounds slack or wild. Deceive them, ill-treat them,
or abuse them, and the effect will be noticeable in a
week ; the bitches will be cowed, and the old dog
hounds will sulk ; just put their toes on the ground
and stand looking at their huntsman with a superior
air of astonishment and disgust. Horsemen should
know and consider that their sport will i^np^^ove
to a moral certainty in the same ratio that they
refrain from kicking and overriding hounds, which
will assuredly cowe them more or less, or cause them
to sulk ; for the condition and frame of mind that
hounds are in contribute about 70 per cent, to the
sport they show.

The field would also do well to remember that a
Master or huntsman loves his hound individually as
much, or more than, any one who is out loves his
pet dog ; and that it is pain and grief to him to see
any of them injured or deceived ; and it is rather
dreadful to reflect that ahnost all inju7'y to hounds by
kicking, jumping on them, or overriding them, could
he avoided, if people would only learn to be more
careful. " 'Ware horse " is a cry that should seldom
be uttered except by the members of the hunt estab-
lishment— " 'Ware hound " is much oftener necessary.

Two years' experience in the hunting-field appear
to qualify any one to be a critic of the huntsman's
art — for what is easier than to criticise ? We all can
have a go at that ! Even George Cheek, the school-
boy in Soapey Sponge, was ready to declare that Mr.
Watchorn was " a shocking huntsman — never saw
such a huntsman in all my life," although George's
experience "lay between his uncle Jellyboy, who had

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!" 13

harriers and rode 18|- stone, Tom Scramble, the
pedestrian huntsman of the Slowfoot Hounds, and
Mr. Watchorn."

Such critics are sometimes apt to accuse the
huntsman of bloodthirstiness, but huntsmen bring
their hounds out to hunt a fox, and not to play
with him ; if he lead the field over a good country,
so much the better for the field, but the hounds
come out to hunt him, and, if possible, to account
for him.

One often hears by the covert-side, "Why doesn't
he put his hounds in there and drive him over
there ! " But all should know (it has been said and
written often enough) that, unless favoured by high
wind or some exceptional circumstance, you cannot
drive a fox over a desired line of country. A fox
leaves a covert, nine times out of ten, with a view
of going elsewhere to gain safety, and usually
chooses a sheltered route, avoiding, if possible, the
wild open country, where all his movements can be
viewed, and which the thrusters are longing to
cross. An able and very observant huntsman re-
marks that a fox is sometimes driven off his point,
out of his selected country, if he starts with a
strong breeze behind him on a really good scenting
day and with hounds away close to him. Then the
wind carries their fierce cry so strongly that they
may seem closer to him than they really are. He
dare not turn to make his point, for that, he knows,
would bring him " into the wind," giving his pursuers
even a greater advantage, and when a run starts in
this fashion it is generally " all U.P." with Reynard.

14 "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE !"

With regard to the expense of maintaining these
hounds, that some treat so carelessly, it is only when
financial matters are being discussed at a hunt
meeting that the ordinary follower of the chase
gathers any ideas on the subject, unless he chooses
to interest himself in the matter of kennel manage-
ment. How many know anything about the way
hounds are fed during summer and winter, or how
much they eat (I verily believe that some think
they are turned out to grass in summer), that
oatmeal costs £13 or £14 per ton, and that feeding
in summer costs fully as much as in winter if
hounds are to be kept really healthy?

These details are not thought of by the majority;
if they were we should, perhaps, seldom have that
piteous howling of the maimed hound struck by the
horse of a careless rider, and " 'Ware hound ! " would
probably be passed along more frequently.

Readers who are hunting folk and reside in the
country, do you rear a puppy (or puppies) for the
Hunt you patronise most ? If not, you ought to do
so ! You will not fail if you do to appreciate the
working of hounds, to be zealous for their success,
to try on all occasions to ensure their being given a
fair chance to exhibit their prowess. I should like
to put in a special plea for hounds when they are
leaving covert.

"A fall's a hawful thing," as Mr. Jorrocks said, in
one of his " sportin' lectors," but at no time does
it seem such a calamity to the ardent sportsman as
when it occurs at the very commencement of the
chase. At that thrilling period it appears to most of

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!" 15

us that a moment's delay may be fatal, that a yard
lost may never be regained, or, if retrieved, the steed
may be unduly pressed in the effort. Every dire
casualty that is likely to imperil the pleasure presents
itself to our excited fancy, with the result that at the
beginning we are all inclined to ride a little harder
than we ought to do. Yet if we pause to consider,
it will be manifest to all who care about hunting that
the first few moments after hounds come away from
covert are just the most critical of the pursuit, and
if huntsman and hounds are given a chance now all
will probably go well if there is a scent. If, on the
other hand, they are interfered with and scent is
poor the fox obtains every advantage, consequently
he is able to put such a long distance between his
brush and the nose of the leading hound that without
a change of scent in their favour hounds are very
unlikely indeed to come up to him.

Now, it very often happens that scent lies very
badly in the immediate neighbourhood of a fox
covert on a hunting morning, and it seems to me
that this fact is not sufficiently recognised by hunting
folk ; but a few instances of what I mean will pos-
sibly enable some of my readers to recall occasions
when a puzzling want of scent just as hounds came
out of covert was followed by a sudden and strange
improvement. How often do we hear at the end of
a fast gallop, " I thought there wasn't an atom of
scent when we first went away," or words to that
effect. Yet if we had been anchored overhead in a
captive balloon just above the fox-covert for some
minutes previous to its being drawn a good deal of

16 "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!"

the mystery of scent would have been revealed. In
the first place, there are a few foot-people about —
good fellows, no doubt; friends of the covert-keeper
maybe, all anxious to see a hunt; and who have a
better right ? They will not come up to their vantage
place near the cover fence till the horsemen appear,
and they will not make a noise ; but they approach
from different directions, and in parties squat down
under the shelter of neighbouring fences, out come
the pipes and a tobacco-parliament is held. Then
" the Hunt " is seen approaching ; it advances, say,
from the east. There is an ungated field on the
right, so the M.F.H. has to send the field right
round the covert to take post on the north side,
where he wishes them to stand. The gates they
have to pass through are in the middle of the fields,
therefore they cannot keep close to the covert fences,
and so by the time they have taken up their allotted
position the crowd of horsemen has thoroughly foiled
the ground for many yards from the covert on three
sides of it. From the fourth side the fox goes away,
but is headed back soon after, not, however, before
the whole field has been all over the enclosure on
that side also in the struggle for a start.

There are days, of course, when there is no doubt
about the thing at all ; when hounds come tumbling
like a cataract over the covert fence, and with a swoop
pounce upon the scent, throw up their heads, and
stretch themselves out to race with one veritable
scream of fierce ecstasy that causes men to " boil up,"
no matter how phlegmatic may be their temperament,
while those of an excitable disposition straightway

"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! " 17

begin to " see red." There is no need for dalliance
on these occasions. Pick your place in the first fence,
sit down in your saddle, keep his head straight, and
away with you ! But such flying starts, such burning
scents from covert, are exceptions and not the rule.

"Never be close to hounds for the first two fields,
and we'll maybe show you a run," was a speech of
one of the best of amateur huntsmen, Mr. Henry
Briscoe, Master of the Curraghmore Hounds, who
knew as much about fox-hunting as most men. What
huntsman is there who would not like to feel him-
self entirely alone with his hounds for the first few
minutes — with the knowledge that his active and
capable first whipper-in was lying handy with eyes
skinned and ears alert, and that every horse behind
him but the whip's had a pair of hobbles on his
forelegs ?

Hunting pictures, hunting songs, and most of the
imaginary runs in sporting novels are all to blame
for establishing the notion in the mind of aspiring
youth that a fox-hunt invariably begins, or ought to
begin, by hounds coming tearing out on the line of
their fox and immediately beginning to race him, while
the field at once sweep on like an avalanche in their
tracks. " Nimrod " was the first offender with the pen,
Aiken with the brush ; and as time went on our old
hunting songs of the " southerly wind and cloudy sky "
type were succeeded by others which had caught the
taint of pace and hurry. Even such true poets and
sportsmen as Charles Kingsley and Why te-Melville pipe
to the same tune of pace and hurry, and seizing the
most stirring and romantic side of the picture, urge

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 3

18 -HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! "

us by burning words to further deeds of " derring do."
Sings Kingsley in immortal verse : —

" They're running ; they're running, go hark !
One fence, and we're out of the park.
Sit down in your saddles and race at the brook,
Then smash at the bullfinch — no time for a look.
Leave cravens and shirkers to dangle behind ;
He's away for the moors in the teeth of the wind,
And they're running, they're running, go hark ! "

In his prose descriptions of hunting, some of which
are as near poetry as prose can be, Kingsley never
lets himself go in this fashion, but describes the sport
from a sportsman's view. So with Whyte-Melville,
who in Tilbury Nogo, Market Harhorough, and many
other works, gives us the truest bits of genuine hunting
picturesquely described that have ever been written ;
but when he launches into verse, it is the excitement
of the opening moments of a quick thing that his
glowing muse has seized upon to celebrate in couplets
that ring again " where'er the English tongue is
spoken." Here is a verse: —

"We threw off at the castle, we found in the holt,
Like wildfire the beauties went streaming away ;
From the rest of the field he came out like a bolt.
And he tackled to work like a schoolboy at play."

And here is the "find" in "The Galloping Squire": —

" One wave of his arm, to the covert they throng.

' Yoi 1 wind him ! and rouse him I By Jove he's away ! '
Through a gap in the oaks see them speeding along.

O'er the open like pigeons : ' They mean it to-day ! '
You may jump till you're sick, you may spur till you tire !

For it's ' Catch 'em who can 1 ' says the Galloping Squire."

"HOUNDS, GENTLEiMEN, PLEASE!" 19

Now, while yielding to no one in admiration for the
songs quoted from above, for I know every word of
them — " have them off by heart," as the children say —
it strikes me that we have been educated by pen and
pencil to think of the commencement of a run always
as a scrimmage, where pace and jumping powers are
the great essentials, whereas in my humble opinion
Mr. Briscoe's words, " Never be close to hounds for
the first two fields," should be set as a copy for most
of us.

Perhaps it may be thought that the foiling of the
surroundings of a fox covert as described above is
overdrawn and exaggerated, but instances in proof of
what has been written so often recur to my memory
that I may perhaps be excused for relating one or two.
In the eastern portion of County Kilkenny there is a
famous fox covert named Bishop's Lough, planted in
the great days of Sir John Power by the baronet
himself on his own property. It has often happened
that, owing to the exigencies of the draw, the late
M.F.H. (Mr. Langrishe) elected to approach the covert
from the Bennett's Bridge Road. Between the road
and cover lies a mile of sound old grass, divided into
large fields, but ungated. Consequently the field had
this little " school " across the country before reaching
the covert, and the fences being easy, be sure they
spread themselves well over the fields and took these
obstacles almost in line abreast. On arrival at Bishop's
Lough the horsemen were swung round the right-hand
corner of the gorse and held in position there. Some
seasons ago the Bishop's Lough foxes used invariably
to go away straight for the road and over the bit of

20 "HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!"

country crossed by the horsemen, and almost always
scent appeared queer and catchy, while invariably one
heard cries going about such as " Hold hard ! " " Give
'em room ! " " There's not an atom of scent," &c. Mr.
Langrishe, however, always seemed quite alive to the
state of the case, and without actually lifting and
unsettling hounds seemed to get them along fast by
cheery encouragement, till either the road was crossed
or the fox had turned clear of the strip of ground we
had used on our way to covert, when the game would
begin in earnest.

There was a good gorse covert about three hundred
yards from my house some years ago, which seldom
was drawn blank. It was situated among large, flat
fields, which were very difficult to keep clear of folk
on a hunting morning, and it was often remarked to
me when a fox went away to the north towards the

avenues, that there never was any scent at G .

When we ran a fox into the place, however, I never
noticed any slackening of the pace or alteration of
scent ; but people seemed slow to believe that by dally-
ing on horseback in the neighbourhood of the fox
covert, they not only stood a chance of giving its
inmates a hint to leave, but also were foiling the
ground for the hounds.

Instances could easily be multiplied, but enough has
been said to make out a plea for hounds at the start.
If there is a scent you will know it soon enough, and
there may be a scent three hundred yards from the
covert, though there be none close round it.

CHAPTER II

ON GOING TO COVERT: MERITS AND DEMERITS OF
THE MOTOR-CAR

" Oh, to feel the wild pulsation that I felt in days of yore,
When my horse went on before me, and my hack was at the door ! "

Had Mr. Bromley-Davenport written in the twentieth
instead of the nineteenth century, he mvist, I suppose,
have substituted the word " car " for " hack " ; for
where, alas ! is the covert-hack whose paces and
performances were the delight of an earlier genera-
tion of fox-hunters ? Not many years ago every
large hunting stable held, as a matter of course, its
complement of covert-hacks — animals that were at no
time easy to obtain ; looks, manners, and the best of
action in all paces being sought ; while his value
was enhanced if the hack possessed the knack of
jumping any ordinary fence in good style, for there
never has been a time when youthful sportsmen
could resist the temptation of a short-cut across
country.

The pleasures of the ride to covert on such an
animal have been told in eloquent prose by many a
writer, and when Whyte-Melville descanted on the

SI

22 ON GOING TO COVERT: MERITS

theme, more than a suspicion of poetry leavened his
delightful prose : —

" What freshness in the smell of the saturated pastures ! What
beauty in the softened tints and shadows of the landscape — leafless
though it be ! How those bare hedges seem ready to burst forth in
the bloom of spring, and the distant woods on the horizon melt into
the sky as softly as in the hot haze of a July noon I The thud of
our horse's hoofs strikes pleasantly on the ear, as we canter over the
undulating pastures, swinging back the hand-gates with a dexterity only
to be acquired by constant practice, and on which we plume ourselves
not a little. He is the sweetest hack in England, and shakes his head
and rolls his shoulders gaily as we i*estrain the canter from becoming a
gallop. Were he not the sweetest, etc., he would begin to plunge from
sheer exuberance of spirits ; we could almost find it in our heart to
indulge him. The scared sheep scour off for a few paces, shaking their
woolly coat, and then turn round to gaze at us as Ave fleet from field to
field. ... A scarlet coat glances along the lane in front, and, as this is
our last bit of grass, and, moreover, the furrows lie the right waj^ we
catch hold of The Sweetest's head, and treat ourselves to a gallop. Soon
we emerge on the high road, and relapse into a ten-mile-an-hour trot.
The Sweetest, who thinks nothing of twelve, going well on his haunches,
and quite within himself."

That was how they went to covert in the Shires early
in the sixties, when Why te- Melville wrote Market
Harborough, and Lord Stamford mastered the Quorn ;
at least, that was the pleasantest way to journey on
to a meet in those delectable regions where bridle-
roads still prevail, where grass " ridings " abound,
and gates, properly hung, fly open to the crafty
application of the hunting-whip.

We do not all hunt in the grass countries, but, no
matter in what happy hunting grounds we encamp,
let us have tolerably fine weather, and my vote would
always be for the saddle versus " trap " or space-

AND DEMERITS OF THE MOTOR-CAR 23

devouring, time-saving motor. Bridle-roads and
grassy ride are doubtless delightful, but interest,
beauty, and amusement are to be found from the
turnpike road, as was well set forth in the middle
of the last century, by an author whose words will
well bear quotation : —

"The morning ride, slowly pacing, full of expectation, your horse as
pleased as yourself. Sharp and clear in the grey atmosphere the leafless
trees and white farmhouses stand out, backed by a curtain of mist
hanging on the hills in the horizon. With eager eyes you take all in ;
nothing escapes you ; you have cast off care for the day. How pleasant
and cheerful everything and every one looks I ... To your mind the
well-cultivated land looks beautiful. In the monotony of ten acres of
turnips you see a hundred pictures of English farming life."

Last winter it was often my lot to travel on to
covert by motor-car, and no one can deny the comforts
of the proceeding. There were few meets that could
not be reached by the wonder-working vehicle in half
an hour. Therefore there was no hurry about break-
fast, toilet, correspondence, or the digestion of the
morning papers, and I could see no objection to the
arrangement. We met with no accident, ran over no
pig nor dog, crawling child nor any other creeping
thing ; we startled no animals badly, and, I trust,
scandalised none of his Majesty's lieges. But, when
all is said and done, I prefer the hack.

I have been hunting for over forty years, but have
never yet been able to master the contents of the
daily journal on a hunting morning, to write a
satisfactory letter, or to transact a bit of business
properly — "When my horse went on before me."

24 ON GOING TO COVERT: MERITS

I envy most profoundly those individuals who are
not so constituted, but are able to carry on the flow
of daily life unruffled by absorbing anticipations.
Upon a hunting morning my natural placidity departs
from me, and I long to be away. The idea of being
late horrifies me beyond measure, and the very thought
of a breakdown with the motor used to sicken me.

Again, by that rapid means of transit I found that
I entirely lost the pleasures so charmingly described
by the authors from whom I have quoted. What
pleasure can one take in the survey of a landscape
which flashes past at the rate of thirty miles per
hour ? Did I wish to point out to my companion
where hounds put their fox to ground in the next
field, or the spot which the little bay horse carried
me over so gallantly in the last run — who-o-osh ! the
place was behind us before I could raise a finger !
Buzzing down one hill and humming up the opposite
rise, we come, perchance, on the hounds and hunt
servants jogging happily along in front of us, the
velvet hunting caps bobbing up above the hedges, and
sundry gleams of scarlet revealing their presence
before we make the turn, and calling up recollections
of the many pleasant jogs I used so thoroughly to
enjoy when I overtook hounds while " riding on."

Those were the times when the miles appeared
nearly as short as the motor makes them ; when this
and that hound was pointed out, his merits related
with many an anecdote of his prowess, and reminis-
cences of his sire and dam came freely from the lips
of the civil functionary in scarlet. Then, there was
always a good deal to be said of what happened at

AND DEMERITS OF THE MOTOR-CAR 25

some certain time in the last run, for no two runs are
ever really alike to a huntsman, and always something-
happens that is essentially worthy of remark — such
" infinite variety " have the pleasures of the chase !
Now, with all its advantages, a motor-car going at
speed is not adapted for conversation, and I have
often wished, when sitting with an interesting com-
panion in the tonneau, that we had adopted a less
expeditious method of travelling. It must not be
supposed that I wish to pose as an obstructionist.
The motor-car is here to stay — till we take to air-
ships instead ; and as to horses getting frightened by
these machines, well, they must just get used to them.
That is putting it brutally straight, perhaps, but it is
better to say it plainly. In time, in a very short time,
horses will care no more about passing a motor-car
than they do about passing a mail phaeton, and
already they see more of the former vehicle than of
the latter.

The season before last I saw at a meet which was
held in front of the residence of a M.F.H. five motor-
cars grouped among the hounds and hunt servants, and
some of the horses were actually touching the motors,
all of which had full steam up. A photograph was
taken of the scene, and appeared in one of the auto-
mobile journals. The group was arranged to show
how horses can be got to accommodate themselves to
these monsters which have now taken possession of
our roads. So many well-known Masters and ex-
Masters of Hounds are ardent motorists nowadays
that it would seem quite idle to talk of the harm
that can be done to hunting by motor-cars.

26 ON GOING TO COVERT: MERITS

In Ireland, the Master of the Carlow Hounds, the
Master and one of the ex-Masters of the Kilkenny-
Hounds are among the pioneers of motoring in the
island. Earl Fitzwilliam (M.F.H. on both sides of the
Channel) is an ardent motorist. The Master of the
Wexford Hounds could hardly command the great
distances he has to travel without his motor ; and
Mr. Burke, of Tipperary, had for the last seasons of
his mastership taken to the motor-car, which he found
invaluable for distant meets. It may be safely asserted
that if there were any tangible objections to the
motor as a covert hack from a hunting point of view,
it would not be patronised by the sportsmen I have
mentioned. As to the harm done to hunting by the
motorists during the chase, it is not within my
province now to touch upon that subject ; but from
all accounts it is a matter that wants looking after,
in some parts of England at least.

Having mentioned the hack and the motor as means
of locomotion to the covert-side, it only remains to
touch upon the trap, a generic name, it would appear,
for all descriptions of vehicles that carry passengers,
with the exception of omnibuses, mail coaches, and —
hearses. Being tolerably free from prejudice, I must
nevertheless pray to be delivered from driving to
covert on an outside Irish car ; and yet I know that
many such journeys are before me, so had better,
perhaps, change my prayer to one for fine weather
(and warm) on such occasion as I set forth upon a car.
On these vehicles I defy you to keep warm if it is cold,
to keep dry if it is wet ; you lose much of the pleasures
of the scenery by having to twist your head and body

■ri

o

o >

AND DEMERITS OF THE MOTOR-CAR 27

to see the country you approach, and after a really
long drive one feels as if there were a round turn and
half hitch in one's vitals, which there is a difficulty
in undoing. Let me drive (if drive I must to a meet)
with my face to the horses if I am to enjoy any of the
pleasures which come so freely to the man who " rides
on." Let the animal or animals in front be cheery
goers, with a bit of action of the right sort, and if
the pace comes up to nine and a half miles an hour,
then there are worse places than the front seat of
mail phaeton or dogcart.

I have so many pleasant recollections, in all these
years, of long drives to the meet, so many delightful
remembrances of rides to covert, that I begin to think
Whyte-Melville was not far wrong when he told the
writer that " one of the greatest pleasures of the day's
hunting " was " getting to the meet."

I have always prided myself, during a pretty long
hunting career, in being in good time, arguing that,
as I liked to see a fox found, I could at least make
pretty certain of doing that, though very probably 1
might be unable to see him killed. This habit of
making a punctual start served me well when hunt-
ing in after years with the glorious old M.F.H.
with whom I chiefly hunted for eighteen seasons.
His punctuality was proverbial : the country folk by
the roadside used to declare that you might " set
your clocks by the old Master." He moved off at
" eleven sharp," except when on the borderlands of
his country, when at certain fixtures he would allow
" five minutes' law for strangers," or a few minutes
more if a train was late. On these latter occasions,

28 ON GOING TO COVERT: MERITS

however, his pent-up eagerness and energy were
manifest by the pace he pelted along to reach the
first covert, so that it never was safe to take things
easy on the way to the meet. In spite of all good
intentions, nevertheless, unforeseen accidents or con-
tingencies would occur at times, which caused many
feverish moments of misery that will not be banished
from recollection even after many years. I have two
acquaintances whom I have seldom known to be in
time for a meet, yet an uncanny sort of luck seems
to befriend their procrastinating proceedings, and just
as we go away with the first fox of the day
they turn up smiling. It is otherwise with some
(myself, I believe, among the number), for seldom
does fortune forgive them, and it is not often their
lot to find the chase sweeping under their very
noses as they hurry - from the fixture to the first
draw.

There are times of a hunting morning when every-
thing seems to go wrong from the moment we emerge
from the matutinal tub to the sickening period when
we find ourselves a mile from the meet with the
hands of the watch at eleven and the hack with a
stone tightly wedged in between the frog and the
inner quarter of one of his fore shoes. Everything
goes wrong from the beginning ! When buttoning
the very last button at the knees of our breeches
the buttonhook came through the buttonhole with
ominous ease and the wretched little disc of mother-
o'-pearl dropped gently to the floor. The other pair,
which always hang ready on the back of the chair
for such emergencies, are then assumed so hurriedly

AND DEMERITS OF THE MOTOR-CAR 29

that there is a feeling of discomfort about them, and
if one of the loops by which you pull on your top
boots parts company it is difficult to breathe a prayer.
Then that infernal tie won't allow itself to come into
the proper fold ; the breakfast bell rings, and when
you reach the table you find there is mighty little
time at your disposal ; in fact, you have hardly set to
work before a grinding of the gravel outside the
window tells that " the hack is at the door."

But the pulsation you feel is very "wild," and the
world is not going very well with you, for here is a
man to "spake with your honour," and perchance a
dear old lady with a pleasing tale of Reynard the fox
and the fate of certain "bins," and it may be geese.
If you are a "District Manager" — and that doubtful
honour is mine — be sure this is the moment you will
be assailed, and it behoves you, in spite of your feel-
ings, to behave with tact and courtesy. You dispose
of the lady and prepare to treat the masculine visitor
in distinctly different fashion ; perchance it is a tale
of woe ; j)erhaps only a neighbour with a sample of
oats or hay — but, " Why always on a hunting morn-
ing ? " you ask yourself ; and before the matter is
settled you have given the Recording Angel some
little work to begin the day with.

Then spurs and overcoat are caught up and ad-
justed, gloves and hat pulled on, whip stuck in the
trap, smoke set going, and at last you are under
way quite fifteen minutes behind time, with ten
miles in front of you and the road — as roads in this
country always are at this time of year — a sheet of
stones. Twice in the first five miles the poor hack

30 ON GOING TO COVERT: MERITS

picks one up, and you get down and set to work
with the crook of your hunting-crop ; that fails to do
the trick alone, and a stone must be selected to use
as a hammer. It is out at last ; your gloves are
filthy, but you must have a look at the watch, and
are appalled at the lateness of the hour. Round the
next corner you encounter a steam traction-engine,
and the mare never did like a traction-engine, so
more delay is caused while she is led past the
puffing abomination ; the Recording Angel has a busy
time now.

There are sharp-cut wheel-marks on the road and
tracks of horses on the verges, but no one comes up
behind you. Where the mud is thickest, too, you
can see the footprints of the hounds, but no velvet
caps are bobbing above the hedgerows where the
road turns, and when we come into a long bit of
straight there are no splashes of scarlet in front of
you. Late, awfully late ! you think, and take the
whip from the bucket, as the road is a bit smoother,
and endeavour to make up for lost time ; while the
reflection that the mare played the fool at the
traction-engine makes the application of the thong
rather a bitter one. "Hang her!" you say to yourself,
" but for that we might be there now ! " There are
stones again, though, on the slight descent you now
make, and you had best go slow, but when she rises
the hill you become aware that she is going dead
lame. Another stone ! I thought so ! and the pleasant
performance described above is repeated. Now, ahead
of the trap is a long line of hay carts very heavy
laden, and the road is not very wide, and it seems to

AND DEMERITS OF THE MOTOR-CAR 31

you that, market-day though it be, you never saw
so much traffic on this part of the King's highway
before. At last you meet a friend, the local postman,
and hail him : " Hounds far in front ? " " On a long
way," he replies, " and a power of traps." Cheering
news this, and what a road to make up time on —
confound the stones !

At last the fixture is in sight, and from a long
distance you can discern four horses, but no others.
The whip is applied now pretty vigorously, regardless
of the stony road, and it is something, you think, as
you hail your groom, to be able to talk again to a
human being whose speech you know. To your
anxious inquiries as to the first draw he gives satis-
factory replies, having had the good sense, not to
say hardihood, to inquire of the M.F.H. himself.
Furzingfield Gorse ! There is a good grass siding to
the road, and don't you make use of it ! Has the
sun come out ? Anyhow, the world seems brighter
now as you canter along, the horse snorting and
shaking his head as he tries to make a canter a
gallop, and at the next turn you see away in front
of you a parti-coloured mass that blocks the road,
scarlet, black, and white, and nearer to you a long
line of vehicles, which are speedily overtaken. Your
troubles are over for the time.

Perhaps others would not have felt the miseries of
this drive in the manner that they came home to
myself, who may be over-sensitive to affliction where
fox-hunting is concerned, but the idea of being late
for a meet has always been a real misery to me. In
the days of my youthhood, when winter holidays and

32 ON GOING TO COVERT

winter leave were spent with an uncle who w^as a
great supporter of the chase, and gave me one of
my first hunters, I used often to be on tenterhooks
at his dilatory proceedings in the morning ; but he
had a pair of right good roadsters in the Perth
dogcart that did the ten miles into the country town
easily in the hour. So my anxiety ended when I
got up beside him ; only to begin again, however, if
the meet was beyond the town, for he invariably
insisted on doing a bit of shopping on his way
through it; and I'm afraid when the kind old man
was inside one of his favourite shops I almost hated
him, and felt inclined to loose the reins I held and
drive off without him. Since those old days I have
never been able to master that fear of being behind
time at the fixture.

CHAPTER III

A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

" If,"' writes a friend who is a Master of Hounds,
" we could only get the people who come out really
to care about hounds and their work, half our
troubles would be at an end. There would be no
over-riding, no heading of foxes through jealousy to
get a start, no following about of a huntsman when
he is making his cast. People would stand still
the moment they see hounds are at fault, and
would keep silent. No hounds would be kicked or
trampled on, and with the disappearance of jealous
riding would come a great reduction of the damage
that is done in hot haste to grass-seeds and wheat,
and by leaving gates open."

Another correspondent, writing on the same sub-
ject, agrees very thoroughly with some remarks of
mine (still more strongly put by Mr. Otho Paget) on
the necessity of a course of Beckford for the beginner,
and would supplement that by a careful reading of
Mr. Thomas Smith's Life of a Fox. " A course of
beagling " is recommended by another before the
aspiring fox-hunter is allowed to take the field. He
writes : " With foot-beagles all who go out seem to

Sounds Gentlemen, Please. 4 33

34 A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

understand the game ; even the beginners set to work
to learn all about it ; and very seldom do we see the
field do anything to interfere in any way with the
working of the hounds. An ill-advised holloa may
sometimes be heard from an over-excited individual,
but, being sternly rebuked, he restrains his ardour
and his lungs the next time. No one ever cackles
when beagles come to a fault, because every one
wants to help the hounds, and knows that the best
way to help them is to keep still and silent. "Why
should not fox-hunters display the same interest in
the hounds they follow?" It is many years since I
followed a pack of beagles on foot, and am of opinion
that I am unlikely to do so again ; therefore I must
leave it to my readers to decide whether the above
most desirable picture of the conduct of the field
when " beagling " is accurate or not.

If correct, it is certainly a thousand pities that it
is not within the range of practical politics to
compel all fox-hunters to begin their hunting career
by a course of foot-beagling. And yet I do not know
— for, as my friend who advocates the study of Beck-
ford remarks, " there are vast numbers whose obser-
vation is not sufficient to guide them," and I am
afraid I know at least a couple of malefactors — as
a certain M.F.H. would call them — who, I believe,
go out constantly with beagles, yet whose tongues
are never silent at a check with foxhounds. And,
apropos of the "cackling" at a check, I am abso-
lutely convinced that much of the chatter that goes
on is caused by a desire on the part of the chat-
terers to let all the world know that they are " up

A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS 35

at the check " — a sort of jealousy or vanity that
prevents them from keeping silent, though they know
full well they are doing wrong.

The ladies are said to be the most jealous, and, as
a M.F.H. once rudely wrote on this subject, " It is
the hen-cackle that I complain of most."

"Couldn't you write for us," asked another corre-
spondent, " something on the wonderful intelligence
and sagacity and the immense value of hounds that
would interest people, and make them think a bit
more about the pack when they go out hunting?"
Alas ! my dear sir, they have Beckford, " The Druid,"
"Hambledon" Smith, and "Scrutator" to read, and
what can be said by the present writer, what tales
can he tell that have not been already better told
by those great celebrities ? And I fear few people
read nowadays of the marvellous deeds of foxhounds.
All like to peruse a good account of a run, no doubt ;
but when it comes to the adventures of the hounds
alone " no thank you ! "

Among recent contributions to hunting literature
the most delightful is, I think, Sir Reginald Gra-
ham's Fox-hunting Recollections, and the most inter-
esting chapter in that work was to me the one
relating to the Burton Hunt and Lord Henry Ben-
tinck, whose success as breeder of foxhounds was
almost phenomenal. " But," as Sir Reginald remarks,
" Lord Henry devoted a lifetime and his great talents
to the breeding of hounds, but he well knew that his
labour was in vain unless they were carefully and
judiciously handled in the field. Every detail of
information was recorded daily in his private kennel-

36 A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

book, and on reference to its contents many passages
are to be found showing the remarkably acute obser-
vation with which he watched the performance of his
pack."

If writers of reports of runs were to take a leaf
from Lord Henry's book and describe the doings of
the various hounds who distinguished themselves in
chase, I wonder much how their lucubrations would
be received by the public. Would it help to create
in the minds of those who were out an interest in
the hounds ? If they were told, for instance, that it
was Dashwood who alone could hold the line on the
dusty road, and did it for a mile, and so gave us
the gallop, would anxiety be displayed to have a
look at Dashwood next time he was out ? Or if it
were recorded that it was Tarnish who crossed the
stream and was first to grapple with the fox at the
end of the run, would Tarnish be sought for and
recognised as a heroine?

Sir Reginald Graham's book would be most
valuable if it contained nothing else but these
extracts from Lord Henry Bentinck's private kennel-
book, and those who care about hounds and their
breeding will naturally search for his mention of
the great Contest, of Tomboy, and other cele-
brities.

Alas ! the scribe who reports the run has seldom
the knowledge or facilities for notice which make
Lord Henry's notes so deeply interesting, and I need
hardly apologise to the author for now quoting a
few of t^iem ; records such as these may well arouse
interest and enthusiasm about hounds, beside show-

A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS 37

ing the deep thought and study of character dis-
played by the master : —

" Comus, 1844. A modest little dog ; a very hard runner.

" Tomboy, 1845. Got the name of the schoolmaster of the pack, and
was probably the best and most sagacious dog that ever ran in the
Midland counties. These two dogs ran in the bitch pack. There was
little to choose between them — in nose, brilliancy, or stoutness. Each
dog was equally quick in dropping clear into the dry ditches and work-
ing a sinking fox out of them. But Comus could be led wrong by wHd
men or by a flashing pack of hounds, while neither man, nor hound, nor
fox could make a fool of Tomboy. However wild men or hounds might
be, he would quickly leave them aiid turn back to his fox. Nothing
could put him out of temjier, and in his last season he could still race
with the puppies at night.

" Cojitest, 1848. A model dog, a most brilliant animal, noted
for his hard running, flying the gates and double rails without
touching them ; and, too, for turning short without the need of a
' drag chain.'

" Elder, 1850. This was an extraordinarily brilliant dog, a very hard
runner, and remarkable for the distance he could bring his hounds back
to the spot where they last had it good, and for working the dry ditches ;
old Rosebud's excellence came out in him.

''■ Bingworm, 1856. Noted for jumping out of the very centre of the
pack when they were hunting it hill-way, turning back, and never being
caught for two miles in the Gainsboro' Woods.

" Sontag, 1860. Noted for takuig the hounds through two miles of
sheep, driving before them along the Clakby hillside in the great
Wickenby run.

" Biot, 1861. Followed by her sister Ruby, is noted for having taken
back her huntsman and hounds three large fields to the spot where they
left their fox in Thornley. A very brilliant performance."

Lord Henry declares that the hounds he purchased
at Mr. Foljambe's great sale in 1845 " made the
pack " ; and it is interesting to read that Albion, sire
of the famous Tomboy, was not himself more than a

38 A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

good, honest, quiet dog, not at all brilliant. Of others
purchased from the Grove he writes that : —

"Driver was noted for bringing the fox's brush to his huntsman out of
Harpswell Gorse. His son Desperate showed the same characteristic.
A fox having been left in a rabbit-hole in Carlton sandhills, the hounds
were called away. Desperate gave the men the slip, went back to the
hole, and scratched down to his cub, bit off half his brush, and brought
it on to old Dick at Scampton. Driver's little daughter, Dorcas, would
never allow any dog, however big, to take the head from her — she
invariably carried it home any distance."

Of hounds purchased at Mr. Drake's sale, Lord
Henry in 1851 writes : —

" Hector and Herald were two good dogs until they became free of
tongue.

" Smuggler, the crack dog in Drake's pack, and a most brilliant animal
until he turned rogue after being brought out two dags running by
Stevens. Despot also began very well, and ended by getting wide.
These hounds prohahhj only luent wrong from Stevens' infamous
feeding, and from being brought out day after day totally unfit to run.
Goodall picked out these hounds for me as being the best stuff in Drake's
kennel."

This opinion, coming as it did from one of the
greatest fox-hunters and most successful hound-
breeder of all time, is surely worthy of the attention
of all who go out hunting, and should impress those
who read it with the fact that foxhounds are not
mere hunting machines for them to ride after, but
animals of peculiar and sensitive organisation, pos-
sessing intense individuality. So markedly is this
the case that few in one pack have precisely the
same characteristics, and the greatest care and atten-

A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS 39

tion is required to bring them out in the state that
will enable them to hunt in the style admired by
Beckford and appreciated by all true sportsmen.

There is much more to the same effect in Sir
Reginald Graham's book, perusal of which would do
far more than anything that I am able to indite
in the way of creating an interest in hounds. The
subject is one of vital importance to sport, for it
is only when people begin to take a real interest in
hounds and their work that they know what to do
in the hunting-field.

Much good ink has been spilled, much good paper
stained by many writers in the endeavour to secure
fair play for hounds. Apparently it has all been
in vain. Several Masters of Hounds, indeed, declare
that this season " things are worse than ever," and
one writes that "it really seems as if some people
came out with us determined to do all they can to
spoil our sport ; yet they tell me this is not so, and
that they only do it through ignorance. Through
ignorance ! When they are given eyes to see and
to read with, and ears to hear — how can they be so
ignorant?" I wonder what is the price of a booklet
with which I have been presented, entitled Rudi-
rnentary Rules Religiously Regarded by Riders ivith
Foxhounds and Reasons Respecting Them, by H. N. ?

If the price be not prohibitive, I would recommend
every M.F.H. to procure some copies and send one
to each of the worst offenders in his Hunt — or, perhaps,
the funds of the Hunt would stand the cost. These
rules, however, though very amusing, are, as Artemus
Ward expressed it, " rote sarkastic," and possibly have

40 A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

already been taken literally by some who really seem
to have read them, and are determined to carry out
their behests.

I read the rules before going out to hunt on Saturday
last, and, watching carefully, had ample opportunity of
seeing how^ religiously many of them were obeyed
in the morning. We had a slow hunting run — I
think the best bit of cold hunting on the part of
hounds and as good a piece of huntsman's work as
I have seen this season. It ended with the orthodox
kill, too, so that not a detail of the chase was wanting.
In the line of the hunt also there were some extra
big fences, and accurate descriptions of these and
of the difficulties and dangers experienced in sur-
mounting them, were freely circulated during the
frequent checks and when the fox w^as killed.

It was at one of these checks, when hounds were
apparently aware that there was a touch of a fox
somewhere, though they could not carry a line, that
I saw a young lady obey Rule 7 very implicitly.
Rule 7 ordains, " If hounds check and you happen
to be near, ride up among them without a moment's
delay. Your presence cannot fail to help and en-
courage them — particularly if your horse is steaming."
Though the pace had been slow, the horse was steaming
— certainly he was in no condition — but then he had
successfully encountered a large fence, and his rider
was evidently determined that all should see that
she was in a prominent position, so " in she went "
among the hounds, who were spread about the big
field trying hard to get fair hold of the line again.

The same heroine furthur distinguished herself by

A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS 41

implicit obedience to Rule 15, which says, "Whether
hounds are running or not, jump unnecessary fences,
ride over wheat, seeds, &c. You will thus show your
lordly contempt for the mere tiller of the soil, over
whose land you ride uninvited, and your laudable
ignorance of all that appertains to him."

I must not quote more of these rules, but leave your
readers to procure this booklet for themselves — it is
published by Brown & Co., Salisbury. The malpractices
these rules expose are not new, as may be gathered
from the passages I have quoted : they are only the
old crimes over again. The overriding, the heading
of foxes, the riding over seeds and wheat, &c., the
treading on the sterns of hounds on a road, the march-
ing about in full cackle after the huntsman at a check,
the sneaking on to a covert likely to be drawn instead
of going to the meet, &c., &c. — only the old crimes
against which we cannot protest too often or too
strongly, and are held up to rebuke in this little
brochure in sufficiently amusing fashion.

I have been accused of exaggerating the evil
behaviour and ignorance of hunting folk, and of being
unnecessarily severe upon ladies ; but I can see and
I can hear, and carry an easy conscience. Very
numerous are the anecdotes that have been told to
me of late, illustrative of the almost unspeakable
ignorance on all subjects connected with the actual
hunting of the fox, displayed every day hounds go
out by those who follow them, and particularly by
those on side-saddles. No doubt some of these anec-
dotes have a chestnutty flavour, such as the tale of
the lady who was told to "mind the turnips," and said,

42 A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

"Yes! Horrid things, aren't they? But my horse
is very sure-footed." But almost a similar reply was
pretty recently made to me when I offered some advice
about riding through a field where the pulled turnips
were lying on the land.

I often gaze with interest on the comely features
of a lady who firmly refused to subscribe to the fowl
fund on the grounds that she had never ridden over
a chicken in her life, but can discern no lack of in-
telligence ; and I have never been able to account
for the reply given me very sweetly by one, for whose
abilities I have the greatest respect, when I asked her
to " ride the headland." " Yes, certainly I will," she
said, "if you'll only show me which is the headland."
Now, the headland was very fine and large. Had
it been narrow I would have felt sure that she con-
descended to sarcasm as an excuse, implying that
there really was no headland at all ; but she had
spent most of her life in the country, so no wonder
I looked at her pretty hard.

Twice in the last few weeks have I seen in the
neighbouring country one lady ride slap through the
middle of a field of grass seeds, in spite of loud
expostulations. Her excuse on each occasion was
that her horse pulled so, and she couldn't hold him.
Of course she should have been told that she had
no sort of business to come out hunting on a horse
that she couldn't hold. Perhaps, however, she is a
very large subscriber, and will promptly settle for the
damage she did.

I have just heard a delightful little anecdote from
a southern English county. Hounds, after a sharp

^.

^h

Agricultural Distress.

Whip. "Hold hard, Gentlemen! Wheat! wheat! ware
wheat ! "

Young Farmer. " Come on, Gentlemen, never mind the
wheat. It's only thirty shillings a quarter ! "
(DiKifii hi/ Jiilin Leech.)

d fkii "^'^ iMi-^Th'^^^mm

Fox STEALS AWAY FROM TIIM CoVER, BeARDED FOREIGNER OF

Distinction gives Chase.

Whipper-iyi [with excitement, loquitur): "'Old 'ard, there!
'old 'ard ! where are you a-galloping to ? Do you think you
can catch a fox ? ' '

Foreigner of distinction {with great glee) : " I do not know,
mon ami, but I will trai — I will trai ! "
(Diawn hij Jiihii Leech.)

A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS 43

gallop, checked. A lady, who had certainly ridden
well to the fore, came up to a well-known sports-
man who was intently watching for the recovery of
the line, and in excited tones exclaimed, " Wasn't
it grand ? wasn't it grand ? Talk to me ! talk to
me ! " and because he failed to comply with what
she, no doubt, thought a most reasonable request,
that well-known sportsman got himself very much
disliked.

How pleasant it must have been for Master, hunts-
man, and field to find tlieir fox headed back on their
drawing a covert by an individual who had gone on
and posted himself at the far end instead of going
to the meet ! and when the fox was chopped in
covert, what balm to their wounded spirits, what
recompense for their disappointment to hear his
excuse, " But I knew you would eventually come
there " !

Apropos of this story, I cannot help quoting Rule
3 of the " Rudimentary Rules." " When you have
ascertained by inquiry or your own superior intel-
ligence, which covert is to be drawn, do not follow
the hounds thereto if you think you know a shorter
way. Go your own route and post yourself where
you think they will eventually come. You will thus
show your knowledge of the country, and be able
to tell the huntsman if you have seen a fox come
out and return into the covert. If you take seven
friends with you your success will be all the more
certain."

I have heard it said of late years that the tempers
of amateur huntsmen are often unbearable ; but

44 A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

though I most strongly deprecate the use of violent
or unseemly language in the hunting field, it appears
to me that the modern M.F.H. is the most highly
tried of human beings, and if ladies come out in
the great numbers that prevail at present, and
display the amount of ignorance that makes them
so harmful to sport, they can hardly wonder if they
hear words spoken that were best left unsaid.

" As a rule, too," remarks a correspondent, " they
contribute very little towards the finances of the
hunt in which they do so much mischief " ; if this
reflection cross the mind of the highly tried M.F.H.,
it is not calculated to check the flow of his observa-
tions. Professional huntsmen complain very bitterly
nowadays of the difficulties that are put in their way
by ignorant riders ; but it is very detrimental to them
to acquire a character for incivility, or a reputation
for bad temper, so they have to bottle up their wrath
and dare not " blow off steam " like the amateur, who,
if he is not blessed with the possession of a power of
sarcasm, is reduced to profanity.

The feelings of the professional when the field cause
annoyance and do mischief, was so amusingly set forth
in Warburton's verses that I think I may be permitted
to quote some lines from his Cheshire " Huntsman's
Lament " : —

" Over-ridden ! Over-ridden !

All along of that 'ere check
When the ditch that gemman slid in ;

Don't I wish he'd broke his neck.
I, to hunt my hounds am able,

If they only play me fair.

A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS 45

Mobbed at Smithfield by the rabble,

"Who a fox could follow there ?
Let the tinker ride his kettle,

Let the tailor ride his goose,
Not come here to rile and nettle

Huntsmen, since it is no use:

" 'Tain't the red coat makes the rider,

Breeches, boots, nor yet the cap.
Gemmen ! Gemmen ! shame upon 'em !

Gemmen plague me most of all ;
Worse then Bowden mobs at Dunham,

Worse then cobblers at Pool Hall,
Spurring at each fence their clippers

When the hounds are in the rear
(Regular Gemmen — self and whippers

Tipping always once a year).

" Well 1 soft sawder next I'll try on.

Rating only riles a swell ;
Mr, Brancker, Mr. Lyon, Mr. Hornby, hope you're well

Not the hounds am I afraid on,
And I likes to see you first ;

But when so much steam is laid on,
Bean't you feared the copper'U bust '?

Rantipole, I see'd him sprawling
Underneath a horse's hoof ;

Prudence only heard me calling,
Just in time to keep aloof.

" Tuneful now can only whimper.

She who once sweet music spoke ;
Vulcan, he's a reg'lar limper

Ever since his leg they broke.
Gemmen, who can ride like winking,

Should behave themselves as sich,
'Tickler when the fox is sinking.

And the hounds are in a hitch.

46 A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS

I who bean't the Lord and Master,

Though to do my best I tries,
I can only backwards cast, or

Else go home and d n their eyes."

These lines were written in 1851 — and in those days
very few ladies were riding to hounds I

CHAPTER IV

FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN, AMATEUR AND
PROFESSIONAL

There is no possible reason why certain rules for
the conduct of a field should not be observed as
strictly as the regulations or the unwritten laws
governing all other field sports. Why should not
people stand still and remain silent at a check ? Why
should they not keep a little quiet when hounds
have found their fox in a gorse covert? They
ought, as a matter of course, to do so, and to con-
sider so doing as much part of the business of hunt-
ing as riding over the fences after hounds when they
are running. That they omit to do so can surely
only be from ignorance, and were these complaints
of huntsmen more thoroughly ventilated I cannot
help thinking that the grounds for their lamentations
would soon almost disappear.

"The cackling evil is a great one," writes a hunts-
man, who is certainly one of the keenest and most
successful of young amateurs. " It's really awful
sometimes when hounds check ! Sounds like a pack
of wild geese overhead, disturbs hounds, and I am
sure it frightens foxes from breaking from gorses.

47

48 FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN,

The women are the worst offenders, as the female
voice is the more piercing."

This plaint is echoed by others, and by some is
put in stronger terms. But no M.F.H. need imagine
that anything but ignorance or thoughtlessness causes
the conduct complained of, and he may feel assured
that no one dreams of setting the authority of the
M.F.H. on one side, or fails to " play up " to him,
as well as he or she knows how to do it.

But what is to be done? It certainly is a little
rough on the Field Master, where such a functionary
exists, to expect him to go and deliver a lecture on
their atrocious behaviour to a bevy of happy and
excited ladies who are uncommonly well pleased with
themselves, their horses, and the world in general,
at a critical period of the chase. I often think a
neat Christmas or New Year's card, exhibiting a set
of rules and the reasons for such rules, might be
advantageously distributed at this time of year.

Then there is the question of seeds, new grass, &c.
And here I must remark that there are numbers
of hunting ladies who, although they reside chiefly
in the country, seem to take no sort of interest in
the agricultural matters that surround them, even
though botany and floriculture form favourite pur-
suits of their own.

When an amateur huntsman carries the horn there
is no doubt that in these days of increased expenses,
when every one seeks to get "a bit out of the
Hunt " for damage to fields, fences, or fowls, a Field
Master has become almost a necessity, though I
certainly do not envy any man the job. Just think

AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL 49

of some of his duties ! One dreadful part of his
business is not to hold back, but to " whip up " the
field — I mean when going from covert to covert.
Furzingfield Gorse is going to be drawn, and the
M.F.H. believes he will find a good fox there ; it
is three fields away from the high-road, and a
narrow lane has to be traversed during a portion of
the journey. Now, if he can only get the field up
in time, and get them to stand all together on the
hill, and, above all, to go up quietly ! The Field
Master looks back ; straggling along the road in
sections come his flock, some close to hounds, then
the main column, "sections of fours" at intervals,
next a pair or two, then solitary horsemen, and
after that the last of these heaves in sight, round
the bend of the road come a bevy who have branched
off for refreshment, and now clatter up noisily. By
the time our poor Field Master has stood by the
open gate and said, " Come on, please, and don't
make a noise," about five-and-forty times, his throat
is as dry at a lime-burner's hat, his temper short,
and his mind in a horrible state of anxiety lest
he fail in his duty, or (awful thought !) lose his
start.

We wish him well out of it ; also out of his diffi-
culties when, Reynard breaking in full view of the
field, all are desperately eager for a start, which
they shall not get, if he can help it, till hounds are
well clear of the covert. Well, they get away at last.
He "lets 'em go" — at least, all but Spurrier, who has
crammed his horse at the nasty fence on the right
in another direction to the line taken by hounds,

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 5

50 FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN,

trusting to get " on their sterns " as usual, by jump-
ing three fences instead of going through the gate
at which the Field Master stands. And Rapid, too,
confound him ! Regardless of rule, that determined
youth has jumped into the gorse and struggled
through, much to the wrath of our official.

What a time he has had, poor Field Master ! Why
was he not gifted with a fine natural flow of language
like Jack Spraggon to bar the way across the gate,
then turn round, and poaching three lengths, sing
out, "Now, ye tinkers, we'll start fair"?

He must ride up, too, must the Field Master, and
he always " on the premises," or he is of no more
use to the huntsman than "a side pocket to a cow,
or a frilled shirt to a pig," as Mr. Soapey Sponge
elegantly put it.

What chance will' hounds have if they suddenly
come upon cattle-stain when such fiery enthusiasts
as Spurrier and Rapid are thundering along in their
wake, determined that no soul shall live between
themselves and the pack, if one who has iautho-
rity be not very handy to administer caution and
rebuke ?

It goes without saying that the Field Master, who
is of course en rappoi^t with the huntsman, must be
possessed of powers which are approved and acknow-
ledged by all who are members of the Hunt; and
it foMows that these powers should be bestowed
upon him by the said members. I am told that the
election of a Field Master should be a matter con-
ducted by voting, each member sending in the
name of the person he considers best qualified to

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AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL 51

act, the M.F.H. having a casting vote in the case
of two persons receiving the same number of votes.
It is hardly necessary to say that this official should
be one whose position entitles him to respect and
who is thoroughly acquainted with the country and
the people, and who possesses tact in addition to
the qualifications above detailed.

It may be said that with small, or comparatively
small, fields the Field Master is not necessary ; but
I am only writing of the requirements of establish-
ments where hounds are hunted by the Master
himself, and in these days I believe that every
amateur huntsman will be benefited by the assistance
of a Field Master.

When the late Master of the Carlow and Island
Hounds began his long career as huntsman, his
father, Mr. John Watson, was M.F.H. and was
present to guide and control ; fields were small ; com-
plaints from farmers few ; and hunting men with
their hounds were educated to demean themselves as
sportsmen. Thus, when Mr. Robert Watson assumed
supreme command, he had to deal with a field whose
obedience and trust in their Master had become
traditional ; and, being a born leader of men and
possessed of exceptional talent and energy, he had
little trouble in maintaining discipline when fields
grew larger and difficulties appeared which were
undreamt of by the fathers of the men who hunted
with him in recent years. Such a thing as over-
riding hounds, unduly pressing them at a check, or
noise at the covert side would have struck horror
into the habitues of the Carlow hunting-field, such

52 FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN,

was the good order established there by long years
of salutary if autocratic rule.

But from what I have observed in other countries
I take the case I have mentioned to be a very ex-
ceptional one ; and in crowded countries there can
be no doubt of the utility of the Field Master.
Those who go out hunting, unless they have tried
to hunt hounds themselves, or are at least on very
intimate terms with huntsmen and understand their
feelings, have little idea how many things occur
during a day's hunting to exasperate almost beyond
endurance the M.F.H. who hunts his own hounds.
The professional is not so badly off, for he always
has a Master or some one in authority to check the
ardour of the field and keep folk in order ; and this
will be the answer to a statement I have heard,
viz., that professional huntsmen keep their tempers
better than amateurs.

It has, I am afraid, been pretty frequently stated
that men who take hounds take on also a bad temper
and the use of profane language !

"The difference between an amateur and a pro-
fessional huntsman," sententiously remarked a friend
who is given to philosophising on most subjects, "is
that the one swears at you, whereas, as a rule, the
other does not. For I can see no reason why an
amateur who has natural abilities and a real liking
for the job should not make as good, or even a better,
huntsman than a professional, provided he gives
himself up entirely to the work, as some of them
practically do. His education must serve him in
many ways, for he will have studied all that has

AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL 53

been written on the subject, and powers of thinking
and of observation are said to be fostered by education.
His position should inspire more confidence in himself
and give a sense of authority that the professional
sometimes lacks, while I think the feeling that noblesse
oblige will prevent his developing a certain slackness
and anxiety to put in an easy day that becomes
noticeable in some paid officials after a time."

Perhaps there was a good deal of truth in the above,
and something like it is heard very often nowadays,
for one pretty often hears the subject debated and
many arguments brought forward on both sides. It
has been said, for instance, that many ignorant young
men, after hunting for a few seasons, without
bestowing much thought or study on the subject,
straightway imagine that they are capable of hunting a
pack of foxhounds. They take the first vacant country
that will have them — and a pretty mess they make
of it ! There is truth in this, also, no doubt ; but
such amateurs are not usually the men who remain
long on the active lists of Masters of Hounds or
gain for themselves the reputation that certain
gentlemen huntsmen of the present day have
deservedly acquired. Of one thing, however, there
is no doubt, and that is that the number of amateur
huntsmen has vastly increased in recent years. Out
of 179 packs of foxhounds in England, 77 are hunted
by amateurs. In Ireland there are 24 packs of fox-
hounds and only 3 professional huntsmen are em-
ployed; while Scotland, with 11 packs of hounds,
possesses 4 gentlemen huntsmen.

These statistics are somewhat striking, and show

54 FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN,

that the tendency of the age is for men in higher
positions of life to occupy themselves in the practical
management of everything connected with country
life and open-air sports and pastimes.

The young sportsman who takes a country and
undertakes to hunt it himself, unless he has been
almost brought up to the business, has very little
idea of the magnitude of the task he has set himself.
Indeed, it is not often that the amateur huntsman
proves a success unless he be to the manner born,
or is an enthusiast who has tried carefully to master
every detail connected with the chase, with the
ultimate idea of qualifying himself for the post.

The names of really celebrated amateur huntsmen
rise readily to the lips of men who know something
of their subject when it comes under discussion, and
I think it will be acknowledged that those who have
held office for any length of time have served a very
thorough apprenticeship. For instance, who should
know more about fox-hunting and everything con-
nected with the chase than the present Duke of
Beaufort, who, after watching some of the best
professionals of the age for several years, took the
horn in his father's time, and hunted the historic
pack with greater success than any professional
that ever cheered a hound in Badminton ? It is
recorded that the late Duke of Beaufort considered
" old Mr. Watson of the Carlow Hounds " to be one of
the three best huntsmen, amateur or professional, he
had ever seen — an opinion, I believe, shared by
Colonel J. Anstruther-Thomson. Now Mr. Watson
also was handed the horn by his father, and had

P7iO«o]

[Lafayette, DuhUii.

The Late Mr. Burton R. P. Persse.
M.F.H. Galway, 1852-1885.

AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL 55

been brought up to the business as thoroughly and
completely as a young man can be prepared for any
position he is to fill. Small wonder that the son of
such a man should turn out also a celebrity ; for no
amateur ranked higher in the present day than the
late Master of the Meath, Mr. John Watson.

The mention of Colonel Anstruther-Thomson, who
first kept the Fife Hounds in 1849, reminds me that
his father also was Master of the same Hounds. Two
other famous amateurs in Ireland — Sir John Power,
of Kilkenny, and Mr. Burton Persse, of the Galway
" Blazers " — were both sons of Masters of Hounds.

Instances might be multiplied all over the kingdom,
but the names of Willoughby de Broke, Chaworth-
Musters, Galway, Corbet, Drake, spring quickly to
the memory. To these men everything connected
with the chase, hounds, horses, their management,
the habits of the animal they hunted, and every
minute detail came easily, for all their boyhood was
spent among such surroundings that they could
scarcely help attaining without effort knowledge
that other men could only acquire after considerable
time and experience.

But if the aspirant be really keen about fox-hunting,
and have opportunities for observation, also if he has
been able to study under different masters, there
is no reason — given health and temperate habits —
that the amateur should not equal the average pro-
fessional. There will always, of course, be some
bright particular stars in both spheres whose excep-
tional powers amount almost to genius, and I really
believe that such men are born with a sort of instinct

56 FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN,

in the matter of hunting a fox that cannot be
acquired.

The power possessed by certain men over their
hounds is also a gift. It cannot be learned ; but the
first-rate huntsmen must possess it, and this power
is certainly as often found in the amateur as the
professional. The coming man, I am told, or rather
the amateur who at once rushed to the front rank
among huntsmen, is Mr. Charles McNeill, joint Master
of the Grafton, who may be said to have graduated
under Mr. Robert Watson in Ireland, while his
residence in the Shires gave him every opportunity
of comparing the methods of many different huntsmen
of celebrity. Then, apart from his knowledge of horses
and splendid horsemanship, Mr. McNeill has always
deen a " doggy " man, and we may be pretty sure
that his quiet determination was eventually to become
Master of a pack of foxhounds, and hunt them
himself. He is also, like all his race, a lover of
wild sport, and has a knowledge of the habits of
wild creatures. Such a man was bound to succeed
as a huntsman, and why should not such a man be
fully the equal of the very best of professionals ?

Some say the professional holds a great advantage
over the amateur, inasmuch as he is always among
his hounds, sees them fed, is with them at
exercise, and on the long road to covert and the
weary journeys home. Now, although there are
amateurs who do all this, and see fully as much of
their hounds as any huntsmen do, in places where a
competent feeder is kept, yet I am sure, from my own
experience, that it is by no means necessary for the

AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL 57

huntsman to be always hopping in and out of his
kennel to acquire the affection of and that mastery-
over his hounds which is, I contend, a heaven-born
gift.

When Frank Beers hunted the Grafton Hounds his
residence was a considerable distance from the kennel ;
but even when out cub-hunting, with thirty couple
of hounds, in the great woodlands of Whittlebury
and Salcey, his control over them was, I thought,
marvellous, though he was certainly well supported
by the best 'pair of whippers-in I ever saw.

The handiness of the Meath Hounds to Mr. John
Watson has often been noticed, and I have been
amused, when riding home from hunting with him,
and the talk fell vipon some particular hound in the
pack, to see how the animal would spin round when
his name was even quietly pronounced by the Master !
There were seventy couple of hounds at Bective, and
Mr. Watson had his time pretty fully occupied all the
year round, so this control was somewhat remarkable.

It was my lot once to see a pack of hounds of some
celebrity take the field under new ownership, the pack
having been purchased in early autumn. It was a
curious experience, and I am under the impression that
several hounds took the opportunity to resign their
connection with the establishment, and were never
seen again ; yet they were said to have been a handy
pack under other management.

I have heard it said that the professional is more
likely to be interfered with than the amateur by
the crowding of the field when hounds are getting
away, or when he is making his cast, because he does

58 FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN,

not like to " turn round and damn the field " ; but the
professional has a Master who is not infrequently
quite ready to do that for him, so let the huntsman
keep his eyes on the pack, and not divide his attention
between the hounds and over-eager horsemen as the
amateur is often compelled to do.

Of all positions that can be imagined likely to affect
the temper, that of Master and Huntsman is, I am sure,
most calculated to do so, and those who carp most
when the " talking " has been pretty decisive are
invariably those who know very little about the
management of a country or the many chances that
may spoil a run or a whole day's sport.

"Bad language and abuse
I never, never use,"

said the Captain of H.M.S. Pinafore; and, of course,
the language of the bargee should never soil the
lips of a gentleman. Still, it is very hard to " sit
and continue to smile" when, through ignorance or
vanity, some member of his field presses hounds over
the line, heads the fox, or commits some other
enormity ; and is he to remain dumb if he sees the
best hound in the pack rolled over by the heels of a
kicker, or jumped upon at a fence? Of course, the
ideal huntsman should have a smiling face and a
cheery word for every one save under most excep-
tional circumstances, and it certainly gives more
pleasure to hunt with such a 7'ara avis if he can be
found, than with one who goeth forth to war with
gloom upon his brow, and a tongue ready to find
fault with everything and everybody.

AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL 59

After all, fox-hunting is a pastime to many — nay,
most — of the field, and not an all-absorbing pursuit, as
it is to some of us, and to the majority of Masters
of Hounds. But the field is variously constituted
(please remember, O M.F.H. !), and all have come
out to enjoy themselves after their own fashion.
Jones is going to hunt to-day and to play golf
to-morrow ; he really does not know which he likes
best — his golf, perhaps ! Smith hopes to have a
gallop early, so as to get home and try for the fish
he rose yesterday. Brown likes to see his friends,
and is fond of horse exercise. Jenkins' doctor tells
him to hunt for the good of his liver — these are a
few out of many reasons for the presence of your
field, O "Chase Master"! But to you the whole
thing is business — business strict and all-important.
Care and thought, time and trouble, expense and
worry, are necessary — and experience — in order to
bring about a good day's sport, which may be so
very easily spoiled. It is, perhaps, then, too much
to expect that the Master should have great considera-
tion for ^the reasons which induce his field to hunt.
He is there to show them sport if he can, and he
means to try. On the other hand, the professional
huntsman, till his fox is found, has few cares ; he
hopes for a scent, and he hopes for a " bit o' luck."
He looks »to the Master " to keep the gentlemen
back " till the hounds settle on the line, and not to
let any one press him too closely when he has to cast
for his fox. He, therefore, sets to work with unruffled
temper and with unclouded brow.

His time of anxiety will begin with the actual chase.

60 FIELD MASTERS AND HUNTSMEN

He will see the team ploughing in front half a mile away,
and the enclosure covered with top-dressing, partly
spread, partly in heaps, and his soul will be filled
with forebodings that these fields will be selected by
the fox, who will also be sure to pass that farm
where the lurcher and two terriers are always on
the prowl. Then that dark cloud from the south-west
is coming up, and Mr. Spurrier, on his best horse, is
away " on their backs," and will be far too close if
scent fails !

The amateur, however, has all the above in addition
to the trials I have mentioned, so that, on the whole,
I think the professional has the easier time, and,
perhaps, therefore, should be the more successful.

CHAPTER V

SHORT MASTERSHIPS AND THEIR CAUSES

Resignations from Masters of Hounds are fairly-
tumbling in ; never before, or since, the fatal year
of the outbreak of the South African War have so
many 2 vacancies "at the end of the season" been
announced.

In that year of the war the number of Masters and
ex-Masters of Foxhounds and Harriers who took the
field was a large one, but at the close of hostilities
several of the returned warriors resumed the more
pacific commands they had vacated, and some of them
still retain them ; the fashion for very short Master-
ships which seems to be customary nowadays did
not then prevail. A few statistics respecting the
tenure of office of our English Masters of Hounds
may prove of interest just now.

In 1908 there were in England seventy-eight Masters
of Hounds who had only held their positions for
five years or less ; indeed, nineteen of these were
elected in 1907 and twenty-four the year before ; and a
good many of these gentlemen have now signified
their intention of retiring in the spring. That these
wholesale retirements, these very short Masterships,

61

62 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

are bad for the interests of fox-hunting there can be
no denying ; and how bad they are only those who
take an interest in the management of the country and
the affairs of the kennel have any idea.

The magnitude of the evil can be readily imagined
by sportsmen who think about the matter, though not,
perhaps, by some who go out year after year with a
subscription pack of foxhounds, yet never trouble to
attend a Hunt meeting or inquire how any details
are managed. There are hunting folk who expect
everything to be provided for them — foxes, coverts,
and hounds, and a country to ride over — and all very
often for a small subscription, which, however, gives
the privilege of growling at the Master and the sport
he shows on every possible occasion. Yet not one bit
of helpful work will they do for the Hunt they are
graciously pleased to patronise.

To such folk a change of Mastership can only make a
difference if the new-comer prove socially agreeable to
them or the reverse, and so long as a fair average of
sport seems to be maintained they would probably
not object to a change every year or so. It might
liven things up, stimulate curiosity, and give every
one something to talk about in the off season !

Poor M.F.H. — of whose proud position Mr. Jorrocks
declared that " of all the sitivations under the sun
none is more enviable or more 'onnerable " — do you
truly find it so very enviable in these twentieth-cen-
tury days? But there must still be great glamour
surrounding the position, for, though the candidates
come, and often are gone before we really know
them, yet the supply of youths who desire to tack

AND THEIR CAUSES 63

on to their names the magic letters M.F.H. is
apparently unfailing.

Strange notions of the duties and responsibilities
of the post some of those must have who essay to
fulfil them ; so strange, indeed, that some of the
yearly resignations can surely cause no surprise. So
many men of antecedents and surroundings apparently
entirely different from those of the old race of fox-
hunters, from whose ranks our M.F.H.'s were usually
recruited, come forward now as candidates for the
vacant posts, that one is set wondering how they
got into their heads the notion that they were in
any way suitable for the positions to which they
aspire.

Truth to tell, in many cases the candidates have
been persuaded to embark in this quest for distinction
by some who have discovered in them merits that
were unknown to themselves. Of one qualification,
however, they could not be ignorant, for its power
is everywhere acknowledged ; no greater merit than
money-bags can a man have, according to the almost
general verdict of the day. Still, there are those
who would prefer in the candidate some knowledge
of hounds and kennel management, some previous
understanding about the upkeep of a country and
its coverts, to total ignorance on these subjects, and
a general acquaintance with agricultural matters
and country life to little else but a fat balance at
the bank and desire for improved social position.

It causes some of the old brigade to smile when
they hear of Masters of Foxhounds who seldom take
the field, but who regard the fit of their servants'

64 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

breeches and the squaring of their horses' tails as
matters of the deepest import, and worthy subjects
for the exercise of their talent.

Shades of the mighty dead ! It was not thus that
Meynell, Warde, Osbaldeston, Foljambe, Chaworth-
Musters, Assheton Smith, and Lord Henry Bentinck
made their great names !

Although much interested in old hunting history, I
cannot, as I write, call to mind whether in the
golden age of fox-hunting such men as these at once
leapt into pre-eminence, and in their very first season
attained the success that placed them in the ranks
of the great. They certainly were lucky if they did
so, when one remembers the truth of the words of
Mr. Richard Bragg, the " swell " huntsman in Soapey
Sponge. " Have a little regard for a huntsman's
reputation," said he. " Remember that it rises and
falls with the sport it shows."

One of the cleverest amateur huntsmen I have
ever seen was, in his first season, considered to be
so laughable a failure that folk would hardly come
out and hunt with him, and some who should have
supported him went to hunt elsewhere. But, seriously,
it is not by his first or his second season that any
one can judge of the capabilities of a Master or hunts-
man ; and, indeed, it appears to me most unlikely
that good sport will be shown in the first season
when both Master and huntsman have been changed,
these duties nowadays being very often combined by
an amateur. The new-comer has everything to learn,
and sets to work with zeal. There is no trouble about
the hounds, perhaps, though likely as not he may have

AND THEIR CAUSES 65

his own ideas about feeding, exercise, and condition
that have not been those of his predecessor; and
remember, any alteration in the treatment of hounds
and their daily routine will make a difference — it
may be for good or ill, but a difference it certainly
will make. Then comes cubbing time, and the learning
of the country when the leaf is off. A bad scent in
his first cub-hunting season utterly extinguished the
success of a friend of mine in the eyes of some of
his neighbours for at least a year and a half. Then
with indifferent scent in the regular season the un-
fortunate new-comer may find April upon him before
he has learned in what parts of his country scent
can be expected to hold — rather an important matter
to the huntsman when in chase of a fox !

But suppose all goes well for the first season : good
scent, good foxes, and fine weather for the critics.
All talk goes very well, be sure, for the M.F.H. then
— perhaps a shade too well ! Never was such a fine
fellow ! Never was such sport shown ! Who dares
to suggest a " crab " of any sort ? He is a popular
idol at once, and his popularity may carry him through
next season possibly, even if his sport be of very in-
ferior quality to that shown at first. But let scent
in the third season be bad ; let ill-luck come to his
kennel in the shape of disease or distemper, and I
fear very little will be heard in his favour, verj'^ few
allowances made. He feels compelled to go home
rather early for the sake of hounds, many of them,
perhaps, only just strong enough yet for a short day.
" How slack he is getting," is the cry. Good luck
attends the foxes, and they escape time after time.

' Hounds, Gentlemen, Fleaae. (J

66 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

Probably the M.F.H. alone, by diligent subsequent
inquiry, discovers by what curious means the hard-
pressed fox escaped — and some of these escapes are
really very v^onderful. But the critics settle that
the hounds have become slack, and cannot kill their
foxes. " Slack huntsmen make slack hounds," &c., &c.,
and so the bad vrord goes round, and the erstwhile
successful M.F.H. soon finds many detractors, and
will need a great turn of luck in his favour to pre-
vent the adverse feeling becoming so hostile as to find
expression at the next annual Hunt meeting.

Of course the M.F.H. will have friends among the
sportsmen who know and appreciate with gratitude
his endeavours to show sport or to improve the
country ; and, secure of their goodwill, he may treat
lightly what others say ; but, although a Master of
Hounds, he yet may actually be possessed of a sensi-
tive soul, and to know that blame is being laid when
only gratitude is due is more than many folk can
bear with equanimity. K the members of a sub-
scription Hunt have their affairs in the hands of a
strong committee, and if the committee be properly
constituted — that is, if it be composed for the most
part of sportsmen who know something about the
internal economy and management of a Hunt estab-
lishment as well as about the management of a
country, the chances are that the M.F.H. will receive
proper support as long as he tries to do his best,
and has efficient horses and servants ; but let a hint
be entertained that another man would be willing
to take the hounds on a reduced subscription, or (if
the present M.F.H. hunts his own hounds) that he

AND THEIR CAUSES 67

would employ a professional huntsman, and the com-
mittee must be strong indeed to stem or disregard
the tide of dissatisfaction that is very sure to set in.

" The ideal hunting establishment," said a very great
ex-M.F.H. to me the other day (somewhat to my
astonishment), "is, of course, a first-rate Master with
a first-rate professional under him." Now, the speaker
has always been regarded as one of the best huntsmen
ever seen, so I could not help expressing my surprise
at hearing such a sentiment from him.

" Yes," he said, " over and over again I have felt
that it would be far better for the hunting of the
country if I had a professional under me ; there is
so much to see to, so many things to direct, so much
to be done in connection with each day's sport, that
I defy a man who is hunting hounds to do properly.
Why, I hardly ever went out hunting in my life that
I did not want to get hold of somebody to talk and
consult with over something connected with hunting:
perhaps about that day's draw, perhaps about some-
thing that happened the last day, or wanted looking
after for the next day, and I couldn't do it properly
riding in the middle of a pack of hounds."

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that in the
present day many Masters would not accept the posi-
tion if they were not allowed to carry the horn ; and,
though I admit that it is trying supporters rather high
to let a co7nplete tyro experimentalise and take up
the position previously filled by some huntsman who
has made his mark, yet I cannot suppose that any
one who had not proved himself to be a sportsman
and a lover of hunting and of hounds would be lightly

68 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

accepted, unless, of course, he expressed his intention
of "running the whole show"; when hunting men,
more than ever they did, seem anxious to get their
sport at other folks' expense. At all events, whether
the new-comer be tyro or old stager, let him have a
clear field and a free hand, and be in no hurry to
gauge his merits or demerits. Remember that there
are good things brought about by fox-hunting apart
from flying bursts, gruelling runs, or a constant suc-
cession of extraordinary sport ; that even a moderate
season's sport is productive of much pleasure, much
good-fellowship, and wholesome recreation. The good
days will come, and the good seasons, all the quicker
for kindly unanimity of feeling which, making things
easy for the new-comer and bearing lightly on mis-
takes, will do much to further the welfare of fox-
hunting.

Doubtless in the present day there are surrounding
the M.F.H. difficulties that were quite unknown to
the great ones of old — difficulties which in many
countries are entirely beyond the unaided efforts of
the most zealous Master of Hounds, even if he be
born in the country over which he rules. Let these
numerous and increasing difficulties be acknowledged.
A great many of them must be well known to all,
while others not quite so often discussed are realised
by those who live the most of the year in the country.

I think it must be allowed that acquaintance with
the details of the duties of a M.F.H. — as the best of
our Masters recognise those duties — is a more im-
portant qualification than wealth alone ; and I am
sure that frequently of late years ignorance must have

AND THEIR CAUSES 69

caused the new Master to feel uneasy on his throne,
and determined him to abdicate before his second
season had fairly begun.

Utterly unused to the amount of organising work
that is expected of him, with no idea of the amount
of time that, even on non-hunting days, he must
devote to it, or of the tremendous increase of his
correspondence, with as many applicants to see him
in the morning as used to stand in the London ante-
chamber of a nobleman in Georgian days, no wonder
many a modern M.F.H. who has not had an oppor-
tunity of getting behind the scenes before he took
the office is soon aghast at the multiplicity of his
duties ; and, if not born with an extraordinary keen-
ness for the chase, soon gets deadly weary of them.

The complete tyro, then, who has had no previous
knowledge of the duties of the position, can seldom
be expected to celebrate a very long reign even if
blessed with much riches. A very common reason also
for the short duration of the reign of the modern
Master is the unnecessary expense that his predecessor
in office has thought fit to incur.

Not very long ago I was looking over a portfolio
of photographs of various packs of hounds, their
Masters and servants. A friend who was staying
with me picked up one of the big pictures, looked at
it, and gave a long-drawn whistle. " I thought once
of going in for that pack," he said, " but that style
of thing wouldn't suit me at all." The photograph
represented the usual group of hounds with their
attendants in the background, and these, in this
picture, numbered (inclusive of the Master) six indi-

70 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

viduals, booted, capped, and spurred. Let a man in
these days bring four or five men in scarlet besides
himself to the meet, and we shall be told how " splen-
didly he does things," and much wonderment will be
expressed if he fail to show sport " after all the trouble
he takes."

His successor, unless a man of very strong character,
will hardly like to substitute for six long-tailed horses
with riders complete in scarlet, white breeches, silver
chains and whistles, his modest equipment of first and
second whippers-in, equipped in brown cords and
mounted on short-tailed nags, with a light lad in
dark tweed and breeches and leggings to ride second
horse. If, however, he manfully sets his face against
what Anstruther Thomson scornfully termed the
" pageantry of the chase," he will want the very best
of luck in his first season to enable him to show such
sport as will silence all detractors, or he will very soon
find out that he is held to " do the thing badly," which
cannot fail to aggravate even a philosopher, and
possibly his first season may be his last.

It appears to me, if fox-hunting is to last, that
economy will have to be studied, and that the endea-
vour of the twentieth-century sportsman should be
to restore as much as possible the simplicity that the
sport has lost since it became ultra-fashionable. We
are told that the great crowds which now ornament
many of our hunting-fields are not wanted by either
the farmers or the residents, and that the field-money
which is levied was instituted with a view to lessening
these crowds. Now w^e used to hear not very long ago
a good deal also about the " Simple Life." What if

AND THEIR CAUSES 71

hunting folk turned their thoughts that way ? Why
not meet at ten o'clock instead of an hour later ?
Why not wear brown cords and 'hogany boots, as
our fathers often did, and let the fashions for the
hunting-field emanate from the country, and not from
the neighbourhood of New Bond Street? If the kit
and accoutrements of the fox-hunter cost no more
thought in these days than they did seventy years ago,
I am very sure that hunting would lose much of its
interest for a great many. I am speaking generally,
of course, for there have always been some double-
distilled dandies in the hunting-field, and there always
will be.

The great crowds might possibly diminish under a
ten o'clock regime and the lack of display and ostenta-
tion ; the country in consequence might be easier to
keep, and the general expenses of a Hunt establishment
might be somewhat decreased.

To economise, however, where hounds as well as
horses are in the case, can only be done by one
who has great experience of all country matters, and
is pretty well acquainted with farming operations.
Such an one with leisure to undertake the duties
of M.F.H. is very hard to find in these days, though
really not quite such a vara avis as might be sup-
posed.

For some reason or another, as a rule, the joint
Mastership has but a short life. The ordinary idea of
this combination seems happy — that one M.F.H. shall
find the experience and the other the expenses — but in
practice it does not last very long, any more than the
hunting of a country by a committee.

72 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

I fully believe that if this dreadful idea of capturing
a very wealthy man and making him pay for our
amusement were, to a great extent, abandoned, and
the notion of getting a first-rate sportsman and
manager substituted for it in our minds, we should
find it advantageous for the future of fox-hunting ;
and I feel sure that the right men would be forth-
coming, provided that we who live in the country paid
as much attention to the management of it as we ought
to do ; but this requires a considerable amount of
organisation and energy, and the enlistment of the
help and sympathy of every one who is at all favour-
ably disposed towards fox-hunting. With the right
men once secured we should hear little more of twelve-
month Masterships.

As things are at present managed, or rather mis-
managed, in too many hunting countries, only a very
keen and zealous sportsman who is willing to devote
almost his entire time to the work, is likely to remain
for more than a few years at the head of affairs.
Now this, surely, is not as it should be, and, as a
correspondent points out, " there must be defective
organisation in the system of district management"
that makes so much of the burden fall on the shoulders
of the Master.

I could tell of a country to which a lucky but most
excellent and popular sportsman will shortly succeed,
where, owing to the cordial co-operation of the hunt-
ing community with the retiring Master, this new-comer
will find few of the cares that overburden many a
modern M.F.H. In that country the Master had hard
work at first, but he is an organiser, and knew what

Photo]

Mr. R. W. Hall-Dare.
Master of the Island Hounds.

[Lafayette, Dublin.

AND THEIR CAUSES 73

was before him ; his ideas were carried out, and
every sportsman there feels that things are on the
right footing now, and that their efforts have
put the country into such order that the incoming
Master has only got to hunt it — they will do the
rest.

The country, in fact, is properly managed. The Dis-
trict Managers are few in number, but superintend
very clearly defined areas. They are, of course, hunt-
ing men who reside at home in summer, and are
popular in their own localities. The manager of each
district becomes the Field Master on such days as
hounds meet within his district, and is for the time
being the confidential adviser of the M.F.H. ; he also
collects the field-money. This arrangement appears to
me a good one. Under it the District Manager is found
to take an immensity of trouble to ensure a good day's
sport when hounds come his way, and, as this is a
matter that also concerns him, he does his best that
the amusement shall be as inexpensive as possible.
Therefore he will warn his neighbours who have young
horses or stock of other kinds in their fields that the
hounds may be expected, and no claims for foals or
calves who have made untimely appearance in this
vale of sorrows need be feared. The haunt of the
outlying fox will be known to the District Manager,
and he will lead the way to the retreat that shelters
that terror of the fowl-yard, while every orthodox
covert in his district will be his special care. He
will arrange for the cutting down of the gorse coverts
when they have grown too high, the repair of their
fences, and the condition of the artificial earths. A

74 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

fox going to ground in the country within his juris-
diction will probably be safe if left by the hounds,
and by the month of June he will be able to tell the
M.F.H. how many litters have been brought out
within the confines of his territory. He will be
indefatigable in trying to procure good walks for
puppies in his neighbourhood, and will keep a friendly
eye upon them during the time they are at quarters,
while it is hardly necessary to say that he will walk
a couple himself for the M.F.H.

Often of high social position, the District Manager's
utility is rather increased when this is the case, while
he extends the sphere of his own influence and popu-
larity in the country by coming into direct communi-
cation with many whom he might otherwise be
personally unacquainted with and who often come to
seek his opinion or advice on matters not alto-
gether connected with hunting.

The District Manager, I think, should certainly be
ex officio a member of the Hunt committee — a body
who have so many responsibilities thrust upon thetn
in these days that selection of the members needs to
be made with great care. There is nothing so difficult
in the country as to get together a body of men to
do three hours' work. Meetings are usually held in
the county town, and half an hour after the minutes
of the last meeting have been read and signed, the
members begin to melt away. One retires to do some
shopping, another to the bank, a third to look at a
horse ; and the gathering is reduced before long to
very attenuated proportions, though if the three or
four remaining are willing to accept responsibility

AND THEIR CAUSES 75

they will probably do the business better and more
speedily than if a larger number were present. Still,
when it comes to a question of the disbursement
of money, there is often hesitation on the part of
the two or three who are gathered together, and
the meeting is adjourned.

With an efficient Hunt secretary, however — and how
much most Hunts owe to their secretaries ! — and a
good working committee, it should be possible so to
arrange matters in a hunting country that the M.F.H.
need have little to do in the off season except the
regulation of his Hunt establishment. Why, after all,
should more be expected of him ? Why should it be
said M.F.H. 's work is really beginning when our sport
is ended ? He will have plenty to occupy his mind in
seeing after his stables, and his servants, and the
breeding of his pack, but need not necessarily be ex-
pected to stay at home like a nut in its shell all the
summer.

Not very many years ago I heard objection gravely
taken to the name of a candidate for the mastership
of a country because he was a polo player, and so
would be " gadding about all the summer instead of
looking after his country " ! No wonder that master-
ships are short, if such ideas prevail ! The fact is that
the modern M.F.H. cannot do it all " off his own
bat," as is so often expected of him. He should be
thoroughly supported by all interested in fox-hunting
in his country, who should endeavour to make his
task an easy one. He may have to work hard at first,
but the work should be the work of organisation, for
a leader is always wanted ; but after the first year or

76 SHORT MASTERSHIPS

so, instead of wishing to retire from the overburden
of work, the burden should have become hght and
easy, and the pleasure of seeing the good results of
his labour should begin.

No doubt the M.F.H. is the proper person to organise
where organisation is wanted. Who else is to do it ?
And to organise well, it follows that he must have a
good knowledge of all details of the matter he is
taking in hand. Where the new M.F.H. is a local
man, we will suppose that he must possess some
knowledge at least that will be of great use to him in
his career, and, speaking generally, a local man of
position and influence is of all others the most
desirable for a Master of Hounds, though such men,
willing to undertake the work, are not now so plenti-
ful as they were at the beginning of the last century.
" Get a sports7nan to hunt your country," was the
advice given by a well-known magnate of the hunt-
ing world after a long dispute had caused a vacancy ;
" everything wants putting into order — the country,
and the people in it," The sportsman was found, and
it was done ; but money alone could never have healed
the breaches and effected the much-desired change,
nor will money too freely expended be conducive to
the proper management of a country. With subscrip-
tion packs I hold that the money for the manage-
ment should come from the men of the country, and
not from the Master. It was Mr. Delme Radcliffe who
said that a Master of Hounds would always find his
hand in his pocket, and must always find a guinea
there. Squire Delme Radcliffe was an M.F.H. in the
thirties. Had he kept hounds in the reign of

AND THEIR CAUSES 77

Edward VII., he might have written " both hands in
his pockets " ; but in a properly managed country,
where economy is studied, and the new M.F.H. has no
lavish spendthrift to follow, a smaller sum than the
guinea should do to line the pocket.

A word more before closing this chapter on the short
duration of joint masterships.

In some cases there may be a reason, and a very
excellent one for their brevity ; for it may be the wish
of the incoming M.F.H. to share responsibility with the
Old Hand who is about to retire, and so learn from
him all that is to be known about the country and the
manner of hunting it.

In this case, when the partnership is dissolved and the
newcomer reigns alone, it may be safe to prophesy that
his rule will not be a short one ; and I can imagine no
better preparation for the beginner than sharing the
work for a time of a practised M.F.H. who has every
detail at his fingers' ends.

CHAPTER VI

HORNS, HOLLOAS, AND DOG LANGUAGE

" The horn of the huntsman is heard on the hill,"
exclaims the impassioned lover in the Irish ballad to
his sleeping mistress ; and it is to be hoped that the
appeal was successful, and that the fair Kathleen
awoke from her slumbers, got dressed, and mounted
in time to see the fox found.

Much mention has been made of horns whenever it
has pleased poets to sing of the chase, and not even
Anstruther Thomson's penchant for the whistle has
been the means of introducing that instrument to the
favour of huntsmen, who still stick to the time-
honoured " foot of tin," copper, or silver, and use it
more or less sparingly, each according to his idea as
to the utility of the sounds he produces. Unlike our
Gallic and other Continental friends, we have no
hard-and-fast rules for the use of the horn. No Moot,
Recheat, Prise, or Menee as in olden time to mark
with musical honours the different episodes of the
chase. In our hunting-fields the noises made by the
huntsman's horn are often discordant enough, and I
do not think as much attention is given to this art

78

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 79

of horn-blowing as it demands, or as it formerly
received.

A weird blast is heard at intervals during the day ;
if quickly repeated it is supposed to mean the " chink "
or " double " of the horn that proclaims the flight of
the fox ; if, without any particular " linked sweetness "
it is "long drawn out" to a most melancholy and
funereal wail, we are then aware that the covert by
which we stand has been drawn blank. That is about
all we have to learn of the uses of the " merry horn,"
except perhaps that two short, quick, high notes
convey to the whippers-in that all the hounds are
present and moving on.

Nevertheless, we are treated by some huntsmen to
a wonderful amount of horn-blowing during the day :
these are full of queer noises and sounds, and seldom
lose a chance of conveying the instrument to their
lips. Others again are so sparing of its use that one
wonders why the horn is carried at all. For choice,
however, surely the silent huntsman is better than the
noisy one? He is certainly less irritating, and is, I
think, less likely to do harm. Everlasting horn-
blowing has doubtless an unpleasant effect on the
nerves of the listener and becomes a mere mechani-
cal habit on the part" of the performer, while it is
treated as such by the hounds themselves, who in time
pay no heed to the sounds.

It has often amused me to watch the proceedings of
one of these perpetual musicians. The Master gives
the signal to move on from the meet ; out comes the
trumpet — Toot ! A cart comes along the road — " Get
over hounds." Toot! "Take first turn to the left

80 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

at the cross roads." Toot ! Hounds stray on ahead —
" Gently, Rumager ; gently on there." Toot, toot !
"Leu into covert there." Toot, toot, toot! and horn-
blowing accompanies every third step of the horse,
and follows every alternate cheer till the covert is
drawn, and the sound has become a weariness to the
spirit.

Then, when the chase begins and the fox is viewed
away, that is the time for the real solo, the "con-
certed piece," with lots of flourishes and variations,
and every blast no doubt conveys pleasure to the
performer ; but we may notice, perhaps, that hounds
do not appear to fly to the sound with marvellous
alacrity, nor do the strains boil up very genuine
enthusiasm on the part of the field.

It must be observed that these remarks on the use
of the horn are in no way intended to be didactic,
and must be regarded simply as observations made
in the spirit of inquiry by one who has never carried
the horn. I have, however, opportunities of seeing
(or hearing) a good many different wielders of the
instrument in the course of the hunting season, and
noticing so great a variety of style among these
practitioners, I am impelled to record some of these
observations and the ideas they suggest.

Mr. Robert Watson — whose great reputation as a
huntsman needs no mention from me — was of all
others the man whose methods I have had most
opportunity of noticing. In my youth I often heard
his merits discussed by my seniors — by men, too, who
were, I believe, well qualified to discuss an opinion.
I have heard exception taken to him as being too

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 81

silent a huntsman, although he was gifted with a
magnificent voice, resonant and melodious, and
further produced a most stirring note upon a horn.
Silent he may have been, yet how seldom did his
hounds chop a fox in covert, and when did he ever
leave his field behind when hounds went away with
their fox? His quiet encouragement to the pack to
try (sounds which a friend declares reminded him
of the conjugating of Greek verbs, eloimi, philoimi),
varied by a peculiar hound-like call, " Eelyow, ellyow ! "
contrasted strongly with the bellowing invocations to
" push him up " and " roust him up," accompanied by
loud blasts of the horn, which some huntsmen use.
In drawing, Mr. Watson, as a rule, used his horn not
at all, except to move his pack from one part of the
covert to another. But his " Hoick, hoick, hoick ! "
was good to hear when a " finder " opened, and the
" Eloo-Zoo, eloo-Zoo, eloo-Zoo — at him ! " which followed,
used to set the bushes shaking and the horses
capering.

It is true that most of Mr. Watson's coverts were
small, the woodlands few, and the gorses plenty ; and
I believe that in really large woodlands a free use of
both horn and voice is most necessary to keep
hounds in touch, and also to keep in touch with the
field.

The best performer on a horn that I ever heard
was the late Frank Beers, when huntsman to the
Grafton Hounds, and next to him, in my experience,
I would place Mr. Langrishe, the late Master of the
Kilkenny. Both these men could " bring a tune out
of a gas-pipe," and Beers, in his immense woodlands

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please- 7

82 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

was no doubt greatly served by his perfect com-
mand of the instrument. In the Kilkenny country,
however, this great execution is not so much called
for.

I take it that the horn should give forth no sound
that has not a meaning to the hounds, and that the
field also should be able to know what is meant by
the various blasts ; and, as we are not aware that
hounds, however " musical " they may be, have a
quick ear for tune, I think it follows that the fewer
variations of sound they are treated to the better, if
the horn is to be efficacious.

An occasional alert note during a long draw seems
to enliven the work. Quickly repeated once or tivice
when the find is proclaimed, and accompanying the
" Hoick together," that note seems to stimulate the
listening pack to rush to support their comrades' cry.
Then the " doubling " of the horn when — supreme
moment of all ! — he is away, and the huntsman gets
his pack together for the pursuit ; surely there should
be no mistaking that sound, and all foxhounds should
love to fly to it. What vim and fire Frank Beers
managed to put into those quick, stirring notes !
And Mr. Watson, too ! How often I hear it in my
dreams, my good dreams I — " Tally-ho, gone away !
Tally-ho, gone away ! " it seemed to say. " Better be
quick ; better be quick ; better be quick ! "

No, there certainly should be no mistaking the
" gone away "' call, and none other that resembles it
should, I think, ever be sounded. I have heard a
" double " sounded for the view in covert, and even
in a gorse covert a huntsman of my acquaint-

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 83

ance sounds it when he views a fox across a ride.
I cannot think this unusual call desirable and
have myself seen it bring hounds out of covert,
while the field, not understanding it, catch up their
reins and gallop along the covert sides, creating
sometimes a certain amount of confusion. The
huntsman who uses it, however, believes that hounds
are thereby stimulated to get together and press
their fox. He, moreover, believes in the horn as an
inspiriting adjunct of the chase, and uses the instru-
ment more freely than many of his fraternity, both in
and out of covert ; yet his capability as a huntsman
is undeniable.

Then there is that long-drawn, melancholy note (of
which I have written before), when the covert is
blank — melancholy, but necessary, and, of necessity,
melancholy. That, too, should not be varied ; all
huntsmen should blow it in the same way, if only
for the information of the field, all the world over
or " where'er the English tongue is spoke," which is
pretty much the same thing ; and, as a matter of
fact, there are few parts of the world where the
sound of the English hunting-horn has not been
heard. The sharp " twit, twit," telling that hounds
are all on, is another of the general calls that admit
of no variation, and are known to all hunt servants
and, I imagine, to all fox-hunters.

But I have heard considerable variety in the
sounds given forth when the fox goes to ground, or
lies dead surrounded by the baying pack. Yet it
seems to me that there also there should be no
uncertainty, but that all should know the sound of a

84 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

mort, and all huntsmen should sound it in the same
manner.

Judging from effects, then, it would seem that
the huntsman who is chary of the use of his horn,
as a general rule, has the best chance of finding his
summons promptly obeyed when he does " wind a
blast," and it is interesting to note the eagerness with
which the pack, who know that business only is
meant, will fly to the sound when they hear it ; and
surely it is most important that they should do so.
At a check, for instance, on a windy day, with
hounds spread out over a field vainly trying to
recover the lost clue, the huntsman, wishing to bring
them together for a cast in another direction, touches
his horn. Vox huinmia is of no use, the wind will
scatter his " Yeo-yeote " to the deuce ; but a ringing
blast of the horn, if they have not learned from
overuse to disregard the sound, will pick their heads
up at once, and bring them crowding round his
horse's heels.

Then mark the eagerness with which hounds obey
the " doubling " of some horns when the fox is gone !
How they fairly tumble over one another in their
haste to get to the spot where that stirring obligate
is being performed. When this is noticed, I think, it
may, as a rule, also be observed that the huntsman
is not a lavish user of the instrument.

It is doubtless an art that takes a certain amount
of time and practice to acquire, this winding of the
merry horn, but I think it is worth acquiring. Many
celebrated huntsmen of the past have been much
praised for their "excellent note on a horn," and

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 85

the great Peter Beckford was probably the cause of
the adoption of the straight horn by recommending
its use in his immortal work ; and, as it seems to be
" the horn which is the most readily sounded and is
heard the furthest," it is therefore the best. There
is no musical knowledge required to bring forth the
desired sounds, but a certain knack must be attained
in order to produce at once, with certainty, and when
a horse is in motion, the few necessary calls which
we have been considering. We read that Mr. Assheton
Smith, at an advanced period of life, sounded his
horn while leaping a gate. Needless to say the gate
had five bars, but we are not told the number
sounded by that fiery veteran during his leap.

And if the huntsman should use his horn with dis-
cretion, how much more should the follower of hounds
be chary of raising his voice ! There are few inhabi-
tants of these islands who do not feel themselves
impelled to shout on the unexpected appearance of a
fox ; and if the view is obtained in a hunting country
the shout is almost certain to assume the sound of
a genuine " view-holloa " ; yet from a fox-hunter's
point of view this is pretty sure to be wrong ; for
"nine times out of ten that you holloa when you see
a fox," says a celebrated M.F.H., "you had better
have kept your mouth shut."

To begin with the view-holloa, the " Tally aw-a-aey ! "
There is little doubt that very often this preliminary
to the chase is most unnecessary. The whipper-in
views " the lad " away from a gorse covert, and most
probably a good many of the field see him too. The
whip waits till the fox is well over the first fence, or

86 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

till he counts twenty, and then out rings his rattling
view-holloa, and if he has "a good pipe," as Mr. Jor-
rocks expressed it, the sound is most inspiriting, and is
warmly admired. But what are the odds that every
other man who has seen the fox also does not then
add his quota to the noise ? The whipper-in, of course,
if he knows his business, has placed himself as near
as he can to the spot whence the fox broke covert
before tallying him away ; but it will be noticed that
the other horsemen who have viewed the fox and
think it is incumbent upon them also to shout, raise
their voices from various different places, though a
little reflection should tell them that though hounds
are supposed to come away to a holloa, they are not
wanted except where the fox broke, and therefore
they had better have remained silent.

Indeed, though admitting the exhilarating sound of
the view-holloa, and the necessity for its vigorous use
at times, the " silent system " when getting away with
a fox is the one that commands the admiration of the
writer. If the huntsman can see the whipper-in when
the fox goes away — as he so very often can — why raise
the shout at all ? Why not raise the cap only ? Even
if the whipper-in is invisible to the huntsman, but his
cap-in-air is seen by the field, a word from one of the
horsemen to the wielder of the horn will bring him
out, and possibly with the body of the pack at his
heels without flurry, noise, or confusion, and with no
over-excitement among the hounds ; and then it is
that he has the real chance of getting well away
with his fox.

Mark, when you have an opportunity, kind reader

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 87

of these reflections, the difference in the gait of the
fox who sKps away unobserved, as he thinks, and
unholloa'd, from that of the animal who, after ghding
smoothly along for a hundred and fifty yards or so
is greeted by a perfect storm of yells and shouts.
He was covering the ground at a nice pace before,
but at those sounds he puts on such a spurt as few
animals can equal till he has placed at least one more
fence between himself and the hateful noise. Mad-
dened by the shouting and the horn-blowing, the
hounds come tearing and leaping out of covert, their
heads in the air, and either overrun the scent or,
flinging on, fail to pick it up quickly at the critical
period when the fox is placing many fields between
himself and his pursuers.

In the other case the fox, stealing quietly along,
sees no particular cause for extra hurry, and, unless
going away down wind, hears nothing to put him in
a frantic state of alarm ; the distant sound of a horn
he has heard before, and also the chiming of the
pack, so he does not alter the smooth, stealing pace
at which he started till hounds, who are well settled
to the line from the first, drive him into quicker
flight by getting unpleasantly close to him, and,
being over all their initial difficulties, do not let him
increase his lead very much if there be anything like
a scent.

We have supposed the field and foot-people to have
remained silent in this case until the servant has raised
his voice ; but how often do we hear the irrepressible
shout raised before the fox has crossed the first field
when " Tally-ho back ! " is the cry that generally

88 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

follows. Of a hunt in the southern part of Ireland,
the members of which are proverbial for their forward
riding and daring horsemanship, it is related that on
the fox breaking from a well-known gorse in view
of the whole field, each man exclaimed in what he
imagined to be a thrilling whisper, " Hush ! don't say
a word ! " but the volume of the whisperings was such
that the fox doubled back incontinently.

How many good runs in Ireland have been spoiled
by the uncontrollable " Look at 'um out ! " from the
foot-people by the covertside, as soon as they view
the fox away. Irishmen, however, are hopeless where
shouting is concerned. They must " let a bawl " to
relieve pent-up excitement, I suppose, when occasion
offers ; but the experienced huntsman who knows the
ways of Erin's Isle treats all holloas from country folk
with caution, if, indeed, he does not disregard them
altogether.

"An Irishman, when hounds are out, will holloa.
It may be to call his friends to see the hunt, or
simply to relieve his own excited feelings at the
sight of the chase or to draw the horsemen towards
him to see the ' lepping,' or to decoy them away from
the neighbourhood of his own seeds or wheat. Then
if the huntsman does go to the holloa, as likely as not
Pat will tell him which way the fox he sees 'every
Sunday morning ' usually travels ; or maybe, an
absolutely imaginary tale will be told with an excita-
bility and engaging appearance of truth which would
deceive any but the old stager who has been thus
caught too often."

The above pronouncement, printed more than twelve

'.^;^s;s!Si'>^:ig/0

Me. Briggs, not being good at his fences, goes througu
THE Performance op Opening a Gate.

(Drawn by John Leech.)

Excessively Polite.

Well-b7-ed Man. "Your horse seems a little impatient, sir 1
pray go first ! "

{Drawn by John Leech.)

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 89

years ago, is certainly true in the present daj". I have
a great friend who lives on the low hillside behind
this place, and not long ago I met him the day after
a run from a gorse in the valley below. " Didn't you
hear us roaring yesterday ? " he said. " Why couldn't
yez come and hunt the great fox that wint for New-
town ? " " But, man alive," I said, " couldn't you see
we were on another fox going bang in the other
direction? What the deuce was the good of keeping
on shouting ? You might have got the hounds off our
fox, if they had checked, with all that yelling. " Shure
that's what we wanted," he naively replied, " the other
was the lad we laid out for ye to hunt ; he'd have
given a great chase, and we'd had a great view of
ye entirely."

If we reflect at all on the subject, I think we shall
conclude that one very seldom should be tempted to
give a holloa out hunting, and that we should never
do so without due consideration. If we see the fox
and hounds have checked, and if we are absolutely
certain it is our hunted fox, if also the huntsman
cannot see our hat held up in the air (which is better
for the hounds than any holloa), then we may " let
go " our holloa with a will ; but it must be remem-
bered that one never should holloa unless you can
get on to, or close to, the ground over which the fox
has passed before raising the voice.

If a fox is viewed by one of the field at some distance
from hounds it must be borne in mind that though
he appears to be a run fox, he is not necessarily the
hunted fox. Hounds have a brace of foxes travelling
in front of them twice as often as any of us imagine.

90 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

It is very dangerous to give vent to a holloa on account
of " information received " ; far better to get informa-
tion and gallop back with it to the M.F.H. Remember
that a pedestrian who holloas because he sees a fox
may be viewing him from a distance of half a mile,
and however glad he may be to see the hunt, he is
not the least likely to run to the spot where the fox
was when viewed, though by doing so he would mate-
rially assist the pursuing host. It is the greatest
nuisance to a huntsman when he gallops to a holloa
with his pack to be told by the shouter that the
fox has gone away over the hill in the vicinity
of which hounds checked, for he has to hurry back
again over, perhaps, an intricate bit of country
when very likely his own cast would have hit off
the line in less time than it had taken to get to the
holloa.

At the vital period of a good hunt, when hounds
have fairly asserted the superiority of condition and
have worked near to their beaten fox, we should be
more careful than at any other time how we raise
our voices. All sportsmen have learned that the
scent of a beaten fox is weak, but all do not realise
how very weak it is when the quarry is run almost
to a standstill and his elastic flight reduced to a
shambling walk ; but the hounds, though they cannot
race up to him, are terribly excited and fully aware
they are close to their beaten foe. A loud holloa
now will likely as not madden and unsettle them.
If they hunt from scent to view, well and good, but
if the fox lies up in a fence, or lies down in a turnip
or tillage field, the inveterate hoUoaers are very likely

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 91

to prolong if not to save his life. Hounds are baffled,
the huntsman puzzled, and the units of the field are
arriving on the scene more or less exhausted by the
run, full of excitement, and all having plenty to say
about it. Suddenly the fox is put on his legs and
steals away down the drills or by the side of the
fence. Then the outcry arises, " Tally-ho ! Tally-ho !
Yonder he goes!" &c., and, catching the contagion,
every one yells. This brings the hounds — leaping
wildly and bristling with excitement — not to the fox,
but to the shouters. Reynard's last effort puts a
fence between himself and the pack, and perhaps,
as I saw happen two years ago, he reaches the
drain for which he was making in the next field
but one. Had intimation been quietly conveyed to
the huntsman, and had the horsemen kept still
and silent, Reynard would never have left the field
alive.

Last year we saw hounds run their fox to the edge
of a small half-frozen lake. Hounds went in after
him, and the fox was soon after viewed scrambling
up the shores of an islet in the middle of the lake.
This sight had such an effect upon a noisy feather-
headed whipper-in, that he let off a series of tally-
ho's and screams ; with the result that he brought all
the hounds back to him. Meanwhile, unseen by us,
the fox crossed the ice from the island to the main-
land beyond and eventually made good his escape.
Never was there such an example of the dangers of
a holloa.

There is no doubt, however, that all sportsmen ought
to try and learn to holloa in the orthodox manner ; for.

92 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

of course, to every pack comes a time when, as Whyte-
Melville sings : —

" With a storm in the air and the ground like a stone,
We're all in a muddle, beat, baffled, and blown,"

and nothing more can apparently be done; but, wel-
come sound ! a holloa is heard from afar. If it has the
true ring about it, and sounds as if delivered by a
practised voice, it will be the sweetest of sounds to
the huntsman. " Huic holloa," he shouts, and getting
his pack together and his trumpet out, away he
bustles, best pace, knowing he is on no fool's errand.
" That's Gospel, begad ! " roared the old West Country
huntsman, with delight, who had lost his fox but
heard the well-known holloa of Parson Froude.

A good holloa, clear and resonant, is pleasant to
hear at any time, but music to our ears when the
stirring gallop is checked all too soon and there seems
but little chance of its revival. It is heard in England
a good deal oftener than in the sister isle, for there
a fox has many more enemies abroad, and in some
populous districts is viewed by the countryfolk where-
ever he goes ; but, in the Green Isle, except in the
neighbourhood of a covert, Reynard may travel for
miles across the grass without once hearing the fate-
ful sound, " Tally-ho ! "

Now, concerning hound-language.

A very observant and enthusiastic student of the
works of Mr. Surtees used to declare that the author
ought to have given us more information as to the
early career of his redoubtable hero, Mr. Soapey

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 93

Sponge, in order to account for the knowledge of the
huntsman's art which that worthy possessed in such
an eminent degree. " For," said my friend, " one
would hardly imagine that a man whose principal
residence appears to have been the Bantam Hotel, in
Bond Street, and whose chief study was ' Moggs' cab
fares,' would be able to take hold of a pack of fox-
hounds and hunt them in a style worthy of the great
Will Goodall himself."

Where did he learn to use the horn he took from
Sir Harry Scattercash's huntsman, when he heard by
the " hammering and pincering " of that individual's
horse "that it was all U.P. with him?" And who
taught him the dog-language he used so efficaciously
in making his celebrated cast when the fair Lucy
Glitters turned the pack to him?

" ' Put 'em to me,' said Mr. Sponge, giving Miss Glitters his
whip ; ' put 'em to me 1 ' said he, hallooing, ' Yor-geot, hounds ! — Yor-
geot I ' which, being interpreted means ' here again, hounds ! — here
again ! '

" ' Oh, the concited beggar,' exclaimed Mr. Watchorn to himself
as, disappointed of his finish, he sat feeling his nose and mopping his
face and watching the proceedings. ' Oh, the concited beggar I '
repeated he, adding ' Old 'hogany bouts is a6-solutely goin' to kest
them.'

" Cast them, however, he did, proceeding very cautiously in the direc-
tion the hounds seemed to lean. They were on a piece of cold scenting
ground, across which they could hardly own the scent.

"'Don't hurry 'em,' cried Mr. Sponge to Miss Glitters, who was
acting whipper-in with rather unnecessary vigour.

"As they got under the lee of the hedge, the scent improved a Uttle,
and from an occasional feathering stern a hound or two indulged in a
whimper, until at last they fairly broke into a cry.

" ' I'll lose a shoe,' said Watchorn to himself, looking first at the
formidable leap before him, and then to see if there was any one coming

94 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

up behind. ' I'll lose a shoe,' said he. ' No notion of lippin' of a
navigable river — a downright arm of the sea,' added he, getting off.

'■'■'■ Forward, forward.'' screeched Mr. Sponge, capping the hounds
on, when away they went, head up and sterns down, as before."

In this inimitable description Mr. Sponge certainly
appears in the light of a huntsman possessed of judg-
ment, experience, and style, so that I think my friend's
criticism was justifiable. The dog-language is correct
according to what has been traditionally handed down
and written, and without stopping to inquire as to the
antiquity or probable origin of this qviaint language
which huntsmen use, it is, I think, important that it
should be preserved unaltered, and, like the sounding
of the horn, which I have been discussing, its different
phrases should be used by all huntsmen, instead of
inventing, as some do, a phraseology of their own
when speaking to or cheering their hounds.

It was in the middle of the last century that Mr.
Tom Smith, Master at the time of the Pytchley
Hounds, published in his Diary of a Huntsman a short
vocabulary of language used by huntsmen, and though
even Peter Beckford found it " as difficult to Avrite a
halloo as to pen a whisper," yet the terms as printed
by Mr. Smith remain sufficiently intelligible when
sounded, and have been so very often reprinted that
they stand familiar to the ear as household words.

There is no doubt that Beckford is right though,
and that the phonetic spelling of dog-language is
difficult. I wrote on an earlier page of the conjugation
of Greek verbs in connection with Mr. Robert Watson's
encouragement to his hounds to find their fox ; but,
of course, that sound was simply a rendering of Mr.

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 95

Tom Smith's " Eclawick, eadawick — try, try ! " I once
heard this term pronounced by a reader of the book
with the accent on the last syllable, and he remarked
that he "never in his life heard a huntsman sing out
anything ending with 'wick.'" So here the phonetic
spelling would appear to be wrong, and perhaps
" Edoick " or " Eloick " comes a bit nearer the spelling
of a very familiar sound. Mr. Sponge's " Yor-geot "
is Surtees' spelling of what Mr. Smith prints " Yo-
geote ; when hounds have overrun the scent, or he
wants them to come back to him."

But the cry has often come to my ears as if it were
almost spelt " Yeow-yeowte." " Yo-hote, yo-hote
there ; to make hounds hunt at a check," has also
been printed and sounded " Yo-doit, yo-doit," and is
often abbreviated to "Y'ut there, y'ut there," which
is as near as I can get to sounds that I have heard ;
while I recollect a professional huntsman whose
encouragement was plainly " Get there," also usually
naming a hound, as " Get there. Riflemen — get there ! "
which was often followed by " Hey, that's it ! that's
it ! " It was unusual, and we thought it unworkman-
like. But I do like to hear a hound cheered by
name when he makes a hit, and I'll swear the hound
loves it too.

The " Yo-o-o-o-i there " of some well-known hunts-
men is most thrilling and enthralling, and the scream
— sometimes printed " Hoop," but utterly impossible
to spell, when the line is hit off after a check, is the
most intensely pleasurable sound one hears when in
chase.

" Hoick holloa " I know was used as a huntsman's

96 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

cheer in 1795, for I possess a print of my grandfather's
so entitled, and bearing that date. It represents a
very roomily-clad huntsman capping on his hounds,
which are capitally drawn. He wears his hair long
and rides a grey with a tremendous crest. "Howitt
in. et f." is printed on the left corner of the margin.
" Hoick holloa " still remains a pleasant sound when
we are in difficulties, but it is one we seldom wish
to hear.

" Elope forrard — to get hounds on." It is thus
printed in Mr. Smith's book, but it seems to me that
as a rule the initial E in the word is commonly dis-
carded, and that I hear the whippers-in of my acquaint-
ance cry, " Lope forrard, lope forrard," and " Lope lop,
lope lop," when they bring on tail hounds, or something
as near those sounds as I can represent by letters.
" Yoi over " and " Try back," the latter word pro-
nounced very broad, as it were " baick," let us say,
are unalterable, as " Talli-ho," and — hateful sound ! —
" Talli-ho-back." It is not likely that any other cry
will supersede " Who-whoop," which marks the proper
finish of the chase ; but if it be sounded over an open
earth, huntsmen have different cheers of encourage-
ment to excite their hounds to mark and satisfy them-
selves that their fox is there. One does like to see a
fox well marked ivJiere it is not imprudent for his safety
to allow it to he done ; and to see hounds tearing up
the earth, biting at the roots, and "making the sods
fly," is no small compensation for the want of blood.

Beyond the hunting cheers and terms which have
been mentioned and should be known by the veriest
tyro, there are not many others about which we

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 97

who are not of the Hunt establishment need concern
ourselves ; and, like the sounds on the horn, the
fewer words of command that hounds have to learn
the better. Most huntsmen have some few pet
words of their own, some " little language " to their
favourites, which concerns us not ; but the ordinary-
terms of the chase, as written by Tom Smith and
other even older authorities, should, I think, be main-
tained, and unorthodox dog-language should not be
suffered to creep into general use.

Whyte-Melville, in his ballad The King of the Kenjiel,
which he dedicated to John Anstruther Thomson, was
at great pains that the bit of dog-language with which
he ended each stanza should be correct ; and his
correspondence with Anstruther Thomson on this
subject is not the least amusing item in that famous
fox-hunter's Reminiscences. 1 notice, by the way, that
in the ballad Whyte-Melville prints a term we have
been discussing in a manner of his own : —

" Yo-yooite, Bachelor I
Right for a crown 1 "

It is pleasing, then, I fancy, to all sportsmen to retain
the old familiar sounds and usages of the chase and
to vary them as little as possible. I have lately been
plagued by an inability to understand what a hunt
servant meant by the various war-whoops he uttered,
and have suffered unnecessary palpitation several times
a day through believing he was holloaing a fox away
when he was only trying to get hounds out of
covert. These strange, weird noises were baneful,

Sounds, Oentlemen, Please. §

98 HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE

and have had, I suspect, the effect of producing these
remarks. Who has not read of Mr. Richard Bragg,
the swell huntsman in Soapey Sponge ? Who has not
laughed at him, yet loathed him ? Surtees is, as usual,
inimitable in his picture of that insufferable impostor.
He introduces him thus with his hounds : —

" They were just gliding noiseless over the green sward, Mr. Bragg
rising in his stirrups as spruce as a gamecock, with this thoroughbred
bay gambolling and pawing with delight at the frolic of the hounds, some
clustering round him, others shooting forward a little, as if to show how
obediently they would return at his whistle. Mr. Bragg was known as
the whistling huntsman, and was a great man for telegraphing and
signalling with his arms, boasting he could make hounds so handy
that they could do everything except pay the turnpilve gates." . . .
" ' Yo-o-icks — wind him! Yo-o-icks — pash him up !' cheered Bragg,
cracking his whip and moving slowly on. He then varied the enter-
tainment by whistling in a sharp, shrill key, something like the chirp of
a sparrow-hawk."

His fox breaks cover, then " Bragg's queer tootle of
his horn, for he teas full of strange blows, now sounded
at the low end of the covert " — and so the run began.

I remember a certain farmer huntsman who most
decidedly was an vmdeniable sportsman, although his
methods Avere strictly unorthodox. He would march
round the outskirts of a covert with his pack — his
hounds were said to be of old Irish breed — uttering
a queer " burring " noise. If the hounds broke away
and entered the gorse the fox was there, or had
just left it ; if they did not it was assumed that no
fox was there, and the huntsman departed to draw
elsewhere. But I proved to my ow^n satisfaction one
day, and to his great annoyance, that though the

HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 99

hounds marched round the covert and left without
drawing, Reynard was there right enough, for I

viewed a fox crossing a ride just as Mr. F tootled

his horn when moving off. He had great contempt
for the recognised methods of fox-hunting, and par-
ticularly disliked any subsequent mention of the
little incident I have related. At this period of the
world's history it is surely unlikely that great dis-
coveries will be made in what we call the noble
science of fox-hunting, or that anything will be
likely to cause a change in the old-time language
that tradition has handed down for the use of hunts-
men when addressing the pack, although new epithets
and expletives may be bestowed occasionally on its
followers. Let us, then, endeavour to preserve all
the lore and traditions connected with the chase that
have been bequeathed to us, and so —

" Floreat scientia — esto perpetna."

\

CHAPTER VII

OUR PUPPIES: AN ENDLESS SOUECE OF INTEREST AND

AMUSEMENT

Most puppy-rearers, I fancy, taking a lasting interest
in the animals they walk, and when good accounts
are received from the kennels of the performances
of their former charges the news is hailed with satis-
faction, and a kind of reflected glory plays round the
head of the puppy-walker. It was sad news, there-
fore, to hear one morning of the death of Carlow
Pitiful, a bitch reared here that had proved herself
about the best of the year's entry. Poor Pitiful !
What an interest we took in her, wondering if that
heavy forehand would ever fine to a symmetrical
appearance, if that very crooked foreleg would ever
become more like its fellow ! Well, she grew, and
the chest seemed to narrow as she grew, the neck
to lengthen, the " neck-cloth " to drop o£P, and the
shoulders to fall back; while, if not exactly straight,
she did not stand so very much amiss after all when
she went in from quarters. We had no companion
for her in those days of extreme youth, for that year
we did not receive our usual couple of whelps. She
came alone, yet did not develop half the talent for

100

OUR PUPPIES 101

mischief that a single puppy usually does, for we
find that a couple of whelps manage to entertain
each other so well at play that they are not so
devoted to gardening and the uprooting and trans-
planting of shrubs, or to the removal of stable utensils
and articles from the bleach-green as the single gentle-
man or lady for whom we provide temporary board
and lodging.

It is better also, I am certain, for the puppies
themselves, to rear a couple than a single dog. They
exercise themselves twice as well, are never still, but
always racing and chasing one another all over the
grass, and very soon learn also to put their noses
down and use them. I do not mean to say that our
lamented Pitiful was immaculate, or free from the
besetting sins of puppyhood, which cause such com-
plaints from the gardeners and domestics. There
was that affair of the Ampelopsis Veitchii, for instance,
a creeper which is a great ornament to our south
walls here we consider, but to which Pitiful had such
a rooted objection that she several times endeavoured
to uproot the plants. We placed a heavy garden seat
in front of the principal stem, and when she again
attacked the creeper she was tied to the seat, under
which she had crept for protection, and beaten with
many stripes ; and it was long before she could be
induced to visit that side of the house again.

We thought it best to send her into kennels a little
earlier than we had intended, and the cause which
led to this determination was rather curious. She
had never betrayed the smallest inclination to chase
or worry sheep, but when lambing season had

102 OUR PUPPIES: ENDLESS SOURCE

begun she marched up one morning to the hall-door
with proudly waving stern and a very young lamb
indeed held tenderly in her mouth. It was quite
uninjured, but Pitiful was so highly pleased with
herself that we thought it well that she should seek
the restraining influence of the kennel lest she should
develop a too decided penchant for mutton.

On looking over the old lists I find that poor Pitiful
made up the number of puppies I have walked for this
pack to exactly fifteen couples ; and I have reared an
odd one or two elsewhere. Without pretending to
be able to remember the individual characteristics of
each of these thirty foxhound puppies, I can truth-
fully say that the rearing of every one of them gave
me interest and amusement, and that I was very loth
to part with several of them.

A great companion of mine in the days of his
puppyhood was little Racer, who always used to
accompany me in my morning rides, and dearly loved
a school across country with a young horse. Whelped
in 1889, he was by Fitzwilliam Remus out of Bridget,
who was by Brocklesby Roman out of Mr. Watson's
Barmaid, a rare bitch. With such a pedigree, what
could Racer be but a good one ? And a good one
he was ! If he had only been on a bigger scale, here
was our sire hound ; but he wanted inches, and his
lot was to run with the lady pack. He could run
with them — aye, and lead them, too ; and if the work
was hard and the day long, he was showing them
all the way in the evening. He wanted little enter-
ing, I fancy, for a fox covert was only three hundred
yards from the place he was reared in, and one

OF INTEREST AND AMUSEMENT 103

spring morning, when I was told that the hounds
were in the covert hunting hard, it proved to be
Racer enjoying himself thoroughly, and letting all
the world know he had found a fox. He went back
to kennels that evening !

We had a great run with the Oarlow and Island
Hounds at the very end of the cubbing season of
1892, when, finding in Slocock's Gorse, hounds ran
by Old Leighlin and Bornafea to within a few fields
of Castlewarren, when they turned short and reached
Kellymount Hill on the southern face of which they
earthed their fox in a rabbit-hole among some furze
bushes, after what Mr. Robert Watson termed, as I
well remember " a glorious wild fox-hunt " of an hour
and forty minutes. Horses, even in the very last
days of October, are hardly in trim for such a run
as that, but on Kellymount Hill the short grass rode
firm and light, the small fences had gaps in each of
them ; and so a few of us were able to see ho^v hounds
strained up along the sides of the little banks, and
twisted through the gaps after the dead-beateti fox,
which was being constantly viewed, and first through
every one of the gaps came little Racer, with his
hackles erect. Poor Racer ! He deserved a better
fate than the poison which subsequently laid him
low.

Foreman, even in puppyhood, was a hound of quite
another type. A fine, upstanding dog, who was also
most companionable with me, but of so quarrelsome
a disposition that I seldom dared to take him outside
the place. He was the terror of certain children who
used to pass the stable-yard, taking a short cut to

104 OUR PUPPIES : ENDLESS SOURCE

school, and for a long time we suffered some incon-
venience by his refusal to allow the postman to deliver
the letters. It is fair to say that this trait in his char-
acter had its uses. No tramp ever thought it worth his
while to repeat a visit after an interview with Fore-
man. One day I came up from the garden, hearing
Foreman's voice raised in tones of unmistakable fury,
and found him at the hall-door springing up at a side-
car on which was seated a very voluble gentleman
possessing a decidedly Jewish type of countenance.
" Call hoff your offul tog," he cried ; " I haf some
beeyootifle Indian coots to show ! " " But we don't
want any, thanks ! " I replied. " But I want to show
to ze ladies in ze 'owse ; let me joost get into ze 'owse."
I requested him, however, to settle that point with
Foreman, and he soon after departed in great wrath, I
having retired chuckling in the comfortable certainty
that Foreman would save me a dollar or two.

Shall I ever forget Rainbow and her devoted affec-
tion for the cook, who in turn grew fondly attached
to her? Rainbow became a standing joke with us
all ; she grew so very like Leech's picture of Mr.
Jogglebury Crowdey's " Ponto," as depicted, showing
"frantic delight," in the pages of Soapey Sponge. Out
of all shape she grew, and was more like a prize pig
than a puppy when she ^vent back to Ballydarton ;
so that when I got a letter from the Master thanking
me for " the beautiful bitch " I had reared, 1 fully
thought he meant it in chaff. He could see her
merits, though, even through the folds of fat ; and
when I went to look at the entry, I found great
difficulty in recognising Rainbow. She turned out

< s

ciJ

^

H

OF INTEREST AND AMUSEMENT 105

well, too, and I believe was considered worthy of
becoming a brood bitch. One never can tell what
a puppy will grow into.

A pair of puppies that I had here a year or two
ago found a fox in some furze behind the house
I saw him break, and they came away pretty close
to him, but never caught a view. Reynard went at
first for all he was worth, and they hunted him
splendidly, throwing their tongues like good 'uns, but
taking an awful time to get over the fences. I followed
as best I could, and found them at fault not far from
a fox covert about two miles away. They were pretty
well blown, but not half so pumped as I was, and I
had no end of a job to get them home, for they always
wanted to get back to where they lost their fox. Not
a single day passed after that without the pair draw-
ing steadily through those furze bushes for that fox,
but I never heard of their finding again.

We have been lucky in the immunity our puppies
have enjoyed from disease, and have had only one
accident, but there was terrible grief on that occasion.
The beautiful Stella was the constant attendant of
two small children who made a great pet of her. As
they had any amount of grass and fields to wander
over inside the place, they were forbidden to take
her out on the roads. But blackberries in a certain
lane one day proved too much for them, and Stella
followed across the high-road. It was fair day, and
she was driven over, the wheel of the trap breaking
her hip high up. She was but four and a half months
old at the time, and the case looked hopeless ; but
one should never despair of any fracture in the days

106 OUR PUPPIES: ENDLESS SOURCE

of puppyhood, and she was quite sound when we sent
her in the following March. That year Mr. Watson
had the best bitch entry I have ever seen at Bally-
darton, and third in order of merit good judges placed
Stella, Mr. John Watson remarking that many people
would have called her the pick of the lot. She
proved also a first-rate bitch in her work, but I have
mentioned her early career chiefly to show that we
never should destroy a puppy on account of a fractured
limb. Nature's cures are marvellous at that early
age, and even if a complicated fracture should cause
enlargement of a joint and prevent a well-bred hound
from running up with a fast pack of foxhounds, he
may prove useful in other fields of sport.

From my window, as I write, I can see a pair of
lumbering foxhound puppies having a great game
of romps round and round the croquet ground, and
in and out of the shrubberies. They go head over
heels in turn almost every time they race across the
open, and I must say that I never had a pair of
bitches that I liked less. Yet I can see daily improve-
ment. Neither are straight yet. Rational is very
nearly so now ; Ransom was much the better at first,
and apparently the bolder ; but her sister has now
quite turned the tables. There is not a fence in the
country that Rational will not " have a go at " and
get over or through after me, but Ransom is often
left yelping behind. They are by Lord Fitzwilliam's
Proctor, from a good little bitch named Ransom, and
I feel sure will both turn out good working hounds,
little as 1 like them at present. They are an endless
source of interest and amusement, and their very

OF INTEREST AND AMUSEMENT 107

defects create attention because one watches the
gradual improvement that is sure to come, with the
greatest solicitude and hopefulness.

"Don't they kill all your poultry?" a lady asked
the other day. But this pair have never even " looked
crossways " at a fowl, as they say over here ; and I
explained how we cured even the formidable Foreman
of being a chicken fancier. Having at a very early
age displayed a penchant for young chickens, Foreman
was introduced into a small yard where' a hen of
ample proportions sat surrounded by a goodly brood
of chickens. No fox that ever was hunted had a
worse time than that puppy, who then and there
imbibed a horror of poultry that was to last him
through life.

If a puppy takes to chasing sheep — and many
puppies do when they see the stupid brutes flee from
them whenever they come near — the remedy is easy.
Couple the puppy to a heavy, well-grown sheep,
possessed of a fine fleece, and a couple of hours of
this partnership will eradicate any desire to approach
the flock.

On the subject of puppy-walking, a well-known
huntsman of great experience writes to me that he
considers few puppies are rendered crooked by being
allowed to go out on the roads and follow their
guardian in his walks and rides, even at the early
age of four or five months. He attributes crooked-
ness in young hounds almost entirely to overfeeding
when the whelps are very young, and supports his
opinion by quoting many experiences in proof. My
correspondent has done me the favour to write on

108 OUR PUPPIES: ENDLESS SOURCE

this interesting subject at some length ; and there is
so much that is valuable in these admirably written
letters from one who has had between thirty and
forty years' experience in the kennel that, though I
have not permission to print them in full, I give
some extracts that may be useful to puppy-walkers.

" Our j)uppies," he says, " are sent out to quarters
when they are about seven weeks old, and I am
always careful to impress on those who take them in
that they should not feed them highly, and that they
should give them plenty of liberty." He adds that
when these instructions are carried out many of the
puppies may be seen following a horse at three or
four months old.

Much, of course, must depend upon the situation
of the quarters, but personally I should feel chary of
allowing my puppies to travel the high-road at such
a tender age.

" The walkers are cautioned that until their charges
arrive at that age it is not desirable to get them at
all heavy in flesh (or top-heavy), but after that they
cannot hurt them much, their limbs being better able
to stand the weight.

I have proven that crookedness (or rickets) is
brought on by too heavy feeding, puppies often being
allowed to gorge themselves with kennel food, i.e.,
oatmeal, flesh, and broth, mixed up very stiff, and
they are often allowed to go to it when they feel
inclined ; consequently those with the best constitu-
tions become top-heavy, the bone not being sufficient
to carry the weight. Personally," writes my corre-
spondent, " I feed the puppies at the kennels myself,

OF INTEREST AND AMUSEMENT 109

never leaving any food with them, and just keeping
them in growing condition.

"I have sent out twenty-six couples of whelps up
to date, not one of which has the least signs of
crookedness at present. Many of them are to be seen
now in the village, a mile or so from the kennels,
having their full liberty and without any bad results.
Some six seasons ago my kennelman was very anxious
to push on the whelps, which he did by feeding them
heavily several times a day. The consequence was
that we had not one single straight-legged puppy out
of the two litters so treated.

"Here is further proof. I sent out four puppies,
by Belvoir Nailor out of a nice home-bred bitch, to
a foster-mother, some eight or nine miles from here.
I told the farmer when the puppies were three weeks
old that he could help them along with some milk
and scraps from the house. These puppies I fetched
home when they were six weeks old.

" He had done them too well ; they were top-heavy
and crooked, and, owing to having been kept on a
straw-littered floor, their feet are very open.

"For two days I gave them nothing but scalded
milk, and an open field to run in, and unless you
could see how straight they have become and how
their feet have rounded up it would be difficult to
believe it. I think they are now as straight as their
brothers and sisters which I had just sent out."

The extracts which I have been permitted to make
from these letters, I think, should be valuable to some
in the " spring o' the year," when the whelps go out
to quarters ; but from personal experience I must still

110 OUR PUPPIES: ENDLESS SOURCE

maintain that, where it is possible to let the puppies
have plenty of grass to ramble over, it is a mistake
to take them far on the high-road till they are five
months old, or nearly that age.

A pair of puppies whelped on January 29th were
sent to me one year, after being walked for several
months by a sportsman whose house was on the road-
side, and who did the puppies a bit too well, perhaps,
but certainly allowed them to follow his horse along
the road at too early an age. They were so crooked
that I begged to have them taken away ; and not
only were they crooked, but bony enlargements had
formed about the knee-joints. They were transferred
to a place inside the walls of the county town, where
they were unable to get on the roads, but had lots
of room to gambol about some large grass enclosures.
The way that they improved was marvellous. They
are not " plumb," certainly, but not very far from it.

They are curious animals, these foxhound puppies ;
very wise, yet also very foolish in their ways ; and,
oh, how difficult to breed so that some fault shall
not be found ! Many of these faults come to them
when at walk, and crookedness is, no doubt, very
often one of these.

The great "Squire's" Furrier was crooked, we are
told ; but as I have heard that his immediate descen-
dants were not, this points to the probability that
Furrier was not well walked — or, perhaps, was too
well walked.

The puppies that I have known to be kept in too
confined a place, though not always crooked, were
invariably light of timber and not of powerful frame.

OF INTEREST AND AMUSEMENT 111

A very few days' confinement plays the very mis-
chief with a growing puppy, and, sooner than shut
one up because he chases a fowl, transplants a shrub,
or digs a grave in the tennis court, I would send him
back to kennels.

But for all these sins of puppyhood there is a
remedy, and, of course, great watchfulness is required
in order that bad habits may be checked at once.
Would that one could say the same of their physical
deficiencies ! Why do some have open feet, and what
can be done to improve them? Why should some
be swine-chopped ? — a defect for which there is, alas !
no remedy. And then their accidents ! What collie
or terrier ever cuts his foot and gets "a toe down"?
When did any other of the canine species break his
stern or get his eye struck out by the stable cat ?
— an accident which I have twice known to happen.
And their ailments ! That distemper ! Take that
first ! When are we going to get any reliable cure
for that ? When is the microbe going to be captured
which shall point the way to immunity by inocula-
tion? But why should distemper visit foxhounds ten
times more severely than it does other sporting dogs ?
What anxiety the fell disease gives to us who walk
a couple for the Master ! But think of the anxiety
of Master and huntsman, who have often twenty
couples down with it at the same time !

And then the yellows ! I have known a M.F.H.
who very closely supervises everything connected with
the kennel, to declare that he dreads the attacks of
yellows more than he does distemper ; and I know
of one place in a neighbouring county where it is

112 OUR PUPPIES

impossible to rear a puppy of any description. Fox-
hound, collie, or terrier all fall victims to an incurable
form of this disease. Yet I can safely say that I have
never lost a single foxhound puppy from this cause,
and have had no case of yellows here for the last
twelve years ; and this immunity I attribute to the
use of scalded milk from the very first.

Most sportsmen who are members of a hunt profess
to take an interest in the pack which they follow ; in
no way can they evince that interest so well as by
walking a puppy — or, better still, a couple — for the
Master. If they do, they will become aware of an
added interest, and one which invests a visit to the
kennels with a new pleasure. And surely all followers
of a hunt who are in a position to do so should make
a point of walking a puppy, instead of relying almost
entirely on the farmers — so many of whom do not
hunt — for assistance in this matter of keeping up
their pack.

CHAPTER VIII

ON BLOODING HOUNDS

Beyond all doubt the most satisfactory finish to a
run with foxhounds is the death of the fox if run
into fairly in the open.

When the anxious inquirers who have not partici-
pated in the day's sport receive the reply that " they
pulled him down in the open," satisfaction is at once
expressed, and the lucky ones who were in at the
death seem hardly more elated than those to whom
they tell the tale. The triumph is shared by all. It
is often noticeable, too, that hounds on these occasions
receive unstinted praise, which is by no means lavished
upon them when they have run a dead-beaten fox
to ground, or have lost him by some untoward accident,
some cunning wile, or by the sudden failure of scent
when victory seemed assured.

It is not very often in the course of a season that
scent remains first-rate during the entire day, and in
a wild country, inhabited by really stout foxes, the
odds are decidedly in favour of the quarry. When
Reynard runs into a populous neighbourhood, is viewed
here and hoUoa'd there, and headed everywhere, he
gets bothered and baffled, and falls an easier prey ;

Hounds, Qentlemen, Please. 9 113

114 ON BLOODING HOUNDS

but where he plods along unseen, nor followed by-
wondering sheep and curious cattle, a good deal of
luck must be on the huntsman's side if he is to catch
him.

No one who watches hounds carefully in their work
can fail to notice how much that work is affected
by a series of disappointments. With a good scent
they will, of course, go fast, and drive along well.
Really good hounds will always hunt well, and if there
be a soft fox in front they will catch him in apparently
good style, even if short of blood ; but with a fair
holding scent and an old Hector before them, I think
most sportsmen who have hunted hounds are agreed
that if short of blood they do not seem to press for-
ward with such intensity as they do when they are
getting a fox nearly every time they go out. Of
course, Beckford's story is well known of the pack
that did not kill a fox for three weeks, and then,
after having had one fox dug out for them, polished
off seven brace (I think it was) without a miss. It
is not only in hot chase or at the end of the pursuit
that most huntsmen declare they note the difference
in the work of their hounds when they are getting
plenty of blood, but they do their cold-hunting more
quickly, and with an appearance of greater deter-
mination, which is also visible in drawing thick places,
and when packing together on leaving covert.

To those who are fond of hound-work there is
immense pleasure in seeing it done in good style,
and the difference between a pack working along on
the line of a fox in a perfunctory sort of manner and
the same hounds maddening for his blood and driving

ON BLOODING HOUNDS 115

him before them in hot, concentrated fury, is really
so remarkable that I have wondered it has not been
oftener noticed in the profusion of hunting literature
that is set before us at the present day.

The huntsman who is really fond of his work and
fond of his hounds — as, to do them justice, most hunts-
men are — will do all in his power to save his favourites
from disappointment at the finish, and, when short of
blood, the anxiety of that functionary towards the end
of a run is almost pathetic. It is then that the mur-
muring of some extraordinary individuals that are
to be found in every hunting-field will be pretty sure
to make itself heard. If our huntsman displays an
eagerness for the death of the fox he is termed
bloodthirsty, and the unthinking and ignorant critics
imagine that his anxiety is caused by a desire to run
up a " big butcher's bill " which will be trumpeted forth
at the end of the season, be published even in the
columns of the Thuyiderer, and so bring to him huge
credit as a huntsman and a slayer of foxes. The fact
is that few good huntsmen are thinking of themselves
at all in the matter. They know perfectly well how
every action of theirs is criticised, and being, as a rule,
wise men, pay not the slightest heed to anything but
the interests of their hounds, which, if the field only
knew it, are, after all, their interest also.

What man is there who cannot criticise the hunts-
man and his work ? A season and a half's experience
often converts the youthful beginner into an authority
at the mess-table, club, or family circle on the whole
business that some very clever men spend a consider-
able portion of their lifetimes in mastering. " This is

116 ON BLOODING HOUNDS

all wrong, you know," I heard a young gentleman
explain at the beginning of the present season ; " no
one should ever dig a morning fox ! " Whether this
extraordinary maxim was hatched in his own callow
brain or not I am unable to say, but shortly after
on the same day, I heard it gravely repeated, and
once with quite a serious air by a lady.

I have searched my Thoughts on Hunting, by one
Peter Beckford, for a confirmation of this opinion
without success, nor can I find anything to that effect
in Somerville's The Chase, though these two works
contain, I think, all the information that most men
require on the subject of hunting ; indeed, a friend
of mine is wont to declare that no man should pass
an opinion on hunting subjects who cannot pass an
examination on Beckford.

But this matter of the digging brings me back to
my subject — the necessity for blood and the means
of obtaining it ; and for the present at least let us
put on one side all silly criticisms and sentimental
twaddle. I have inquired lately from a good many
efficient huntsmen and masters of hounds their
opinions as to the necessary for blooding hounds,
and the amount of blood that they require to keep
them really up to concert pitch ; and it seems to be
agreed that each pack ought to have at least one
fox a week to produce the desired results.

So very few of those who go out hunting in these
days take the slightest atom of interest in hounds,
that no wonder one hears strange things said in the
hunting-field ; but it is a great pity that this should
be so, and the folk that are to be pitied are the

ON BLOODING HOUNDS 117

people whose carelessness about hounds has caused
them to remain ignorant of many most interesting
traits in the character of that highly-bred animal,
the modern foxhound.

Many of those who go out hunting are content to
notice in a casual manner the clustering hounds wait-
ing with waving sterns at the meet for their hunts-
man's arrival, and perhaps deem it an interesting and
pretty sight to watch their greeting with its clamorous
rush ; but few have any idea of the depth of character,
powers of memory, and peculiar intelligence of the
foxhound, who nevertheless seems, in some respects,
a strangely dull and unobservant animal that cannot
compare with the collie or terrier in cleverness ; yet
in others he seems to display more brain-power than
the rest of the canine tribe, as one may gather when
listening to old stories by huntsmen of their best-loved
hounds.

One of the traits of the character of the foxhound
is his extreme sensitiveness, which causes him to be
subject to fits of deep dejection, to sulk in an extra-
ordinary manner ; and, objectionable as this very
common habit may be, it will be found that the
animal seldom gives way to it without reason. Fox-
hounds, although they will work like demons, are not
only impatient when disappointed in getting hold of
a fox that they have run to ground, and show dislike
to leaving the place where they have marked him,
but if the disappointment is repeated a few times,
begin to show a want of keenness about every detail
of the chase. They become slack, in fact, and this
displays itself not only in drawing but in casting. I

118 ON BLOODING HOUNDS

wonder what remedy for this state of things would
be suggested by the critics who are always ready to
blame a huntsman who digs a fox for his hounds? —
this being, I have also remarked, considered to be
a crime unpardonable if done on a good scenting day ;
for the sufficient reason, of course, that the critic
conceives that the time employed might be better
occupied in looking for another fox to give him a
gallop, the needs of the hounds receiving no thought
or consideration whatever.

Yet were I huntsman of a pack of hounds that was
short of blood, the good-scenting day is the one that
I would select to blood my hounds by the use of the
spade or terrier, for on such a day even slack hounds
become keener ; they will mark their fox with energy
and determination, and if they get hold of him when
in this mood, should break him up savagely, when
probably a cure will be then and there effected.

It can be truly said that on everything connected
with the chase Beckford's opinions remain as invalu-
able at the present day as they were when first given
to the public ; for, although the great Peter hunted
in the Stour Valley and on Cranbourne Chase one
hundred and thirty years ago, so much in the system
that he recommends must be accepted as unquestion-
ably correct, that we must conclude the author was
a sportsman considerably in advance of his age. For
instance, he is all for " style " in fox-hunting. " Most
fox-hunters," he says in the fifteenth letter, " wish to
see their hounds run in good style. I confess I am
myself one of these. I hate to see a string of them,
nor can I bear to see them creep where they can

ON BLOODING HOUNDS 119

leap. It is the dash of the foxhound which dis-
tinguishes him, as truly as the motto of William of
Wickham distinguishes us, A pack of harriers, if they
have time, may kill a fox ; but I defy them to kill
him in the style in which a fox ought to be killed."

In my edition of Thoughts on Hunting, on the page
opposite to that on which these words are printed, is
a picture of two couple of Beckford's hounds, and I
think they look very like catching any fox and doing
it in good style, too. Here are straight legs, round
feet, rare shoulders, deep chests, round ribs, strong
loins, and good quarters and thighs. The colour, to
be sure, would be too light for the taste of the present
day, but nothing of the heavy-jowled, crooked-legged
old Southern type is to be seen.

"Although," writes Beckford, "I am a great advocate
for style in the killing of a fox, I never forgive a pro-
fessional skirter," and yet so important did he deem
plenty of blood to be to produce this excellence of style
that he declares in his opinion when blood is wanted
the huntsman should take "every advantage that he
can of the fox." " You will think," he said, " that he
may sometimes spoil his own sport by this ; it is true
he sometimes does, but then he makes his hounds, the
whole art of foxhunting being to keep the hounds well
in blood " ; and immediately afterwards he presses this
point still more strongly when he says, " I confess that
I esteem blood so necessary to a pack of foxhounds
that with regard to myself I always return better
pleased with but an indifferent chase with death at
the end of it than with the best chase possible if it
end with the loss of the fox." This may seem an

120 ON BLOODING HOUNDS

exaggerated way of putting the case, but Beckford
writes entirely from the view of the houndsman, and
in no part of his work, not even in his immortal
description of a fox-hunt, does he descant upon the
pleasures of riding as they appear to him, though in
the beginning of his seventeenth letter he reads us a
lecture which, though it has been often quoted, will
stand repetition. " Fox-hunting, an acquaintance of
mine says, is only to be favoured because you can
ride hard and do less harm in that than any other
kind of hunting. There may be some truth in the
observation ; but to such as love the riding part only
of hunting, would not a trail-scent be more suitable?
Gentlemen who hunt for the sake of a ride, who are
indifferent about the hounds, and know little of the
business, if they do no harm, fulfil as much as we have
reason to expect from them, whilst those of a contrary
disposition do good, and have much greater pleasure.
Such as are acquainted with hounds and can at times
assist them, find the sport more interesting, and fre-
quently have the satisfaction to think that they them-
selves contribute to the success of the day."

So that even in Beckford's day there were "such
as love the riding part only of hunting," and were
"indifferent about the hounds." The gentlemen of
this kidney who hunted with the great Peter, I fear,
must have viewed with as much impatience as we see
manifested nowadays his very decided determination
that his hounds should have plenty of blood.

"You desire to know," he writes in the twenty-
second letter, " what I call being out of blood ? In
answer to which I must tell you that, in my judgment,

ON BLOODING HOUNDS 121

no foxhound can fail of killing more than three or
four times following without being visibly the worse
for it. When hounds are out of blood there is a kind
of evil genius attending all they do ; and, though they
may seem to hunt as well as ever, they do not get
forward ; while a pack of foxhounds well in blood,
like troops flushed with conquest, are not easily with-
stood. What we call ill-luck, day after day when
hounds kill no foxes, may frequently, I think, be
traced to another cause, namely, their being out of
blood; nor can there be any other reason assigned
why hounds which we know to be good should remain
so long as they sometimes do without killing a fox.
Large packs are the least subject to this inconvenience ;
hounds who are quite fresh and in high spirits least
feel the want of blood."

Beckford then deals with the remedy for " slack-
ness," which is invariably consequent on want of
blood. "If your hounds be much out of blood, give
them rest. ... If what I have now recommended
should not succeed, if a little rest and a fine morning
do not put your hounds into blood again, I know of
nothing else that will. After a tolerably good run
do not try to find another fox. Should you be long
in finding, and should you not have success after-
wards, it will hurt your hounds ; should you try a
long time and not find, that also will make them
slack ; and nothing surely is more contrary to the
true spirit of fox-hunting, for foxhounds, I have
already said, ought always to be above their work. . . .
When hounds are much out of blood some men pro-
ceed in a method that must necessarily keep them so.

122 ON BLOODING HOUNDS

They hunt them every day, as if tiring them out
were a means to give them strength and spirit.
When hounds are in want of blood, give them every
advantage. Go out early, choose a good quiet morning,
and throw off your hounds where they are likely to
find, and are least likely to change ; if it be a small
covert or furze brake and you can keep the fox in,
it is right to do it, for the sooner you kill him when
in leant of blood the better for your hounds. All kinds
of mobbing is alloivable when hounds are out of blood,
and you may keep the fox in covert or let him out
as you think the hounds will manage him best."

In the same letter Beckford gives instructions for
the digging of foxes in snow-time and reiterates his
opinion as to the absokite necessity for giving hounds
plenty of blood, but slyly adds, " But I seem to have
forgotten a new doctrine which I lately heard — that
blood is not necessary to a pack of foxhounds. If
you also should have taken up that opinion I have
only to wish that the goodness of your hounds may
prevent you from changing it, or from knowing how
far it may be erroneous. Those who can suppose the
killing of a fox to be of no service to a pack of fox-
hounds, may suppose, perhaps, that it does them hurt ;
it is going but one step further."

Those who have not studied Beckford's work may
imagine from these extracts that he was a blood-
thirsty sportsman who desired to show a long list
of foxes killed, but no idea could be more fallacious.
He writes most strongly against the unnecessary kill-
ing of foxes, and no one has ever put the matter
more strongly or in abler fashion ; but before quoting

-P-'ioto] [Lafayeite, Diihlin.

Mn. Wu.LiAM DE Salis Filgate.

IMaster of the Co. Louth Foxhounds since 18G0.

ON BLOODING HOUNDS 123

his words I must call to mind his opinion that three
or four succeeding days without a kill renders fox-
hounds visibly the worse for it. " Though," he writes,
"I am so great an advocate for blood as to judge it
necessary to a pack of hounds, yet I by no means
approve of it so far as it is sometimes carried. I
have known three young foxes chopped in a furze
brake in one day w^ithout any sport — a wanton
destruction of foxes, scarcely answering the purpose
of blood, since that blood does the hounds most good
which is most dearly earned. Such sportsmen richly
deserve blank days, and, without doubt, they often
meet with them. Mobbing a fox, indeed, is only
allowable when hounds are not likely to be a match
for him without it. Are not the foxes' heads which
are so pompously exposed to view often prejudicial
to sport in fox-hunting ? How many foxes are wan-
tonly destroyed, without the least service to the
hounds or sport to the Master that the huntsman
may say he has killed so many brace? How many
are digged out and killed, when blood is not wanted,
for no better reason ? — foxes that another day per-
haps, the earth's well stopped, might have run hours
and died gallantly at last ? "

These passages, I think, do most conclusively prove
that Beckford cannot be charged with inhumanity,
and that therefore his strong advocacy of the necessity
of blood for hounds — if we are to expect them to show
us really good sport — is entitled to the strongest
respect, and should command our belief when we
know that he was a past-master of the art of hunting,
and that all else that he wrote has been considered

124 ON BLOODING HOUNDS

valuable by the greatest sportsmen that have flourished
since his day. If Mr. Otho Paget's idea, that no one
should be allowed to take the field until they have read
and digested Beckford, could be carried out, we should
hear little of the " grousing " that often takes place
when the M.F.H. decides to " have him out " ; or when
he deems it advisable to make it a short day, and so
take hounds home " above their work," as Beckford
says. What is done, is done in nine cases out of ten,
for the sake of the hounds, and in the interests of
future sport, and of these interests none can judge so
well as the Master and huntsmen. There are in every
hunting-field some queer spirits who only seem happy
when finding fault with the management, and whom
nothing can please ; these you may lay long odds are
neither generous in their subscriptions to the Hunt,
nor do they trouble themselves to assist very much
in looking after the coverts or the country ; they can
all study Beckford, however, whose support has been
called for so often in this paper to uphold the axiom
that every pack ought to have at least one fox per
week to keep it up to the proper standard of excellence.
It is wearisome work, very often, digging for a fox,
and I don't think anybody likes it ; but I fancy it is
very seldom practised too often, although there have
been well-known eccentric individuals who become
notorious for the abuse of the spade.

CHAPTER IX

THE COLOUR OF HOUNDS: THOSE HELPFUL SPLASHES

OF WHITE

That " a good horse can't be a bad colour " is an old
saying, though it brought John Leech's favourite hero,
Mr. Briggs, to grief, being an inducement for him to
purchase his famous spotted hunter, who, having been
highly trained in a circus, insisted on sitting down on
his haunches whenever a band played. Well, we all,
I fancy, have our favourite colour for our horses as
well as for bright eyes and silken tresses.

In spite of the legendary romance that lingers about
a black, neither hunting men nor men of the Turf are
usually fond of the " coal-black steed," though, per-
sonally, I have had several very good hunters that
were blacks ; and I suppose our favouritisms in colour
are the result of pleasant recollections of the doughty
deeds of some bright particular stars, either " chestnut
or brown, or the flea-bitten grey." This, one would
think, can be the only reason for a sportsman pre-
ferring to buy a horse of one particular colour, though
no doubt an objection to appear conspicuous or outr4
might deter many from the purchase of a skewbald or

126 THE COLOUR OF HOUNDS : THOSE

a steed spotted like Mr. Briggs' favourite, no
matter how good a performer he was known
to be.

As to the utility of particular colours in hunters,
the reason that makes the modern military man
discard the grey as a charger is an argument, to my
mind, in favour of his use as a hunter — he can be
seen such a long way off. I recollect some years ago
having a capital run over a very wild and intricate
country on a very foggy day in Ireland, where, as a rule,
we are very little troubled by fog in the hunting
season. We went away from a covert on to a high
table-land in the Queen's County, where the mist lay
thick : the late kennel-huntsman of the Duhallow
carried the horn, and he was mounted on a marvellous
old grey mare that I never saw down at a fence.
Getting away, as usual, with his hounds, he crossed
the first road well in advance of us all. Being foggy,
it was a bad hearing day ; but some of us saw a ghostly
white shadow flitting on in front, and whenever it
disappeared we knew there was a fence. A brown or
a chestnut would have been invisible, but the fleeting
white shape guided us, and we heard the music at
last, and stayed in hearing of it to the end — stayed
till the music became loud and uproarious and we
found the pack baying round an earth. Then said
a friend to me, " A law should be passed compelling
all huntsmen to ride white horses."

So it would appear that for one colour at least utility
may be claimed in the hunting-field, so far as horses
are concerned.

Can the same be said of hounds ? Well, to a certain

HELPFUL SPLASHES OF WHITE 127

extent, I think it can. It is not often that a pure
white foxhound is bred (though I saw a puppy, and
a very well-made one too, of that colour last year)
and it is not often perhaps that a hound whose colour
is almost white, is a very good one ; but I can swear
that in my experience the most wonderful working
hounds that I have seen have had plenty of white
about them, and these are very much the easiest to
see when in chase. I have in my possession a good
many portraits of celebrated hounds of a past day,
and I have looked with interest at the pictures of a
good many more. With hardly an exception they are
light-coloured hounds, or hounds that have a good
deal of white about them.

Glancing back to early days of fox-hunting in the
eighteenth century, I have before me an engraving
from Stubbs' picture of the black, tan and white
Brocklesby Ringwood, 1788. Stubbs' hounds are full
of intelligence, but he did not always make them great
beauties. Ringwood is a very deep hound, standing
on short, almost stumpy forelegs that have great bone
and carry rare feet. Then there is Colonel Thornton's
famous Merkin and her puppies. She is black and
white with some tan about the head and a blue mottle
merging with the white. Merkin ran an attested trial
of four miles in seven minutes and half a second (there
were no chronographs, I think, in those days). She was
sold in 1795 for four hogsheads of claret, the seller to
have two couples of her whelps.

There is plenty of white, too, about Brocklesby Rally-
wood (1843), as painted by Ferneley, before he went
to Belvoir in 1850 in exchange for Rutland to be the

128 THE COLOUR OF HOUNDS: THOSE

very marrow of the famous ducal pack. His white
shoulders and nape of neck, breast, and forelegs are
very noticeable in the picture, and Will Goodall's
memorandum will suffice for further description :
" This is a most beautiful little short-legged dog,
exceedingly light of bone, but with beautiful legs and
feet." "Cecil," who saw his son Rallywood at eleven
years old, thus describes him : " His colour is a very
rich black, white and tan ; his symmetry is most
captivating and perfect. With a splendid intelligent
head, well set on a nice clean neck, good shoulders, legs
straight as arrows, rare feet, fine back and loins with
capital thighs, and rather under than over twenty-three
inches in height, he is, in my estimation, as near as
possible the perfection of a foxhound."

My sketch of perhaps the greatest of all sires,
Osbaldeston's Furrier, represents him as a black and
white hound (a very great deal of white about
him), of rather a short-backed type, extraordinarily
deep through his heart, and with a very high-set
stern. It is a broadside view, so the crookedness
which expelled him from Belvoir in 1821 is concealed
in the picture. That year " The Squire " wanted more
hounds for five days a week with the Quorn, and
went to Belvoir for the draft he had secured ; and,
writes " Cecil," " Jervis, the feeder, who was an ex-
cellent judge, pointed out Furrier, saying he was the
best bred hound in the kennel, and descended from
Mr. Meynell's Stormer, ' but I don't think his Grace
will keep him.' 'Why not?' said the Squire, 'he's
the finest-looking hound of the lot.' ' Yes,' replied
the feeder, ' but his legs are not quite straight, and

HELPFUL SPLASHES OF WHITE 129

the Duke won't like him.' This turned out to be
true, so Furrier was consigned to Quorn " ; and when
Osbaldeston took his pack to the Pytchley country
in 1829 he had no fewer than twenty-four and a half
couples in it by him, and oftentimes he made his
whole draft for the day from the progeny of this
renowned sire. Furrier ended his days at Brocklesby,
having been presented by the Squire to Lord Yar-
borough, and the last of his family was one litter at
Brocklesby.

My picture of Mr. Corbet's great Warwickshire
Trojan represents a terribly throaty, short-necked
hound with very faulty shoulders, which, like his
neck and the rest of his forehand, are white. He
does not look like being the only hound out of a
strong pack who could jump the park wall at Chil-
lington, and at " Lord Dartmouth's, near Birmingham."
The grey-pied Tarquin, another Warwickshire cele-
brity, was an ancestor of the hound that " could
do no wrong," the blue-pied Berkeley Cromwell, whose
head now hangs in the hall at Berkeley Castle —
" the best hound," said old Harry Ayris, " that ever
man cheered." Cromwell was got by Lord Henry
Bentinck's renowned Contest, whose colour was, ac-
cording to Cecil, " a good black, white, and tan "
("Hunting Tours," p. 89).

Cromwell's blood ran strong in a very great hound
of later date whose portrait is now before me. This
is Lord Coventry's Rambler (1873), who must always
rank as one of the sires of the age. My likeness is
an engraving, and shows a lovely, lengthy black,
white and tan hound, with absolutely everything

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 10

130 THE COLOUR OF HOUNDS: THOSE

right about him, just the sort one would imagine
to run hard, as he did in his ninth year. He was
by Lord Fitzhardinge's Collier, a descendant of Crom-
well. When I was at the Berkeley kennels some years
ago light colours still predominated, as they did in the
time of Harry Ayris, when the Earl was not particular
as to looks or colour, coarseness or straightness, so
long as the nose was right and the work good, and
they were not shy of tongue. The best-looking hound
in the world, if he had not these qualifications, was
put away at once. " Lord Fitzhardinge's hounds kill
more foxes and work harder than any pack in the
kingdom," said an authority of that day.

In the neighbouring kennel at Badminton a large
number of badger and yellow-pied hounds have always
been observable, due largely to the blood of the
celebrated Beaufort Justice (1813), a yellow-pied hound
by the New Forest Justice. In Ferneley's picture,
" The Meet at Grove in 1828," there is not a single
dark-coloured hound. Mr. G. Saville Foljambe, prob-
ably the best hound breeder of them all, was the
Master, and Lord Galway and Lord Henry Bentinck
are prominent in the picture, looking approvingly at
the pack that afterwards was to fetch 3,500 guineas
at the hammer.

I think absolutely the best foxhound I ever saw
at work was a black and white spotted hound, with
no tan about him at all. I first saw him on the
flags as a puppy, and heard the great sportsman who
bred him say, " I suppose I ought to draft him on
account of his beastly pointer colour — but, look at
his shapes ! " Warrior was not drafted, I am glad to

HELPFUL SPLASHES OF WHITE 131

say, but transmitted his splendid working qualities
to many descendants, and also, I am bound to admit,
his exact colour to a good many that I have seen.
He was a grandly shaped hound, and when one
huntsman of a neighbouring pack caught sight of
him and heard of his work, he never rested till he
had sent some of his best bitches to him, and excel-
lent results followed. No one, I think, likes the look
of a tanless black and white hound ; but Peter Beck-
ford remarks that " a good hound, like a horse, can't
be a bad colour." Still it appears to me that light
colours are preferable to dark in the field. Some
folk have ideas that the badger and hare pies are
" soft," that a predominance of white tells a tale
of constitutional weakness, but I think the great
hounds above mentioned show that this is not the
case.

At the present time dark-coloured hounds with
very little white about them appear to be most
fashionable, and if of almost whole tan colour, they
are most admired of aU, judging from remarks I
hear, particularly at hound shows ; but I am heterodox
enough to believe that as a colour "the beautiful
Belvoir tan " is the least to be desired when hounds
are in chase. We are not all able to ride close to
hounds when the heyday of youth is passed, and,
indeed, the majority of the field must usually be
content to view the pack from some little distance
when they are running hard. Now in heather, over
ploughed land, or in rough, bracken-covered fields,
their fashionable colour is almost invisible, but a
pack of dappled hounds one can see a mile away.

132 THE COLOUR OF HOUNDS : THOSE

They look better, too, to my mind as they sweep

across the greensward in a compact mass of varied

colour : —

*' Chime, ye dappled darlings,
Through sleet and snow,
Who can override you ?
Let the horses go 1

" Chime, ye dappled darlings,
Down the roaring blast,
You shall see a fox die
Ere an hour be past."

Those who have ridden in sight of hounds for any
length of time with the country as heavy as it is
now well know how difficult to follow with the eye
they become when the continued pace has put the
horses on their mettle to live with them, and the
stain from ploughed land and muddy ditches has ob-
literated all white from the colour of the gallant
pack and reduced them to one uniform dark drab.

When I first saw the Belvoir hounds on the flags
I was fairly amazed with the beauty and uniformity
of that most magnificent-looking pack, but two days
later when I saw them at work on the ploughs I
felt less in love with the " typical colour " of some
of them. I have seen the great Dexter, and have
read a great deal about him, but still am heathen
enough to declare that I should like him better with
some real good splashes of white about his sides.

A few years ago when hunting with the Devon
and Somerset Staghounds I noted often how difficult
it was to follow the dark tan hounds with the eye,
but how the dappled ones were fairly thrown up by

HELPFUL SPLASHES OF WHITE 133

the heather in bold relief. I reared one hound which
had been drafted to those regions on account of his
great size ; he was a dark-coloured hound, and, though
I took great interest in his proceedings, he was very-
difficult to distinguish, and, alas ! when found, he was
by no means "running at head." Two years ago a
well-known and enthusiastic young amateur hunts-
man excited great surprise by making public his
endeavour to get together a pack of " badger or hare-
pied hounds or those of a light colour." He knew
what he was about, however, and was going to hunt
a rough country, and, as I dislike wearing glasses
out of doors, my entire sympathy was with him in
his endeavour. I hunted a good deal not very long
ago with a pack in which the fashionable dark
colours predominated ; I fear they were not a very
first-class pack, but in a certain part of the country
1 found it so hard to see them that I fairly loved the
little spotted lady who led them such a dance among
the heather and bracken and low Irish furze ; out
of gratitude to her, perhaps, I have penned the above.

CHAPTER X

THE FOX IN SUMMER

" Stags in the forests lie, hares in the valley oh,
Web-footed otters are speared in the lochs
Beasts of the chase that are not worth a tally-ho 1
None can compare with the gorse covert fox."

Now is the season of respite, at length has arrived
the time of peace and goodwill to the vulpine race.
No more for many months shall disappointment in
the shape of locked hall-door await the rambling
fox at his earth after a nightly prowl. No more
shall the deep note of some well-known " finder "
arouse Sir Reynard from dreams of hen-roosts and
plunder, and strike terror to his guilty soul.

Nunc est ludendum, the time of domestic quietude,
of endless frolic with the precocious youngsters of
the fox family, of havoc among young birds, bunnies,
and field-mice.

The majority of the throng in scarlet or sable,
whose chief recreation for five months of the year is
the pursuit of the fox, will probably never again
set eyes on a single specimen of the race till the
first week of next November, and what becomes of

131

THE FOX IN SUMMER 135

poor Reynard in the meantime is a matter of which
they are profoundly ignorant and which appears to
concern them not at all.

Fortunately for the fox — fortunately for the noble
sport — there are sportsmen in every country who are
of a different kidney to the above. These are the
residents ; the poor country mice, whose quiet homes,
"embowered by trees and hardly known to fame,"
are situated among the green pastures across which
we ride with such rapture in the winter, and upon
these men devolves in great measure the care and
protection of the fox haunts and the inhabitants
thereof during the off season. In his morning or
evening ramble the country sportsman, an he be a
true man, will note the weak place in the covert
fence and see that it be repaired against trespass.
To him w^ill be brought early news of the litters in
his neighbourhood, which he will protect with a
fatherly care, and whose progress, education, and
amusements will afford him much interest and
pleasant recreation.

Although an amnesty has been now proclaimed
between the foxhound and his hereditary foe, poor
Reynard has other and more deadly enemies to con-
tend against, and from whom he requires protection.
He has an evil reputation, and that lying jade Rumour
has made it a thousand times worse than it ought
to be.

" The fox took my lambs last night," said a wrathful
agriculturist not long ago.

" How do you know it was the fox ? " I mildly
inquired.

136 THE FOX IN SUMMER

" Didn't I see the blood on the ground, and find the
lambs themselves lying in a ditch, half eaten?"

"But couldn't a dog have done that?" I suggested.

"I know the fox did it. Don't I hear him barking
every night ? " was the reply.

In vain I argued that it is not the practice of the
fox to bark when in pursuit of his prey — that, on the
contrary, he is a silent hunter ; that his bark is a
serenade to his lady-love, a call to a comrade, or a
warning to his cubs. Words were useless, pleading
ineffectual — and the poison was prepared. The utmost
favour I could gain was that the strychnine should be,
for the first night, placed in some porridge and not
in meat. The result was that within two hundred
yards of where the poison was laid were found the
corpses of three dogs — one a highly-prized setter of
the lamb-owner — two cats, several crows and magpies,
and a missel-thrush. Alas ! on the following day, in
the adjoining field, was found a fine dog fox, cold and
stiff, and almost in his paws the body of a crow.
Poor Reynard had apparently never entered the lamb-
ing field at all — he was found a quarter of a mile
away from the porridge ; but dogs, cats, and birds had
all partaken of the deadly mess.

I by no means wish to assert that foxes never take
lambs, but I believe they do so very rarely, considering
the ease with which they could seize numbers of them
in the lambing season if they wished. I have asked
many shepherds who have been sitting up with the
lambs if they ever saw a fox seize a lamb, and never
could get a reply in the affirmative. From the
window which is in front of me as I write, I look

Photo]

Mr. Assheton Biddulph.
Master of the King's County Hounds.

[Elliot A Fry.

THE FOX IN SUMMER 137

out over green pastures grazed by many sheep. My
lawn is divided from these pastures by a sunk fence,
and by the side of this sunk fence is a favourite
" run " of Reynard in his rambles from the adjacent
gorse.

Often and often have I seen him appear, attended
by fluttering magpies, and, nose to ground, hunt
slowly, like a setter, through the pastures. The sheep
when he is near wheel away, and, with heads erect,
follow him at a respectful distance, but betray no
more alarm than they do when lepus timidus wanders
shyly into the field and limps and squats alternately,
as is his custom of an afternoon. Evidently the fox
is considered no mortal foe by the flock ; but mark
the hurried flight, the awful panic caused by the
sight of the most harmless of lap dogs, even though
he be on my side of the sunk fence. Ewes and
lambs are off in a mad stampede, terror is betrayed
in every motion, they squeeze in a huddled mass
through a gap in the fence beyond and are lost to
view. They know too well the canine fondness for
mutton.

Nevertheless, it is certain that a weakly and newly
dropped lamb is now and then carried off by a fox
when the vixen has maternal cares on hand ; for
when the cubs are very young the forays on farm-
yard and hen-roost are most frequent. It is at this
season, then, that the country sportsman can do much
to lessen those "bills of mortality" which assume such
terrible proportions when they are presented to poor
M.F.H. A stroll with the gun in the evening and
morning in the neighbourhood of the covert will

138 THE FOX IN SUMMER

most likely provide a brace of bunnies — and what
sportsman will grudge them ? — a rook or two, or a
wood pigeon, and so save the farmer his fowls and
the master his silver. Now also is the short-lived
season for the rook rifle, and the tender "branchers"
are wonderfully relished by the fox ; but most of all
does he delight in a succulent water-hen.

Last winter, in the snow-time, I sallied forth when
daylight permitted, and from the covert fence I
tracked a fox's wanderings for many a mile. He
led me to every pond in the parish, and as every
piece of water was frozen over I wondered not a little
at first. However, the tracks of water-hens soon re-
vealed the object of his quest, and at last I came to
a pond where there had been a rush and a capture
on the ice, as testified by the marks of the struggle
and drops of blood on the snow.

Satisfied with his bag, the fox had then returned
home well pleased, for I pricked him back to the
covert and marked the depression in the snow caused
by the bird he was carrying. And on his homeward
journey he must have worn his brush in a jaunty
fashion, for I never saw the mark of it in the snow,
though I frequently noted he had been trailing it on
his outward prowl. But it is not the " gorse-covert
fox" who is the real desperado, the robber of the
finest turkeys, the slaughterer of hecatombs of geese.
The great culprit is the outlyer, the solitary brigand
whose lair is on some straggling double fence, gorse-
covered bank, or small, sequestered brake too insigni-
ficant to be regularly drawn. This retreat when dis-
covered will generally disclose the desperate character

THE FOX IN SUMMER 139

of the outlaw, for the heaps of feathers and bones
and the heads of hapless ducks found there far
exceed the contents of the fox's larder in the covert.
" Rats and mice, and such small deer," young rabbits,
beetles, frogs, and snails form the usual menu of the
" gorse-covert fox," varied by occasional tribute from
a farmyard, but seldom fi^om a neighbouring one. Ex-
perience tells me that a fox very rarely indeed takes
fowls or ducks from the vicinity of the covert he
frequents, but, probably wishing to be at peace with
his neighbours, travels far afield for his poultry.

I think that a fox does not manage to kill many
full-grown rabbits in the course of a year, but he
seldom fails to capture at least one young one in a
summer's evening ; many an hour have I wiled away
right pleasantly in watching the grace, activity, and
amazing swiftness of this " last of our wild beasts "
when in pursuit of the nimble coney.

A few years ago there were two litters of cubs in
a gorse covert in my immediate neighbourhood, and
a portion of the field adjoining the covert had been
ploughed up ; this ploughed land formed a play-
ground and hunting-field for the cubs, and here I
often watched them receive their early lessons in
rabbit-catching from the vixen. About six in the
evening I used regularly to take up my position at a
corner of the covert, and seldom had many minutes
to wait before the cubs appeared in the open.

When the sun was dropping low, and the stillness
of evening replaced that indescribable hum and bustle
which pervades the world during daylight even in
the sleepiest of sleepy hollows, I would move as

140 THE FOX IN SUMMER

silently as possible by the fox covert till I reached the
corner and could command a view of the ploughed
land.

The bullocks grazing in the field, with the curiosity
of their species, would advance upon me slowly, but,
finding that I remained absolutely motionless, in-
variably continued their ruminations close around me,
and often formed a living screen from behind which
I could observe, without fear of detection, the
manoeuvres of the foxes.

In the quiet twilight, while the cattle beside me
cropped close the green herbage, and the scent of
their breath gave an added sweetness to the evening
air, the rabbits hopped and squatted and played wild
games of romps in the fallows outside the gorse
bushes ; and in the silence one could hear the patter
of their paws on the ground. But the most sensitive
ear could catch no sound of footfall when a cub
appeared in the open as suddenly as if he had been
shot up from below. Shortly the whole litter of four
half-grown cubs would be seen, but of these and
their gambols the bunnies took scant notice ; nor did
the cubs appear much disposed to be aggressive till
the vixen came upon the scene. Then all was
changed : such bunnies as did not bolt at once into
the depths of the gorse squatted flat in terror, while
the cubs crowded round their parent with every
demonstration of joy. Then a curious sight could
be witnessed. As deliberately as a keeper places his
guns outside a pheasant covert, so did the vixen post
her cubs at intervals along the outside of the gorse,
and then proceeded to hunt the bit of ploughed land.

THE FOX IN SUMMER 141

which I should mention had been sown with gorse
seed as an addition to the covert. Soon she would
put up a squatting rabbit, who darted for his life
towards the gorse with Mrs. Vixen in hot pursuit,
while the cubs did their best to cut off poor bunny's
retreat. I never witnessed a capture effected in this
manner, though I have no doubt the manoeuvre was
at times successful, for the " shaves " were often very-
close indeed. On one occasion a rabbit bolted the
other way, and faced for the open ; and never have
I seen any animal rival the incredible swiftness of
that vixen's rush. Ere twenty yards had been
covered she was upon him, and one loud squeak
told of the closing of long jaws on the loins of the
victim.

Foxes prowl in company far more frequently than
is generally supposed, and hounds have, I fancy, a
brace in front of them much oftener than we who
ride to them at all suspect. Not once, but many
times have I seen three foxes issue from the neigh-
bouring covert " 'twixt the gloaming and the mirk "
of a summer's evening, and, like Indians on the
war-path, move stealthily in single file across the flat
fields towards the rough hillside ; often, on a dewy
morning in June, when riding a colt before the sun
had risen high, I have viewed a brace returning
together, and sometimes both were laden with the
spoils of foray. When the young corn is getting
high and the meadows ready for the mower, foxes
are rarely seen save by those whose pleasure or
duty it is to be abroad early when the mist still lies
on the lowlands and the dew is glittering on the

142 THE FOX IN SUMMER

grass ; when a solemn hush is over the land after
the burst of melody which greets the dawn from
grove and coppice, and when even that natural
ventriloquist, the corncrake, who has been
" scraping " incessantly through the night, has
ceased his monotonous cry.

Then is the time to steal down to the covert, and
while that glorious glow is still in the East, maybe
you shall behold the triumph of Reineke Fuchs. Here
he comes, stepping daintily through the wet grass,
and trailing, like Achilles, his slain — the good, grey
goose held by the neck in his mouth, her body
swung across his shoulders, and her drooping pinions
brushing the dew ; or perchance Dame Partlet is
between his bloody jaws, her breast feathers dropping
at every step — a rueful spectacle.

Have no fears, however, for your own fowl-house
or farmyard, if they be close to the covert. Yonder
victims have been "lifted" from a far country — you
may safely reckon on that; it is almost incredible
the distance that a fox will carry a heavy duck or
turkey.

Distrust, then, the complainant whose dwelling is
very nigh to a fox covert, when he declares the
depredations of the fox to be unceasing ; for, though
my fowls roam at large within two hundred yards
of a gorse, yet in six years I have lost but one. On
one occasion, in a very dry summer, a fox resorted to
a neighbouring small plantation, and, stealing out at
midday, was seen by my stableman to stalk an old
grey cock, whose peculiarly raucous voice had of ttimes
" murdered sleep," and was my special abhorrence.

THE FOX IN SUMMER 143

Alas ! they holloa'd and warned Reynard off just as
he was about to make the fatal spring that would
have rid me of my plague for ever. This was the
only other instance of even attempted robbery in
six years ; and yet that covert invariably held
foxes, and one summer harboured two litters.

The curious mixture of boldness and timidity,
which is one of the characteristics of the fox, has
been noticed by many writers and by all sportsmei^
When a fox is once fairly away and the pursuit has
begun, it needs but the sight of a human being in
the distance to turn him from his course and cause
him to pass, without entering, the strongest coverts,
where shelter and safety seem assured. But, on the
other hand, when he is headed immediately after
breaking covert, he will return to it in spite of the
most strenuous efforts to ride him out, and will face
a field of horsemen and thread his way through them
with extraordinary boldness and determination. This
well-known fact should surely be taken into account
by hunting men, and should cause them implicitly
to obey orders and remain where they are posted
by the M.F.H. at the covert side, for a skirting
horseman has made 7nany a bad fox. The best-laid
plans of foxes, as well as those of mice and men,
gang aft agley, and we may be sure that this 'cutest
of wild beasts lays out his plan of campaign as
soon as he is aroused from his noonday siesta by
the note of a hound.

We who have noticed his proceedings can well
imagine what poor Reynard's thought must be when
that happens. Finder, from the thickest spot in the

144 THE FOX IN SUMMER

gorse, is impelled to throw out an eager whimper;
Fugleman, Singer, and Rallywood press to the sound,
and the bushes crack and wave as they press. Their
ecstatic notes set the horses capering, thrill the very
souls of their riders, and bring vexation and alarm
to the ruddy-brown animal who lies coiled up like
a snake among the driest of grass or bracken in the
sunniest spot in the covert. Quickly getting on his
legs, Reynard glides ventre a terre to his earth. It
is stopped, but he guesses as much, and, by no means
disconcerted, he threads his way to the covert fence.
If the coast be clear he will away at once to Pinch-
me-near Forest, but the chatter of many tongues,
the stamp and snort of steeds, and the aroma of
tobacco proclaim that here is stationed the field ; and
though he probably guesses that his best chance
would be to charge out straight through the throng,
when many of them would infallibly ride after him
and completely foil the scent, yet such policy is
contrary to his inclinations and the traditions of his
race.

He wishes to slip away unseen, and the first few
moments of his flight he would desire to devote to
consideration of chances.

He knows so well all the surroundings of the covert,
you see ! If he can slip through the usual smeuse
in the thick bullfinch which bounds the next field,
not a soul will observe him, and then he can steal
along by the side-fence and have time to peer into
the lane where that infernal dog coursed him the
last time, and try if he can cross in safety.

So he stealthily works round by the covert fence,

THE FOX IN SUMMER 145

looks out, drops into the field beyond, and makes
for the smeuse. Alas ! Mr. Luckless comes round
the corner to light that cigar, or Mr. Dawdle, who
is late as usual, and hasn't been to the meet, enters
the field by the gate at the far side and meets the
fox face to face. He turns, but already the hounds
are emerging from covert, so he circles back in face
of the horsemen now pressing for a start. " Hang
it ! they are everywhere ! " he says to himself. " The
dog in the lane will have heard this row and be on
the watch ; better back to covert at once." So,
regardless of whip-cracking or shouts, he darts
through the throng and gets back to shelter, where,
perchance, bad scent and foiled ground serve him so
well that he is left in peace. " What a beastly
bad fox ! " say Messrs. Luckless and Dawdle. Well,
perhaps he is so now, for he has learned a bad
lesson, though he wasn't a bad one when he first
slipped away, but both looked like going and meant
it.

That " the good fox is the one which goes away
first " is an accepted truth, but this is by no means
always the case, and I knew a little vixen who
resided in a gorse covert where foxes were plentiful —
I knew a little vixen, I say, who stoutly refused
to leave her home so long as another fox remained ;
but then away she would go, and invariably over
about the best line she could choose, while we were
seeking for "passes" in wired fences and railway
crossings in pursuit of a comrade who always selected
the most undesirable country in the locality.

It is most difficult to account for the extraordinary

Uouiuls, Gentlemen, Please. XI

146 THE FOX IN SUMMER

number of what hunting men call " bad foxes " which
are found in some seasons.

Foxes that have been badly frightened by human
beings soon become bad foxes, and seldom can be
induced to face the open without extraordinary pres-
sure. The attentions of their four-footed enemies
in the covert are troublesome, but preferable to even
the sight of the hated biped in scarlet outside.

And from consideration of bad foxes one's thoughts
turn to scent — the great mystery of Diana, the puzzle
to huntsmen from the days of Nimrod to the time of
Tom Firr. What more can be said or written upon
so perplexing a subject ? Truly, I fear but little
that is really useful, though experiences and reflec-
tions may possibly be found entertaining. Theories,
axioms, and hard-and-fast rules have from time to
time been put forward concerning scent and the
causes which influence it, and all in their turn have
been contradicted and upset. When —

"Each horse wore a crupper,
Each squire a pigtail,"

our ancestors believed in the " southerly wind and
the cloudy sky" as heralds of a hunting morning
Half a century passes, and Squire Delme Radcliffe,
in eloquent prose, begs for a northerly breeze to
bring him scent and sport. The " lowering wintry
morn " is welcomed, in spite of its gloom, by the
ardent fox-hunter, and the rays of bright Phoebus
bring no brightness to his soul ; some seasons ago a
continuance of sport, such as is seldom seen, was

THE FOX IN SUMMER 147

enjoyed all over the Sister Isle in the sunniest and
bluest sort of weather.

" There's a scent, you may swear, by the pace that they drive,
You must tackle to work with a will ;
For as sure as you stand in your stirrups alive.
It's a case of a run and a kill."

I recollect listening to the remarks of a number of
sportsmen one morning a few years ago, as they
watched a fine pack of foxhounds gambolling round
the hunt servants at the try sting-place.

"I think there won't be much of a scent to-day,"
quoth No. 1 ; "so much dew and spiders' webs on the
hedges."

" Sure not to run to-day," said No. 2 ; " look at
those hounds rolling about."

" Never a scent with a north-west wind," remarked
No. 3. " What do you think. Sir Charles ? "

The veteran thus addressed moved not the cigar
from his lips, but made answer between the puffs.
"Well, you young fellows seem to know all about
it. Now, I'm just old enough to know that I know
nothing about it at all !"

Caustic the remark, but correct ; for what followed ?
Twenty minutes later hounds found their fox in a
woodland, and made the sylvan alleys fairly ring with
their melody, and the dry beech leaves whirled up in
red clouds in their tracks. They swept like a pent-up
torrent along a broad avenue, hard, white, and solid
as cement, twisted through a gateway into a stretch
of deer park, across which they flew, leaving spurring
horsemen far behind. Then throwing themselves over

148 THE FOX IN SUMMER

the deer-park wall, raced into their fox — a grey old
campaigner — in the middle of a heavy field of plough.

"They didn't give you much time to look at the
spiders' webs on the fences, I fancy," grimly remarked
Sir Charles, as he noted the smoking steeds and per-
spiring riders.

Yet in all the observations I listened to at the meet
there was a certain amount of sense and truth born
of tradition, and, perhaps, experience. It is a bad
sign when cobwebs are seen and when hounds roll,
and the north-west wind is, as a rule, unfavourable to
scent, but not ahcays. Why not always? Therein lies
the insoluble mystery. So many abler pens than mine
have written, so many authoritative tongues have
spoken on the subject, that I jot down these reflections
of my own with much diffidence and humility.

Though it is, I believe, an acknowledged fact that
some dog foxes emit a stronger scent than others,
yet I am inclined to think that, apart from the
effect of soil and atmosphere, and the nature of the
vegetation through which a fox passes, we are, in
this vexed question of scent, a good deal more
dependent upon the particular animal we are hunting
than is generally supposed.

I have, or had, to be thankful for a gift — or is it
knack? — of viewing foxes away from covert, and
during the pursuit, which does not seem to be shared
to the same extent by many of my friends ; and, thanks
to this power of observation, I have several times
noted a certain occurrence in the hunting-field, which
I have no doubt has also been manifest to many
readers of these pages. Let me give, as an example,

THE FOX IN SUMMER 149

the first occasion on which I saw it happen. This was
in Ireland, and, alas ! it is many, many years ago.

The Curraghmore hounds had met at Listerlin, and
were drawing a gorse covert — name forgotten. How
vividly the whole scene comes before me as I write !
The pleasant balmy afternoon on the grassy hillside, the
wild, green fields of the Ross country stretching away
to meet the dull grey sky ; John Duke's eager face as
he rises in his stirrups, and twists his mouth to cheer
his darlings ; the glorious music that rose from all
parts of the covert — I can hear it now, here in this
old arm-chair.

Three rustics on the top of a bank in the Browns-
town direction will surely head the fox if he should
break that way, and even Lord Waterford's sonorous
voice fails to convey to them his wishes that they
should come down or hide behind a gorse bush on
the fence.

Away goes a magnificent fox, with a tag to his
brush of really dazzling whiteness, and straight for
those rustics he heads. The pack swarm out not a
hundred yards behind him. The excitement is intense,
and just as his lordship appears to be about to with-
draw his restraint from the eager but obedient field,
a lady's horse elects to lie down and have a pleasing
little roll. Among those who assisted the Amazon
I was not the least irate, and the flick of the whip
which brought that misguided quadruped to his feet
was an exceedingly bitter one. What a curious sight
did we behold when gallantry permitted us to turn
our attention to the chase ! Hounds had been able
to run but slowly ; the fox had been headed by the

150 THE FOX IN SUMMER

rustics, had jumped the fence to his right, and under
its shelter was hurrying back to covert. The field,
with the exception of our " humane society," was
following the slowly returning pack, which patiently
puzzled out Reynard's returning steps. I had nothing
then to do but to remain still. I had lost no start,
and equanimity was restored. But no sooner had
our fox re-entered the covert, when, at the same
spot from which he made his exit, a second fox
slipped away. No. 2 was a great dark fellow, a
rough-looking customer, with shaggy fur and full
brush unadorned, however, with a particle of white.
Away he went right in the tracks of No. 1, but no
rustics bothered him ; the yokels, in high delight,
were " following the hoont " back to the covert. It
was my privilege to hold my hat in the air, and to
convey to Duke what had happened. He elected to
follow this fox, as the coast was clear, but meanwhile
hounds were back in covert, and there was a slight
delay in getting them to the horn. But few minutes
had elapsed since the first fox broke ; there was no
change in the weather, no overhanging clouds had
passed away, and the second fox was running a
foiled line. Yet the way those beautiful hounds
dusted that unfortunate was a sight to see, and
right merry was the dart which followed. How well
I remember it! One hard-riding pursuer will recollect
it to his dying day, I fear — a broken leg is a sorry
memento of a day's sport. But maybe he has forgotten
it ; he certainly appeared to have done so, to judge by
the way he was going last season.

This much is certain, that the first fox left little or

Photo] [W. Daveij d- Sons, Harrogate.

Mr. Isaac Bell.

Master of the Kilkenny Hounds.

THE FOX IN SUMMER 151

no scent, and hounds could run him but slowly. Five
or six minutes later, over the same ground, foiled
as it was before the second fox crossed it, they ran
another fox like wildfire, and both were dog foxes,
I am sure. Since then I have noted much the same
thing happen more than once, and have several
times seen hounds change from a fox they had been
running hard to one that they could scarcely hunt,
though the latter was a very short distance in front
of them. On every one of these occasions I have
heard men express astonishment at the sudden
change of scent, but cannot recollect anybody
suggesting that this was due to the change of foxes,
as I firmly believe it was.

I mentioned that both the foxes I saw hunted by
the Curraghmore hounds were dog foxes ; because it
is a well-established fact that a heavy vixen, or one
that is nursing her cubs, does not, as a rule, give
out as strong a scent as a dog fox. This must have
been noticed at the end of a season by all hunting
men who take interest in the sport and to whom
the glory of the gallop is not the sole aim and object
of hunting. But here, again, there is no hard-and-
fast rule, and occasionally hounds will race into such
a vixen in a few screeching minutes, though they
may seem reluctant to break her up when killed.
To the best of my knowledge, I have seen a bagman
hunted but twice in my life, and I would that my
score in this game had been a duck's egg. In both
instances hounds ran in a puzzled, purposeless sort
of manner; exactly, in fact, in the style in which
the celebrated Mr. Facey Romford's hounds hunted

152 THE FOX IN SUMMER

the gift fox into Mr. Hazey's preserves. From this
I gather that there is much difference between the
scent of the Leadenhall gentleman and that of the
genuine article. This, of course, by no means proves
that wild foxes have not all the same scent ; but it
happens that the casual manner in which I once saw
a keen pack of foxhounds hunt a bagman first set
me thinking that all wild dog foxes might not throw
out the same odour, and subsequent observations
have satisfied me that they do not.

But to what purpose, these reflections upon scent?
What is the use of bothering about the matter?
After all, it is not in our power to alter it ; and, if
we could, we should probably do harm. How many
of us would come out hunting if we knew a bad-
scenting day was before us ? And yet what fun we
have, what pretty hound work we oftentimes
witness, what lots of sociability we enjoy, even on
a bad-scenting day ! For my part, I think that
much of the wondrous enchantment connected with
the chase would be lost were we always sure " to
ride to a scent breast high." Hunting rises superior
to all other pastimes by reason of its infinite variety ;
and anticipation is not the least of its pleasures — the
anticipation of sport which is so largely dependent
upon this perplexing scent.

To whom, then, can these reflections be of any
sort of benefit?

From my window, as I pen these words, the sight
of the eternal rain pelting upon the brown surface
of a Highland lochy, and the dense wet mist on the
moors has brought sorrow to my soul. But lo ! a

THE FOX IN SUMMER 153

happy thought arises, dispels the gloom, and permits
me to bring this chapter to a close in a spirit of
tolerable cheerfulness.

Perchance, after a bad morning's sport next winter,
" ingenious youth " may restrain his impulse to go
home, may recall the words of the enthusiast who
scribbles these lines, and say to himself, " Perhaps
the afternoon fox may possess a more powerful
perfume ! " Then it may come to pass that he shall
stay out and enjoy " the run of the season." At all
events, let the said youth remember that the lines
of Whyte-Melville I quoted on an earlier page,
describe the only way, when hounds are in the open,
of ascertaining whether there is, or is not, a scent.

CHAPTER XI

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

I DO not think I ever remember to have seen so few
coverts drawn blank as in the present season. The
litters did well, it is true, and there w^ere plenty of
them ; it was a good breeding year though I heard
of no very large litters anywhere. Yet, though
most countries are well stocked with foxes they
have had just as many before now, only, I think,
they have never been so easy to find.

It is the extraordinarily wet season that has
brought this about, I have little doubt, for a fox
would find it a very difficult matter to make him-
self really comfortable lying out in such a winter
as this. Those who reside in the country cannot
fail to have noticed how, w^ithout any severe frost,
all the undergrowth in the coverts, save the very
stems of the briars, has disappeared. The tangle of
weeds and coarse grasses which made our fences
so blind has gone long ago, and gone without very
much aid from King Frost. Fairly battered down
flat by the ceaseless downpour, it has simply rotted
aw^ay.

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 155

No chance for a dry bed for poor Reynard in the
big double fence, osier-bed, or little outlying brake
this winter ; and many a nice snug drain, with well-
sanded floor, which has sufficed for an earth in
dry seasons, now carries a foaming torrent. Remains
then to the fox the shelter of the gorse, the privet,
the pleached laurel covert, the rocky fastnesses of
some wild woodland, where also among the roots of
some giants of the forest may be discovered the
Castle of Malepartus.

But the plenitude of foxes in the coverts this season
has, I think, been the cause of the somewhat unsatis-
factory termination of very many good runs that
I have seen. Foxes, it appears to me, do not at
present trouble themselves to make for some well-
known drain, but go straight for a breeding-earth
or fox covert, and if the latter be reached a change
of foxes almost invariably occurs, much to the dis-
tress and misery of many a huntsman.

" Why is it that fresh foxes invariably spring up,
invariably go away, and that hounds invariably
change?" some one asked despairingly the other day,
when the pursuit had to be stopped owing to the
lateness of the hour, as has so often been the case
this season in every Irish hunting country. Few
persons except those immediately connected with the
pack, or the very small minority who are deeply
interested in hound-work, ever credit the foxhound
with the wonderful sagacity and powers of memory
he possesses. Folk see the fox away, or hear that
he has gone, and if sufficiently well mounted they
see hounds pursuing him ; but few of them guess

156 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

that the majority of the pack know most of the
game a little better than any of us. When, after
the "forty bright minutes," or steady hunting run,
we near the well-known surroundings of some
favourite covert, is it to be supposed that hounds
do not know where they are as well as the most
determined thruster who follows them so closely, or
the steady " pointsman " who has come best pace by
gaps and bridle-roads ?

In the country from which I write, most of our
coverts are gorse, and some are commanded by
eminences from which the work in covert can be
witnessed ; and I have noted how, when hounds enter
in pursuit of a fox, many of them will not content
themselves with smeusing after him through the
thick furze in a long-drawn string, but make straight
for the good bit of lying where they usually rouse
a fox. Up jumps the fresh fellow, and, with a verit-
able shriek of delight, the hound plunges after him ;
the gorse is alive now with excited hounds, and,
scared out of his life, the fresh fox flies at once,
maybe without being viewed ; perhaps just a glimpse
has been caught of him, or perchance a whipper-in
has got round and catches a steady full view of him
crossing the middle of the field, and, in the latter
case, there should be no doubt as to whether he is
the run fox or not.

No, although we have been told, or have read,
how to distinguish a fresh fox from a hunted one, I
make bold to say that it is not always a very easy
matter.

The draggled, mud-stained object that enters a

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 157

gorse covert or passes through bracken or long, dry
grass, cleans the marks of travel very quickly from
his sides, legs, and brush ; and, if he pass across a
ride close to your horse, allowing you but a glimpse
of his back as he steals through the grass, it is not
so easy to decide if he has been travelling or not.

A hunted fox moves with drooping brush, we know ;
but I never see foxes, fresh or beaten, crossing covert-
rides with raised brush. At that time the animal,
knowing he is liable to be seen, makes as little
display as possible.

When a fox, after pursuit, lies up in a patch of
gorse, and bolts from it when hounds close with him,
he goes away with a rush, makes a last bid for life,
and the effort carries him so fast that this, combined
with his comparatively clean appearance, causes him
sometimes to be mistaken for a fresh fox.

Get a good look at him, though, from a little
distance, and if he is in the open the stilty, high-
on-the-leg appearance of the run fox cannot be
mistaken, and, once seen, will not be forgotten. Last
week I saw a fox run very smartly for four or
five miles to a large gorse covert on the slope of
a heathery hill; above the gorse on top of the hill
is a sort of kopje with rocks and boulders strewn
about, and from this coign of vantage I had a splendid
view of the covert below. I viewed three foxes there,
but there was an open space in the gorse on which
the snow still was lying, and this the foxes crossed
like the figures on the slides of a magic lantern.
There was no mistaking the hunted one — he looked
absurdly higher than the others ; and his waist was

158 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

very noticeable ; but we left him behind a few
moments later, for a good fox stole away through the
heather, was holloa'd, and naturally the huntsman got
his hounds out in pursuit.

There is, of course, a well-known and deep-rooted
objection entertained by most huntsmen to killing
even a well-beaten fox in a gorse covert. It " stains "
the covert, we are told, and the chances are that
foxes will desert a covert so stained — for a time.
I cannot but think that this objection is somewhat
fallacious if the covert be of any size, and one that
usually holds several foxes ; but in very small gorses,
particularly if they have grown to be at all " open,"
a kill does no doubt have a bad effect. In a season
like the present, however, when most coverts are
holding well, it seems to me that the hounds might
be considered before the reputation of the covert.

No doubt there are numerous difficulties and
dangers ahead of the huntsman and whippers-in who
on tired horses arrive in the late afternoon within
a field or two of a covert towards which the gallant
pack are straining after their fox. What is to be
done ? If a fresh fox goes away and even a few
couples come out on his line, it may want a man
on a very fresh horse to stop them. The field is
scattered and squandered, and our huntsman hardly
likes to ask any of the gentlemen on their tired
horses to take up positions and lend a hand ; while
the idea of the whole pack starting away with an
old dog fox, empty from his long fast, fresh and
fit to run over the next two parishes, fairly makes
him shudder. " Best stop them when we can ! Get

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 159

round them, there ! " he shouts, and so has ended
many a good chase in the last three months.

But, if horses be not done to a turn, I myself
would like to see the pack make a fairer ending ;
the sportsmen who are up to offer their services to
stand and view a fox away and help to stop hounds
from the fresh one, nay, even to offer the use of their
nags to the servants, if the hard-worked steeds of
the establishment are more blown than their own.

I remember when I was young hearing Sir John
Power, who hunted the Kilkenny hounds for so long,
declare that in Ireland they did not understand stick-
ing to their hunted fox like they did in England.
" Over here," he said, " every one is mad for another
gallop, and ready to holloa a fresh fox away. Half of
them do not care a sixpence about hounds getting their
fox ; they'd much sooner get their ride." Sir John was
no doubt a great authority, but my idea is that not
many people try to discern the difference between
fresh and hunted foxes, which, as I have observed, is
not such a very easy matter.

I know of no subject that calls forth such strange
variety of opinion as the appearance of even a fresh
fox when he is viewed in covert or going away from it.
" Biggest fox that ever was seen," says one gentleman,
who sees Reynard with fur erect from rage and fear
bounce over the covert fence. " Long, lean, greyhound
sort of fox," another says, who sees him fairly in his
stride slipping smoothly along a field away. " Little
bit of a vixen, I should say," remarks a third, viewing
him across a road with the moisture on his close-lying
fur a few minutes later. Every other man has a

160 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

different opinion, and confidently gives it to the world.
A friend of my own, however, confides that he gets so
excited when he sees a fox that he never seems able to
notice any peculiarities, though I would suggest to the
tyro that it is well if you have a chance to notice if the
fox he views away from covert at the beginning of
the run carries a white tag to his brush, and whether
that tag be large or small, whether he wears a white
waistcoat and collar or is dark all over his chest.
These are points which he may be able to distinguish
fifty minutes later in the ride of a distant covert,
or when Reynard lies stark and stiff upon the
sward.

When he lies stark and stiff ! As I pen the words the
inappropriate air of certainty they appear to convey
presents itself to me, and occasions when our fox has
beaten hounds rise to memory. Perhaps we are a little
too prone to attribute these failures to kill rather to
bad luck on the part of pursuers than to the exceeding
cleverness of pursued.

Three or four years ago I used frequently to stay for
certain fixtures with a well-known M.F.H., who was
beyond all question a very clever huntsman, though
I think that few gave him credit for the intense
interest he took in the fate of the fox he had been
hunting. As a matter of fact, if his hounds and he
failed to account for their quarry, though he might
appear to make light of the matter he did not in
reality, for he would brood over his defeat in the
evening, and with pencil, paper, and the ordnance
map would strive to elucidate the mystery, often
returning next day to make further investigations at

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 161

the scene of the disappearance of the last traces of the
fugitive.

Several times I have known his investigations to be
successful, and I am sure he would be able to relate
very many extraordinary escapes of dead-beaten foxes
during his long term of mastership. It certainly is
very wonderful, the luck that befriends a sinking fox,
and those who affect to disbelieve in the animal's
possession of any extraordinary cunning cannot have
gone with much interest into the question, " What
became of the fox ? "

I have often read that the hare should be credited
with far more cunning than the fox. It may be so,
but personally I have never seen this displayed when
hunting with harriers — a sport in which I have not
indulged for a good many years — for the wiles of a
hunted hare, her loops and squattings, her tremendous
springs from the squatting-place, all seemed to be
tolerably known to the huntsmen, and have often
been described, notably by Surtees, who declares that
" the manoeuvres of a hunted hare are simply astonish-
ing," and in several of his novels gives a description of
a hare hunt in which he displays perfect knowledge of
a game that, nevertheless, he does not seem to have
cared very much about playing, if one may judge by
the words he puts in the mouth of John Jorrocks.

Another writer, as great as Surtees, also expresses
a very high opinion of the 'cuteness of the hare, for
Whyte-Melville makes Mr. Tilbury Nogo relate that
"it is needless to describe the difficulties I had to
encounter, or the ignorance I was obliged to conceal,
in my first attempts at hunting the wiliest animal of

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 12

162 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

the chase, for in shrewd cunning and baffling subter-
fuge I conceive a hare to be infinitely more deceptive
than a fox." And again : " I have heard it said by men
who have distinguished themselves in both pursuits,
that the science and ingenuity required to kill a good
hare are even greater than those which are necessary
to give an account of a bad fox."

It is perhaps the " bad fox " that of tenest displays
the most cunning, but the escape of many and many
a hero who has stood up before hounds till horses have
stood still, has often been due to his marvellous cunning
and resource. The keenest huntsman with the best
pack of hounds can never be sure of his fox till he has
him in hand, and, though they may have brought him
along through flocks of sheep, into which he has pur-
posely run, across rivers, through cattle-stain and
coverts, " crawling with fresh foxes," and have viewed
him dead beaten in the next field, it often happens
that all traces disappear entirely and as suddenly as
if he had " wanished into thin hair," as old Jorrocks
has it.

My friend, of whom I made mention above, was
sadly bothered one day by the unaccountable dis-
appearance of a fox he had been hunting hard for
an hour. At the end we ran towards a fairly high
demesne wall with a road alongside it, and a view was
caught of our fox as we came down a slight declivity ;
he was getting over the wall from the road, and
apparently with a good deal of difficulty. The M.F.H.
lifted the pack and carried them through the avenue
gate. We were then in a somewhat narrow park of
sound old grass, which was bounded on the other side

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 163

by a deep and broad river with tree-clad banks.
Hounds, on coming to the place where the fox had
crossed the wall, struck the line at once and tore away-
over the grass ; a ruined cottage with a small yard
enclosed by a low, tumbledown wall lay between them
and the river, and along close by the side of this wall
they ran, and once past it went even faster than before,
but slackened their speed on reaching the river bank.
The pack ran for a short time after passing the cottage
with such fire and so very fast that no one had the
slightest doubt but that the fox had reached the river-
bank, and there was a holloa higher up the river-side,
to which, if I remember rightly, hounds were taken
and there a fresh fox was seen, I believe ; anyhow we
did no more good with our hunted friend.

The M.F.H. was much chagrined because he did not
handle his fox, whose proceedings, however, had been
witnessed by the herd who acted as covert keeper.
This man afterwards said he saw the fox cross the wall
and make straight for the old buildings. On reaching
them he ran close alongside the low wall, and went on
towards the river for about a hundred yards, when
he stopped and turned short round in his tracks back
to the wall. Jumping up on this, he sprang over a gap
or old gateway on to the wall of the yard, which ran
at right angles to that upon which he had jumped,
scrambled along this, and, reaching the gable of the
old cottage, climbed up and disappeared. The pack,
when the strong counterfoil was reached, of course ran
harder than ever towards the river, and overrunning
the line carried on to the wooded bank. The fox was
not headed and could not have seen the herd, who

164 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

watched his mancBuvres from behind a tree. " Why
didn't you holloa ? " was asked very naturally. "Is it
to have my good fox killed ? " was the reply. " Not
for the handsomest pound note that ever was printed
would I let a bawl out of me ! "

It was the cat in iEsop's fables, if I remember right,
that told the fox who was boasting of his many wiles
to defeat hounds, that he had but one trick, and that
was to climb a tree. The hounds suddenly appearing,
the cat performed the tree trick successfully, but
Reynard, in spite of all his cunning, was torn to pieces.
In these days, however, the fox has learned the use of
the tree as a means of escape from his pursuers, and
I fancy that a good many more runs end in this
manner than most of us have any idea of, and it is
curious how difficult it is to see a crouching fox on
the branch of a tree when he knows that his enemies
are beneath it.

On the last day of the season, two years ago, the
hounds that hunt this country had a capital run over
a good grass country, and had got pretty close to
their fox, who, fairly run out, was being viewed at
intervals which became more and more frequent.
At last he was seen to enter a large, newly ploughed
field — the first bit of tillage we had met, I believe.
Here hounds were brought to their noses, and could
only hold the line with difficulty. Intent on handling
his fox, our huntsman carried them beyond the plough
on to a clean grass field, where, however, there was
not a vestige of a line. The fence dividing the tillage
from the grass was a green bank of fair size, and this
was jumped at many different places by some of the

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 165

field. Having made it good forward the huntsman's
natural inference was that his fox had lain down in
the ploughed field, and very carefully did he try
back for him. Foot-people appeared on the scene,
and were questioned as to drains or holes, and several
of them mounted the bank and watched our baffled
endeavours. It was no use, however, and our hunts-
man looked rather rueful as he said " goodbye," for
it was the fall of the curtain. As we plodded home-
wards we heard a distant holloa far behind us. '* The
fox was on, after all," we said ; but it was not so. On
that bank grew one old shabby trunk of a tree, not
six feet high, I should think ; horses had jumped close
to it, and countryfolk had stood on either side of it.
When we had long disappeared from view one of
these fellows jumped down into the plough, and
as he did so the fox jumped down from the tree on
to the grass on the other side and made off.

I often pass, on a certain roadside, an old ivy-
covered thorn, which saved the life of a good fox
when very hard pressed by Mr. Robert Watson and his
hounds, who had been hard at him for quite an hour.
He was hoUoa'd and viewed " just in front of ye "
ever so many times, and a sharp look-out was kept
by more than one of us on the green hillside beyond
the road as we neared it. Hounds swarmed on to
this road, were cast beyond it, held up the road,
down the road, and tried back without success.
"Must be a drain here somewhere," said the M.F.H.,
and search was made by the roadside. I held in a
whipper-in's horse, I remember, while he scrambled
from the road into the field, and stood under an old

166 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

thorn-tree when I did so, talking to an elderly-
gentleman with a spade in his hand, who expressed
an opinion " that thim dogs is no [adjective] good at
all," for didn't he " see the fox corning up out of the
bog not two perch in front of thim." I met my
ancient friend a few days after as I drove past the
same spot, and he stopped me. "A great hoontsman
you are," said he, "and the tail of that [something]
of a fox hanging not half a foot above the nose of
ye ! " And he then told me how a few minutes after
we had left he saw the fox slip down from the tree
under which I had been standing. I examined the
place, and certainly the fox could not have been
crouching more than two feet above my head when
I held the horse for the whipper-in. There are few
sportsmen, I imagine, who cannot call to mind some
tree tales similar to the above ; I can recollect several,
but these two, somehow, have a very abiding place
in my memory.

A fisherman once gave me very interesting details
of the efforts of a fox we were hunting to baffle his
pursuers, which, however, in this case proved futile.
He was trying for a salmon a little above a bridge
when he heard the cry of hounds on the far side of
the river, and shortly after saw a fox, which was
evidently crossing by the bridge, appear upon the
parapet and scramble down to the beach on the side
of the river where he was fishing. Probably the
fox may have been headed on the roadway, but
anyhow, he now took to the water above the bridge
not far from the fisherman, and swam back to the
other side. On landing he passed under a dry

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 167

arch of the bridge and continued his way down stream

by the side of the river. I think that fox must have

been born under a most unlucky star, for I always

considered it a bit of a fluke that we killed him.

The fox had taken to the road for some little distance

before he came to the bridge, where hounds threw

up. On the right-hand side of the road was a high

wall, quite unjumpable, and joining the parapet of

the bridge. On the left or up-stream side it was

easy to jump from the road into the fields just at

the end of the bridge where the dry arch was.

Without hesitation our huntsman jumped into the

field, and on landing saw the dry arch and passed

through it, thus putting such hounds as followed

him at once on the line of their fox ; and the rest

of the pack scoring to cry, they killed a little further

down the river bank. Piscator declared that there

were no foot-people or carts on his side of the river

to head the fox, and that his jumping down, recrossing

the stream, and passing through the dry arch was

simply a clever plan to evade his foes and gain the

shelter of big woods about two miles below the bridge.

Some hounds were feathering along the roadway of

the bridge when the huntsman turned off into the

field above it, and, unless he knew of the dry arch

and was determined to make good the ground in

the direction of the shelter, I never could understand

why he did not hold his hounds across the bridge.

But he was one whose sagacity was seldom at fault,

and was a worthy match for even so clever a fox

as this one, who, I almost forgot to say, had run over

fourteen miles before he reached the river, which

168 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

he had already once crossed about four miles higher
up.

If our fisherman's view of the case was correct, I
think the cunning displayed more than equals any
that I have ever heard of being displayed by lepus
timidus, though I have quoted high opinions to the
effect that it requires much science to bring a good
hare to hand. Sir Reginald Graham tells us that the
late Lord Suffolk once asked Mr. George Lane Fox,
M.F.H., his opinion of hare-hunting. " I have always,"
he replied, " understood it to be a most scientific amuse-
ment." Not for nothing, then, has our sport been
termed " the noble science."

I have been told, apropos of the above story, that
bridges seem to have a sort of fascination for the
hunted fox, and two instances have been related to
me of foxes having scrambled down to the buttress
of a bridge and lain curled up on a projecting part of
it. There can be little doubt but that foxes know
well how quickly their foot-scent evaporates from
stones or masonry.

The run of February 11, 1908, enjoyed by the
Waterford hounds was one of the very best of a
season brimful of most excellent sport from the first,
and had a curious conclusion. It lasted for two hours
and forty-five minutes, and at no time till the very
end did the pace become "dead slow," while parts
of it were decidedly fast, and at one time hounds
distinctly had the best of the game, and were un-
attended. Of course, it seems most unlikely that
the same fox was in front all the time ; but that they
did not change near the end of the run has since

P7iofo]

INIr. Arthur Pollok.
Master of the Kildare.

[Itohinsnn.

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 169

been proved, and the M.F.H. is now inclined to think
that there was no change at all. When the country-
man in that tiny valley just before the end gave
us news that he had viewed him recently, hounds
had their hackles up and crossed the little strath
with such fire that it certainly seemed " all up " with
Reynard. No covert lay in front, and the sea cliffs
near Tramore seemed much too distant. Then came
the road, then the lane, with the burnt hillside on the
right, up which hounds puzzled so perseveringly till
all traces were lost ; but there was a farmhouse just
to the right of the end of the lane — a farm, and a
stack of straw, and a ladder leaning up against it.
An hour after hounds had left comes the farmer with
his pitchfork, and climbing the ladder, finds the travel-
worn fox, who had climbed up the ladder, and now
decamped by the same means.

In a rough part of South Kilkenny hunted by the
Waterford hounds, it is an old trick for Reynard to
run along the top of these rough stone walls for
a considerable distance, when only very tender-nosed
hounds can make it good. During Mr. Pollok's
mastership of the Waterford, they hunted a fox for
over a mile and a half completely round Corbally
Wood ; he ran along the top of the wall all the time,
and continued to travel along an adjoining wall on
the north side of the hill. Mr. Sargent, in his
Thoughts on S'port, also relates an instance of a
bitch named Matchless, bred by Henry Lord Water-
ford, running her fox along the walls in South
Kilkenny.

One of the most curious endeavours of a beaten fox

170 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

to escape from his pursuers was related by Mr. Harvey
Bayly, who was twice Master of the Rufford Hounds,
and I think the incident took place during his first
mastership. In this the ladder also played a part.
Hounds ran their fox to some farm buildings, and
stopped at a gate where a ladder leaning against the
wall showed the way into the open door of a loft-
As hounds could make nothing more of it, a whipper-in
bethought him of ascending the ladder into the loft,
where he found no fox, but his strong odour. This
loft proved to be over a cart stable, and, surmising
that the fox had passed down by the manger into the
stable below, the whipper-in gave information, and
the stable was entered by the door. It was very dark,
and occupied by but one horse, an old, worn-out
cart-mare, who stood in the corner stall.

Considerable search failed to reveal the fox, but
suddenly some one espied him squatting down on the
hack of the old mare, who did not seem in the least
perturbed by his presence. The fox was shortly after-
wards killed by the hounds.

I heard of a somewhat similar case in Kilkenny
long ago ; the fox came down from the loft to the
manger, but this one escaped when the door was
opened. I have twice known a fox climb on to a roof
and go down the chimney ; the last occasion being after
a memorable gallop in Carlow, from Newtown Hill to
" Moll Doolan's," near Milford. The brush of this fox
for a long time decorated the sanctum of a relative
of my own.

I have also known the flue of a greenhouse give
refuge to a fox more than once, and in Henry Lord

THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES 171

Waterford's diary mention is twice made of a fox
seeking safety in the same sort of retreat.

Somerville, in The Chase, notices the fact of the
beaten fox betaking himself to the haunts of men for
shelter, having discovered many hiding-places in his
nightly rambles and being fully aware how certain
unsavoury drains would effectually destroy any traces
of scent.

Of stories of foxes and trees there is no end, but
I may say that I have seen a large cedar-tree growing
close to one of the great houses in the North of Eng-
land that I was informed often " held " three or four
foxes in its branches.

One more story. There is an old deer-park wall
near my home, and some rough, broken ground on
the hillside beyond it. I was shown by an old man
an ivy-tree growing several feet away from this ancient
wall, and of it he told me the following tale : A certain
Major K , long since departed, had a pack of har-
riers, and they used to find an outlying fox in a patch
of gorse some miles beyond the rough hill. To this
deer-park wall they used to run him time after time,
and there invariably lose him ; but one day my in-
formant was working in the adjacent field, and saw
a fox suddenly appear on top of the wall, run along
it till opposite the ivy-tree, when he gave a splendid
spring, and landed among its branches, where he
remained. On this occasion he had evidently defeated
hounds earlier in the run, for he was not followed ;
but news of the manoeuvre was brought to the Major,
and the observer was ordered to take post in the tree
on a certain day. On that day, at about noon, sure

172 THE HUNTED FOX AND HIS WILES

enough the cry of hounds was heard in hot pursuit on
the hillside above ; then the fox appeared on the wall as
before, and picked his way along it in leisurely fashion
till opposite to the tree, though the cry then sounded
very close to him. He was about to make his spring
when he perceived that the tree was already occupied,
so dropped back off the wall, and, of course, the
orthodox tragedy followed.

CHAPTER XII

GORSE COVERTS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT

"Oh, how they bustled round him!
How merrily they found him ;
And how stealthily they wound him,
Through each dingle and each dell 1 "

Taking Squire Western as their type, it has been the
fashion for many writers, ever since the days of
Fielding, to speak of fox-hunters as of beings who
were dead to all sense of beauty, poetry, or imagina-
tion. Somerville, however, was a Master of Hounds,
as " Cecil " has found out for us, and that true poet,
Charles Kingsley, was a sportsman to the backbone ;
while Whyte-Melville has somewhere written that
" there is something of poetry in every man who
rides hard across a country."

There was the very quintessence of sport in the
doings of our ancestors, though their skulls were
adorned with the unpoetic pigtail ; in their early
hours, in their quest for the drag of a travelling fox,
and their keen appreciation of the beauties of the
dawning day, which have all been so admirably de-
scribed by Somerville in his famous poem. And it

173

174 GORSE COVERTS

always fascinated me to hear a late well-known M.F.H.
relate how his father used to wait with his hounds
on a wild, heathery hill " for the day to break that he
might drag up to his fox."

For my part, I believe that the impulse which drew
those ancestors of ours from downy pillows and port-
laden slumbers, when " bright Chanticleer proclaimed
the morn," was tinged with a strong feeling of
romance and poetry.

Few men in these galloping days go out with a view
of deriving much pleasure from seeing hounds find
their fox, and, indeed, the chorus of the invisible pack
from the green depths of a gorse must be but a scanty
joy to the seniors, who declare that what they now
care about is " to see a fox well found." The multi-
tude, however, prefers the gorse covert, with its
surroundings of green pasture-lands, to the echoing
woodland with its heavy rides, up which we splash
nearly to our girths. Taking all things into considera-
tion, perhaps the multitude is right, and, personally,
I have derived endless pleasure, both in summer and
winter, from a gorse covert, which for many years
has been my constant and pleasing care, but which
now, alas ! presents a sad appearance of blackened
desolation.

Its glories have departed. No more does the splendid
sheet of gold add beauty to the landscape in the merry
month of May; and what more lovely spectacle on
earth is there than a gorse covert in full bloom ? Do
you remember what Linnaeus said about gorse, or
how Wallace, in his Malay Archipelago, wrote that
" during twelve years spent amid the grandest tropical

AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 175

vegetation, I saw nothing comparable to the effect
produced on our landscape" by gorse and heather in
blossom ? And, as a traveller in many lands, I can
fully endorse his opinion. My gorse, however, had
grown very tall and hollow, and the stems of the
bushes were bare for several feet from the roots.
There was no bottom in it, no under-covert ; never-
theless, when hounds paid their first visit last season,
it held a leash of foxes. After that it was always
drawn blank, for, though frequented by foxes, they
must have experienced a feeling of insecurity, and
the earth-stopper's visit was invariably sufficient notice
to quit. So the edict went forth, the covert was cut
down, or in some parts burned, and though thick
bunches of tender gorse are now sprouting at the
roots of the old plants, it will, I fear, be two years
ere the note of a hound can be heard in it again.
But, Phoenix-like, it will rise from its ashes, and, with
a new addition to its size already in growth, it is to
be hoped that foxes will always seek a shelter in this
favourite spot, and never again be found wanting
as long as gorse is in blossom, and osculation in
fashion.

In planting gorse coverts, when it is practicable to
do so they should, of course, be made large enough
to enable one half to be cut down at a time, so as to
have always a covert standing. Three acres of strong
young gorse take a lot of drawing, and in the be-
ginning of winter will be found almost impregnable
if the gorse seed has been very thickly sown. The
thickly sown covert, however, does not last long, for
the plants have not room to spread, and the stems

176 GORSE COVERTS

grow up into long cane-like sticks, bearing no under-
growth, in a very few years ; and, unless gorse grows
really strong an exceptionally heavy fall of snow will
often break down and ruin the whole covert. It seems
a good plan in situations which do not appear to be
favourable to the growth of gorse, to plough the land
in broad furrows and sow the seed in drills ; but this
system is said to have its attendant disadvantages, for
foxes get into the habit of travelling only in the
furrows, and are liable to be chopped by hounds.

Happy the hunting country that is not dependent
on artificial coverts to harbour its foxes, but has plenty
of good woodlands, spinnies wherein grow lots of
strong under-covert, sheltered dingles, and wild, scrub-
clad glens. In such a country all that coverts require
in spring is repairs of the fences, which must be taken
in hand as soon as "the last card" has been worked
through, and is usually not a very heavy job. It is
very different where the " evergreen plant," immor-
talised by the poet laureate of the Tarporley Hunt,
forms almost the only shelter for the fox, for now
is the time that these coverts require most careful
attention — attention, too, which in these days has
become very costly.

No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down for the care
of a gorse covert, for so very much depends upon the
nature of the soil. Where the ground is good the
covert will require unremitting attention from
the first, for the grasses in very rich soil will in-
evitably choke the young gorse if the sod be not
skimmed off before the sowing is done, and the labour
will be in vain. In the country from which I write

AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 177

we are almost entirely dependent on artificial gorse
coverts, and the practice when laying out a new
covert has almost invariably been to plough up the
land and take a crop of oats off it, putting in the
gorse seeds, in the same manner that grass seeds are
sown, with the oats. This plan, while it prepares the
land for the gorse, has the advantage of bringing
something in to pay for the cost of what is often a
very expensive undertaking. In light land it succeeds
very well, but where it is of extra good quality I have
known the natural grasses to reappear and fairly beat
the gorse.

In the most successful of our coverts the seed has
been sown broadcast ; some recommend sowing in
broad drills, but a great authority has rather con-
demned this fashion, as it leaves trenches in which
foxes are liable to be chopped, though I cannot say I
am able to call to mind an instance of this.

When the gorse is fairly established in good soil it
grows with great rapidity — far more quickly than it
does on the light land to which it seems more suited
and where it sows itself and takes root easily. For
this reason it is impossible to lay down any rule as
to the length of time a covert will last in a holding
condition before it requires cutting. That can only be
ascertained by close inspection ; that inspection should
be made in the first days of March, and followed as
quickly as possible by action whatever course is
adopted.

The ideal gorse covert is always said to be one large
enough to admit of half being cut down while the
other half is holding ; but where practicable I would

Hounds, Gentlemen Please. 13

178 GORSE COVERTS

much prefer to have two small separate gorses on the
same land ; this, for a variety of reasons which have
appeared to me since I have been in charge of a
district. In light land, for one thing, where the gorse
covert is thriving, the ubiquitous rabbit is pretty sure
to appear. This is by some considered to be an advan-
tage as providing food for the foxes, but to my mind
the rabbit is ever the bane of the gorse covert and
the curse of fox-hunting. When once even a few
rabbits make their appearance in a gorse, if half or
any portion of the covert has to be cut down, that
portion must be most carefully wired round with a
three-foot rabbit-netting — here extra expense comes in
— and every rabbit-hole dug out, for there is nothing
the dear little bunnies love better than the tender
sprouts of gorse ; they nibble these off with marvellous
assiduity as soon as the green tit-bits appear. Half a
dozen rabbits will do more damage to an acre of sprout-
ing gorse than any one would believe who had not seen
their depredations. This wiring-in of the cut-down
portion of the covert to protect it against rabbits is
absolutely necessary, but it is a terrible disadvantage,
for it causes foxes to be chopped when hounds are
drawing the standing part. I have seen this happen
more than once in the same covert. Now, with two
separate coverts you cut the whole of one down, and
getting fairly to work at the rabbits, ought easily to
be able to exterminate them. When gorse likes the
soil it will grow so strong in twelve months as to be
quite safe from the attentions of the rabbit who only
cares for the young shoots. With all the gorse down
and the fences clean, it should not be a difficult matter

AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 179

to clear away all the rabbits from two and a half acres,
which is quite sufficient for a good gorse covert, if pro-
perly tended ; and when once the bunnies are banished
your care should be never to let them reappear again.
Moreover, with the rabbits you will have banished
brass snares, traps, poaching curs (both four-legged
and two), and will have brought the great essential to
fox-preservation to your covert, to wit, absolute quiet.
But when half the covert is cut down this absolute
quiet is not so easily secured.

When a covert is still holding well, owing, perhaps,
to its careful preservation, it is often difficult for those
in authority to order it to be cut down, even if it is
growing tall and hollow. But to let it stand for yet
another year, as is so often done, is the most mistaken
policy. Whenever the stems grow bare and one sees
on stooping that the covert has lost its matted ap-
pearance and become hollow, doicn ivith it ! It may
hold for another year, but foxes don't like it, and the
young gorse will spring more quickly if it be cut
before the stems become very thick, and their strong
roots take too much out of the soil.

" A stitch in time saves nine." So when the covert,
or a part of it, is condemned, set to work at once to
cut it, and when cut and removed let the fence receive
your best attention and see that all gaps be mended.
The cutting of a gorse covert was very easily managed
long ago ; indeed, there was a time when folk would
pay to be allowed to cut and cart the furze away, but
now furze is valueless as fuel. No baker wants it for
his oven as in olden days ; no cottager seems to care
about it for his fire ; and so one has to pay pretty

180 GORSE COVERTS

heavily for the cutting and removal of what was once
a marketable commodity.

I have heard, and read also, that it is a good plan
to " lay " and peg down the gorse steins when they
grow high ; but this is not my experience, nor is it
recommended by one or two Masters of Foxhounds
who have tried it. It makes but a slovenly looking
job, after all. It is difficult to draw, and foxes are
apt to be left behind in it ; it sickens hounds, who
hate the stuff through which they can't hunt their
fox properly ; and for that reason, if for no other,
this treatment of a gorse covert is to be condemned.

I have heard of a gorse covert, a small patch of
which is devoted to a perpetual stick or rubbish heap.
Some strong posts are driven into the ground a short
distance apart, the posts about eighteen inches above
ground; laths or poles are nailed from one post to the
other, forming a support for branches, thorn bushes,
hedge clippings, roots of trees, gorse, or any sort of
covering. This covert, I am told, is never drawn blank,
and if your covert is situated in a hairy country, I
am sure the plan is a good one ; but in a stone wall
or clear bank country I fear the material would be
difficult to find for this useful annexe.

Where there is an artificial earth in the covert it
should have been very carefully examined before now.
The old grey badger has a way of establishing himself
in early winter in these artificial earths, and his
presence remains often unsuspected. If earths that
are in good order remain unused, or if the covert is
not a large one and fails to hold, suspect then the
presence of the badger, who is going to alter the

AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 181

interior architecture of the earth to suit himself,
blocking up certain passages, enlarging chambers, and
filling his sleeping-place with a wonderful quantity of
hay or grass procured from — who shall say where?
In that earth no vixen will bring out her cubs, nor
will she move them into it from outside till all traces
of the badgers have disappeared. Such at least is my
experience, and that of two neighbouring covert-
keepers, though I have read that there are different
opinions about the matter.

A few years ago, to judge by letters and
articles which were published, one would have
imagined that the badger was nearly as extinct in
these islands as the dodo ; they may be scarce in
some districts : in this part of Ireland they have
been vastly on the increase for several years, but,
like other night workers, are not believed in because
seldom seen.

It is quite possible if the artificial earth bears no
signs of use that it is faulty in construction and is
damp. If this be the case, and you cannot devise
some system of drainage to rectify the defect, it
should be dug up at once as totally useless, and
another constructed. An efficient method of draining
should be carefully considered, to save expense, for
a properly constructed artificial earth is not made
for nothing.

When a new covert has to be laid out, most careful
consideration is required as to its situation ; and in
these days the most important point is that it shall
be absolutely free from trespass. When it is possible
to place the covert within the boundaries of some

182 GORSE COVERTS

staunch supporter of the Hunt, that, of course, is
best, because there no trespass need be feared.
There the vixen may safely attend to her domestic
duties, and there, if "certainty" be possible, should
be the certain find. But no matter where the gorse
covert is placed, it will require attention and cutting
down in due season. And here I may remark that
in reality there should be no cutting down; the
cutting should be done with an upivar^d stroke of
the bill-hook, and the cut should be clean. Cut
down, and you splinter the wood. I have known
one covert to be completely ruined by that
treatment.

Nothing makes a better covert than gorse at its
best, but when hollow there is no place that foxes
more dislike after a windy night, with the stems
rattling and the foliage blowing open. The odds
against a find ought to be long ; and yet, we shall
be asked, what substitute can be found to equal the
evergreen plant ?

Where the land is wet, osiers form dry lying ;
pampas grass, privet, laurel, have all been tried ;
perhaps a mixture of anything that will grow on a
poor soil ; some of the newer conifers, to be ruth-
lessly " headed " when they attain three feet six inches
might succeed. An artificial covert need not be large,
as those who have seen the late Mr. Jack Gubbins's
famous little nook at Bruree know well — it is just
as carefully looked after by the owner of Prospector,
by the by — and when sheltered from wet and wind,
if quiet prevails, a fox does not want much more if
his food supply be tolerably handy.

AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 183

I have never seen a covert entirely composed of
privet, but I liave been told that in suitable soil it
forms an excellent shelter, and affords capital dry-
lying. Where the surface of the ground is uneven
and laurels can be " laid " over pit-like depressions
in the land, they make a lasting and most excellent
covert, and only require occasional clipping when
they grow high to make them furnish at the
bottom.

To those whose lot is cast in some favoured grass
countries, where a seven-acre spinney is considered
a wood, the sight of such sylvan expanses as Salsey
Forest, or the Badminton Lower Woods, brings
dismay. But let them go and see how the Grafton
hounds can rattle out the former stronghold, and
how the Duke and his pack can make the foxes in
the latter cry Capevi, as old Jorrocks has it, and they
will confess to having witnessed work both quick
and beautiful.

To the minds of some sportsmen, even in these
days, there is a certain spice of artificiality about
the neatly enclosed and carefully planted square of
gorse, so dear to the galloping division, and so
suggestive of the quick find and breathless five-and-
twenty minutes. I confess my own leaning for the
methods of Mr. Coryton and his hounds dragging
up through the heather to a regular Dartmoor
"Hector." There is no doubt that a wild woodland
is the place of all others wherein to view and admire
the " fierce intelligence " of the pack as they examine
each likely haunt, and the very sound of their busy
feet among the dead leaves, and the snuffing of

184 GORSE COVERTS

their nostrils, awakens the stern joy, the hunting
instinct so strongly implanted in the human breast.
For a picturesque, but most thoroughly faithful,
description of a woodland find, read Whyte-Melville's
run with the Pippingdon hounds in Tilbury Nogo, or
his chapter on " The Provinces " in Riding Recol-
lections. These bring the scene and action before
one as the writings of that lamented author alone
can do, and we feel, as we read, his enthusiastic
pleasure in the wild sport he so vividly describes.
Fond as we may be of the gorse enclosure, the
opening note, the rattling view holloa, and the sight
of the pack pouring from the covert, the other is the
real thing, depend upon it ; and the twenty minutes'
" coffee-housing " outside the gorse, without a glimpse
of a hound, contrasts badly with the enthralling
sight of a gallant pack of hounds drawing up to
their fox in a picturesque woodland on a good
scenting day.

These words call up thrilling recollections of long ago
as I write them, and I see again in imagination a lovely
dingle in the West country — a little wooded glen or
strath. A trout stream ripples along between steeply
sloping banks, clothed thickly in places, sparsely in
others, with holly and hazel coppice. Now and again
the valley widens, and stately silver firs spring from
the flat greensward beside the stream, which babbles
on to join the Tavy. Above, on the right bank, gallant
old Squire Trelawney, of Coldrennick, leads a goodly
throng, and cheers the pack beneath him as they
spread and try for a touch of a fox. In a wide
glade a little badger-pied bitch becomes very busy,

AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 185

and returns again and again to a mossy patch of
tender green. Two sages of the pack think her pro-
ceedings worthy of investigation, and feather steadily
along in her company up by the laughing burnside.
"He's been there," says the Squire, and looks at his
watch. They brush through a cluster of fern, and
then the little bitch flings up her head ; but before
her musical note reaches us on our height, hounds
are pressing to her from left and from right. Splash-
ing across the water to get to her, tearing wildly down
the banks to her, racing up from behind to her, turning
short back to her — the heroine of the hour. Once
more she flings her tongue alone, and then such a
clamorous chorus arises as the whole pack sweep
along by the stream below us, and Boxall cheers.

" Have at him there, forrad, forrad ! " and, with a
sparkle in his eyes, the old Squire looks over his
shoulder and says, " Best keep moving pretty briskly,
gentlemen." The valley narrows and darkens, and
thicker grow the firs, and thicker still where the
stream turns at right angles to the north. In our
meadow above we cut off the angle and again see
the striving pack below us, and hear the " gallant
chiding " echo and re-echo as the glen becomes wider,
and rocks and boulders hang over the stream. Our
horses snort and strain at the bit as we canter merrily
to such stirring music. A grove of firs is in front :
we crash over the rotten fence and pass between the
trees into a small green paddock. Beyond frowns a
high, straight bank, coped, it appears, with slate ; no
gate, but, lo ! yonder a hog-backed stile. What a
sweet sensation it is to hop neatly over timber!

186 GORSE COVERTS

Fainter sounds the hound music on the left. More
trees, but beyond them, stretching upwards to the
sky-hne, a purple sea, and far in front of us some-
thing like a flock of white birds flitting over its
surface. Enough !

Pardon ! The pen took charge, and got fairly away
with me ; for here have I, who have just referred you
to Whyte-Melville, been presumptuously inflicting
boyish recollections for the last ten minutes. They
were flying minutes, though — that stile was a rasper.
And what Rudyard Kipling says of the Himalayas
so say I of Dartmoor — that if the smell of it once
creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at
last, forgetting all else, return to these hills.

CHAPTER XIII

ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS

The most sacred spot in the old covert lay about thirty
yards from the gate, which opened upon the middle
side ; a narrow path branching from the ride led one
in a few steps to a cavity in the ground, at the end
of which cavity a small stone-faced aperture, half-
hidden by tangled weeds and grass, revealed itself.

" It looks like the mouth of a drain ! " said my
small boy to his tiny sister after his first visit to the
covert ; " but " (in a tragic whisper) " it really, really
is — The Fox's Den ! "

The little path led on straight past the cavity I
have mentioned for ten yards to another similar
excavation, wherein was situated the other mouth of
the earth, which was shaped exactly like the letter A,
the plan of artificial earth which found most favour
with our great M.F.H. ; and my comparatively slight
experience has led me to believe that this is the most
satisfactory pattern I have seen.

To describe more particularly this particular earth
I must mention first that the old covert is situated
in the corner of a perfectly flat field of twenty acres,
and, the ground being on a dead level, the mouths of

167

188 ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS

the earth had to open into the pits or cavities I have
described.

From each mouth a covered way, lined, as to its sides
only, with stone and covered by flags, ran straight till
they met a small circular chamber of " lie-by " at the
apex of the A ; each of these shafts was twenty yards
long, their mouths twenty yards apart ; and half-way
from the mouth to the apex, the crossbar of the A,
a tunnel of similar construction, opened into them.

I recently assisted at the uncovering of one of these
earths, which had become blocked up in one of its
passages ; and I may note here that this damage was
evidently the work of a badger, fresh proof thus being
furnished of the injurious effects caused by the presence
of that animal in a fox covert.

The entrances were smaller than the rest of the
shafts for two feet inwards from the mouth, and the
flooring of these two feet was of flags, to prevent
enlargement of the mouth, but this was the only
part of the " floor " thus flagged. The walls of the
shafts were solidly, if roughly, built of stone, and the
shafts varied in width from nine to twelve inches,
while their depth was eighteen inches. In the centre
of the crossbar of the " A " a small lie-by, or cave,
turning towards the apex was made — this being two
feet wide, semicircular in form, and well roofed and
lined with stone.

Although when we opened the earth we found that
the right-hand shaft of the earth was closely packed
ivith clay, and also the right-hand part of the crossbar
— packed so closely that it appeared as if it had been
" tamped " down by a pavior — yet there was no defect

ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS 189

to be observed in the walls, roof, or coDstruction of
the earth until we came to the " lie-by " in the crossbar
of the "A." Here we found that some of the heavy
stones that lined its walls had been picked out and
the cave then enlarged ; all the clay which had been
excavated having been thrust out into the passages
I have mentioned and packed away there. Only the
badger could have done this, and here were the remains
of the grass bedding which the old rascal had, as usual,
provided for himself.

I do not think the badger had made a very long
sojourn in the covert, but, after having spoilt our
fox-earth, had soon taken his departure, and when
the rabbits increased in the covert they had also
found their way into the earth. Wonderful, indeed,
is the burrowing power of the badger, wonderful the
power of those short, muscular limbs, the strength and
sharpness of those formidable claws.

Those who have watched the animal in captivity
know in what an incredibly short space of time he
can stow himself away underground if undisturbed ;
and I once had the opportunity of seeing the wild
animal at work on a moonlight night, or rather of
watching the fountain of sand that was thrown up
unceasingly, till the worker became aware of our
presence. It was one of the most uncanny sights I
ever witnessed, for the moon shone full upon the
sandy "bank in the middle of the black wood, and
the " geyser " of sand seemed to be propelled from
the bowels of the earth by some mysterious and
supernatural agency.

It will be readily understood how safe from maraud-

190 ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS

ing terriers is the inhabitant of^such an earth, for the
lithe, supple fox, by running through the cross-passage,
can make a proper fool of a dog without bolting into
the open air, or perchance into the sack placed in
readiness by other foes awaiting him outside.

I have seen earths of other design, some shaped after
the manner of the letter L or T; but if there is no
natural hole to be adapted and improved upon, and
all the work has to be done by man, I think the
A pattern will be found very simple of construction
and most secure.

Where natural burrows are regularly used by foxes
as breeding earths, it may be found necessary to face
the entrance with stone and reduce the size of the
aperture, for it ^is obviously important to make it
impossible for a dog of large size to draw the earth.

The situation of the earth in the old covert was,
of course, selected by our chief, whose advice was
" not to have an earth placed far from a ride, so
that the rest of the covert should be disturbed as
little as possible when the earths were being stopped
at night." This, I am sure, is correct, and the hint is
worth remembering, for no little detail should be
neglected by the owner who wishes to have his
covert described as "a certain find."

Although I fear no other gorse will ever be quite
so dear to me as that old covert, which, distant but
three hundred yards from my front door, shone a
veritable "Field of the Cloth of Gold" in May. Yet
it is by no means my ideal fox covert. The dead
level of the situation, the close-trimmed thorn hedge
and post-and-wire fence which surrounded three sides

ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS 191

of it gave it an air of artificiality which I deprecated
always, in spite of the wonderful reputation it gained
for holding foxes. More to my taste is the wild bit
of broken ground, the little glen through which runs
the tiny stream, the rocky hillock, whereon the fir-
trees seem to find a natural footing, or the punchbowl-
like depression among the grassy hills, on whose slopes
we gather to watch the white sterns flickering and the
dark bushes shake.

Surely there is pleasure to sportsmen — I speak not
of riders — in the quest of the wily animal, in the actual
search for the " little red rover," who may be here
to-day but away in the next parish to-morrow ; and,
to my mind, the ideal covert is one in which we can
watch something of the fierce intelligence of the pack
as they try for him, while if the surroundings be
picturesque that pleasure is surely enhanced.

Not a mile, as the crow flies, from my writing-table
is a little covert which, I am happy to say, at this
moment contains a litter of foxes, and has a delight-
fully natural and sporting appearance, though the fields
around it are flat enough. How many, I wonder, of
the hundreds who have seen it drawn have ever been
inside those low, thorn fences ? Trees grow within
their bounds and among the thorn of the fences ; thus
it looks like an ordinary square spinney, such as that
the train flits by many times in half an hour when
speeding through the English Midlands. In reality,
however, the land within those fences is on a gentle
rise, and the gorse 'grows strong round thorn and
chestnut and hazel. There is an abrupt little fall in
the ground some fifty yards from the southern fence,

192 ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS

and here was once an old quarry or sand-hole, the
bottom of which is now carpeted with velvet turf, at
the present moment somewhat stained and trodden
down. Three chestnut-trees have their roots down in
this deep hollow, and their umbrageous foliage sweeps
the ground, covering the face of the steep northern
bank, in which are the mouths of the breeding earths.
The vixen did not bring her cubs out there, though, but
in a rabbit burrow under the tree close by ; she has
" moved them in," three of them — such fine little chaps,
big as large cats already, and just as agile.

We made a party to watch them two evenings ago
— three ladies and myself. The ladies sat concealed
under the branches of the chestnut opposite the earth,
taking up position about 7.30 p.m. The midges, they
say, were — well, " too awful for words," but they — the
girls, not the midges — behaved nobly, and in less than
a quarter of an hour were well rewarded. For they
saw the sharp little snout and twinkling eyes of a
cub appear at the mouth of the earth just opposite,
and presently he stole out on the grass, not twenty
feet from their delighted eyes. The midges by this
time had reduced me to profanity, and caused my
retreat, but I learn that this cub was " quite the
sweetest little darling." His brothers, too, were
quickly on the scene, but at first they seemed sus-
picious of the presence of strangers. There being no
more, however, in the ladies' gallery, while perfect
stillness and silence prevailed, the cubs were em-
boldened to begin their gambols, in which the wing
of a fowl played some part ; and eventually one little
rascal charged across the grass and nearly jumped

ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS 193

into the lap of one of the watchers, which discon-
certed him so horribly that he rushed back to his
lair, spitting and snarling. He quickly came forth
again, and the fun recommenced, but soon the gloam-
ing was changing to the mirk, the clock in the village
spire a mile and a half away boomed solemnly the
hour of nine. I thought I heard the distant bark of
the vixen, and, stepping forward from the bank above
the scene of frolic, a stick cracked loudly under my
foot. Tarn o' Shanter's burst of applause in Alloa's
auld haunted kirk had not a speedier effect in putting
an end to the revelry ; all three cubs turned and bolted
for earths " like all possessed," and the watchers found
difficulty in struggling out of the well-fenced covert,
so dark had it become before they reached the hedge.
However, some of the party having never before seen
cubs at play were more than delighted with the enter-
tainment provided by the covert, and all agreed with
me that here was an ideal fox-earth.

Disused drains in the vicinity of old buildings are
very frequently converted into breeding earths by the
foxes, and I recollect one evening being surprised to
see four cubs disporting themselves under some large
trees about forty yards from the back of my stables.
As I approached they vanished, and I then discovered
a hole communicating with an old drain which had
once led from the stables to the ditch of a farm
road. Beyond this farm road was a triangular planta-
tion of larch and fir covering about a quarter of an
acre. Here the cubs remained all the summer, re-
moving in the autumn to the old covert. Hounds,
as usual, found every time they drew it that winter,

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. X4

194 ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS

but we noticed that the foxes invariably ran up
past the house to the grove behind the stables,
where, it is needless to say, they found no open
door. The hole which led down into the old drain
was in a little-frequented spot in a patch of
ground completely covered to the depth of some
inches with dried beech-leaves, and had never been
noticed before ; it had probably been made years
ago, was lightly stopped with clods of earth and
forgotten. The old drain formed a snug and very
complete earth when this postern door had been
cleared ; but it was curious that I never found any
feathers, bones, or fur, or any billets of foxes near
the drain, though they were to be seen in abundance
in the little grove on the other side of the farm road.
No more delightful description of a fox's earth, or,
rather, of a " head of earths," is to be found than
Charles Kingsley's in the famous paper, A Concert in
a Pine Wood. May I be forgiven for quoting it? —

" Beneath yon tir some hundred yards away standeth, or, rather,
lieth, for it is on dead, flat ground, the famous castle of Malepartius,
which beheld the base murder of Lampe, the hare, and many a seely
soul beside.

"I know it well: a patch of sand heaps mingled with great holes
amid the twining for roots : ancient home of the last wild beasts. And
thither unto Malepartius safe and strong, trots Eeineke, where he hopes
to be snug among the labyrinthian windings, and innumerable starting
holes of his balliura, covert way, and donjon keep. Full blown with
self-satisfaction he trots, lifting his toes delicately and carrying his
brush aloft, as full of cunning and conceit as that world-famous ancestor
of his, whose deeds of unchivalry were the delight, if not the model,
of knight and Kaiser, lady and burgher, in the Middle Age. Suddenly
he halts at the great gate of Malepartius, examines it with his nose :
goes on to a postex'n : examines that also, and then another and another.

ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS 195

while I perceive afar, projecting from every cave's mouth, the red and
green end of a fir-faggot. Ah, Reineke ! fallen is thy conceit, and fallen
thy tail therewith. Man has been beforehand with thee, and the earths
are stopped 1 "

Besides the artificial fox-earths in the coverts, I have
seen several earths of olden days in County Kilkenny,
which were made by the famous Sir John Power when
he hunted that country. These he called " decoy
earths." They were placed away in the open country
to induce foxes to run over a particular line to seek
their refuge, and several of them had the reputation
of being very successfully planned. These earths, I'
believe, were left unstopped in the very early part of
each season, and some remain altogether unstopped ;
but " on the day of the hunt " Sir John would station
an emissary to keep " sentry-go " over these earths
and head the fox from them. There was an amusing
story told of a lad who sat on the bank with his legs
dangling over the mouth of such an earth and fell
asleep, to be rudely awakened by the leading hounds
worrying at his calves, for the hard-pressed fox had
slipped in between them.

Some who are now hunting in Kilkenny may re-
member the finish of a run on the Coppenagh Hills,
when the fox went to ground in what appeared to
be a drain. Spade and pick were called for and
mining began, but an old countryman standing by
advised them to desist, saying it was "an old earth
made by Sir John lined with brick and covered with
slate, and I dunno what all," and that they would be
a week in digging him out. Drain-pipes have been
used in England for the same purpose, but I have not

196 ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS

personally seen them successfully worked. However,
both for " decoy " earths and main earths a friend
tells me that they answer admirably.

In spite, however, of all the care and trouble that
has been bestowed upon artificial earths, my expe-
rience tells me that foxes, however much they may
frequent them, do not as a 'rule actually bring out
their young in them. Why this should be I know
not, for I have often known a vixen carry very tiny
cubs into the artificial earth, cubs that could not have
been many days in this wicked world — a vale of tears
to them, perhaps ; but, as Mrs. Gamp says, " They was
born in the wale, and must take the consequences of
sich a sitiwation." These cubs were born in some
holes in a railway embankment, past which the
trains thundered eight times a day, while linesmen
were constantly at work close by. The foxes were
brought out there again this year, and a strong
litter, too, but they have been moved of late, and I
trust have gone to stock " the old covert " once
again.

But what charm lies in this favoured spot ? It has
been " permanently stopped " over and over again ;
stones have been poured down the holes, whole
masses of the bank have been dug out ; the holes
fairly plugged with rabbit-netting and covered in.
But sooner or later the place is always " cleaned out "
again. There is no shelter near, not a tree close to the
spot, nothing but the high, gravelled embankment, with
the "iron road" on one side and a large field of light
grass land on the other.

But this fondness for certain breeding earths is a

ON ARTIFICIAL FOX-EARTHS 197

well-known characteristic of the fox family, and
several most unlikely places in this neighbourhood
are annually " cleaned out " by the vixens. Some of
these are not considered safe or desirable by those
interested in the preservation of foxes, and tar,
petroleum, and many cunning devices of the earth-
stopper have been used to make them abandon these
haunts for good and all. These efforts may seem
successful for a time, but sooner or later Madame
Vixen will return to her old quarters for " the
interesting event."

Perhaps it is that with all our care and trouble we
have not yet discovered how to make an artificial
earth that shall entirely satisfy the most cunning of
our wild animals. If we could do so the safety of the
cubs would be much insured in a country where wood-
lands of any size are scarce, and most of the foxes
are found in gorse coverts.

CHAPTER XIV

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

The late Mr. George Lane Fox, one of the great pillars
of the chase in the nineteenth century, whose love of
real fox-hunting was hardly equalled by any of his
great contemporaries, used to be rather severe upon
those who forsook their own county hounds and went
to what Mr. Jorrocks called the " Cut-me-downs " for
their sport ; and Whyte-Melville, who thoroughly
sympathised with the great M.F.H. in this matter — in
principle, at least, if he did not carry it out in prac-
tice— expresses it delightfully in the pages of Market
Harborough. " After all," he writes, " notwithstand-
ing her irresistible attractions, we cannot follow Diana
every day of our lives, and surely it is wiser and
pleasanter to take her as we want her amongst our
own woods and glades and breezy uplands, and
pleasant shady nooks, than to go all the way to
Ephesus on purpose to worship with the crowd.
Mixed motives, however, seem to be the springs that
set in motion our human frames, and if Care sits
behind the horseman on the cantle of his saddle,
Ambition may also be detected clinging somewhere
about his spurs."

198

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 199

Men certainly hunt from "mixed motives," and the
great Squire of Bramham, above mentioned, delighted
in the reply of one of his followers, a visitor who took
up his hunting quarters within the confines of the
Hunt, to an inquirer who asked why on earth he
didn't " go to the grass." " I don't eat grass," was the
answer, " and I prefer the hospitalities of the plough.
The man whose idea of fox-hunting is simply riding
fast over a country is never the one to "prefer the
, hospitalities of the plough," and if an honest notion
of his ideal sport could be obtained it would probably
be found to be something of this sort : A very level,
sound, grass country of large enclosures, none less than
twenty acres, divided by stiff fences, with the take-
off firm and good and the landing smooth and capable
of being jumped by a horse in his stride ; a blazing
scent and no check till the "beastly crowd" is well
shaken off, and then only of sufficient duration to
" give a horse his puff " ; time limit, thirty-five
minutes at most, preferably ten minutes less, for if
the pace is really " top-hole," and the fences " pretty
useful," it gets to " second-horse time " about then.

A delightful programme, no doubt ; but, fortunately,
some of us say fox-hunting at its best is not like the
pictures we see in the print-shop windows, and if the
above were to be the unvarying fare served out to
the true fox-hunter, surfeit would very soon over-
take him, and he would become horribly bored and
disgusted. He would miss what are to him the real
joys of the chase— the endless diversities of the
pastime, the beautiful working of the hounds, and
their wonderful instinct called forth by difficulties

200 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

presented during the pursuit, by the nature of the
country, the stain of cattle or sheep, the heading of
the fox by the plough-team or labourer, or the running
of a road by the beaten quarry, and his twisting course,
that betokens the end is near.

To some, perhaps, the most wholly delightful moment
in a fox-hunt is when a hit is made by some favourite
hound, or a happy cast by the huntsman when
" we're all in a muddle, beat, baffled, and blown,"
and the pack, swarming together like bees, drive
forward with such rapturous cry that the man must
be made of strange material who does not catch the
contagion and feel an electric thrill shooting through
the very cockles of his heart.

The requisites laid down by a great sporting
authority as being "essential to a real good fox-
chase " were " hunting sometimes, running some-
times, and racing into the fox at last," and when
these essentials are obtained we all go home happy ;
and it would be a very long time before a repetition
of such pleasure became monotonous ; it certainly
has never been my lot to have too much of it — but
one never can tell ! " Of sitting, as of all other
carnal pleasures," said the escaped Puritan galley-
slave, " satiety cometh at the latest."

Of great grass countries and great crowds, I believe
satiety cometh to most after middle-age, though there
be many who battle on to the end ; and a great sports-
man has been heard to declare that if all Meath were
like the famous Dublin country he would not hunt
in it. It is that great variety which is common to
almost all Irish countries that makes hunting in the

Photo] [Lafayette, Dublin.

The Late Mr. John Watson.

Master of the Meath Hounds, 1891-1908.

(Died, aged 56, 1908.)

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 201

Green Isle so especially delightful ; and this variety-
is certainly very pleasantly manifest in Meath, where
on a Friday the sportsman may find himself racing
over the level expanses of pasture in the neighbour-
hood of Dunshaughlin, let us say, and next day
twenty-six miles to the north he may be watching
the Meath bitches rise and disappear over the grey
stone walls that intersect those light, grassy uplands
that look down on Virginia Road Station.

This variety of country endears it to the sportsmen
who dwell therein and "never have two days con-
secutively in the same sort of country" — one of the
advantages a settler in the glorious Limerick district
claimed for it when I was there lately. Though I am
by no means in sympathy with the peripatetic fox-
hunter who wanders about in search of sport,
" shifting his pitch " from year to year, yet I most
thoroughly enjoy a day or two in a new country ;
but, as a friend puts it, "if all England and Ireland
outside the towns were one big rolling patch of
Leicester grass, divided by bullfinches of the regula-
tion pattern and distance apart, a visit to a distant
country would be robbed of more than half its
present charm ; and hunting would certainly be
much more commonplace if all the countries were
exactly alike, if precisely the same methods were in
force, and if the packs were of a dead level standard
of quality." Those who have never hunted outside
the crack countries may be excused for believing
that sport elsewhere must be tame and feeble, so
much has been written in praise of these favoured
districts ; but the mistake is a great one, as has

202 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

often been conceded by good sportsmen from the
Shires when they retire to the provinces.

No doubt great speed and much leaping of high
fences and wide water appeals to the imagination,
and the Midlands of England have frequently been
selected as the scene of many a doughty deed per-
formed to please a lady in the pages of a novel ;
while the writings of " Nimrod," describing "the law-
less burst, the wicked riding, the cracking of rails, the
Siberian waste of grass, and the submersion of new
coats and gallant souls in the Whissendine," drew
great attention to the district wherein these heroic
incidents took place. Whyte-Melville, too, has put
before us unequalled descriptions of sport in the
same country ; but true sportsmen will follow that
author with greater delight when he takes us into
the provinces with charming Kate Coventry or Uncle
John, or down into the West with Tilbury Nogo.
Surtees and Charles Kingsley also were able, years
ago, to please the genuine fox-hunter, though the
authors never wandered into the " Cut-me-downs "
with their heroes ; but brave old Peter Beckford, by
the wonderful earnestness and fervour of his well-
chosen language, has been able to eclipse all others
in his absolutely truthful description of a fox-hunt.

A wonderful performance, in truth, is Beckford's
famous picture of a fox-hunt. Doubtless he drew
from memory, and I suppose that Dorsetshire, and
probably Lord Portman's country, was the scene of
action. A wonderful performance indeed. Not a
word about the horses, the dresses, the dreadful
leaps, the broad brook, and the horrible fall, and yet

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 203

sustained and thrilling interest to the sportsman from
the find. " Hounds and hunting," these are the theme,
and, with skilfully interpolated little gems of Somer-
ville's poetry, Beckford has given us a classic whose
merits have received justice from authors who were
no sportsmen. It is inimitable ; it could not possibly
be improved upon ; and yet when we read it over
very carefully we shall see that our author could
hardly have appealed to us so well had he been
describing a run over Leicestershire, for many
passages we most admire would have lost their
truth.

The writings of Beckford and Somerville may have
lost some of their popularity in the present age, and
if this is the case it is much to be deplored, for they
are more attractively instructive than any others,
and we hear yearly increasing complaints as to the
necessity of instructing many of the folk who come
out with hounds in what has been perhaps some-
what fantastically termed the " Noble Science of Fox-
hunting."

From the writings of Surtees we can learn nearly
everything about the actual pursuit of a fox that can
be gathered from a book ; but there is so much to
amuse in his novels, and a sense of the ludicrous is
so quickly aroused, that many minute descriptions
and details connected with the chase are, I fancy,
often overlooked by the reader, who does not expect
to find pearls of wisdom dropping from the jolly
rnouth of Mr. Jorrocks, even when he " lecters " from
the platform or soliloquises when pounding along on
the back of " Arterxerxes " : nor does he look for con-

204 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

summate knowledge of the huntsman's art when
such amusing knaves as Soapey Sponge or Facey
Romford proceed to handle a pack of foxhounds.

In Beckford's Thoughts upon Hunting, however, and
in the poem he quotes so freely, will be found all
that the ardent young sportsman can desire to read
for his instruction alone, and if a love of the pic-
turesque and what there may be of poetry in the
chase appeal to him, he will find delight in these
pages, and will learn from them that many pleasures
are to be found in most unfashionable countries, and
that the glory of the gallop is by no means the sole
pleasure of fox-hunting, nor the one that we enjoy
the most frequently.

Some would have us believe that a beautiful land-
scape is thrown away upon the fox-hunter, who is
supposed to dislike the sight of anything in the
shape of a hill that rises higher than the Hemplows,
and whose ideal country is one that a horse can
easily gallop across. As a matter of fact, however,
the majority of fox-hunters have, I find, the keenest
appreciation of the beauties of Nature in all her
varying moods, and rejoice in them exceedingly.

" It is true," wrote an early Victorian author, " that
among the five thousand who follow the hounds daily
in the hunting season there are to be found, as
among most medleys of five thousand, a certain
number of fools and brutes — mere animals, deaf to
the music, blind to the living poetry of nature. To
such men hunting is a piece of fashion or vulgar
excitement, but bring hunting in comparison with
other amusement and it will stand a severe test."

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 205

Those who are conversant with the works of the
most famous authors who have written upon the
subject of hunting cannot fail to be struck with
the unaffected admiration for the picturesque which
constantly displays itself in the descriptions of the
chase. Charles Kingsley, in the opening chapter of
Yeast, and in many another page, Whyte-Melville
and Surtees in most of their works, give us delight-
ful glimpses of charming English scenery, and the
chapters in which these descriptions appear are, I
notice, beloved of hunting men. To quote again
from our enthusiastic " Early Victorian " : " How
delightfully fine the run along brook-intersected
vales, up steep hills, through woodlands, parks, and
villages, showing you in byways little Gothic churches,
ivy-covered cottages, and nooks of beauty you never
dreamed of, alive with startled cattle and hilarious
rustics."

I once ventured to make comparison between fox-
hunting in Ireland and the sport as it is carried on
on the other side of St. George's Channel, and to set
forth the advantages claimed by Hibernian sports-
men for their native isle. It has lately been pointed
out to me by a lady, whose experience and knowledge
is unquestionable, that I omitted to claim for Ireland
one of the charms of fox-hunting on this side : to w^it,
the beauty of the scenery, and the picturesque variety
of country one rides over in many of the very best of
her hunting districts. " Whereas," says my correspon-
dent, " in England, when we come upon really beauti-
ful scenery in the hunting-field, the country generally
becomes unrideable, or nearly so."

206 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

Now, while admitting that the picturesque is met
with in every county in England, and much that has
beauty in its own quiet way, I think it must be allowed
that most of the crack countries are not celebrated for
striking or romantic landscape. Some exceptions there
are, no doubt — and notably in the North Country —
which suggest themselves readily enough ; but in
Ireland there is scarcely a grass country in some portion
of which the background is not filled by some blue
mountain or noble range of hills, while river scenery
of the most enchanting kind is very frequent — scenery
that, to my mind, is enhanced by the sight of a pack
of hounds, with their scarlet- and black-coated followers
moving swiftly along by the wondrous green margin
of the sparkling water.

Naturally, in Ireland as in England, the most
romantic scenery is to be found in countries that are
unrideable ; and though the Kerry beagles have a
fame of their own, there are no foxhounds to be
found in that loveliest of Irish counties, where moun-
tain, lake, and forest forbid the use of the steed. In
the neighbouring county of Cork, however, fox-
hunting prevails in the midst of scenery, wild and
very beautiful in the west, where Miss Edith Somer-
ville reigned over the West Carbery ; though at times
hounds pursue their quarry relentlessly over a country
which looks only accessible to a goat, followed never-
theless by horses. To the east of the same county by
the banks of the Irish Rhine, the C.C.H. have many
a gallop along the lovely Blackwater Valley, and I can
never forget the evening we ran a fox to ground at
old Strancally Castle — a picturesque ruin that looks as

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 207

if it were placed there to complete the romantic beauty
of that wonderful reach of the glorious river. Further
up the same river those who have seen a run along
its banks from Modeligo for the first time, will after-
wards have nearly as much to tell of the views they
have seen as of the Hunt itself, and following up the
stream into Duhallow^ territory we come upon charm-
ing river scenery in the neighbourhood of Mallow and
the Avondhu kennels. Nor is the valley of the Suir,
to the northward of those towering Knockmeildown
Mountains much less beautiful, and there are times
when its beauties burst upon one out hunting in the
most unexpected manner. It was either from Castle-
morres or Rossenara that we saw the Kilkenny
hounds slip away after their fox one muggy, misty day,
when Mr. Langrishe had solemnly prophesied that
there would be a scent to satisfy all of us — only,
perhaps, he put the matter before us with greater
intensity ! They got away over the hill into what is
known as the Wynne's Gorse country, and there was
certainly no doubt about the scent or the pace. The
line of big green fields the fox crossed was ideal, and
it was voted a charming country. The parti-coloured
patch that moved so smoothly over the surface of these
fields seemed to show^ up their greenery, the sound as
of joybells that rose from it stimulated the lucky ones
within hearing in their efforts to keep near it ; the
fences were sound and fair, and mostly bare of all
growth of thorn, and would have been voted small
in some countries.

A charming country ! And yet, had no hounds been
there that is a featureless and uninteresting bit of

208 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

tableland enough, and one that, under other circum-
stances, would have been voted monotonous. The
hounds raced and the horses pulled, and all went well.
The trees of Booliglass were well away on the left,
and still the hounds raced, but the horses pulled no
more. The thick atmosphere prevented me from
taking any landmarks, though I think the M.F.H.
knew every field he leaped into, but at last we found
ourselves upon stony ground ; hounds checked, and
the mist cleared away, and then, as it lifted, rose an
involuntary " Oh ! " such as one hears on illumination
nights when the many coloured sparks burst from the
rocket over a cockney crowd. We were looking down
on the lovely valley of the Suir. Bessborough, among
its splendid timber and sweeps of greensward, lay, so
it seemed, at our feet, Castletown Woods to the right
of that again, and the well-wooded vale towards
Carrick, Kilsheelan, and Clonmel. Through the valley
ran the shining river and beyond it and opposite to
us the Tower Hill of Curraghmore and the Carrick
Woods with the Comeraghs towering behind them, while
wood and mountain framed the picture to the west as
far as the eye could reach. We had a rare gallop up
to that point ; but though I remember it well to the
check, the view from the stony hill is all I can tell
of the finish without reference to the diary. I shall
never forget that "Oh!"

It must be understood that the countries I have
recently mentioned are what are known as countries
which are chiefly under pasture, and which commend
themselves from a rider's point of view to our notice.
The country from which I write has in itself no great

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 209

claims to natural beauty (save in the actual valleys
of the Barrow and Slaney — two rivers by which it is
watered), were it not for the glorious mountain views
of the Mount Leinster range and the more distant
Wicklow Mountains, which we never lose, no matter
in what part of the district we are hunting ; and in
winter, when snow sheets the tops that rise to an
elevation of more than sixteen hundred feet, one
cannot well imagine anything more beautiful than
those distant views. But, as was remarked before,
almost every Irish view has its share of these. Lord
Fitzwilliam's territory presents a combination almost
unequalled of moor and mountain, woodland and
pastoral plain. Kildare, with its stout foxes running
up into the sweet Wicklow Mountains ; Waterford,
with the dark Comeraghs dominating the cream of
its grass ; Wexford, with the southern slopes of the
Mount Leinster range rising high above the sporting
lowlands ; Louth, with exquisite views of the Mourne
Mountains — upon all one might descant at length,
which should prove wearisome. And Royal Meath,
deadly flat though most of what Sam Reynell called its
" boundless plains " may be, has views of the Dublin
hills and possesses uplands above Tankardstown and
over far Loughcrew, commanding most glorious
panoramas. Galway, with all its wild wealth of grass,
may, perhaps, be the exception ; and the sadness which
the grey walls seem to lend to the landscape gives a
sterile effect to much of a country which I have seldom
visited.

Then, quite apart from the attractions of lovely
scenery, I often wonder if the favoured individuals

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 15

210 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

whose lot it is to pursue the fox over " the cream of
Leicestershire," have better fun for their money than
those who take their pastime in what are disparagingly-
termed " rough countries." At first sight, it would
appear that comparison must be absurd, and the notion
of contrasting the pleasure enjoyed by the equestrian
mounted on the ideal steed for the flying countries and
careering over "oceans of grass," with the scrambling
mode of progression familiar to the sportsman in a
rough country on a nag that the other could " gallop
rings round " seems too ludicrous for words. And yet
when I wrote of " fun " just now, I confess that
doubts began to assail. Simply from the rider's point
of view, of course, there can be no question about the
matter when all goes well, when hounds are not over-
ridden at the start, when no railway intervenes just
as they have begun to shake off the crowd, when no
fresh fox jumps to save the life of the hunted one,
when no wire crops up to cause disaster and delay.
But such things do happen, and happen pretty fre-
quently, too — so frequently, in fact, that I find some
of my friends beginning to sigh for a little wilder
and less conventional sport.

My recollections of a run in a rough country some
years ago may perhaps serve to raise a smile. What, I
wonder, did the "swoU" from the grass of the English
Midlands — for one was out that day — think in his
heart of hearts of the quaint scene at the cross-roads
where we met? Ten individuals on horseback all told,
waiting for the hounds in as bleak a spot as you shall
find in Southern Ireland ; a group of country folk
round them and a single side-car with two ladies on

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 211

board, squeezed in close to the fence to get out of the
bitter wind. But, " Here come the hounds ! " their
Master with a single whipper-in in attendance, and
four or five more horsemen. There are fifteen couples,
not very evenly matched, you will say ; some very little
bitches, and one or two dog-hounds that dwarf them
considerably ; but the bitches are very smart and
shapely, small though they be, and, despite their un-
evenness, there is a varmint wear-and-tear look about
the pack which rather impresses one. The M.F.H. and
huntsman is impressive, too, in his way, and looks
like business. You augur well from his reception by
the country folk, with several of whom he is soon
in earnest, low-toned conversation, in the course of
which two more horsemen turn up.

" Law enough," at last says the Master, and, turning
his horse, a procession, which consists of one lady and
twenty mounted men, moves off to the base of a high
and rocky hill. Banish from your thoughts, oh swell
from the Midlands ! all recollections of Cream Gorse
or Ashby Pasture, for "here we go up, up, up,"
breasting at first the steep slope of the high conical
hill, with short, slippery grass under our horses' feet —
grass which changes all too soon to weird-looking
heather and patches of low-growing Irish furze. At
last, when our saddles are inclined to slip over our
horses' tails and the wind shrieks past our heads —
recumbent though they be on the necks of the steeds
— we reach the top (seven hundred feet high), and find
ourselves among strange boulders of red-coloured rock,
where wretched, stunted fir-trees struggle for existence
among great hummocks of coarse, yellow grass with

212 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

short furze and brown heather intermingled — the fox
covert. Before we have fairly adjusted ourselves and
our saddles we can hear, despite the whistling of the
winds, that hounds have found a fox and are hard at
him, and we become aware that the summit is already
tenanted by quite a crowd of country folk, who have
been awaiting the arrival of the pack, and have no
intention of quitting their coign of vantage as long
as a horseman or hound is visible in the plain below.
With extraordinary keenness of vision they will view a
fox both in covert and far away from it, and their
intense excitement become contagious. The Master's
cheer and the occasional touch of his horn is supple-
mented by yells and rushes of the foot-people, when the
fox is viewed stealing along a path beneath the stunted
firs, or showing himself for a second among the rocks ;
and many strange shouts of encouragement are directed
at the hounds. The M.F.H. bears himself with Chris-
tian fortitude ; he is used to their ways, and beyond
a " blast all that bawling, boys ! " — very fervently
delivered — keeps his temper and his breath for his
horn and hounds.

At last an ear-piercing yell, followed by a more
scientific " view holloa," sets us all off in hot haste to
follow the tracks of the Master. Crouching under the
firs, we escape decapitation, and scrambling over half-
hidden boulders and half-tumbling over many a tussock
of tufted grass, we at length find ourselves on the
edge of what appears to be a ghastly precipice. But
there is a path (or an apology for one), and the hunts-
man is slithering down, so we harden our hearts and
follow. The countrymen, be sure, are there to see

VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES 213

him go, and throughout the dangerous descent we hear
such cries as " Look at 'um now down thro' Mick's ley
field I " " Isn't he a divil ? " " Mind him now, across the
praties below," " He's a riglar (something) of a fox."

At last — oh, joy ! — we are beyond the worst of the
gradient, and can see hounds cross a small field of
yellow grass below us ; and there we also find ourselves
in a few seconds more. The lower fence of the little
field appears simply a high mound of large stones piled
up along its length, but with an amazing rattle and
clatter of stones we surmount this difficulty. We have
the M.F.H. in front of us, his whipper-in is on the right,
and we have followed him as closely as etiquette will
permit down this terrible descent.

The pack is slipping along now, and their eager,
excited notes come back up the hill to us with a
mocking challenge, as it seems. Now we drop into a
" boreen," so rough and stony that we doubt if progress
is quicker in this little lane than on the gorse-covered
slope we have left ; but we peg along, and when
the walls are low we catch glimpses of hounds ahead
and slightly to our right, and when they are high —
why, we hear the merry music and know our own
course is correct. But a gap from the " boreen " leads
us into a tiny field, in time to see hounds disappear
over a high stone-faced bank, and the surface of the
ground being now only slightly on the decline, we hug
ourselves with the notion that the hill is at last left
behind, and that we are fairly " in for a run." Our
boreen has also put us on terms again with the pack,
and the " skirmishers " who did not make the ascent
now are not one whit better off than ourselves.

214 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

There is a merry flash past a little farm, an awful
drop on to a broad, white road, a steep descent into the
bed of a shallow stream, and a climb up the further
bank of the same, which takes the steam out of the
nags as they struggle uphill to a yellow woodland,
through which hounds hunt with resounding cry.
Away then over a high stone gap at the end of the
ride, on to an open bit of rough moorland, where we
pick out sheep tracks and paths, for our progress is
hindered again by the low Irish furze which crops up
among the heather. The fox has run one of these
paths, we may be sure, and " hounds all after him go "
in a longish string just now, and not saying quite so
much about it as before. The visitor from the Midlands
is well to the fore, and going his own way; his face,
slightly flushed, wears an aspect of supreme content,
and carries not the suspicion of a sneer at the rough
country. " What a rare good fox ! " he says, " and how
they do dust him along ! "

Good fox he is, but he is not half done with yet.
Slanting now across our track runs a broad, grey
wall, and there is a gap in it in front of hounds,
who are leaving us behind a bit ; but in the very gap
they cluster and pause. Then a curious thing occurs.
Hounds pour through the gap and spread themselves
over the rough ground beyond, all but two of the
smallest bitches; these nip at once on to the wall, and,
silhouetted against the western sky, run fast along
the top of the wall, throwing their tongues shrilly at
intervals. The pack swings round, and running by
the side of the wall, press on with confidence in the
couple over their heads, and perhaps catch a whiff

VARIETY IN HUNTING COaNTRIES 215

or two of the scent that maddens them, for a note
goes up also from among them on occasions. For
more than a quarter of a mile this queer and most
interesting work continues, till the wall leads us into
a fir wood, where there is strong covert of the sort
described before under the trees. This wood also
crowns a hill, but a low one, and the savage cry that
goes up from among the trees makes us press to the
far side for a view. See, " there he goes ! " down by
the far side of the rocks ! But these woods are full
of foxes ; is he our hunted one ? It is not easy to
decide, for the heather hides his brush and half his
body ; but here come the hounds, their hackles erect
from poll to shoulder like the mane of a butcher's
cob. Yes ! I think we may bet on that vanishing
brown shape below being their rightful quarry. In
the open the heather carries a rare scent, and faint
though that of a sinking fox may be, they swoop
down after him, but ere they have gone a mile are
springing frantically about below on the rough ground,
where they have stopped. " Whoop ! " He's in here,
in a hole among the rocks. " Whoo-whoop ! " It was
an hour and thirty-five minutes, and has seemed half
a lifetime. No check from find to finish, and the
stranger in a wondering sort of way says, " Gad ! I
believe it's about the best hunt I ever saw." But
what's this ? " Tally ho ! Tally ho ! " Out jumps the
fox from the shallow cleft in which he had taken
refuge, and once more goes for the fir wood up on
the hill above us — a bad move, poor fellow ! For
straggling hounds above us, attracted by the noise,
come leaping down and meet him ; he turns, and the

216 VARIETY IN HUNTING COUNTRIES

turn is fatal — they have him now, and a struggHng
mass wobbles down the hill w^ith much stifled growl-
ing and worrying. " Whoop ! " again — and twice as
vigorously delivered,

Now the obsequies ! The lady must have the
brush, but the mask will cross the water and hang
in a Midland hunting-box to remind the owner of a
day in a rough country.

CHAPTER XV

FOX-HUNTING TYPES

THE VETERAN — THE MAN WHO HUNTS TO RIDE — THE
MAN WHO RIDES TO HUNT.

" I've lost my grip, I've lost my go,
So now I ride in Rotten Row."

I MAKE no apologies to the noble lord who wrote
the above lines for quoting them. They describe the
reasons given by an old friend, one of the best
welters who ever crossed an Irish country, for his
abandonment of the chase ; but the pity of it is that
he should have deprived himself of many years of
enjoyable recreation, and left untried the numerous
pleasures of fox-hunting that can still give delight
even when —

•'The beard is grey on the cheek and the top of the head grows bare."

It may appear difficult perhaps to one who has
always been aut Caesar aut nullus to realise that
keenest pleasure and never-ending amusement fall to
the lot of the sedate, elderly gentlemen on the

217

218 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

clever cob or good family horse, who seldom fails to
put in an appearance at the covert-side. He has
had quite the best of us all even thus early in the
day ; his perfect-actioned steed has given him no
annoyance on the way from the meet by undue fresh-
ness ; there has been no boring at the rein, no excit-
able curvetting. Therefore, with unruffled demeanour
he has been able to hold pleasant converse with his
friends, nor when the covert is reached does he allow
any consideration of what lies in the immediate
future to disturb his equanimity or interfere with his
real pleasure in seeing hounds try for their fox.

He knows the reason why young Rapid grows
silent and preoccupied when the deep, sonorous note
of old Rummager proclaims that the thief of the
world is afoot, and why he sidles along up the fence
towards the narrow hunting-gate ; but the selfish
anxiety for a start, and mad hustle and jostle to
get well away, are things of the past for our
Senior, His anxiety now is that the fox shall get a
chance, and the hounds get well away, so that we
all may have our fun, each in the manner it pleaseth
him best. Not for him now the eager emulation to
drop into the front rank and stay there, " good
fellows to right and left of him, but not a soul
between himself and the hounds," he has done it in
his day, and now he appreciates the ecstatic pleasure
of his successors, and likes, if he can, to watch them
play the game.

He can say with Charles Kingsley in his famous
" Concert in a Pine Wood " — the best bit of hunting
that ever was penned : " Let it suffice that I have

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 219

in the days of my vanity drunk delight of battle
with my peers far on the ringing plains of many a
county, grass and forest, down and dale."

To sportsmen all, to friends of ray youth, who,
because they think they have lost their " grip and
go," noTv confine their equestrian pursuits to Rotten
Row, or betake themselves to the Riviera, I, as one
of the ancients, would say, " Return to your old
familiar winter quarters. Even in a winter like the
present the skies are clearer than in London, and the
rain at least as cleanly. What pursuits have you
whose delight has been in —

'"The steed's brave bound and the opening hound'?

What pursuits have such as you by the shores of
the Mediterranean ? Better the mud from the dog-
cart wheels on the way to the meet than the dust
from the motor-car on the Corniche road, the cheery
jog to covert than the stroll on the glaring Promenade
des Anglais ! "

Here is the ideal mount for you ! He is 15 "01 hands,
his shoulders are long, his girth is deep, his feet are
as flint, his legs as of iron ; he can flex those hocks of
his in trot and canter, and, " mounting you like a
castle," can step away with you at a walk an honest
six miles an hour. His mouth is light, and he will
turn from no fence you put him at should vaulting
ambition possess you to-day, but will jump it de-
liberately, with safety and activity.

Up with you, then, and jog on once more to the
well-known field that overlooks the little glen with

220 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

the furze-clad banks, and the dark Scotch firs grow-
ing where the sides are steepest.

" 'Tis the place ; and all about it, as of old, the magpies call,
Boding evil to ' the Lad.' . . ."

Hark ! What a piercing note ! Sounds almost like
a hound in pain, doesn't it? There it goes again!
Reminds you of old Starlight, does it? Well, old
Starlight has been dust this many a year; but that
was Cowslip, a grand-daughter of hers — see ! there she
is on the other side, on the rocky slope where the gorse
grows so sparsely. There never is a scent there, you
remember, and not another hound can speak to it.
There, she shows again ! Same colour, you see — red
and white, like her grand-dam. How like the old
bitch even from here ! Mark the extraordinary way
she lashes her stern.

There are some followers, though ; look at them
working hard in her tracks ! But they can't quite
own the scent. Aye, now they have it ! now they
can press him a bit ! I reared that black bitch, and
she's a wonder. Wait till you see her in the open !

The fox, did you say ? Where ? Ah, I thought the
sight of him would fetch you. Aye, there he goes
again across the rocky bit. See if he crosses the
stream below. No ! What? Yes ; by Jove, you're
right. Yonder he goes ! He's away !

What are those fellows doing pressing on down
there? Why, poaching a start! Well, they can't
head the fox now, but they may foil his line before
the hounds come out. They must learn better, no

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FOX-HUNTING TYPES 221

doubt, but "boys will be boys." Our huntsman is
down there now, and there go the hounds. No !
he hasn't quite the note on the horn that the old
man had — but who has ? We must be moving though,
on through the next gap, and follow the cart-track
down the hill and cross the stream. What a cry
comes up from below ! You need no spurs, I see.
Splash through the water, and peg up the little green
lane, with the low stone walls on either side. The
fox passed up the field to the right of it. I told you
so, and here we are alongside the hounds.

Look at them now, they have fairly got hold of
the scent ; see the two dark-coloured bitches that
lead them— like greyhounds on a hare, aren't they?
How they do drive along ! That's a hard-riding chap
coming up on the bay horse. How cleverly he
jumped that stone-faced bank ; good sportsman,
though ! he will do no harm ! Here comes the
Master ! Looks happy, doesn't he ? I should think he
had all his hounds on. Did you take the time when
the fox broke ? Too excited, were you ? Well, I have
it — ten to twelve by my watch ; remember that !

Where are we heading for ? Well, there's a biggish
wood about five miles in front of us, and a lonely
country all the way ; we're bound to see something
of them if they run that way. There's a road in
front of us that our lane comes out upon, and once
over that road it's safe to be a run, for, bar accidents,
they won't be over-ridden to-day. How well they run
together, don't they ? But the black bitches still lead,
and how's that for a cry ? What is there like that
continuous musical clamour that seems to rise and

222 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

fall ? A peal of bells ; aye, the old, old simile — we can
find no better.

Look out, now ! Here we are at the end of the
lane, and out upon the broad high-road. Hark to
the Master's " Hold hard ! " He knows what's in front
of them. But look at the hounds coming out on to
the road ; how intense their eagerness ; how changed
and strangely savage their appearance. Here comes
a double-distilled fool bursting on to the road
after them, and dropping right in among them,
heedless of the Master's objurgations ; and look
to the left along the road at the crowd that are
coming up best pace. Aye, hold up your hand and
check them ! Anyhow, we can do that much good.
But hark to Relic along the road to the right there,
and see how the pack scour after her. There is good
Grove blood in her, and her forbears could all carry
a line along a road, though none like her. " Lord
Galway for ever ! " — how she does spin along ! " Age
cannot tame" the good old hound. One day a week
she comes out, and rests the remainder of the week,
and she never comes out but she makes her mark.

" Mrs. Macadam " they call her, and when dust is on
the road or through stain of horse and cattle she will
hustle along the highway and keep her tongue going,
too. She has two daughters out, and you'll see them
close to her now, I'm sure. Aye, there they are —
Rival and Rally. But now the old lady stops, and
the pack swing over the fence to the left, for the
Master's cap is off, and listen to his " Yoi ; over, over,
over ! " We can watch the men now. How the
Master's old brown settles himself down, almost " sits

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 223

down to be " before the wall, and then hoists himself
over ; while another fellow takes a circle round the
road, nearly knocking half a dozen people down in
order to get a run at the fence, at which he bungles
horribly. See that lady, how she gets her horse
collected, has two short strides, and flips over. But
we haven't time for more ! Bustle along the road and
fling open the next gate you come to on the left ;
there's a long line of gaps beyond it, and we shall be
on the high ground on the right of hounds. Well
done ! Now we can shove along as hard as we can
lay legs to the ground. Isn't it splendid going ? What
a glorious sensation even to an old 'un to send a free-
going horse along over such turf as this, light, old,
upland grass that has never been broken up, with the
keen air whistling past one, and that jolly cry of
hounds and the indescribable sound of the chase ever
in our ears.

There they go ! " Readies, how they run ! " as old
Jorrocks would say ; but there is a " tail " on the field,
and no mistake ! What a string ! Look at the little
group in front — bay horse is leading, turning neither
to right nor left, but four men are in line close
behind him, and taking the fences just as they lie
before them, rising and dropping like clockwork
figures, yet gaining not an inch on the pack. We,
too, have a following up here. Look round and see
what a line of horsemen are after us ! Stick your
whip under that pole now, and lift it off the top of
those stones in the gap before us. Neatly done, in
truth ! Now away down the slope towards yonder
trees. That is the wood I spoke of, and the road we

224 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

will reach in a minute leads round the top of the
wood, and then runs through the bottom. Oh, to be
there and view the fox across ! Here we are now,
with the arching trees overhead — and how calm and
still all nature seems down in these sylvan depths
after the " delight of battle on the ringing plains " !
But hark ! " Through bramble and brake the echoes
awake ; " they are hard at him still, and coming this
way ! Let us press close up to the trees on the left.
Ah ! there he goes across the road and into the low
side of the wood. With drooping brush and tucked-
up belly he steals across at a foot's pace. Have you
forgotten how to holloa ? By Diana, no ! That was
a good one, and has told. Listen to the horn, and
the Master's cheers. Here come the pack, and the
Master crashing down through the underwood with
them. " Where did he cross ? " No need to reply ;
the hounds rapturously tell him that. " Ls he long
gone?" "Only just in front of them." "Forrard!
f orrard ! " and the trees close after our jovial hunts-
man. No need to follow him ; stick to the road,
and gallop down through the wood, taking the first
turn to the right when we come to the cross. There
they go now, across the little valley below the wood,
but their heads are up in the bottom, and, though
hounds swing round, they come back puzzled. What
can have happened? Ah, see that evil-looking collie
coming down the road towards us with his tongue
hanging out and his sides heaving. No doubt he has
coursed our fox, and it would be well to make the
M.F.H. aware of it. Our information decides his
cast, and in five minutes they are running harder

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 225

than ever, but soon begin to twist and turn very
decidedly, and we can see a lot of their work. Soon
the chase ends : ends with the death of the fox, or
at the open earth which has saved his well-earned
life — what matter ? It has been a good run, and
what a lot of it we old folk have seen !

" 'Tis triumph all, and joy " to finish in sight of
hounds the end of a fine pursuit. Nor does our
pleasure end here. We have to talk it all over on
our way home, and again over wine and w^alnuts
after dinner, maybe to measure it on the ordnance
map in the smoking-room after that again. Then the
humours of the chase spring to mind ; the croppers
we viewed, the funking and the craning ; the
decorative legends of Jones, who arrived ten minutes
after the finish ; also Smith's imaginative anecdotes
as to the powers of his "little brown horse." We
notice little talk about the hounds among the young
ones ; but we can have our say about their doings,
for we can assuredly claim to have seen "more of
them than most."

Well, has it been a pleasant day ? I think so ! A
healthy one? I am sure of it! "Toil just sufficient
to make slumber sweet," — toil that will but prolong
the life even of an old 'un, for no men preserve
their mental and bodily faculties so long as those
who are constantly in the saddle, and do not let a
passing ailment put an end to their riding. How
numerous are the proofs of this ! Think of Mr.
Robert Watson, M.F.H., riding over the biggest
country in Ireland, horn at saddle-bow, in his
eighty-fourth year! And read in Colonel Anstru-

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. \Q

226 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

ther Thomson's Reminiscences of the pleasures that
remain to a man who is fond of the chase even
unto patriarchal age ! That book alone, with its
happy, genial tone, should be sufficient inducement
to all hunting men to stick to the sport as long as
Providence gives them strength to stick to the
saddle, "while panting Time toils after them in
vain."

The Man who Hunts to Ride is to be found, I think,
in every hunt in His Majesty's dominions, and is
present at almost every meet with every pack of fox-
hounds.

There is no mistaking the keenness with which
he pursues his sport ; which is certainly to him one
intensely exciting, containing, as it does, a consider-
able spice of danger to himself — in many cases also
to the hounds he patronises, and occasionally to his
fellow-mortals, " Bruiser " yclept by some, by others
*' thruster," both epithets sufficiently describe the
manner of his progress. He comes out to ride
straight and hard, to be turned by no fence, to go
as close to the hounds as his horse can carry
him, or as long as that horse can last. But it does
not necessarily follow that he will over-ride hounds,
unduly press them at a check, or otherwise miscon-
duct himself ; for, if he has been any length of time
at the game, he knows better than to spoil his own
fun. Though he probably would die sooner than say
so, however, he means to " have the best of it " if he
can, and intends to let no man ride between himself
and the pack when they really run hard.

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 2^7

Now, he who goeth forth with this intent may, I
think, be fairly described as the " Man who Hunts to
Ride," for though his pleasure may be enhanced
by the sight of the pack carrying a scent at a fast
pace over a stiff line of country, and though their
cry may serve still further to boil up the excitement
within his breast, yet the fact that they are engaged
in the pursuit of a cunning and resourceful animal,
and that he is supposed to have come out to watch
them do it, does not come home to him at all.

A retired sabreur, well known in the hunting
world, a very fine horseman, who has won his
share of glory between the flags, once had the
honesty, not to say hardihood, to confess to his
friend, the late Master of the Meath Hounds, that
he " loved the ride," but " didn't profess to under-
stand or care for the tally-ho business ! "

Not many forward riders, however, are so candid
as our friend, though I know full well that the
number of those who share his sentiments is legion.
Still, I suppose it would be unfair to suggest that
the members of the legion are not fond of fox-
hunting.

" Why don't you always go out with the stag-
hounds or draghounds ? They'll do just as well,"
I once asked a friend — now, alas ! with the great
majority — who had expressed similar sentiments.

" Oh no ! " he replied, " I like foxhounds best.
One meets such lots of good fellows, one sees such
fun, and I like riding about all day — particularly if
I can get on a different horse occasionally. Besides,
you never know when you will have a dart, and it's

228 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

all the jollier if it comes unexpectedly. Now, with
the 'goat' one conies out later, has a gallop, goes
home, and that's all about it." This was a military
steeplechase rider of great renown, who had steered
a Grand National winner.

Verily the votaries of the chase differ in the
manner they enjoy its pleasures !

It may be thought by some when one looks round
at a large assemblage of horsemen gathered together
at a favourite trysting-place that it should be an
easy matter to classify the different types of fox-
hunters present ; but to my notion this is not the
case. Look for your " bruisers " or " thrusters." In
all shapes and sizes, of all classes, and, I am almost
tempted to write, of all ages, shall you find them
throughout the land.

Appearances are deceptive in this, as in other
quests. Yon tall, lathy figure carrying that lean,
resolute head with its strongly marked line of eye-
brow and square, determined chin, surely that must
be your " thruster," if ever there was one ? Note, too,
the accurate fit of his superlative boots and breeches,
the beautiful cut of his double-breasted, swallow-
tailed scarlet, and the length of his terrible shining
spurs! "A rum 'un to follow, a bad 'un to beat, I'll
be bound ! "

" Not worth a row of pins to ride, my dear sir ! "
replies Mr. Asmodeus, who knows all about every
one. " But see that pale, half-starved looking, cada-
verous youth, with the light hair and the hat on
the back of his head ; he's a holy terror to ride, if
you like ; turns from nothing, jumped two strands

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 229

of wire on top of a bank last day he was out, and
the coped demesne wall at Kilballysmash on
Saturday last ! "

We may be sure that when strangers appear
at a meet the huntsman, especially if he be an
amateur, casts a wary and inquiring eye upon
them ; appraising them in his own mind, and in-
wardly settling (with a view to further notice) who
will be a "likely fellow to press them at a check."
I have before now received the confidences and
apprehensions of a huntsman on such an occasion,
and have lived to hear him confess his mistake at
the end of the day.

As to the age of the Man who Hunts to Ride, has
it a limit ? Mr. Robert Watson once declared that no
man who smoked was worth — well ! not much — to ride
across country after he was sixty ; but in this, I think,
the veteran was for once mistaken, bearing in mind
that his friend and brother M.F.H,, Sir John Power,
who enjoyed a long cigar to the end of his life, was
a rare good man on a four-year old when he was
seventy, and fairly " set " a large field of horsemen
with the Heythrop hounds at that age. Sir John,
however, like Mr. Watson, and the hero of the
following tale, was one of those who "ride to
hunt " — a species that survives rather longer in the
field than the other, I am inclined to believe. " Age
cannot tame, nor custom stale " some fox-hunters,
that is certain.

I recollect years ago having a hunting friend
to dine with me at Boodle's. At an adjoining table
sat a party of delightfully cheery, fresh-coloured

230 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

youths who were discussing the moving adventures
by flood and field of a run in which some of them
had participated. " It was a devil of a place ! " quoth
the principal spokesman ; " bad downhill take-off, a
stiff-looking rail set well away from a widish ditch,
and the hedge was as high as a house — a ' you couldn't
see over, you couldn't see through ' sort of thing — and
Lord knows what on t'other side. But one couldn't
help feeling sure there was something. I turned
away ; wouldn't have it at any price ! So did Blank
and Dash who were up, when down comes an old
chap on a big bay, never looked to right or left, but
sailed over the lot. I give you my word he loas forty-
five, if he was a day ! "

My friend and I found we were looking at one
another very hard, for we both had to own to a
more advanced age, but it transpired that the hero
of the tale was the late Lord Connemara, who was
then, I believe, approaching his seventieth year.

It must not be imagined that the Man who Hunts
to Ride is naturally a jealous rider. On the contrary,
he may be the readiest in the field to pull up and help
a friend, or even a stranger, in a difficulty, catch a
loose horse, get down and open a gate that cannot be
jumped, and, in fact, prove himself to be the good
fellow he so often is. But he has come out to have
his hunt, which means that he is going to follow a pack
of hounds wherever they go. These hounds are to race
at a great pace over the country, he hopes, and he is
going to stay as close to them as he possibly can ; that
is the game, and a glorious one it is, he thinks — better
than polo, if possible ; and, if there is plenty of fencing,

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 231

better than the fastest tussle for first spear after the
grim, grey boar. You talk to him of scent ! Oh ! he
hopes with all his soul that there will be a good scent,
or, if they must go slow, that they will go over a
strongly enclosed country with as few gates as possible
in the line.

Perhaps in the mind of the Master all such enthu-
siasts are labelled dangerous. They think nothing of
hounds or hunting, he reflects, so they do not antici-
pate the sudden turns, the abrupt checks that the man
who rides to hunt would almost instinctively have
apprehended. And such knowledge is never likely to
come to them till they begin to care for hounds and
the actual science of hunting.

Not long ago I heard a huntsman exclaim, apropos
of one of the straightest of youthful pursuers : " I
ought to have slanged him, I know, but I hadn't the
heart to do so ; he is such a capital boy, and means no
harm. He comes out for his ride, and where hounds
go he intends to go too ! "

When, however, the Man who Hunts to Ride carries
any jealousy into the field with him, he must at once
be labelled dangerous, and it»is hardly conceivable to
what lengths jealousy will carry some men when out
hunting. A farmer told me not long ago, when talking
of a certain notoriously jealous rider, that he saw him,
when well in front of the field at the time, ride bang
among the stooping pack at a sudden check and crack
his whip. They rode home together, and he asked the
jealous one what on earth possessed him to do such
a thing, and spoil the finish of a fine gallop in which
he had gone so well. " You needn't say anything about

232 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

it," was the reply, " but the fact is the old horse was
beat, and I don't think could have jumped another
fence ! " This is a perfectly true story, but, of course,
an exceptional case, and I am happy to say that this
individual retired from the chase some years ago.

" Duck under. Jack ! Duck under ! " screamed Lord
Scamperdale to Mr. Spraggon, who was souse overhead
in a clayhole. " Duck under ! You'll have it full
directly," added he, seeing Sponge and the rest coming
up. This was jealousy pure and simple, of course —
jealousy of the stranger who dared to cope with the
members of the Flat Hat Hunt. And of all forms of
hunting jealousy the dislike of seeing a stranger in a
leading position in the field may be perhaps most
natural ; but what shocking bad form to evince it !
Some who have been notably fine sportsmen in all
other ways have yet not been free from this taint
of jealousy ; indeed, certainly three of the best men
to hounds I ever saw in my youthful days were jealous
as girls. They were all " forty-five if they were a day,"
but I feel sure they never had any enjoyment out of
a run unless they were carried bang in front. For
hounds two of them cared nothing, and openly said
so, while one of this pair gave them very little room,
and, though a good supporter of the Hunt, was always
in trouble with the Master.

The Man who Hunts to Ride is to be found in all ranks
of society. " Go along, Jimmy ! " said a late renowned
M.F.H., whose language was always tolerably incisive,
to a well-known hard-riding candidate for Parlia-
mentary honours who was jumping off a road a bit
too close to the pack in the Master's opinion — " go

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 233

along ! That's right ! Kill all the hounds, and break
your own blessed neck ! Then we'll have no more
fox-hunting and no Liberal Member for Blankshire ! "
The hard rider whom I mentioned above as riding
hounds off the line was a corn merchant, and the late
Captain Algernon Moreton, who used to regale me
when a boy with stories of Lord Fitzhardinge (Sir
Maurice Berkeley) and his huntsman, Harry Ayris,
said that the sharpest thorn in the old sailor's side
was a hatter from Gloucester who was slightly hump-
backed, and upon whom the choicest flowers of the
noble M.F.H.'s nautical vocabulary were freely
sprinkled.

In strong contrast with the man who rides hard
across country for riding's sake must be placed the
Man who Rides to Hunt — the man who sets out in
the morning intent on seeing hounds find their fox
and hunt him, and on obtaining as good a view of
the performance as the animal he bestrides will enable
him to do. His pleasures and anxieties, which give
zest to the pleasures, begin early in the day ; nay, may
we not say that they began the night before ? For he
is a thorough devotee of the chase, and would never
dream of going to bed without taking " a look at the
night," setting the barometer, and giving it a final tap.

When wakened in the morning he is all anxious for
a peep out of the window to see if it is a hunting day,
and betrays a certain amount of fussiness till home
is left behind and he is fairly under way for the meet.
He would not be late for any consideration whatever.
When he arrives he is keen to^get a look at the hounds,

234 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

knowing many of them by sight and name, and notes
the absence of any celebrity of his acquaintance with
regret, and is soon in conversation with the Hunt
servants or the M.F.H. himself.

As to his horse, such a man seldom rides one that
cannot "get him there," though he may not be fas-
tidious as to appearance or particular as to whether
the animal will pass the vet. or no, and he gets on his
back without any sort of idea of showing off his
horsemanship, but simply with the intent of keeping
within such distance of the hounds as will enable him
to watch them to his own satisfaction, no matter how
far or how fast they run.

This is the matter-of-course programme with him
always, and if he fail to carry it out — and the best
will sometimes fail — most dire will be his disappoint-
ment ; though jealousy of other riders, ambition to
be alone with hounds, or the desire to jump unneces-
sary fences never crosses his mind. Not that he does
not enjoy the stirring sensation of pace, or the " feel "
of the elastic spring that carries him over the obstacles.
What man can help doing that ? But these are only
accessories to his pleasure, to the delight he feels in
being able to see the gallant pack racing along over
the greensward after their quarry, while their
melodious cry causes a strange electric thrill to shoot
through his frame. He is well aware that he is then
having the very quintessence of the fun ; yet should
the pace suddenly slacken, his pleasure will hardly
be lessened when he draws rein to watch them stoop
for the scent, to note how busily each hound is working
to carry the line; how, opening and shutting like a

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 235

fan, the pack press forward, swarming like bees, and
driving furiously onward when they catch a stronger
breath of the " tainted gale."

It is now that the Man who Rides to Hunt has
the advantage over the " thruster " pure and simple,
who begins to find the thing a bore if his horse is
still fresh, and would be glad to see a fresh fox jump
up in view of the pack— an event which would cause
much distress to the other pursuer, who, having
enjoyed the ride, is now delighting in the Hunt.

I remember once seeing hounds leave a covert close
to the gate at which they were put in a few seconds
after having entered it. They scoured away, and ran
so fast and straight that in a few minutes I heard
a voice exclaim, " Gad, this must be a drag ! " " If I
thought it was," replied one of the best of sportsmen,
" I'd pull up on the spot ! " — and he meant it too. But
I fancy it would have made little difference to the
other, who was one of your go-along-there-are-three-
couple-of-hounds-on-the-scent style of gentleman.

" Be with them I will," may be as much the motto
of the Man who Rides to Hunt as of the other. He
may not be a finished or beautiful horseman, but
must carry a heart bold and determined beneath his
waistcoat, and his eye must be quick. The chances
are that he is served by his sportsmanlike power of
observation, and his knowledge almost amounting to
instinct, of the way to get in and out of a field
so as to lose no ground.

"There is," writes Whyte-Melville, "an intuitive
perception, more animal than human, of what we may
call ' the line of chase ' with which certain sportsmen

236 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

are gifted by nature," and this intuitive perception
seems to be possessed by the men who ride to hunt
in a greater degree than by others.

I wrote just now that the pleasures of leaping large
fences satisfactorily are fully appreciated by the Man
who Rides to Hunt, but must qualify the statement
somewhat, for I have known several of the species
who, if they thought about the matter at all, con-
sidered the fences approvingly, because they served
to give room to the pack, but otherwise regarded them
with dislike or as obstructions sent by Providence, and
therefore to be dealt with in as cheerful a spirit as
possible. To these men the usual chatter after a run
about the " aw^ful places " that have been jumped and
the vivid descriptions of the obstacles seem foolish
in the extreme ; and I have heard pretty short answers
given by one whose thoughts were of the catching
of the fox during every minute of the gallop, when
asked how he got over the Ballyscatterem double or
some other dreadful impediment. He said to himself,
no doubt, " Now, what the deuce had the jumping of
the double to do with the way those beauties, now
baying round their huntsman, dusted that fox — the
way they stuck to him through all the difficulties
that threatened to defeat them? All that fellow can
think of is the beastly fence that bothered him."

Certain it is that the men who ride to hunt talk
mighty little of the fences they encountered unless
they have been defeated by them, when possibly they
may have a word or two to say. " Where do they
find these terrible places?" the late Lord Wilton is
reported to have said, " I never come across them."

PJiotol [Lafayette, Dublin.

The Late Mr. Kohert Gray Watson.

Master and Huntsman of the Carlow and Island
Hounds for 59 Years.

(Died, aged 87, 1908.)

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 237

There are men who ride to hunt with every pack
in the kingdom. My own slight experience of hunting
in the West of England leads me to imagine that
they have a larger supply down there than elsewhere,
though I suppose that the North Country runs them
close. On the Irish side of St. George's Channel this
brand of sportsman is not so frequently found, though
it is said that the late Master of the Carlow and Island
Hounds (Mr. Robert Watson) had educated a pretty
large field of horsemen to ride without hazarding their
own sport, and to share in some degree his own
sympathy and interest in the work of the hounds.
But men of Mr. Watson's calibre and extraordinary
personal influence are rare indeed, and the exuberant
animal spirits and general excitability with which
Hibernian sportsmen have been credited are not
altogether conducive to the power of taking pleasure
out of a slow hunting run.

This mention of what I have seen effected by Mr.
Watson brings one back to the reflection that the
Man who Rides to Hunt must have been educated to
the business ; and this matter of education is in the
present day declared by many Masters of Hounds to
be very urgently required. Very recently I received
a strong letter upon the subject, in which the writer
declared that it would soon not be possible to carry
on the sport in particular districts where so many
people who came out displayed entire ignorance of
what they were about, and whose sole idea of fox-
hunting appeared to be to ride over the country, and
on all occasions to keep as near to the hounds as
possible. Now, the Man who Rides to Hunt will, from

238 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

the beginning of the day to the end of it, be always
careful of the hounds ; he will give them room at all
times. On the road when going from covert to covert
he is sure to be within sight of the pack, but never
" treading their tails off " in the culpable manner one
so often sees. Huntsmen like their hounds to spread
about on the road when it is clear, and have no wish
that they should be herded along like a flock of closely-
packed sheep. At the covert-side your sportsman is
keen to watch the behaviour of the pack just as they
are thrown in, know^ing certain symptoms in their
demeanour w^hich at times will tell pretty surely that
they have a fox inside the fences. When he is found,
our friend who rides to hunt becomes " dumb as a
drum with a hole in it," to use Mr. Sam Weller's simile,
or at most will hardly elevate his speech above a
whisper, but his eyes are alert and he has lots to
think about, and it will be generally found that
he has secured a start. When hounds check, his voice
will never be raised in noisy clamour, nor will he
move his horse about, but he watches with intensest
interest every movement of hounds and huntsman.
He is hunting the fox in his own mind, and it is of
this check and such-like incidents of the chase that
he will talk when all is over.

The mischievous practice of turning off the road
when going from covert to covert, and schooling over
the fences alongside it, will never be committed by
him, it is hardly necessary to say. The " frolic home
after a blank day " is now, as it ought to be, a thing
of the past, for in these days unnecessary riding over
fences is much to be deprecated ; and, if hounds are

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 239

cold-hunting slowly, it is much more sportsmanlike to
go a considerable distance out of one's way to pass
through a gate in the fence than to follow them over
it. The huntsman and servants may do so — it is their
business — but no one need go after them. This may
seem absurd to some who read these reflections. If
so, let them ask the farmer over whose land they
are riding what he thinks about it.

It must be remarked that among hunting folk the
use of the verb " to ride " means, in their parlance,
to ride hard across country. "Is he any good to
ride?" asks Brown of his friend Jones, with a jerk
of his head towards poor Robinson, who passes by.
" Not worth a row of pins ! " replied Jones truthfully,
according to his rendering of the word. Yet Robinson,
though " a trifle delicate in his pluck," as the Irish
whipper-in said, may be a finished and powerful horse-
man. To the uninitiated it may seem strange that
many of the men, who, both in the past and present
day, have seldom been seen to ride over a fence, have
yet done most to further the great sport of fox-hunting
by their princely support and their practical knowledge
of hunting in all its departments, but especially in the
matter of hound-breeding.

So much, however, is talked and written on the
subject of fox-hunting by those whose knowledge is
superficial, that non - hunting folk take their ideas
of the chase from the highly coloured descriptions in
modern novels, the perpetual chatter about jumping
of fences, and, to quote Mr. Jorrocks, from "Mr.
Hackermann's pictor shop in Regent Street : There
you see red laps flyin' out in all directions, and
'esses apparently to be had for catchin*."

CHAPTER XVI

FOX-HUNTING TYPES {continued)

THE MAN WHO HUNTS FOR AIR AND EXERCISE — HIGH-
WAY FOX-HUNTERS — THE MAN WHO HUNTS BECAUSE
IT IS THE THING TO DO — THE FOX-HUNTER ON
WHEELS.

Let me take first the Man who Hunts for Air and
Exercise. Here he is at the meet ! A type that you
may, for once, single out. Nearly always of a jovial,
good-humoured disposition, the Man who Hunts for
Air and Exercise is also, I have observed, one who
takes up a certain amount of room in the world,
whose appearance bespeaks goodly nourishment of
the corporeal frame. No "lean and hungry Cassius "
this. Rather a jovial Falstaff, with hearty greeting
and merry jest on tongue. A type that is welcomed
by all and could ill be spared.

We are not to suppose that this type of fox-hunter
always labels himself as above. On the contrary, he
would probably be very much surprised if told that
he was considered to come within that category.
Certainly, he never deems himself a hard rider ; but

240

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 241

to be told that he only came out '* for air and exercise "
— perish the thought !

And yet there are, we notice, signs and tokens
which serve to place him unmistakably, and the
weather is the first of these. Just a little bit of a
feather-bed sportsman is our friend, for —

"When the morn comes dim and sad
And chill with early showers,"

it may come to pass that we miss his cheery pre-
sence at the fixture ; though, if the day clears up,
very likely he will turn up smiling somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the second draw.

On a fine morning it is a pleasure to be overtaken
by him on the way to the meet ; for our friend gene-
rally drives, and very comfortable he looks in fur-lined
coat, with the softest and thickest of rugs lapped
round his goodly person. He hails you with a pleasant
bit of chaff, and almost always has a bit of news ; for,
early in the day though it be, he has managed to get
a glimpse of the morning paper, and to wade comfort-
ably through his correspondence while he breakfasts ;
for he is not the man to be tempted from his daily
routine by any undue excitement or flurry because
there's a day's hunting before him.

Perchance he whizzes by with a laughing "good
morrow " in the most up-to-date of motor-cars ; but,
be his vehicle driven by petrol or drawn by horses, it
is pretty sure to combine comfort with dispatch.

When he exchanges his conveyance for a hunter he
is not going to be less pleasantly carried. His groom

Hounds, Oentlemeji, Please. 17

242 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

knows better than to have his horse "a bit above
hisself," and the animal steps away quietly but
springily under him, dropping his head confidingly to
the bit.

His acquaintance, it is hardly necessary to say, is a
large one, and he appears to be on terms of friendship
with every one he passes, while his attention to the
different members of the brigade of Amazons testifies
to the gallantry of his disposition.

No matter the reasons for his appearance in the
hunting-field, he is usually a stickler for orthodoxy
in the matter of dress, and generally affects the scarlet
livery of the chase, though there is never anything in
the smallest degree outre in his costume. But we
may notice that the scarlet never seems to become
of the purple hue so familiar in our own wardrobe,
and the strongest sunlight fails to bring out those
lines down the glossy hat — like traces of time on
beauty's cheek — which tell of struggles with the
holding thorn.

By him the commissariat department is seldom neg-
lected ; he is prone to carry at his saddle-bow a huge
receptacle for fluids in a hunting-horn case — an objec-
tionable form of flask, perhaps, but which has often
been forgiven when its generous owner has passed it
over for a good pull on a cold day or on a weary road
home.

When the assemblage breaks up into groups at the
covert-side our Air-and-Exercise Man is pretty sure to
be a central figure in one of the merriest, and the
laughter that is heard from that particular group is
not seldom provoked by a tale from his repertoire,

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 243

which is large, and includes always some amusing
novelty. Like the bursting of a shell, a sudden sound
scatters the groups in all directions ! The new story
is forgotten at once — and perhaps for ever. The
supreme moment has arrived to each one. " What
will he do with it?" That is the question.

Our friend, only very slightly ruffled, preserves his
outward calm. He has no sort of intention of racing
for yon narrow hunting-gate with the score of enthu-
siasts who are doing their best to get there first.
Still less has he any idea of cramming straight at the
impossible-looking fence beside the gate, like the
gentleman whose horse's tail is already at such an
ominous elevation. Not a bit of it ! But he is going
to have his gallop, nevertheless — just so much or so
little of it as seemeth good to him.

So he flows steadily with the tide, and passes easily
through the gate, unsquashed, unkicked, uncursed, and,
getting well down in his saddle, is carried smoothly
across the first field, his horse going collectedly and
catching just the right hold.

When he reaches the fence five people or fifty may
have jumped it ; that concerns him only if they have
lowered the leap a little for him. His horse is a good
jumper, anyhow, and if lots of folks are in front of
him, why, there are lots more close to him on either
side, and some behind ! Lots of company, in fact ; and
among them, no doubt, some of his own kidney who
are possessed by no overmastering excitement, and can
chaff and jest as they ride along even more effectively
than at the covert-side or on the road, for the inci-
dents of the pursuit are sure to furnish material for

244 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

their good-humoured banter, and the half-serious
exclamations of advice and encouragement which
they exchange.

The Air-and-Exercise Man not infrequently places
himself, or is placed, in charge of a bevy of juveniles
or of a young lady, but is not quite so happy in this
capacity, which is more in the line of the severer order
of sportsman, he thinks ; but those who are under his
charge will have no cause to regret it, for they will
be sure of a safe and amusing ride with so genial a
cicerone.

When the end of the chase has come, and our friend
has joined forces with the happy and still excited
band who were with hounds at the finish, it is
amusing to notice how some of the regular front-
rank men, without any source of triumph in their
demeanour, but as a matter of course proceed to
describe to him the details of the last few minutes
of the gallop. With real interest, tempered by philo-
sophic calm, he receives their information, and heartily
congratulates the M.F.H., and all present within hear-
ing, and may, perhaps, remark : " Ah, well, we did very
nicely, too ! "

It is hardly necessary to explain that the Man who
Hunts for Air and Exercise has distinct fondness for
a horse, and takes an interest in all appertaining to
him. If he did not do so he would seek his exercise
in some other fashion ; and I have observed that he
is sometimes one of the chief racing men of the hunt.
In the spring of the year his opinion is frequently
asked as to the Grand National, and is received with
much respect. In the Point-to-Point races he takes

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 245

great interest ; he is usually one of the committee, and
often a prominent official connected with the gather-
ing, which he nevertheless affects to hold in a certain
good-humoured contempt as being not the real thing
— "neither flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring."

He is often also an indispensable functionary at the
Hunt Ball, where he is in great request, though he
may not be seen at his best " on the flure," and prob-
ably regards dancing as fatal to the safe digestion
of his dinner. But he will have a word to say about
the supper and the wines, and is indefatigable in
seeing that the dowagers shall miss nothing of what
he regards as perhaps the most pleasurable part of the
evening's entertainment ; later on he will be sure to
gather a few friends in the supper-room, when they
will be equally sure to drink "Fox-hunting" in some
vintage for whose wholesomeness he can vouch.

For he is a fox-hunter — of a certain type, and not
a bad sort of type, either. He is popular with all,
and, though he may not do very much in an active
way to further the sport, yet he " promotes the
harmony of the meeting," and makes no false pre-
tences. It was told of a noble M.F.H. of bygone days
in the West of England that he gave very startling
and original advice to a follower who, when asked
" What the devil brought him out ? " replied that he
" came out for air and exercise." But I do not think
that the type I have been trying to sketch can often
be accused of doing any harm, and generally the
M.F.H., beginning perhaps by good-humoured tolera-
tion of the species, soon finds a very much warmer
feeling springing up towards the amiable individual

246 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

who seems to do so much to further the hilarity of
the proceedings, and would not in the least mind
seeing with his hounds a few more of his kind.

I do not lay claim to any great knowledge of the
tactics and strategy employed by the force of highway
fox-hunters which I have very recently joined. I am
but a humble " recruity " striving to learn, but appalled
at present by the difficulties which present themselves
to the road-riding brigade. Of the dangers, I may
have something to say later on.

The difficulties, briefly stated, are embodied in the
effort to see something of the hounds in chase, and
of their followers, by sticking to His Majesty's highway,
and such lanes or " boreens," as they say over here,
without doing more in the way of jumping than to
scramble through or over a line of gaps which lead
from one road to another. Also the difficulties of
avoiding harm by heading foxes, getting in front of
hounds, or carrying them on beyond the line if they
are running in an adjacent field, by the terrible
clatter raised by the hoofs of our horses.

Readers will perhaps pardon an egotistical vein
that may appear in this brief record of recent ex-
periences and the reflections to which they give rise.
I thought there was something a little like a frown
on the good-natured face of my medical attendant as
he " spotted " me at a meet last week — my first
appearance after a longish spell on the sick list —
and when he enjoined me to " dodge about the roads
and not to do too much," I meekly resolved to obey,
at all events for so long as the hard-riding medico

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 247

was anywhere near. Hence my attachment to quite
a strong force, which I came to think was distinguished
for its good-humoured excitability, its knowledge of
the country in which we were manoeuvring, and its
attention to the commissariat department.

It is easy to conceive the intense interest and
constant excitement which can be derived from the
chase when dodging about the roads, but its vexations
seem so numerous that I am inclined to think I had
better attempt still to encounter the perils of the
fields than the safer but more circuitous plan I
endeavoured to follow a few days ago. That there
is much amusement to be derived, there is no doubt ;
to carry on the game successfully requires decision,
knowledge of country, and knowledge of the run of
a fox ; also one must be a judge of pace and be able
to gauge quickly the strength of scent, which regu-
lates pace.

He is a happy man indeed if he succeeds in getting
parallel to the line and has hounds running alongside
him in the field adjacent to his road ; and if he be
really fond of hounds, he has a far better view of
their work than their followers, whom he is now able
to hold in supreme contempt. " Look at those con-
founded fellows ; why will they press the hounds so ?
Why won't they give them room ? " I heard wrathf ully
uttered more than once the other day from the road ;
for the habitue of the highway has his eye upon
horsemen as well as hounds, and if he be honestly a
road-rider, and not the least ashamed of it (and why
should he be ?), it may be dangerous to " buck " in
his presence or make lame excuses for refusals or

248 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

non-appearance. It was a terrible moment for an
unfortunate blagueur, who always used to impress
upon us that some curious piece of ill-luck had alone
prevented him from seeing the finish of a run — it was
a terrible moment, I say, when, after explaining at
length how stirrup and leather were switched off at
a " horribly hairy place " when he was " close to
hounds," a well-known road-rider, in a voice that
could be heard half a mile away, said, " Here's your
stirrup-leather, that we saw you hang up on a gate-
post " ! The unhappy victim was unaware that he
was in the next field to the road when the accident
occurred.

Of course, the crowning triumph of the road-rider,
the moment of supreme happiness, is when his sagacity
has enabled him to get to the scene of the finish, the
kill or the mark to ground, before any of the field
brigade have arrived ; and this he is usually able to
do once or twice in a season if he be a constant
attendant. For if hounds have been running for any
length of time, and he has kept in any sort of touch
with them, it will probably happen that a well-known
wood or other fox-covert lies at length directly in
front of them ; the road-rider then executes a bold
foward movement, and if he has a handy road
arrives at the covert in time to see hounds run into
it. It is also a moment to be proud of when he has
managed, by his knowledge of the country and un-
hesitating tactics, to place himself where he views
the fox, hounds, and horsemen cross a road. To do
this is the dearest ambition of the road-rider, and I
imagine he mentally scores a good many points in

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 249

the game when this conies off ; it sometimes comes
off several times in a run, but that is exceptional,
quite a victory, for he wins all along the line.

In a former chapter I ventured to consider the
subject of "holloas." Now, the holloa of the ex-
perienced road-rider is the one the huntsman loves
best of all to hear, and, probably recognising the
voice, he will come to it like a shot, knowing it to
be " gospel." No one has such an opportunity of
judging if the fox he views be the hunted one
or fresh as the road-rider who has been long at the
game. He is not unduly flurried at the moment, and
can take a quiet scrutiny ; if he sees him in the next
field to the road, he can tell pretty surely if he is the
run fox, while if he crosses the road he is on he can
make a certainty of the matter. For my experience
has taught me that a hunted fox seldom goes straight
across a road, which he looks upon, I fancy, as a help
to baffle his foes, and he is pretty sure to run along
it for a few yards at least before turning into the
fields again, and the view one gets of him on the
road, when with drooping brush and arched back
he shuffles along, settles all doubt as to whether it
is prudent to holloa or not. Of course, as was
remarked before, it very often happens, particularly
in England, that there are two foxes running in
front of hounds, but the line of the chase will
direct the observant rider as to the advisability
of the holloa.

Please let me here remark that these observa-
tions are written without any idea of disparaging
the road-rider and his manner of procedure. At

250 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

no very distant date I feel I may join that cheerful
host, never to desert it ; and, having had plenty
of fun in another way, look forward placidly
to a little more of a different sort, so it is
well to study the subject when one can.

The " infinite variety " of pleasure that is derived
from fox-hunting is one of its greatest holds on the
community. Hard riders, soft riders, good riders,
bad riders — all enjoy the sport in their different
ways ; and, though one hates to see the gorgeously
apparelled youth who has been talking big at the
covert-side give a hurried glance round and make
straight for the road the moment the glad view-
holloa is heard, yet we recognise that it is fitting
and proper in every hunt that a certain body should
make for the road and stay there. Elderly men who
have had their day — men whose nerve is not what
it was, but who love the cry of a hound — cheery
individuals who let us all know they hate the fences
but love the fun, individuals in search of health,
girls who are forbidden to jump, but who, never-
theless, are keen as possible to come out and ride —
all these form component parts of a crowd that, as
I said before, is perhaps more excitable, and certainly
more good-humoured, than the rest of the field,
while there is no mistaking the heartiness of their
enjoyment.

Their disappointments are even harder to bear than
those of the thrown-out division in the country, for
the days come very frequently when they absolutely
see nothing of a run. These are usually those won-
derful scenting days when hounds fairly fly over the

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 251

country and can burst up a fox— any fox that ever
waved a brush — in fifty minutes ; and w^hen scent lies
in this fashion the day's sport generally consists of a
succession of fiery gallops most unsuited to our friends
on the road. But in the "great run" or the good
hunting run we may be pretty sure that the clever
pursuer on the road will see as much of it as most
of us who are lobbing along after the pack.

I spoke of dangers on a former page, and I think
those who notice the proceedings on the road will
admit that there is some reason for using the word.
The pace, to begin with, that is often sustained along
" the 'ard 'igh " for quite a length of time is rather
alarming to one who has been taught to have con-
sideration for legs and feet, while the volleys of mud
and pebbles that are cast behind resemble grape or
shrapnel ; so it is no joke to be a rear-rank file,
and perhaps that is one reason that all press so
eagerly forward. Then one sees corners twisted round
in manner quite appalling, and in threading through
a shoal of traps, the drivers of which are often gazing
intently over the hedges, both skill and excellent
nerve are required.

" The Man who Hunts Because it is The Thing to
Do," is an entirely modern production. He is, from
all account, becoming more common every year. In
spite of all the increasing difficulties with which the
sport has to contend there is no manner of doubt
that it grows more fashionable with each recurring
season, and this, too, when we are told that the
country squire, who may be said to have invented

252 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

the sport, is gradually disappearing, being too often
obliged, by the changed conditions of country life, to
let his ancestral home, if not to part with his hereditary
acres.

In my edition of Stonehenge's British Rural Sports,
published over forty years ago, it is stated that
" there are at this time nearly one hundred packs
of foxhounds in England and Wales, exclusive of a
considerable number in Scotland and Ireland." In
Baily's Hunting Directory of 1909-10 we find 179
packs of foxhounds in England and Wales, besides
24 in Ireland and 11 in Scotland. This increase of
nearly 100 packs of foxhounds in England and Wales
in forty and odd years assuredly testifies to the
extraordinary popularity of the sport at the present
day, in spite of all the difficulties that seem to
threaten its continuance. These figures, indeed, make
one rub one's eyes in wonder, and as the mighty
hosts of the pursuers, thousands upon thousands of
the booted and breeched, rise before us in imagina-
tion, the thought also arises : How many in every
thousand hunt solely because others do ?

It has become "the right thing to hunt — you're
out of it if you don't," as a beginner explained to
me not long ago. Therefore sooner than be " out of
it," nearly every one hunts who can, though a very
great number would very much sooner stay at home.
It may seem strange and curious to the philosophic
mind that folk who are held to be sane should
embark upon a pursuit, or the pursuit of pleasure,
simply because other people do it ; that they should
spend their money and a great deal of time on its

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 253

prosecution only for the satisfaction of being able
to say that they have done so. Yet there seems to
btB no other discoverable reason for the presence of
some folks in the hunting-field. The wearing of a
scarlet coat is said to attract some thither, but the
pleasure derived from going so arrayed must pall after
a time and satiety follow. No interest in woodcraft,
no vaulting ambition to negotiate timber or twig,
has drawn forth this particular type of fox-hunter
from cosy fireside to the rawness of the chill covert-
side ; but a certain sense of duty sustains him through
the ordeal, the duty he owes to society which compels
him to hunt so many days in the week for so many
weeks in the year.

" Only a fortnight more of this, thank God ! " mur-
mured a well-known society butterfly of the Victorian
Era, as they picked him up after a complicated sort
of fall with the York and Ainsty. He was Yorkshire,
you see, and bore a name that is a household word
in the shire of many acres ; therefore, he would never
have shirked his season's hunting had he hated it
even more poisonously than I feel sure he always did.

The great increase in the number of foxhound packs
of course bespeaks an increase in the number of their
followers ; but yet, if an analysis of the hunting-field
were taken, it would be found that it is with certain
packs only that this increase has taken place. Many
most renowned establishments in England where sport
is consistently good have fewer folk hunting with them
now than of yore. These packs will generally be found
in counties where game preservation is on the increase,
and new-comers have somewhat overpowered the old

254 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

residents by the weight of metal they carry. But in
certain other counties, known well to hunting men,
the cult of the chase predominates ; hunting-boxes are
snapped up as soon as built, and are occupied from the
first fall of the leaf till the chime of Easter bells is
heard by a crowd of folk some of whom are the very
best and keenest of sportsmen, but many others who
have no claim whatever to be considered worthy of
the name, but who are simply carrying out part of
a yearly programme which compels them to be so
many weeks in London, so many more in Scotland,
and to hunt in some fashionable locality during the
winter.

Four years ago I paid a delightful visit to the West
of England to hunt with the Devon and Somerset
Staghounds. My only previous visit had been during
the mastership of Mr. Mordaunt Fenwick Bisset, with
whom I stayed when a boy. At that time, I should
say, the average field numbered between twenty and
forty ; but four years ago — well ! it is most difficult
to compute the numbers of a field with the Devon
and Somerset nowadays owing to the country they
are spread about in, but we know it has become a
matter of hundreds. One used to be filled with amaze-
ment at the remarks heard about the sport, and I
feel quite certain that fully one-half the folk who
came " a-hunting the wild deer " had not the most
distant idea what was going on during two-thirds of
the time they were out. So long as the weather was
fine, however, they all had a delightful outing — "a
picnic on horseback among the heather," some one
described it ; nor were snowy tablecloths, ice pails,

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 255

and powdered footmen forgotten by some of the
picnickers.

It was when the tufters were at work, and my
host and I waited on the fir-clad hillside, that we heard
a delightful scrap of conversation from a group below
us. " Then do you never go to Scotland now ? "
said one fair dame. " No," was the reply ; " all our
set have quite given it up for the last three years.
I like this much better, and it's really cheaper."

I made the acquaintance of another who had
forsaken Scotland for the alluring wildness of the
more gentle West, and she confided to me that the
strong air of the North did not agree with her, and
that she was fascinated with the West country, though
both her husband and herself considered stag-hunting
" most awful rot " ; but my suggestion that she could
stay at home was met by " Why ! one must do
something ! " This reason, which has brought so
many dilettante fox-hunters to our hunting-fields,
without any previous education in the sport, has
produced one variety of the type under considera-
tion ; and it would be very desirable for the interests
of fox-hunting if they confined their attentions to
the pursuit of the stag, where they cannot do very
much harm.

It is of the migratory species that we have been
chiefly treating up to the present, but the Man who
only Hunts Because it is The Thing to Do is to be
found also in fair numbers in his native county.
Never caring really for the sport, he yet supports
the county pack with his purse, and by his presence
because his neighbours do so, and pays his subscription

256 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

to the Hunt as a matter of course, just as he pays his
income-tax. He is not likely to take any very active
part in furthering the interests of the sport by
managing a district, walking a couple of puppies, or
making a fox-covert, but he "comes out" and spends
part of the day in the saddle, when he will, perhaps,
gravely discuss the affairs of the nation with any one
who will listen to him ; but, though he may have lived
all his life in the country, he is as ignorant of anything
connected with the hounds and their management
as the peripatetic butterfly who sends down his horses
in November to some fashionable locality and sells
them in Leicester when the cream of the season
is over.

The migratory variety of the species being essentially
your fashionable fox-hunter, he is, it is hardly
necessary to say, distinguished by the up-to-date
splendour of his attire and general appointments.
The cut of his coat, the curve of his hat-brim, the
length and colour of the tops of his boots, are matters
to him of supremest importance. A few years ago
it was correct to have several inches of a gaily
coloured silk handkerchief protuding from a cunningly
devised pocket, and without this somewhat unnecessary
demonstration that he was in the habit of blowing
his nose like a Christian he would have been
profoundly miserable. It was de rigueur to buckle
on his spurs so that the necks were placed half-way
up the calves of his legs, and to wear them at his
heels would have made him unhappy ; while I have
an acquaintance who, I am told, positively refused
to come out one morning because among his numerous

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 257

pairs of leathers not one could be found that was
cleaned to his entire satisfaction. I meet him
occasionally in divers places and in different array,
but always picture him as he was described to me
seated in the middle of his dressing-room surrounded
by piles of snowy buckskins, " sweerin' at lairge " at
his unfortunate valet.

Surtees has given us in his novels many pictures
of country fox-hunters who patronised the chase for
almost every reason that could be imagined save a
love of the sport, and if some of these sketches seem
to incline to caricature, most of them, I am told,
were drawn from life. In these, the Man who Hunts
Because it is The Thing to Do, is not forgotten,
and we wonder who really enjoyed himself most,
Mr. Puffington in Soapey Sponge, or Mr. Willey Watkins
in Mr. Romford's Hounds. Other reasons still more
curious carried many of Surtees' characters into the
field — Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey (chairman of the
Stir-it-Stiff Union) to cut his gibbey-sticks, Archie
Ellenger to try and secure a dinner, Mr. Bunting to
try to secure a wife ; but we may hold up Mr.
Puffington as the prototype of many a man who
has appeared before the world as a fox-hunter because
he thought it the correct thing to be — no exaggeration
or caricature this, but a carefully drawn and correct
likeness. His ambition to achieve popularity led to
the placing of the magic letters M.F.H. after his
name, though as Mr. Jack Spraggon observed with
a sneer, he had "as much taste for the thing as a
cow " ; and this really may be said of numbers who
come out hunting in the beginning of the reign of

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 18

258 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

Edward VII. They have no taste for the real
sport ; they care nothing about it ; they know
nothing about it ; and, worst of all, though they
engage in it so largely, they never seem to try to
learn anything about it.

Hence the constant appeals and remonstrances from
Masters of Hounds in the field and from Masters and
others which appear from time to time in the
sporting papers. The man or woman who hunts
Because it is The Thing to Do is no fancy type,
and too often is an unmitigated nuisance.

Last of this series of types let me place the Fox-
hunter on Wheels — not the man who hunts on wheels,
if you please, because some of the most interested
and successful of those who pursue the fox in this
fashion are ladies ; indeed, my own experience leads
me to declare that there are some ladies whose talent
for seeing something of every run from a light pony-
trap is little short of marvellous.

This degree of excellence is, however, the result of
considerable practice and experience, and great know-
ledge of the country ; but, besides this the successful
driver must assuredly have a very real knowledge
of hunting and the run of a fox. Few hunting days
go by in my part of the country, no matter what the
state of the weather may be, that do not bring certain
traps to the meet. Few runs are brought off when
one of them at least is not within hail of the finish,
the owner being sometimes actually present, having
left the trap in the nearest road.

In his Riding Recollections, Whyte-Melville, referring

POX-HUNTING TYPES 250

to the late Duke of Beaufort, says : " I do believe that
now, in any part of Gloucestershire, with ten couple
of the badger-pyed and a horn, he could go out and
kill his fox in a Bath-chair ! "

It is astonishing how, when the mind of the clever
hunter on wheels is quickly made vip, even in a fast
thing, he is usually able to see something of hounds,
and always something of the field, or at any rate of a
part of it, and probably that part which affords the most
amusement. A good many years ago, in the Carlow
country, I was disabled for about three weeks, and
during that time on most hunting days I was given
a seat in the dog-cart of a very popular lady, who
was quite the best fox-hunter on wheels I have ever
seen ; and as the " gun-carriage," as her trap was
nicknamed, was always stored with good things, and
I was employed to dispense these, I found also that
a measure of her popularity had attached itself to
me, which restoration to the saddle, I fear, dispersed.
Only once when we drove together did we taste the
bitterness of entire defeat, but the course of the chase
lay from east to west, and all the roads seem to run
north and south. How we did scuttle along, leader
of a whole string of vehicles, which always blindly
followed my charioteer ! And, worst of all, their
occupants loudly blamed her for going wrong — "just
as if I asked them to follow," as she justly remarked.
But as a matter of fact, on this occasion hounds raced
from Rathdaniell Gorse to Russellstown almost quite
straight, and, though we saw the find and opening
burst, we had no means of following the line of the
chase.

260 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

It was a curious experience, which became very
interesting and sometimes keenly exciting, when,
after seeing hounds and horsemen disappear in full
cry, we would peg along at a rattling pace, twisting
round corners and suddenly halting. " Can you hear
them now ? " or " There they go ! " as the whole chase
would burst into view. We saw the end of a very
fine hunt in South Kildare, or, rather, the last few
moments in the open, from a road at Davidstown
which we had reached in time to view the fox across.
He w^as staggering along, looking very high on the
leg as I pulled out my watch. We could not hear a
sound for two long minutes. At last it came to us,
but, beat though the fox appeared to be, he was three
minutes in front of the disreputable-looking objects
that then swarmed up on to the road. Most of them
seemed to be of a uniform drab colour, so covered
with mud and travel-stain were they, and a half-
smothered, angry growl accompanied them as they
crossed the road, to break into an honest, cheery cry
when they reached the field beyond. It was another
minute before two or three horsemen struggled into
the flat, holding field, but before they reached the
road fence Goodall and one or two more, who had
kept their heads about them and knew the locality,
came clattering along the road, having avoided the
boggy field but never lost sight of hounds all the
way from Devie's Furze. The fox was well up on
Corbally Hill by this time, so Goodall's face hardly
betrayed contentment, nor did that of one of the
advancing horsemen in the fields when his horse fell
back in attempting to jump up on to the road. The

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 261

next man flung himself from his jaded steed, and,
jumping alongside his horse, landed safe, exclaiming
as he did, " Oh, why didn't we stick to the road when
they crossed it just now!" It was the proud boast
of my fair pilot that she had never headed a fox in
her trap, but on this occasion Goodall blurted out
" Wish you had managed to head him off the hill ! "
for Corbally Hill grows much strong covert in which
there are many foxes.

In some countries " the traps " are often as
thorns in the side of the huntsman, and there is
no doubt that the drivers should submit themselves
to the control of the M.F.H. or Field Master, who will
place them in positions where they are not likely to
interfere with sport when a covert is being drawn.
That is about as much as he is able to do ; everything
afterwards must be left to their own sportsmanlike
behaviour and good feeling. They have come out to
have their day's amusement as lookers-on, and must be
careful that they do not mar it by over-eagerness or
stupidity, for it is often very easy for a maladroit
driver to spoil a right good run ; but, on the other
hand, the knowledgeable Jehu who keeps his eyes
about him may often give assistance to the huntsman
for which that functionary will be grateful. Perched
up above his w^heels, our sportsman can often get a
great view of the surrounding country, can note the
wheeling sheep, those curiously fluttering crows, the
distant pedestrian with his hat off, and, perchance,
the wily villain himself stealing smoothly round the
base of yon distant green hill.

There must be a very strong fascination about this

262 FOX-HUNTING TYPES

amusement, for I notice that certain traps are never
absent from a meet, and come long distances to the
fixtures, letting no foul weather deter them. As with
other varieties of the fox-hunter, there are specimens
of this type to be met with in different ranks of
society, and I think the cleverest followers I know
are two retired tradesmen ; these never, I believe,
rode to hounds, yet there must be something very
remarkable about the run of which they do not see
a good deal from their little trap.

In some Hunts the carriage contingent is a very
large one indeed, and I have heard in one country
that the assiduous Hunt secretary has suggested to
some of the followers on wheels, whose immediate
relatives are not members, that they should subscribe
towards the funds of the Hunt which gives them so
much weekly amusement. This is a step which would
not meet with approval in the country from which I
write, where we are old-fashioned, and cap our
neighbours to the extent only of the modest half-
crown which is usual all over Ireland, believing that
all sportsmen should be neighbourly one to another,
and feeling it a pleasure to welcome all who live on
our borders to share our sport. At the same time,
those who drive after hounds consistently all through
the season, and derive pleasure from so doing, might
well make a graceful acknowledgment of the same
by communicating with the Hunt Secretary in a
manner which could not fail to please.

There is one way in which the drivers after hounds
can very often do a very useful turn, and that is by
closing any gates that they may observe left open

FOX-HUNTING TYPES 263

on the road where the line of chase has passed. When
stray colts or cattle come out on the road, and wander
aimlessly about, it is well also to give information of
the same at the nearest cottage. By so doing the
fox-hunter on wheels will call down blessings from
both peasant and pursuer, and much trouble may be
avoided by the timely action.

CHAPTER XVII

HUNTING MISERIES: LOSING ONE'S START-THE
DOUBTFUL DAY— THE BLANK DAY

I WRITE in a period of misery to hunting men. A
hard black frost holds the country in its iron grip,
and surely nothing could be more exasperating than
such abrupt cessation of sport. And yet I don't know.
There are other disappointments that come sometimes
to every hunting man, the very recollection of which
is sufficient to cause nightmare when we retire to rest.
Have all hunting folk their own particular nightmare,
I wonder? Some have confided to me that such is
their case. One fair lady used to dream that hounds
were running hard through the park of her old home.
She saw them from her window, and, rushing out
to the stable-yard, could find no one there. Never
mind, she would saddle her favourite herself ! Alas !
old Schoolboy's box was locked, and "give her all the
world" she couldn't find the key.

When my own old mare. Dyspepsia, comes round
ready saddled at about 3 a.m. on a frosty morning,
I invariably find that I lose my start in that endless
wood I know so well, w^here so many different rides
diverge in different directions. Why do I always

264

HUNTING MISERIES 265

take the wrong one ? Goodness knows the deep-voiced
pack is making noise enough (is it possible that in
reality the sounds are one's own " nasal respirations " ?)
— yet up that ride we invariably flounder to find it
end in a gap made up six feet high and interlaced with
barbarous (forgive me !) wire. So back we go and
strike another ride, which is full of rabbit-holes that
bring a sinking of the heart at every stride. Yet
somehow we get into the open to view a fair land-
scape, across which rapidly moving dots of scarlet and
black are scurrying. We have "lost our start"! But
yon village spire suggests a means of catching them
by a safe short cut. Alas ! when we gain the village
street it leads up an endless hill so steep that the
horse seems to go backwards instead of forwards,
and, dismounting to lead up in despair, we wake to
find it all a dream. It was a dreadful dream, and
the awakening brings relief ; yet, horrible though it
was, what was it to the misery of " getting left "
in reality with a good hunt in progress — a mishap
which must happen at times to all hunting folk, no
matter how keen and determined they may be, or
how successful they usually are in obtaining a good
start.

There are many causes utterly unforeseen and
unavoidable that may bring about the catastrophe ;
a stirrup-leather may break ; you may be cannoned
and " knocked endways " at the first fence ; a horse
may fall in front and block up the only possible spot
in the bullfinch ; a lady or one's best friend may come
to grief alongside, and gallantry, humanity and friend-
ship compel you to draw rein; a fresh fox may run

266 HUNTING MISERIES:

back and be viewed ; " Tally-ho ! back ! " is shouted, and
you pull up, unaware that the pack is on with another
one — such are some of the reasons I call to mind in
my own experience which have caused me to lose a
start and begin that progress so full of anxiety, of
alternating hope and despair, known as " riding a stern
chase."

Hounds are away, and from some reason or another,
probably through your own stupidity or obstinacy,
you have lost your start, and, recognising the situation,
you set to work manfully to try to catch them. They
cannot be so very far in front, you argue. Here are
fresh footprints ! There is an indescribable noise in
the air, and you fancy you can see the man on the
haycock ahead looking westward and shading his eyes ;
so, setting your teeth and hardening your heart, you
make a bee-line across country for that haycock.
Jumping your fences a thought quicker than usual and
bucketing unmercifully between them, the haycock is
soon reached, and a hurried inquiry elicits the shout
" They're ten minutes gone." Be not dismayed ! Your
watch will show you it is little more than ten minutes
since they found their fox, so you may safely set the
ten minutes down as two, or three at the most, and,
catching sight of horsemen in front, you peg away at
the same reckless pace. Soon you grasp the probable
direction of the chase : you make up your mind as to
the possible point, if you know the country ; and you
form your plans. If, like the immortal Soapey Sponge,
you " would be first or nowhere," and despise " plodding
on the line," you will probably pull up here. If, like
myself, you are cast in less ambitious mould, you will

LOSING ONE'S START 267

persevere, trusting to a check, a friendly turn, or a
convenient road to bring you up to them again, and
push on all eyes and ears, all hopes and fears ; but
your anxiety will only make the reward more sweet
if fortune do but favour you.

If a friendly road does present itself and lead in
the direction of the disappearing forms, my advice is,
get on to it at once, even if you have to lead over the
roadside fence or risk a fall to take you there ! Once
on the " 'ard 'igh road," peg along it, regardless, for
once, of legs and feet ; you are sure to gain a bit
here. But keep your neck stretched and a bright
look-out over the fences, and should you see the
scarlet or black backs turning away from you, hesitate
not, but quit the highway at once, and again pursue
diligently. Many are the disappointments you may
suffer, many the difficulties you may encounter : a bit
of rising ground hides the chase from view, and give
you pause, but pause as seldom as possible. That
sound which brought you up with a jerk was not the
chiming of the pack, but the gabble of geese and
turkeys at yonder farm close by. That sound that
thrilled you so, again, was not the huntsman's horn
(as you discover when you stop to listen), but the
braying of a jackass, or the distant lowing of cattle.
Those yells you heard came not from the followers
of the pack, but from children released from the road-
side school.

Trust not too much to the ear, but depend chiefly
on your eyesight to bring you out of your difficulties ;
and, if your horse be a good one, the chances are
that you will speedily overtake some of those who

268 HUNTING MISERIES:

have been treated as scurvily by Diana as yourself,
and you may find yourself the leader of a band of
unfortunates who may look to you for aid. Trust
little to information. If you are hunting in Ireland,
the country folk are often too much excited to give
you practical help by pointing out a means of getting
a " nick," and the chances are they wish to see you
leap some fences close to them; or it is just possible
they do not particularly care to see any more horse-
men riding over their holding, and may designedly
mislead you ; but this last will not happen often.
Remember, however, to take no heed of statements
as to the time when the hunt passed ; the minutes of
expectancy when the advancing host were approaching
seemed ages to the longing spectators, and there was
so much to see and talk about, so many exciting
incidents that delighted them, therefore the minutes
have nearly lengthened themselves into quarters in
their imaginations by the time you arrive.

It is best when you are striving thus to get on
terms with your leaders to follow them religiously,
and not to ride for your own hand. Make for the
gaps that they have made ; that will be better for
the farmer the chances are, and better for yourself,
too. You may think that by jumping here or jump-
ing there you can cut off a bit, but be very sure
where you are going before you try it. You may find
that the field you jump into is wired on three sides
or contains new grass, or wheat, when you must come
back in the first instance, or ride religiously round
the headlands in the second. But where others have
gone, you can go ; and if you make up your mind

LOSING ONE'S START 269

to do so, you can do it quicker than those who have
preceded you, and have made your task an easier
one than theirs. When landed in one field, the hoof-
marks will direct you where to look for the exit, at
which you will arrive without hesitation or delay, and
you will be pretty sure to cross the intervening space
a trifle faster than did your predecessors. Should you
overtake a beaten sportsman or one who has met
with disaster, remember that he will be full of
despondency ; and, even though he be clad in the
" Scarlet Livery of the Chase," heed not his tale of
woe if he does not require your personal assistance,
but hurry on.

You may be unsuccessful, but the chances are in
your favour. Hounds seldom run on for very long
so deadly straight and without such pause as to give you
no sort of opportunity of closing. Your experience
tells you that of those who start fairly with hounds
a very small percentage retain their places close to
the pack, and if you overtake some of the laggards,
you will be pretty sure to pass a few more, and each
set you pass places you in a better position, till at
last you meet with some reward by hearing the
unmistakable cry of hounds in front. This will prove
a fresh incentive, causing your spirits to rise in a
truly marvellous manner, and if a few minutes later
you are able to shout " Yonder they go ! " your happi-
ness will be great. It will be supreme if shortly you
find yourself where you have longed to be for what
seems to you half a lifetime at least, and can see the
pack — and what a disreputable, mud-stained lot they
look! — opening and shutting like a fan close in front

270 HUNTING MISERIES:

of you, swarming and bustling over the fences, and
find yourself among the lucky ones who have been
there from the start.

It is now time to think of the good bit of stuff
between your legs that has brought you here, for you
may be pretty sure that he has both galloped faster
and gone farther than the steeds he has now joined ;
therefore it behoves you to take no unnecessary
liberties with him if he is to stay there. So you must
look out for the sound going, the wet furrow in the
ploughed field, the firm headland and the firm take-
off, and above all things do not hurry him up the
steep incline. If there be ever so slight a pause he
will catch his wind, and when he has gained breath,
the sight and sound of hounds will stimulate the
brave beast as they do his rider, and you need have
little fear but he will carry you gallantly to the close.
The extreme pleasure that is now yours is enhanced
by the anxiety you underwent during the long stern
chase, and by the miseries you suffered when you
became aware that you were left behind. So intense
is your satisfaction now by contrast with what has
gone before, that you almost wonder if the lucky ones
who got away with hounds and stayed there feel more
truly happy now than you who lost your start.

What may be termed " doubtful days " have come
to us very frequently in Ireland this winter,
owing to the very sudden appearance of sharp
frosts when we least expected them. We have
taken our bedroom candlesticks and marched upstairs
to the accompaniment of a soft tinkle of rain on

This is Jones, who thought to slip down by the rail early in the morning, and
have a gallop with the fox-hounds. On looking out of the window, he finds it
is a clear frosty morning. He sees a small boy sliding — actually sliding on the
pavement opposite ! ! and — doesn't he hate that boy — and doesn't he say it is a
beastly climate.

{Draivn by John Leech.)

THE DOUBTFUL DAY 271

the window-pane ; but the opening of shutters next
morning has revealed fantastic patterns of fern
and fohage executed in high reKef by the frost upon
the glass, and despair has taken possession of our
souls.

There is in the collection of Mr. Punch a truly
heart-breaking picture by John Leech, which repre-
sents a sportsman clad in his " nighty " (pyjamas
were unknown in England in the fifties) looking out
of his window. Misery and wrath are depicted on
his countenance, and a pair of beautifully cleaned
top-boots stand on the floor beside him. " This is
Jones, who thought to slip down by rail early in the
morning and have a gallop with the foxhounds. On
looking out of the window he finds it is a clear, frosty
morning. He sees a small boy sliding — actually
sliding ! — on the pavement opposite ! And doesn't he
hate that boy — and doesn't he say it's a beastly
climate ! " Probably Jones, as he intended to hunt
by train, went back to bed, and there the matter
ended ; and several times this season we have looked
out of the window and thought of Jones, and found
a face wearing a similar expression reflected in the
looking-glass : but then we reflect that one night's
frost was seldom known to stop hunting when the
sun shone brightly the next morning, and so the
miseries of the day begin. First there is a consultation
with the groom before dressing for hunting. Now,
grooms are always decided pessimists or equally
decided optimists as to the feasibility of hunting. If
your man be an optimist, why, the horse " goes on " ;
if the reverse, he is generally told to wait till you

272 HUNTING MISERIES:

come out, in which case too, in my experience, the
horse generally " goes on." Nevertheless, you feel in
your heart of hearts grave doubts while you are
attiring yourself — doubts which assail you with ever-
recurring frequency when, after breakfast, you get
into the trap to drive to the meet. The ground is
"cruel hard," and the hoofs of the hack ring with
metallic sharpness on the dry, white, unyielding road.
What about the hounds and their feet? He (the
M.F.H. is " He," of course) is desperately keen cer-
tainly, but will He take them on such a morning as
this ? And you reflect darkly upon the provisions
in the Servants' Compensation Act.

But the thought arises that there is a good deal of
grass on the roadsides between the kennels and the
fixture, and you are induced to proceed — despite the
fact that the breath from your horse's nostrils and
your own ascends like smoke into the heavens. In a
field adjoining the road, however, there are two
ploughs hard at work, and, "when you can plough
you can hunt" has long been an axiom connected
w^ith the chase, which you have never known to be
refuted in practice — at least " hardly ever " — and you
tax your memory for instances in support of the well-
known saying. Then your ears catch the rattle of
wheels behind you, and a friend overtakes you, his
tall hat betraying that he is bent on the same errand
as yourself.

" I suppose we're mad ! " is his cheery exclamation,
and, while inwardly disposed to agree with him, you
broach the theory of the plough, and can see that it
brings to him a crumb of comfort which a bit of

THE DOUBTFUL DAY 273

shaded road speedily discounts. " Freezing still in
the shade, I'm afraid, though," is the next observation ;
a fact so cruelly evident that no printable reply is
necessary. We ease the pace a bit, and console our-
selves by remarking that " There's no need to hurry
at all events, for they won't throw off before twelve
o'clock on such a day."

It's a wintry drive at best ! The peewits in the grass
fields look gigantic, and the starlings as large as
peewits. The rooks that follow the plough are very
tame, not to say impudent, and the cattle keep close
against the fences, huddling together for warmth,
their heads turned towards the gate in patient ex-
pectation of the arrival of the fodder cart ; and the
distant hills are white to their very bases. But there
is warmth now in the sun, and the short grass begins
to sparkle with moisture. We overtake a fellow-
sportsman hacking on and dealing his scarlet-clad
chest and shoulders resounding claps with hands en-
cased in white woollen gloves. " The hounds are just
ahead," he declares. " I suppose He'll try and hunt
somewhere ! It might be rideable by one o'clock ! "

Then the pack is overtaken, and the cheerful visage
of the first whip as he removes his cap is the best
thing we have seen this morning — except the plough.
"'Unt, sir?" says he in answer to our query. "Of
course we'll 'unt ! Nothing to stop our 'unting at
twelve o'clock ! Why, it never froze till early this
mornin', sir ! Only hopes we'll have a scent, sir !
That's what I'm doubting about. What with this sun
and the rime on the north slopes ! "

This is good hearing ; but our experience is not of

Hvuiids, Gentlemen, Please. 19

274 HUNTING MISERIES:

yesterday, and it seems to us as we advance that we
are getting into even a harder country than we have
left behind, and we reach the meet just as the Master's
motor-car overtakes us, to find that though many
besides ourselves have not cared to risk losing a day
in such a very uncertain season, they are very much
divided in opinion as to the advisability of hunting.
That, of course, can only be decided by the M.F.H.
himself. On his shoulders rests the whole responsi-
bility, and it is no slight one. It matters, after all,
very little to the field.

If hounds do not come to a meet there are always
some captious individuals ready to declare that it was
" quite fit to hunt " where they came from, or that a
neighbouring pack were out. Of course, the toes of
the hounds are not taken into consideration ; nor, what
is more important still, the limbs and necks of the
Hunt servants. Captain Spurrier may go out on one
of these doubtful days as full of ride as ever. And
when hounds find and go away, he may also "get away
on their backs " as usual ; but when he jumps into a
field of short grass and his horse's legs seem suddenly
to go all ways at once, and this pleasing performance
is repeated at the next fence, he opines that " it's not
good enough" and makes for the King's highway. It
is not so with the servants : their position is very
different.

It is not meet, perhaps, for a hunting man to prate
of the danger of the Hunt servants' calling, for the
follower of hounds shares the dangers of the chase
with the professional ; and yet I may be allowed to
point out that the risks are not quite the same, and

THE DOUBTFUL DAY 275

that the life is a pretty hazardous one. Take the case
of the huntsman and his aides on this doubtful day,
when the bone is still in the ground, when the take-oif
is slippery, the landing adamantine. Once hounds
are away he must ride after them, to stop them,
perhaps, if ordered, to keep in touch with them some-
how or other, at all events if he can ; and in trying
his best to do so he undoubtedly runs great risk of
serious accident. The result has often been a crushing
fall and a broken limb.

It is not a politic thing for a Master of Hounds to
mount his men badly ; and yet how badly a great many
of them are mounted ! How often have I seen the
pitiful spectacle of hard-working, gallant men trying
day after day to smuggle over dangerous fences brutes
that were only fit to send to the kennels ! How
particular most of us are about what we ride, though !
" If a horse gives us more than three falls in a season,
I must pass him on," a friend of mine used to say.
" This beggar never lets me off with less than three
a day if hounds run, sir ! " said a Hunt servant to me
of the uncertain brute he was riding ; yet he said it
in no complaining spirit, but as if it were all in the
day's work.

The charge of intemperance is often brought against
Hunt servants as a class ; and it may be at once con-
ceded that many of them succumb to the temptations
which surround their calling, and I verily believe that
no other class of men are so tempted. In the first
place, there is the " treating " system. The Hunt
servant is always a bit of a hero in his own neigh-
bourhood, and never finds himself in a village in the

276 HUNTING MISERIES:

country without meeting some one to press him to
" a glass," never enters a house where he is not offered
some form of liquid refreshment which would perhaps
be denied to any one else. On a cold, raw morning,
when they pass with the hounds on their way to the
meet, the servants will very frequently be hailed as
they come opposite the door of the village inn, and
tankard or bottle proffered, when the morning w^ind
blows bitter chill or the wet fog makes one cough,
is mighty hard to refuse. So is the tray with the
white cloth on it and many bottles and glasses which
the footman brings out to the men when hounds
arrive at the meet before the hall door, and we may
note what liberal measure is served out to the favoured
horsemen who are held in admiration by so many.
" Bvit drinking and hvinting are twa men's work," as
the Duke's Scotch huntsman, Mr. Jock Haggish, said
in Plain or Ringlets, and I " hate that glassing, glass-
ing" just as much as he did, for it has brought ruin
to some of the best and cleverest servants I have known.
It is on the way home, however, that temptation
most often assails the Hunt servants in a manner
which is very hard to resist. Tired, and empty as
to the stomach, for he has eaten nothing but a crust
since early morning, his limbs weary from long-
sustained muscular exertion, the Hunt servant jogs
home with one or two of the field who are pretty
sure to be going his way. Hunting men are pro-
verbially hospitable ; if they have had a real good
day the hospitality fairly overflows, and will take
no denial. " Glasses round and pails of gruel at the
first pub.," then " Now it's my turn. Shall we say the

THE DOUBTFUL DAY 277

same as before ? " and all the rest of it. To some
men a certain amount of stimulant taken on an empty
stomach may revive the tired frame and be beneficial,
but to most it is baneful, and, mounting quickly to
the brain, often reduces the gallant horseman to a
very despicable object before he reaches home. One
glass might do no sort of harm, but it is this unhappy
custom of treating and tempting to " another with
me" which plays the mischief with the men, and has
brought to the class an evil reputation for insobriety.
Surtees' sketches of " Swig and Chowey " in Facey
Romford's Hounds are only too true to life.

Then there comes a time to some men when on
certain mornings there is a consciousness that the
nerve is not quite what it should be. Bad horses
and heavy falls have tried it pretty highly perhaps.
Yet it will never do for a servant to "funk." He
feels that if he begins to show a delicacy in his pluck,
as they say in Ireland, his reputation will be lost,
and resorts to the ancient but mistaken expedient
of " keeping his spirits up by pouring spirits down."
Hunt servants, by the way, are not the only fox-
hunters who have been known to patronise jumping
powder ; but then as Mr. Pigg said to his Master,
" Ye've nae call to ride for raputation," though the
servant has.

Not many fox-hunters, I think, are aware at what
an early age a very large proportion of Hunt servants
are considered past their work, but a glance at
" Huntsmen and their Records " in that invaluable
publication, Bailys Hunting Directory, will consider-
ably astonish most sportsmen who peruse it, for they

278 HUNTING MISERIES:

will find there the dates of the birth of many well-
known professionals who have been so long before
the world that they are looked uj)on as old men, but
the figures tell a different tale. The life for half
the year is a hard one, and few men can stand the
shaking falls that come at some time or other without
feeling lasting effects as the years pass by.

Dear me, dear me ! How I have been rioting ! All
this has arisen from contemplation of the risks the
Hunt servants must run if the M.F.H., too sanguine
or too anxious to please his field, decides to move
on to covert. But what I have written may stand :
perhaps it may prompt some of my readers to send
a subscription to the Hunt Servants' Benefit Society —
an organisation which has pre-eminent claims on all
hunting men.

What I had in mind is the responsibility that rests
on the Master in these doubtful days. Humanity
bids him consider well his decision, apart from
economic reasons. Seldom in any country do bridle-
roads and by-lanes enable Hunt servants to get to
their hounds without jumping if they are required to
stop them, while in Ireland the idea is quite im-
practicable, for there are no bridle-paths and not too
many gates. Altogether it is a matter for most serious
consideration. However, to make the best of it, the
gathering at a meet is always a pleasant one; so we
mount, and seeking a sunny spot to move about in,
await the decision of the man in authority. He
will, of course, " give the day a chance," so we
have time for much pleasant conversation, and hear
opinions on the state of Europe and other things.

THE BLANK DAY 279

During a hard winter more new tales and
anecdotes are hatched in Clubland and other parts of
the British Metropolis than usual, I think, and on an
occasion like the present you are sure to hear a yarn
or two, and perchance a verse, that will bring a smile
to the gravest, though grave folks are in a minority
in the hunting-field. Then there is the last good run
to recapitulate, and we hear news of the doings of
the neighbouring packs, of whose followers some will
probably be present. So the minutes pass. At last
the fiat is given. Is it "hunt" or "go home' ? If
the former, there are times when a great run is
brought off, as was the case in Carlow on just such
a day last week ; or we may pick our way about in
doubtful pleasure, with an indifferent scent and with
hounds only just able to puzzle out the tortuous
ways of Reynard, who is taking it very easy in front ;
in which case there will be much hesitation in the
order of our going, and no great anxiety displayed to
get at the fences. If, on the other hand, " Home '
be the word, we retire, hating more heartily than
ever the miseries of " a doubtful day."

A few pages back reference was made to one of
John Leech's hunting sketches in Punch. May I be
excused if I call attention to another drawing by the
same artist? It is called "A Frolic Home after a
Blank Day," and is one of the most spirited and
not the least amusing of Leech's hunting sketches.
The group of horsemen who are frolicking home in
this reprehensible style is composed of several very
different types of humanity, and the steeds they

280 HUNTING MISERIES:

bestride represent most of the different classes of
horseflesh one sees out hunting in the provinces.
Unhke most artists who have represented scenes of
the hunting-field, Leech never drew one " sealed-
pattern " horse, and never made his riders sit each
in exactly the same fashion. He was not perhaps
always equally happy in the delineation of the noble
animal, and the cheeks of the bit he placed in its
mouth, when he caparisoned it with a double bridle,
were invariably absurdly long. But the life, spirit,
and humour of the chase he seized unfailingly, and
charmed us by the truth and atmosphere of the little
bit of landscape he always introduced. A large
engraving of the " frolic home " hangs upon my wall,
and is irresistibly drawing me from my subject, but
I am chiefly struck by the joviality and hearty
enjoyment betrayed by the countenance of every in-
dividual in the picture. Even the face of the stolid
rustic, hurrying out of the way of the youth with
the hunting-cap, who, finger to ear, executes a view-
holloa as he passes, combines amusement with
alarm ; and the gentleman whose horse has refused
the hurdles with disgraceful abruptness seems enter-
tained by the performance. The very back of the
stout yeoman, whose good " family horse " is flipping
over the obstacle, somehow expresses enjoyment ;
indeed there is infectious merriment about the whole
scene.

How different — how very different — from the
dejected crew that lately wound their way home-
wards after the first blank day I had seen for a
long time. In these days sportsmen all over the

THE BLANK DAY 281

kingdom, I trust, know better than to regale them-
selves on their way home by a " school" across
country, common though the practice used to be not
so very many years ago — a practice which is said
to have originated in the Midlands in the days of
Dick Christian, when one of the feather-headed
" thrusters " exclaimed, " What fun we should have if

it wasn't for these d d hounds ! " Nowadays, though

a solitary horseman homeward bound, may jump a
fence or two to cut off a long distance round by the
road, we hear too much about damage to fences
and the "cutting up" of land when hounds are run-
ning to make it expedient for a bevy of sportsmen
to " frolic home " after a bad day, after the fashion
of the olden time. Yet I think the miseries of the
blank day are so depressing that something to raise
our spirits and put us in heart again is sorely needed;
and if on such an occasion we have a farmer out
with us who desires to show us the way over his own
land, I, for one would not decline to follow his lead.
Happily the blank day is a misery that has seldom
fallen to my lot, but the rare experiences of the
calamity are very deeply impressed upon my memory.
We, in Ireland, are experiencing a long period of
drought, and at such times, even in well-foxed
countries, foxes are very hard to find. The last blank
day, mentioned above, was the only one I have seen
for several years, and I trust that a still longer time
may elapse before I see another. It was a weariful
experience, but for many hours in the day we were
buoyed up with hope, while in the morning we looked
upon the finding of foxes as such a certainty that the

282 HUNTING MISERIES:

man would have been voted a lunatic who suggested
the possibility of a blank day.

First of all, we met where we had never met before,
because foxes abounded in the immediate neighbour-
hood, we were told, and there was abundance of wild
gorse, &c., which was strictly preserved by the owner
of the land. Doubtless it was the resort of foxes
very frequently. There were smeuses and billets to
prove that, and once or twice some old finder of the
pack would conduct her investigations so rigorously
as to make us hope that she had discovered traces
of a line ; but there was no challenge, and we came
away to repeat the performance elsewhere several
times during the morning. Something like a sigh of
relief went up when at length the M.F.H. went away
from these outlying places, and, getting on to the
high-road, set off at a good honest trot for ascertain
wood, from which no fewer than five foxes had gone
away the last time it was drawn. If ever there were
a certainty, it was before us ; but Diana decrees that
there shall be no certainties connected with fox-
hunting. If there were, perchance the sport would
lose some of its fascination. The wood was as blank as
the faces of the crowd outside, when the long-drawn
blast of the horn was heard to summon hounds from
the covert.

Nevertheless, though the day was wearing on, hope
did by no means forsake us, for seldom are the
gorses on the hillside without a fox ; but after careful
investigation again the mournful blast was heard.
The weather, too, had turned against us now, and
bitterly chill came the blizzards from the black north

Mb. Briggs goes for a Day's Hunting, and has a Glorious
Run over Splendid Country.

{Drawn by John Leech.)

W^S- =^^^S^

Going to Cover.

Voice in the distance. "Now, then Smith — come along!"
Smith. "Oh! it's all very well to say come a,long ! when he wont
move a step ; and I'm afraid he's going to lie down."

(Drawn by John Leech.)

THE BLANK DAY . 283

as glen and ravine were searched with equal want of
success. Yet the ladies — several of them, regardless
of change of complexion and transfer of colour from
cheek to nose — braved it well, and sooner than accept
a blank day followed on in support of the M.F.H. to
the biggest woodland in the country, where we suffer,
as a rule, from a superabundance of foxes. It was
colder still, and horses' coats were staring when we
got there. Halting on the road above the wood,
we listened intently for the opening note — sure of that
at least, though we hardly expected a gallop in the
open. Alas, it never came ! A puppy caught in thick
briars (as we afterwards heard) gave vent to a howl,
which caused men to look at their watches and say,
" At last ! " but there was no repetition of the sound.
Despair took possession of our souls, and a most
miserable party shortly afterwards dispersed to
respective homes, the hounds — poor things ! — looking
perhaps the most dejected members of the hunting
community. Truly we had experienced in their full
bitterness the miseries of a blank day.

Some years ago a blank day was saved by our
finding a fox in the very last covert in the stop ; he
ran back till he almost reached the fence of a gorse
covert we had drawn in the morning, where he got
to ground in a big stone drain just outside the covert.
A terrier was put in at the other end, when out came
our hunted friend, followed immediately by three
others. Of course, there is no doubt that on wild
nights foxes are often stopped in, particularly in
gorse coverts where the gorse has grown hollow and
open, when the long stems rattle and shake and give,

284 HUNTING MISERIES

one would think, a feeling of discomfort and insecurity
to the fox ; but in most woodlands that are not
disturbed by trespass there are snug places which a
fox prefers to any earth, natural or artificial, even
when the weather is too vile for him to pursue his
nightly ramble outside.

One of my own most disappointing experiences of a
blank day in Ireland was about twenty-five years
ago, when I drove with a friend nineteen miles — Irish
miles, too, I think — to meet Mr. Robert Watson and
his hounds at Limrick in his Wexford country. We
drew some good coverts in a fine country without a
touch of a fox, and were very sick at heart when we
prepared to drive home. That was on a Thursday,
and on the following Saturday hounds were to meet
at Coollattin, Lord Fitzwilliam's place, where we had
our trap. One of the family suggested our leaving
horses and servants at the stables there and coming
back to hunt on Saturday. This we did, and were
rewarded by a good gallop, which we should not have
seen had a good day been our lot on the Thursday, for
Coollattin was a fixture we had not planned to attend ;
so fortune, for once, made some amends for a blank day.

Nineteen miles (Irish) seems a long way to go to
a meet, especially when one has a blank day after
getting there ; but last year, wishing to see some new
country, I drove twenty-nine miles to the fixture —
or rather was driven, but the vehicle was a very
excellent motor-car, and the drive through a pretty
country seemed nothing at all. Except that the weather
was fine, we experienced all the miseries I have
described, and came home saddened after a blank day.

CHAPTER XVIII

SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE

•' I GO out hunting to amuse myself, not to try to break
my neck," an old hunting comrade of mine in bachelor
days used to declare, and he always appeared to succeed
most undeniably in his endeavour. Gifted with a
delightfully sunny disposition, the keenest apprehen-
sion of the humorous, and a fine flow of animal
spirits, it was seldom indeed that he failed to make
us laugh in the evening over some of his experiences
of the day.

Though I do not think he ever pretended to any
great appreciation of hunting so far as houndwork
is concerned, he is a keen lover and a good judge of
a horse, and riding was one of his greatest pleasures.
Nothing connected with any horse that was out
escaped him. He made a point of noticing what every
one rode, and how they rode them ; while falls,
refusals, and blunders were stored up in the treasure-
house of his memory as well as the masterly achieve-
ments of other coveted steeds.

Such a man could hardly fail to find amusement in
the hunting-field, even on a bad scenting day, and
being socially inclined as well as being a universal

285

286 SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE

favourite, he was not dependent entirely on canine
or equestrian performances for his day's pleasure.

A man like my friend perhaps derives more steady,
uninterrupted pleasure from the hunting-field than the
greatest enthusiast on the subject of fox-hunting
who rides out on a hunting morning with a mind so
full of anticipation of the joys of the chase that the
many disappointments which, alas ! most days bring
have a very disturbing effect upon his equanimity. If,
however, this more severe order of sportsman be
also blest with an appreciation of the humours of the
hunting-field, they will prove his salvation when he
kicks his boots off after a poor day, and retires to his
snuggery to ruminate thereon.

It seems rather unfair that so much we find amusing
out hunting should be afforded us, and often most
unwittingly, by the principal performers in the piece —
the M.F.H. himself, or his huntsman ; yet such, I am
afraid, is the case. His sayings and doings are noted
and commented on by all ; words uttered in moments
of irritation — " cuss words," perhaps, as our American
cousins call them — are repeated, and perhaps slightly
elaborated, not in any spirit of mischief, but merely
because, from their extreme earnestness, they sounded
amusing ; and undoubtedly some of the best of our
well-known hunting stories, which, like " The Grouse
in the Gun-room," never grow stale, are founded on
the expostulations or repartees of certain celebrated
Masters of Hounds.

It has appeared to me that an amateur huntsman
after a season or two becomes possessed of a wonderful
aptness in reply, which seldom fails to amuse, and also

SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE 287

generally of a fine flow of words, an eloquence which
is sure to be highly entertaining — to some of the
listeners, at all events. Yet, strange to say, those to
whom this gift is given often appear unaware that
they possess it, and profess entire forgetfulness of
the words which have excited so much admiration — "
possibly, and perhaps, astonishment. It is as though,
during the excitement of the chase, some spirit takes
possession of them, and they speak with other tongues
than they use for the ordinary purposes of con-
versation.

There is a well-known tale which relates how a late
celebrated M.F.H., when making preparations for a
" dig," overheard a horseman of Semitic birth remark
that in his country they would never stop to dig a
fox in the middle of a good scenting day. " In your
country ! " said the wrathful M.F.H., turning upon
him ; " if you were in your country you'd be mounted
on a jackass chasing jackals round the walls of
Jerusalem !"

A friend chaffing him afterwards about this bold
flight of fancy, asked, " What on earth put such a
thing in your head to say to the man ? "

" Gad, I don't know ! " was the reply. " Since you
all say so, I suppose I must have said it ; but how it
came into my head I don't know."

"Where's the d d woman coming to now?" groaned

a great amateur huntsman once, as a lady, valour over-
coming her discretion, landed upon a road in far too
close proximity to hounds, whose heads were up. Half
an hour later the pair were jogging along side by side.
" I suppose you are aware that you called me ' a d d

288 SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE

woman' not long ago ?" quoth the lady. "Impossible!"
said the gallant and ready old Irishman ; " I called you
a grand woman ; and so you are, begad ! "

We feel sure that the great Mr. Jorrocks, though
he declared to James Pigg that he would see him
"frightening rats from a barn wi' the bagpipes at a
'alfpenny a day, and findin' yoursel', afore I'll 'ave any-
thing more to say to ye," would have been quite
unequal to such vituperative recrimination when dis-
mounted from Arterxerxes, or in the quiet retirement
of Great Coram Street. But of the facetious sayings of
Masters of Hounds there is no end.

Still, many very celebrated Masters and several
famous huntsmen have left behind them a reputation
for the good things they have said in the hunting-field,
and it seems a pity that more of these conversational
plums have not been preserved. It is most aggra-
vating in " Nimrod's " Memorial Sketch of the great John
Warde in the Sporting Revieio to read of the "well-
known " good sayings of that celebrity, his " well-
known reply " to Mr. So-and-so, and his tale concerning
something else are mentioned, but " Nimrod " gives no
more information about these jests than honest
Diggory did about the aforesaid " Grouse in the Gun-
room " ; and we must be thankful that more recent
authors have not followed this example. Sir Reginald
Graham in his Fox-hunting Recollections, for instance,
records the delightful story against himself. " With
all the confidence of youth," writes Sir Reginald, who
had found himself alone with the puzzled pack (the
Burton, Lord Henry Bentinck, M.F.H.) " I proceeded to
hold hounds down wind and then in other directions.

SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE 289

No doubt I must have thought it encouraging to the
pack to wave my right arm with energy as I took
them along. All in vain. They never touched the
line again. I looked round once more : What did
I see ? Fifty yards behind stood Lord Henry himself,
the Messrs. Chaplin, Chandos Leigh, and Charley
Hawtin. Would that the earth could have swallowed
me up at that moment ! Slowly, step by step, the
cavalcade approached ! I heard a smothered ' Hush ! '
and yet another pause. At last Lord Henry, in slow,
measured tones, almost hissed out, word by word, ' Sii'
Reginald, lohen you have quite done feeding your
chickens, perhaps you will alloic my huntsman to cast
my hounds.''' One of Colonel Anstruther Thomson's
whippers-in when he first hunted the Fife, Charles Pike
by name, must have been a bit of a wag. Pike after-
wards became huntsman of the Quorn, when the
hapless Marquess of Hastings was Master, and Colonel
Thomson tells us how " Colonel Lowther meeting Pike
in Leicester one day said, ' Well, Pike, what are you
doing ? ' He answered, ' I've got the sack. Marquis
has taken to drink. Hermit has won the Derby, and
we're all going to hell together.'"

There was a first whip and kennel huntsman in a
neighbouring country to that from which I write
whose sayings used to amuse us not a little some few
years ago. He was a cheery fellow ; keen and hard-
working too and very ready with his tongue. He was
possessed of a strident voice which he got ready for
action by clearing his throat with a sound that might
have been audible a mile away, and the throat, when
once cleared, seemed incapable of emitting any sound

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 20

290 SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE

that could not have been heard about the same
distance.

" Slip round quietly to the other side of the covert,"
said the M.F.H. to him one day as we approached a
famous covert in the South Kilkenny country. "Slip
round quietly, and make no noise." " Yezzir," replied
the servant, cantering off with a reverberating " Come
up,'oss,"and commencing the throat-clearing operations
as he progressed along the covert-side. On arrival at
the corner he evidently found it occupied, for, despite
the distance, we plainly heard that raucous " whisper "
rattle off without the suspicion of a pause, " Now, little
boy, wot are you a-doin' off ere ? Don't you know
terrible big fox lives 'ere ? last little boy he ate was
twice as big as you." The fox was at home all right,
but it is hardly necessary to add that he did not break
from that quarter as we fondly hoped he would.

The same functionary sharpened his wit on a couple
of peasants one day when a bad fox got to ground
after a short gallop. The M.F.H. determined to have
him out, and two country fellows with a terrier were
quickly on the scene. " Best wait for the kennel
terrier," said the whipper-in, looking with some con-
tempt at the local candidate for underground honours ;
but Mr. Langrishe, ever anxious for the country folk to
have a share of our sport, thought otherwise, and
encouraged the countrymen to get him out if they
could. The dog was duly taken between his master's
knees, " rustled up " and introduced into the earth, but
very quickly came back ; he was tried again and again,
but though he *' challenged " he could not be induced to
go to his fox. " Get a candle ! Best get a candle ! " said

SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE 291

the whipper-in, in tones of suppressed triumph at the
failure. " And what the devil would I want a candle
for ? " said the countryman, with astonishment. " 'Cos
he's afraid o' the dark. Can't ye see he's afraid o'
the dark ? " said the delighted whip. " Hah ! 'ere
comes old Jakes" (a kennel terrier). "Now we shan't
be long!"

The second whipper-in in some Hunt establishments
has been known to fill, in addition to his active
occupations, a position somewhat similar, in its passive
duties, to that of the whipping-boy of ancient days,
or at least to act as a sort of buffer to divert his
Master's wrath from the really guilty.

" Ned," who was for many years second whipper-in to
that glorious sportsman the late Mr. Robert Watson,
used occasionally to act as a safety valve for his
Master's wrath : but I recollect an occasion on which
he fairly turned the tables. We were running a fox
from the BuUingate covert towards Coollattin, and
were on the hill-slopes above Donishall when scent
failed rather suddenly. A good field was out, several
strangers who were staying with Lord Fitzwilliam
among the number. Ever anxious to show sport, the
Master appeared to be doubly eager that day, yet cast
as he would he could get no touch of his fox. At last,
far below him on the Carnew road, his quick eye dis-
cerned a scarlet-clad horseman with his cap off : it was
Ned ! his own Ned ! whom at that moment I am sure
he heartily blessed. Getting the pack to his horse's
heels with one touch of his horn, he hurried at break-
neck speed down the slopes. " Which way did he go ? "
shouted he, as soon as he got within hail of his servant.

292 SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE

" Did what go ? " roared Ned in reply. " The fox, ye
donkey ! " came in stentorian tones from the Master.
"I saw no fox," returned the Avhipper-in at the top
of his voice. "Then what the devil did you raise
your cap for ? " thundered the M.F.H. " To scratch me
head ! " stolidly replied Ned, and there was a silence
that could be felt before our uncontrollable laughter
arose.

The unconsciously spoken truth, " I'm afraid we're
in for a good thing, confound it ! " blurted out by a
faultlessly got-up shirker as hounds poured out of
covert on a scent evidently of the best has become
almost classic. One can imagine the delight of those
who heard it.

In Ireland the conversation of the foot-people when
a covert is being drawn, or when one meets them
during the progress of a run, is often delightfully
amusing, and one is thankful to the authors of The
Experiences of an Irish R.M., for preserving many
typically quaint sayings of the peasantry when "the
Hunt is out," and they are enjoying the winter amuse-
ment they love. The expressions used are comical
-to a degree, particularly when the spectators get a
bit excited, and the English visitor is usually consider-
ably edified.

"No man," said an old gentleman by the covert-side
very gravely, in my hearing, — " no man is anny use
to folly dogs — only a fierce-goin' man through the
country ! " And I think it will be admitted that
" fierce-goin' " is delightfully original and descriptive.

" Give me ould Watson's dogs," said a bystander,
when the late Earl Fitzwilliam's hounds were drawing

SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE 293

a covert in the Carlow country, " the Lord's dogs don't
bawl anythin' worth while."

Those who have the happy knack of remembering
quaint sayings like the above, which one hears every
hunting day in Ireland, are much to be envied ; par-
ticularly if they can be induced to pull them out for
our edification afterwards.

Why te-Melville delighted in an Irish story which came
from these parts, and he introduced it into Satanella.
Two country folk were admiring the horse of a well-
known welter squire who was always splendidly
mounted, and one summed up the matter by saying,
"Sure, ye niver see his honour but ye see a great
baste ! " The same squire in later years grew very
obese, and in England one day rode down at a fence
which was guarded by an excited agriculturist and
his myrmidons armed with pitchforks. " Let this 'un
coom ! " roared the farmer, — " let this 'un coom ! He's
sure to faall, and he'll mook half an acre o' land."

Few hunting days pass without some very comical
sights coming under notice, and the humours of the
chase invariably crowd in when a bit of open water
has to be encountered ; for, somehow or other, the
spectacle of a fellow-creature disappearing from sight
beneath the waters never fails to arouse laughter,
which is repeated when he emerges ; particularly if
he lands on one side of the brook and his horse on
the other. This is horribly barbarous and unfeeling,
no doubt ; but the fact remains.

Tom Firr's story of the gentleman who popped his
head up from the middle of the brook at which Tom
was riding, said " Cuckoo ! " and ducked under again,

294 SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE

and repeated this performance three times, will be
remembered. The incident must have been about the
most comical ever witnessed out hunting.

"What the devil are you doing there?" was the
rather inane inquiry by a gentleman of a second horse-
man, who was floundering about up to his armpits
in very green-looking water. " Only gathering water-
cresses for supper," was the unruffled reply ; '* what
the did you think I was up to ? "

Open water that cannot be forded but must be leaped
is not often met with in Ireland, but when it appears
it never fails to afford " divarsion."

A few years ago I was out hunting on the occasion
of an "exchange meet," when a neighbouring pack
had come down to have a day in the country. I cannot
say that I much appreciate these invitation days. They
invariably give rise to jealousy and unsportsmanlike
rivalry in the matter of riding, which is very antago-
nistic to sport, for hounds seldom get any chance of
fair play on these occasions, when " show me a Meath
man till I lep on the small of his back " is the style
of business that prevails. On the day in question,
however, a fair gallop was brought off, and, as luck
would have it, after crossing a little bit of stiff country,
a hona-fide brook (Hibernice, " a river ") appeared in
front. There was a great scatteration and several
duckings, a lady, I regret to say, getting about the
worst. Had there been additional jumping powder
served out that day, I wonder, or did the presence
of the visitors' pack account for all the strange and
daring feats, we saw ? When the scrimmage was at
its height, one welter-weight rode down to the water's

SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE 295

edge, dismounted, and bestowed a hearty crack to the
quarters of his steed, which plunged into the water
and swam across. His master watched him land with
interest, and then, and only then, the idea seemed to
strike him that there might be a difficulty about
rejoining partnership. I saw him scratch his head
and stalk solemnly up the bank. The pace was too
good to make further inquiries, but it will be long
before I forget the scene.

The inquiries, expostulations, warnings, and words
of advice that one hears flying about during the
progress of a run over a stiffly enclosed country are
often very comical ; but it is well to make up one's
mind to be good-humoured, if possible, during the
hustle that often ensues, particularly at the commence-
ment of the chase, and if one has to remonstrate, to
do it as politely as possible.

A friend of mine — alas ! now with the majority —
used to contain his anger at times with difficulty, but
always so successfully that it exploded in withering
and overpowering politeness. " Pray, sir," I heard him
once exclaim to a stranger, "in all this fine country,
can you find no other place to ride but on the nape
of my neck or the small of my back, where you have
been the entire day ? " At the commencement of a
sharp gallop, in the long ago, which followed one of
the " invitation meets " I have noticed, one of the
strangers rode right into a well-known luminary of
the Kilkenny Hunt, an elderly gentleman of light
weight and lively temper, a very hard and slightly

jealous man to hounds. Poor Mr. was sent flying

into a deepish ditch just as his horse was taking off.

296 SOME HUMOURS OF THE CHASE

The destroyer of his start, I must say, behaved properly,
for he pulled up, and was profuse in his apologies ; but
I think I can see his victim now as, fairly grinning
with rage and disgust, he snarled, " I suppose you came
a long way to do that, bl 1 ye ! "

CHAPTER XIX

"JOVIAL HUNTSMEN": SOME CHEISTMAS REFLECTIONS

The " Festive Season " is with us again, with its
showers of postcards and swarms of pictorial annuals.
As usual, the artists have been busy depicting strange
scenes from the hunting-field, and hounds are once
again running their hardest over snow-clad pastures.

Ever since Ralph Caldecott produced his delightfvil
picture-books and his amusing sketches for the
Christmas numbers of the Graphic^ the British fox-
hunter, and particularly he of the early Georgian
era, has been a most favourite subject for Yuletide
illustrations.

How well we know his voluminous scarlet coat
wide skirted, and reaching well below the dark
mahogany tops ; the broad knee garter encircling
the leg above the knee, or the bunch of dangling
ribbons below ! How familiar the mulberry com-
plexion— suggestive of " collar glasses," " bumpers of
fine fruity old port," and much toasting of the
"favourite lass," as well as frequent libations in
honour of horse and hound when they " passed the
bottle round ! "

The " Jovial Huntsman ! " — he is always thus repre-

298 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN":

sented, and his carouses round the punch bowl, his
quaffing of the nut-brown ale brought to him at the
village inn door by the rosy, buxom Hebe with the
trim ankles, and his salute on parting with the fair
cupbearer, all have been given to us both " plain and
in colours" over and over again, and our purveyors
never seem to tire of supplying the same dishes.

Well, they know what they are about, I presume,
and find ready sale for their wares ; but I wonder if
the fox-hunter of long ago was really a cheerier
mortal than the rest of mankind — as cheery, in fact,
as these pictures seem to suggest ? He was a bit of
a roisterer, we all know — our great-grandfathers
mostly were — whether they hunted fox or hare, or
stayed at home ; but fox-hunting seems always to
have fostered good-fellowship and sociability, though
in the two-bottle days the good-fellowship was
doubtless a bit too exuberant. I maintain, however,
that there is in the pleasures of the chase something
that does call forth geniality and dispels gloom, that
leaves recollections which one feels anxious to impart
to others, and a desire also to compare notes and
hear the opinions and adventures of our friends.

In these less expansive days it is considered correct
to conceal to a certain extent one's exaltation, and
we smile at the doings of our ancestors, whose hearty
custom it was to gather together as many comrades
as they could at dinner after a day's hunting ; toast
and song went round, and they heard how " a
southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaimed a
hunting morn," and a good deal about Aurora, and
bright Phoebus, and chaste Diana. Such was their

SOME CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS 299

invariable habit when they "had a rattling day,
look'ee there," and probably such also was their
custom when they only " powdered up and down a
bit " just to cheer them for the want of a better run.
We know that these convivial gatherings were pro-
longed, but as they feasted in those days at an hour
we should consider the afternoon, I imagine that
their port-laden slumbers began correspondingly
early, and the small ale which was used instead of
Lord Byron's " hock and soda water " on the following
morning cooled their parched throats and cleared
away the cobwebs before "bright Phoebus cleared
away the dusky plumes of night."

As time wore on and fox-hunting on the "system
of Meynell " took the place of the old-fashioned
peep-o'-day business, it became the favourite
recreation of the most cultivated men in the land,
and if the Hunt Club meetings, which became general
in many countries, were more decorous in their
conviviality than the orgies which celebrated a good
run in days of old, they were still full of hilarity.
No doubt much wine was drunk, but much wit
came out ; and songs which can never die so long as
the sport exists were written to be chanted at these
merry meetings.

The rules that governed the social proceedings of
these Hunt Clubs make sufficiently amusing reading
in this age of lemon squash and barley water ; for
any infringement thereof was visited by a fine
which invariably took the form of a certain number
of bottles of wine ; we read in the chronicles of the
H.H. that even the great Mr. Villebois himself was

300 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN":

" fined half a dozen of claret for appearing at a
meeting in a waistcoat without the H.H. button " ;
while in the Duhallow, one of the oldest Irish
Hunt Clubs, a similar fine was inflicted on the presi-
dent elected by the president of the last meeting
should he fail to take his place.

The rules of the old Tarporley Club in Cheshire,
established in 1762 for hare-hunting, provide that
" three collar bumpers be drunk after dinner and the
same after supper " ; after that " any member might
do as he pleased in regard to drinking." But when,
in 1769, the club commenced fox-hunting it was
ordained "that instead of three collar bumpers only
one shall be drunk except a fox be killed above
ground, and then one other collar glass shall be
drunk to ' Fox-hunting.' "

I must admit that my own stock of antiquarian lore
is unequal to the task of explaining the term " collar
bumper." A friend suggests that it may be "an
application of an old phrase 'to bring home to the
collar ' " : which means " to nearly finish a garment
in process of making — specifically a shirt." Inasmuch
as collar bumpers were drunk after dinner and
supper it seems to me that the term might mean
' finishing bumpers ' ! " This suggestion seems to me
very likely to be correct.

The club, it would seem, was at first opposed to
its members embarking in matrimony, for by one of
the old rules every member on his marriage was
required to present " to each member of the Hunt
a pair of well-stitched leather breeches" — perhaps a
wise provision for the inevitable !

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Mention of the Duhallow Hunt reminds one that
the old Irish Hunt Clubs were always celebrated —
or shall I say notorious ? — for their conviviality, and
that, though there may be cause for regret that these
old Hunt gatherings have become only memories of
the past, the high revelry and general " divilment " that
accompanied them were often discreditable.

Some of the scenes that took place must have been
very amusing, nevertheless. I was told only a couple
of years ago, by an eye-witness, who was a member of
the old Kilkenny Hunt Club, of the famous ride of
Mr. John Courteney, of Ballyedmund (who first brought
the Grand National to Ireland), up the brass-bound
stairs of the club-house, into the dining-room, and
over a wicker fire-screen placed on the backs of two
chairs before the fireplace ; also of the expostulations
of the lady in charge of the club-house, and Sir John
Power's humorous threat as to the steps he would
take if she objected, and her defiant reply.

Among my own acquaintance was a grave and
worthy gentleman, now deceased, who, in his youthful
days, after a Hunt dinner once disposed himself at full
length across the street in front of that club-house, and,
chuckling with suppressed laughter, declared to his
expostulating friends that he intended to upset the
Waterford Mail which was then due ; and I knew well
a certain grim old gentleman who, on the only occasion
he was ever known to allow his potations to get the
better of him, was safely packed in a passing, empty
hearse, and conveyed home to a somewhat shrewish

spouse

We have heard, too, in more sober England, of roister-

302 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN ":

ing evenings, of high jinks at the Old Club at Melton
and elsewhere ; but these be things of the past. The
increasing presence of ladies in the hunting-field has
softened the manners and improved the taste of the
day; the fair partakers in the sport, who began to
hold their own over the country, by no means objected
to talk over the day's amusement in the evening with
their cavaliers, who forsook the festive board for their
company, and had neither need or wish then to celebrate
in " collar glasses " the fox killed above ground ; though
I trust that "Fox-hunting" may long be drunk in
winter-time ere we join the ladies.

It must not be forgotten, however, that these Hunt
meetings were convened not only for purposes of
revelry ; it was the custom to transact at them much
business, and to ventilate ideas concerning the sport
and its improvement ; suggestions were made and
carried ; and perhaps men spoke their minds more
freely than they do in the garish light of day round
a formal table covered with pens, ink, and paper — and
no collar-glasses.

I have an old Hunt card in a scrap-book, placed there
in youthful days, with a deep line under one of the
fixtures to remind me of a famous run. The card is
old-fashioned, a printed form, the fixtures filled in
with the pen ; the year is 1866, the month January,
and opposite Thursday, 25th, is written " Killerig X
Roads ; members dine together in Carlow."

Well, the Hunt dinner is a thing of the past ; the
members no more " dine together," and, indeed, going
out to dinners in the country in winter-time has
long been voted a nuisance intolerable. " Where the

Countri/ Friend to SjMrting Gent, from Town. " Well, Jack, 1 told you we
should have a capital day. You see the frost has quite goue."

(Drawn hij John Leech.)

Mr. Briggs stimulated by the accounts in the new papers of the
daring feat of horsemanship at Aylesbury,* and excited by Mr.
Haycock's claret, tries whether he also can ride over a dining-room
table.

[Drawn by John Leech.)

(* During the Steeplechase Week, 1851, Mr. Manning for a bet Jumped his
horse over the dinner-table in the Kocliester Kooni of the " White Hart."j

SOME CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS 303

M.F.H. dines the M.F.H. brings his night-cap " was
the ultimatum of Mr. Jorrocks, and met with such
approval that it is often now imitated by the field ;
yet, though I was not a member, I " dined in Carlow,"
a youthful guest, after the great day from the meet
at Killerig, and have a very pleasant recollection of
the evening. I heard more about fox-hunting and
great runs than I ever had listened to in the same
space of time, the proceedings were perfectly decorous,
though amusing, and there was no necessity for
"sermons and soda-water the day after."

To such a gathering one cannot but look back with
pleasure, and one may sigh for something of the same
again. " Come and dine and sleep, and we'll swop lies
about hunting," writes a friend, an ex-M.F.H. ; but I
can't, so he's coming to me instead, and I have another
to meet him : 'tis the best we can do in these times.
The strong north-west wind has driven away the dark,
overhanging pall that has for so long remained close
to us and gloomily discharged perpetual rain ; it will
dry up the sodden land and let the horses have a
chance ; and who knows but the scent may improve ?
Here is a strong sunburst, too, as I write, to cheer us
up and make things look ready for Christmas— a time
that, in spite of the grumblings of paterfamilias, I
think has an attraction for the most morbid. There
is a grinding of the gravel, a tread of horses' feet on
the avenue, and a wild cheer from the nursery
windows. Have we not the young ones home again
to rejuvenate us? It is good to notice how soon the
question comes, "Where are the hounds this week?"
and to see how eagerly the card is scanned. I think

304 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN":

we shall hardly want a "Hunt dinner" while the
holidays last !

There is no time of year when fox-hunting is so
popular as this. In an open winter we who dwell in a
hunting country cannot help wondering what substitute
exists in less favoured localities for the sport and uni-
versal good-fellowship which the hunting-field affords.
What else could bring together the troops of boys and
girls to delight us as they assemble at the meets with
their radiant happiness and amuse us with tales of the
prowess of each tiny steed ? Twice a week the trusty
pony is certain to be brought out if the fixtures are at
all convenient, and the M.F.H. is pretty sure to arrange
that they shall be tolerably central during holiday-
time. Here the youth of the countryside have a
chance of meeting and forming friendships which may
last a lifetime — and friendships formed in the hunting-
field seem to have an enduring quality.

In all countries at Christmas-time dances and social
reunions prevail when the short winter's day is over ;
but in the hunting country the partners often meet
again the day after the ball ; and when evening falls
they do not find it difficult to decide between the
merits of a gallop on the boards or one over the
grass. Hunting folk are always hospitable, it appears
to me ; and there is a give-and-take hospitality con-
nected with the chase which is very refreshingly
genuine. Brown, who lives at the far end of the
country, sends his man with a couple of horses to
you the night before the meet which is near your
door, and fully expects that you will do the same by
him when hounds are in his part of the world, and

SOME CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS 305

if he offer you a " put-up " either before or after
the meet, you know that he will be disappointed if
you do not come, and that you will have a good time
if you do.

When is dinner with a friend so thoroughly enjoy-
able as after a good run? There is small chance of
lack of subject for conversation on such an occasion,
when black Care sits as far from your chair as she
did from your saddle during the gallop.

"Dined, o'er our claret we talk o'er the merit
Of every choice spirit that rode in the run ;
But here the crowd, sir, can talk just as loud, sir,
As those who were forward enjoying the fun."

Yes ! we can still all go pretty straight over the
mahogany, and I notice little change in the prowess
of your youth-hood when the tobacco is lit. And yet !
— and yet ! — it has been whispered that they of the
coming race seem a trifle less keen to get at their
fences than their fathers were in the days " when
all the world was young and all the trees were
green " ; when our gracious monarch went so well
with the Pytchley that Charles Payne said to
Whyte-Melville, " Sure to make a good king, sir !
Sits so well, sir ! Sits so well ! "

I know not if this whisper anent our lads in their
teens be true, but most earnestly hope it is not.
" Laudator temporals acti" how one hates the role !
— But, still, the whisper is in the air, and I am asked
when we are going to see again a Grand National
with as many gentleman riders up as professionals?
And where are the boys whose dearest ambition used

Mounds, Gentlemen, Pleane. ^il.

306 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN":

to be a mount between the flags ? Perhaps if the
greybeards who hear the whisper, and sigh sadly
when they hear it, had begun their hunting career
in a country where every third fence or so conceals
a strand of bullock wire, they might not have been
so recklessly eager to get forward ; perhaps, also, if
they had, from the age of seventeen, been in the
habit of smoking from fifteen to thirty cigarettes a
day, they would not have "sat down to ride so blood-
thirstilee " when they reached the brave old days when
we were twenty-one.

But whatever they may say of the lads, no one can
withhold admiration when he speaks of the forward
riding of our maidens, who now form such a con-
siderable element in nearly every hunting-field. In
the country from which I write I have several times
seen the majority of the field composed of ladies, and
nearly all of them meant going from field to field
with hounds, while several wanted no lead from any
one, and were capable of taking care of themselves.
The increase in the number of ladies who hunt is
very remarkable. In the seventies there were exactly
five ladies who followed hounds in these parts, and
really rode up to them, and this little band included
three really celebrated horsewomen ; in 1906 we have
something like fifty side-saddles in the field, inclusive
of the little girls on their ponies, who take to hunting
as ducklings to the water — that is to say, they take
to the riding part of the performance, but whether
the working of the hounds and the actual hunting
of the fox appeals to them is another matter. That
this should be the case is a consummation devoutly

SOME CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS 307

to be wished for in the interests of fox-hunting in the
future, so that in the days to come there shall be no
more complaints of ladies riding about and chattering
loudly when hounds check, or of reckless riding over
grass seeds and springing wheat.

In a few days our hunting-fields will be thinned,
our Christmas house-parties dispersed, and the boys
will be back at school or college, while the small
sisters will find their hunting days curtailed after
holiday-time, and I think they will all be missed. It
is interesting to turn over Leech's hunting pictures,
drawn in the fifties and early sixties, and to note
how he delights in the portrayal of the juvenile fox-
hunter in his Christmas holidays.

Who does not remember the boy on the Shetland
who charges the brook with " All right, Ruggles, we
can both swim ! " or the other youngster who forbids
the keeper to raise the sheep hurdle as he is "coming
over" on a rat of a pony whose ears are half a foot
lower than the hurdle. Then there is the delightful
Etonian who, when told by an ancient that he should
hold his pony together over plough, replies, " All right
old Cock ; don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs ;
there's my man by the haystack with my second
horse ! " In Leech's day, at all events, the juveniles
were very much on the ride, and it certainly is not
common nowadays to see schoolboys riding up to the
motto "Be with them I will," after the manner of
the lads he depicts so skilfully.

It is amusing to denote the demeanour of the young
brigade when they arrive at the meet, and to observe
the different bent of their inclinations. Most of the

308 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN":

lads get together to chaif and, " buck " about their
ponies and their riding, and to exchange school chat ;
but there will be always one or two who make their
way straight to the hounds, and, never taking their
eyes off the pack, are soon engaged in confidential
chat with the Hunt servants, who, though they may
mistrust the heels of the ponies, are invariably de-
lighted with the lads who show interest in hounds,
and are most good-natured and communicative. These
boys we shall find staying out to the bitter end,
having forgotten all about the Christmas cakes and
good things at home, and, though they may not be all
great riders, are the makings of the sportsmen who
come out to see hounds hunt the fox.

Two days a week are, I think, sufficient for any
schoolboy, and the distance from home should never
be too great. It is the long ride back in the dark
that tires and dims the previous pleasures of the day.
Of course no one is tired, or admits to fatigue, after
a " great run," but when that comes off a day or two
should intervene in order that it may be fully digested.
Schoolboys work twice as well when they go back
if they confess to having a real good time during the
holidays, so the pedagogues tell us ; and surely no
boys have such undiluted happiness as those who can
ride and go hunting.

All boys, of course, do not care about hunting ; some
prefer the gun, and deem a day's ferreting the height
of bliss ; but the lads who hunt I also see blazing
away at the rabbits and wood-pigeons ; and, apart
from the ride they have — which is so good for every
one — the society of many of their fellow-creatures

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SOME CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS 309

of all ages and ranks, who have all come out to enjoy
themselves in the same manner as the boys are doing ;
"all," as Surtees wrote, "is Liberty, Equality, and
Fox-huntity."

The "festive season," though some of it has been
spent by one on the sick-list without much merriment,
and with a considerable amount of pain, has never-
theless shown up in strong colours the kindliness and
good-fellowship that exists among hunting men. I
have had a daily levSe at my bedside, and many of
those who have come have come from afar off. The
posts bring numberless letters of kind inquiry, and
more than half of them are from hunting folk, while
if wishes could avail I would be out hunting again
this week, though against the medical advice to
" wait for a few days more." That the great sport
" engenders good-fellowship," as old Sir John Power
wrote when he founded the Kilkenny Hunt, I do
believe, having had evidence of it this Christmastide
that will leave grateful recollections as long as life
lasts.

CHAPTER XX

WHICH IS THE BEST MONTH OF THE SEASON?

If I were so unfortunately situated that my hunting
was restricted to one month in the year, February
is the month I would choose. I look upon it as the
veritable " hunter's moon," when the stout travelling
dog-fox comes courting from afar.

"The stranger, the traveller, stout, gallant, and shy,"
who leaves covert as soon as found — nay, often without
a warning note being heard. The click of the gate
of the covert-field, or the tramping of many horses
approaching on the road are hints sufficient for him,
and away he steals for some haunt in the neighbouring
parish with ten minutes' clear start and all the odds
in his favour. If this happen in the afternoon, we
have light enough in February to pursue him afar,
and the evening scent in this month, I have noticed,
is often the best of the year. The touch of spring
frost that comes at nightfall so often is in the air,
and hounds can usually run like fire on such an
evening.

What straight-necked heroes some of these February
foxes have proved themselves ! What a number of
those immortal fox-hunts which have been handed

310

WHICH IS THE BEST MONTH? 311

down to posterity as " runs of the century," " great
runs," " classic pursuits," have taken place in "February
Fill-dyke"! It was on February 2, 1866, that the
Pytchley hounds had their famous Waterloo run,
which was the crowning triumph of the late Colonel
Anstruther Thomson's life as a huntsman. On
February 22, 1871, an Ash Wednesday never to be
forgotten in the Badminton country, the present
Duke of Beaufort hunted the historic Greatwood fox,
and upon February 16, 1872, Mr. Chaworth Musters
brought off the great run of his career — three hours
twenty-six minutes from Harlequin, near Ratcliffe-on-
Trent, and killed his fox in the open near Tow Hoe,
after covering thirty-five measured miles.

Instances might easily be multiplied, for I am a
keeper of old diaries, &c., and I note that in February,
1893, I hunted on an average four days a week, and
had a run every day I was out.

" February Fill-dyke " is, I think, a misnomer, for
in this month the ground usually seems to me in
better order for riding than in any other month in
the year. It has disadvantages, it is true. Lambs
have begun already to show themselves in considerable
numbers ; top-dressing covers many of our fields ; the
ploughshare has embrowned the land ; and the russet
squares show off the surroundi,ng greenery. Worse
than all, the presence of the vixen has to be considered
when we go to draw a covert, and precautions must
be taken to ensure her safety ; while the shepherd
and his dog, the ploughman and his team, the farm
servants foddering cattle in the fields, all cause the
wildest countryside to present a more populous

312 WHICH IS THE BEST

appearance than it does in the months that have
gone by.

Nevertheless, the shepherd's dog is less likely to
do mischief to the Hunt when attending on his master
than when out with a comrade on a roving hunting
expedition ; the ploughman has often supplied useful
information at a pinch, and the fox is not likely
to run through heavily stocked fields when he sees
the dreaded human being therein ; so altogether I
think the chase is usually carried on without as many
interruptions and obstacles to success as we are dis-
posed to fear, during the shortest month of the
year.

Then think of the many pleasures it brings ! How-
ever much the fox-hunter may be supposed to dread
the advent of spring, to loathe the " nasty stinking
violets " of Mr. Leech's huntsman, and to shudder at
the white masses of snowdrops beneath the trees, he
must confess to a feeling of exhilaration when the
indescribable freshness of the air at this time of year
greets him on his morning ride. The jocund sound
of the birds who mistake the month for April cheers
him while dressing for the chase, and dispels the gloom
caused by the reflection that the season is on the wane.
Out he goes rejoicing, and can stay out full of hope
till the evening, with no dread of stumbling home
over stony roads in inky darkness on a beaten horse,
as in November. For his horses now should be in
the pink of hard condition, inured to fatigue and handy
to ride, as none are in the beginning of the season.
If he be a cautious and observant horseman he has
learned the run of the foxes from the different coverts ;

MONTH OF THE SEASON? 313

and how strangely their courses vary with the seasons !
And he has also become aware of certain safe places
in the fences, of gaps and the positions of the field
gates, so that he can be carried as quickly along the
well-known lines as the most determined thruster of
them all. Then the delights of the evening ride home
after the good day that comes so often in February.
The "who-whoop!" — last of the day — sounds between
four and five o'clock, and, letting out his girths, he
turns his head for home. The gloaming falls, but not
the mirk, ere he reaches it, yet the clear air holds
the light in the western sky, and the dusk throws
romance over his way.

"When the shades of evening closing round give a
fantastic, curious, mysterious aspect to familiar road-
side objects ! Loosely lounging in your saddle, with
half-closed eyes you almost dream — the gnarled trees
grow into giants, cottages into castles, ponds into lakes.
The maid of the inn is a lovely princess, and the bread
and cheese she brings (while, without dismounting, you
let your thirsty horse drink his gruel) tastes more
delicious than the finest suppers of champagne with
a pate of tortured goose's liver that ever tempted the
appetite of a humane anti-foxhunting poet-critic,
exhausted by a long night of opera, ballet, and
Roman punch."

So wrote an author in the fifties, who described with
singular felicity what of picturesqueness and poetry
is to be found in our sport.

But though I have thus waxed enthusiastic in favour
of the claims of February to be regarded " the sweet
o' the year," it may be that I am singular in my belief.

314 WHICH IS THE BEST

The late Mr. Robert Watson, M.F.H., whose name
appears so often in my pages, was very decided in
his opinion that November was the month to choose
if one month only were to be allowed him. " Isn't
it far the best ? " he said, when I put the question to
him. " We've waited so long for it that it seems better
than all the rest when it does come," and I have both
heard and read that this opinion is shared by many.
Nevertheless, I believe that if the vote could be taken
it would be found that the majority would ask for
a month about Christmas-time in preference to any
in the calender. Fox-hunting and the Christmas
holidays have been long associated in the minds of
all whose boyhood has been spent in the country,
and that is the time of year looked forward to by
many whose work lies in the great cities, for their
annual participation in the chief sport of their boy-
hood, and at no other portion of the winter would it
appear so delightful.

That there is a peculiar charm about Christmas
fox-hunting there is no denying, and though " sunny
memories " may be a misnomer when applied to winter
recollections, yet most pleasant reminiscences of de-
lightful sport crowd thick and fast upon the brain
when we lie back in the old arm-chair and think of
Yule-tides not yet long gone by.

Let me recall a Christmas hunt — a woodland morning
and its sequel.

The gates of the great demesne open upon the
end of the long village street, and the high wall
which shuts out the populace from the park stretches
away for miles, embracing in its circuit several thou-

MONTH OF THE SEASON? 315

sand acres. All round inside this wall runs a con-
tinuous screen of planting, varying in width till at
some points the screen broadens into a veritable wood,
A wide ride runs along the middle of the planting,
following its course round the entire circuit of the
great park. Pleasure grounds, lakes, and streams are
contained within this area, also several clumps and
spinneys of various shapes and sizes, and the fox-
covert proper^-a little wilderness of privet and gorse
— is of all the most carefully watched and tended.
Indeed, the demesne is full of foxes, for the proprietor,
though a Master of Hounds in England, is not un-
mindful of the interests of the chase in the land of his
birth.

The village is all astir to-day, for the county hounds
meet in the great stable-yard, and every lad that
carries a stick will be sure to see a fox, and most likely
will be present at his death.

Meanwhile there are many horses to criticise, many
fast-trotting hacks in the buggies and traps that rattle
in at the gates, and glorious excitement when the
unmelodious tootle of the motor-horn announces the
approach of several of these vehicles which are now
familiar to the inhabitants of every Irish hunting
country.

Soon we are following the Master, who hunts his own
hounds, down the pleasant green slopes towards the
woods. The yellow sunlight, breaking in shafts from
the heavy grey sky, lights up the scene, and brings
the scarlet coats of many horsemen into strong relief
as they canter down across the grass.

Clear and resonant comes the huntsman's cheer as

316 WHICH IS THE BEST

the pack dashes into the thicket of furze and privet,
and the trees send back the echoing crack of a whip.
A minute later the air is full of clamour, for a fox
has jumped up from his snug bed in the long grass
among the privet bushes, right under the noses of
the pack, and every hound seems anxious to let us
know that he is aware of the presence of his enemy.

A knot of countrymen who are standing by my
horse are straightway seized with a species of frenzy,
and the instantaneous rush for the covert that follows
is amusing to witness. But there goes the fox, right
across the park towards the plantation by the lake.
Every soul that sees him yells, and one urchin who
has been kneeling down tying his bootlace, and has
seen nothing but tattered leather and green turf
for the last minute and a half, gives vent to such
blood-curdling shrieks that my sober steed shies from
him in fright. Hounds come out, and, catching a
view, stretch themselves out over the grass after their
quarry. The fleet-footed populace gird up their loins,
and tear after them, while their elders collect in knots
and shout encouragement. The Master, with the
reins on the well-bred chestnut's neck, doubles his horn
merrily as he gallops forward, the first whipper-in
diverges away to the left, and his aide from the covert
holloas lustily, " Get away ! get away ! get away !
hoick!"

Now is the time for the lads and lassies on the
ponies, who are having a real merry Christmas, and
no mistake. With what genuine enthusiasm they set
to work ! It was a real fox they saw — they all saw
him — and there are the real hounds trying to catch

MONTH OF THE SEASON? 317

him, just like the pictures ! Hurrah ! No game that
ever was phiyed equals this ! It is splendid going,
ideal turf — " Forrard, f orrard, f orrard away ! "

We who are old in experience know well that there
is little chance of this fox taking to the open country,
but that he is pretty sure to go the round of the
screens, where he will probably knock up a substitute
and save his brush. But it is impossible to escape the
contagion. There is a scent, too, it would seem, for
the fox twists round a clump of trees, and, though
hounds lose their view, they seldom spin round so
quickly, even when close to their fox, unless the scent
is pretty useful. So a cluster of us who are old stagers
ride wide in the direction taken by the first whipper-in,
who has reached the end of the plantation the fox
has just now entered. He is busy with a gate there
as we approach ; but I catch sight of a little dark
streak that almost seems to be carried by the wind
over the grass beyond the planting, so smoothly does
it move. But it is our fox, and he is heading for the
screens which bound the park. The whipper-in has
" missed him," as he says, " when stooping at the gate."
There is no need to holloa or shout, or to touch the
whistle ; the hounds have had enough of that already.
Here they come, tearing through the hollow planta-
tion, making the trees fairly ring with the fierce
joy of their cry, while the sound of their feet among
the red, fallen leaves, which fly up in clouds as they
pass, is as the sound of rushing water. The scarlet-
clad servant rides quietly forward with his cap in
air as they burst from the spinney ; the Master is
already at the far side, and his cheery horn is followed

318 WHICH IS THE BEST

by a scream of encouragement which somehow gives
one a thrill, and knocks listlessness out of the most
phlegmatic. Up come blowing steeds ; up come pant-
ing ponies, with excited juveniles, whose bright eyes
and glowing cheeks testify to unabated ardour.
Forrard away ! It is a long stretch of grass this
time, and in the form of a wedge the pack is straining
across it at a pace that soon makes most of the ponies
and " good family horses " seem almost to be going
backwards instead of forwards, so far are they left
behind.

Now the screens are close ahead. Bend away a bit
to the left for the gate — and here we are under the
trees. " Tally-ho ! there he goes along the ride ! " He
just passed the gate as we reached it, and here come
the hounds thundering along, and a bit nearer to him
than they were at the spinney, I do think. Follow
them along the ride ? No, thank you ! I know the
holding properties of those muddy rides of old. For
me, the turf outside, and a canter across to cut off
a big corner to the next gate, where we arrive on still
hard-pulling horses. In luck again ! There goes the
fox along the ride, but is he the hunted one ? Look
round at this other fellow who has come out from
the screen behind us, and is hurrying across the park ;
no longer the smooth-going streak, but apparently
high on the leg, and how his brush has dropped !
But hounds are coming along the screen still ! Hark
to their cry ! Yes ; but see, old Artful is coming away
from the screen, and some of her gossips with her in
chase of No. 2 ! Also, hark to the horn, and the
Master's " Yoi there ! " He has grasped the situation.

MONTH OF THE SEASON ? 319

Into the screen with us, then ! Line the ride, and
stop these hounds. Good luck to us, we succeed ; they
hear the horn, too ; and leaving the trees by our gate,
catch sight of their friends outside, and soon join them.
So we have another brave scamper over the grass ;
but the little ones are shaking their reins vigorously
now, and I see some tiny whips at work and heels
giving fierce digs in the region of the girths.

See ! the foot-people have headed our fox from the
covert, and he is turning away for the house. So we
can cut off a bit. Yonder he goes into the shrubberies
on the hill. Easy now, lads and lassies, up the hill.
What is this ? The park wall, and hounds striving
and swarming to get over ! Why, he's really away
at last ! Make for the gate hard by. Out now upon
the road, and gallop down ; and here are the hounds,
all in a struggling mass on the road. Who-whoop !
They have him. He crossed the wall, but his heart
failed him then, and they pulled him down when
trying to get back. Who-whoop ! who-whoop ! — a fine
strong young fox.

Here is the brush for the girl with the golden locks,
the mask for her of the raven curls, and a pad for
each of the four brave boys who rode like men in
front of the girls.

And now the Master looks at his watch ; then looks
towards me. Do I see the shadow of a wink trembling
in the corner of his dark-blue eye? I think I do,
and I think I know what it means. "No more of
this demesne work for me to-day, my boy. Let's be
off for a real merry-go-rounder." Goodbye dear,
delightful juveniles, and tell them at home what a

320 WHICH IS THE BEST

day you have had. Farewell, perspiring and equally
pleased pedestrians. You have had your fun, your
whooping and holloaing, and a hard run ; and if you
have somewhat driven hounds off their heads at the
beginning of the day, the M.F.H. does not grudge
you your amusement, and no more should we.

There are sandwiches now to eat, cigars to smoke,
and maybe a flask or two to be consulted during
four miles of jog-jogging along the hard high-
road before the gate of a field is opened and we turn
in. Two more fields, two more gates, then a line of
fir-trees on top of a gentle rise. The M.F.H. pulls
up ; a mounted farmer, on whose land we are stand-
ing, says : " Please tell the gentlemen not to make
a noise." The first whipper-in steals forward, and
we see him disappear round the fir-trees. They grow
just inside the cover-fence of a crack gorse which
harbours, as a rule, " the old customer " who has
three times defeated hounds. We advance on it now.
The second whipper-in is scuttling away to his old
corner ; the Master is bending forward, horn in hand,
in the act of waving his hounds into cover, when, loud
and shrill, a whistle rings out from the far side. A
twang of the horn, and, keeping well clear of the
fences, the M.F.H. with the pack at his horse's heels,
gallops on round the covert. Well in the centre of
the field beyond the gorse is the first whipper-in.
That functionary is purple in the face, screaming
vigorously, and scooping away with his cap. Hounds
fairly fly towards him. " Hold hard, all of you !" roars
the Master, turning short round upon us, and looking
as if he was going to eat the lot of us, — " Hold hard,

Doing it Thoroughly.

Old Gent. "I say, my little man, you should always hold your pony
together going ui^-hill, and over ploughed land ! "

Young Nimrod. "All right, old cock ! don't teach your grandmother
to suck eggs ! There's my man by the hay-stack with my second horse."
{Brawn hy John Leech.)

The New Hunter.

" Well, Charley 1 How do you like your new
pony?" "Oh! pretty well, thank you, uncle,
only I'm afraid he's hardly up to my weight,
and he rushes so at his fences."

{Drawn hij John Leech.)

MONTH OF THE SEASON? 321

confound you, and let them settle ! " He has no time
for more. His horse whips short round, and lays
himself out. He may put his horn — anywhere he
pleases ; we're away now, and " devil take the
hindmost."

The first fence, half-wall, half-bank, must be nothing,
for hounds don't seem to rise at it, just to float over
it ; so it's hardly worth taking a pull at that, but
some stones rattle wickedly as half a score of folk
charge it abreast. Beyond is a great stretch of grass
dotted with furze bushes, and hounds are now more
than half-way across it, while their shrill notes
tantalisingly come back to us on the light breeze.
There is a stream in the bottom. Look where you're
going ! Well over ! Forrard away ! A wall fronts us,
beyond it a road ; and another wall then before the
fields are reached. The little bitches swing over road
and walls, and now are crashing through a field of
turnips — the only bit of tillage we shall see to-day.
There is no time to lose. On and off the road where
it lies before you ! Ha ! their heads are up in the
turnips ! He has turned short to get on to good
going on the headland, but Artful has it up along
the side of the fence. Some intuition has brought
the Master there, too. Twang, twang, twang — forrard,
forrard, forrard ! In front rises a high bank, stone-
faced to the top, furze and blackthorn growing on
it, but here and there a salient place in the growth.
My spot lies right in front, and with an effort we
are up and over, but drop into a queer sort of hole
with briars and furze filling it pretty thickly, out of
which we scramble still " connected " — thanks be to

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 22

322 WHICH IS THE BEST

Diana. Repairing damages while crossing the next
field at speed, I see that there are now but five men
and two ladies in the field with hounds, which after
crossing one more high fence, swing sharp to the
right. The country after that is easy, and how the
bitches do fly across it ! They dart from field to field,
for our fox has his point in view, and is making it
unhindered by enemies. What a lucky evening !
There are no dogs about ; we pass near no houses ;
and our fox, generally running by the side of a fence,
avoids the cattle in the fine grass fields across which
we are making such pleasant progress. Our Master's
cheers of encouragement have ceased ; the thing is
getting serious. I heard him say, " Come up, you
brute ! " at that last fence, and that good horse
certainly leaves a leg behind him at the next one.
We pass close by the walls of an old ivy-covered
tower, one of Ireland's ruined castles, situated on a
green knoll, and some wheeling sheep direct my eyes
to a speck smoothly ascending the opposite slope.
" Tally-ho ! " I whisper to the M.F.H., for the going
is good on the short, 'crisp turf, and I can ride along-
side him. " Where ? Ah ! I have him now, and we
ought to catch him," he replies.

Five minutes later, when hounds seem to be
growing very dim and small, we throw open a gate
and find ourselves at the junction of four roads, with
the pack nosing about in all directions, busy but
puzzled. Our huntsman holds his hand up. A check
at last. Out comes my watch — thirty-two minutes
up to this ; and what a fog goes up from the panting
horses, though now there are only five here present !

MONTH OF THE SEASON? 323

The Master, after one slight pause of intent observa-
tion, jogs quietly up to the straight road in front,
throws a gate open, and touches his horn ; when but
half-way across the field the bitches dart forward
with thrilling cry, followed by his hearty cheer, and
we fling out our " Well done's ! " at the clever
cast.

I think the pace becomes even faster now, or is it
that one begins to "move on one's horse" to get that
fine, bounding gallop out of him that pleased one
so much half an hour ago. He jumps as boldly and
freely as ever; but I confess to a feeling of relief
when we see a purple-brown line rising high in front of
us not very far off. It is the screen round the demesne
wall of which we saw so much in the morning, and
it becomes a question whether our fox can reach it
or no. Ten minutes more decides it. But what a
lot can happen in ten minutes ! The Master's horse
has refused twice ; my steed's forehead band is
plastered with mud ; a friend has described an aerial
flight through his horse "chesting" a bank, and his
hat is fairly " concertina'd," but he looks happy never-
theless ! The bitches, however, are enjoying them-
selves amazingly, springing up at the fences as if
propelled by some new power, and dashing through
the small enclosures we are now traversing with their
hackles erect. We are close to the high wall now,
and with a scramble and " slither " we light on the
road outside it just in time to see hounds swarm on
to a little object that is turning in towards the lodge
gates. Who-whoop ! They have killed him not three
hundred yards from the spot on which they despatched

324 WHICH IS THE BEST MONTH?

their morning fox, and inside the walls we break him
up on the grass.

" It's a five-mile point if it's an inch," says the Master.
"Forty-seven minutes was the time," I announce.
"Only one slight check," adds the M.F.H. ; "a good
gallop, I think ! Does any one want to draw again ? "
For now the avenue is full of people. No voice is
raised for continuance, so, pleased and happy, we
turn for our homes, nor do our ways seem long, for
what sings the wise rogue Autolycus : —

"Jog on, jog on the footpath way
And merrily hent the stile»a :
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a."

CHAPTER XXI

HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODEBN— A SMOKING-EOOM
PALAVER

I AM afraid that although I have always considered
myself to be, if anything, rather optimistic in my
ideas on the subject of the future of fox-hunting, and
inclined to take a more roseate view of the present
than some of my contemporaries and nearly all of
my seniors, yet it is coming home to me that certain
youthful friends begin to find reminiscences of the
past somewhat wearisome. They hold that the easy
and luxurious conditions under which they pursue
their favourite pastime contrast favourably with the
hard times of an older day, and that the evils of wire,
shooting syndicates, and trebly increased expense are
almost counterbalanced by the rapidity of the whole
business, the society of ladies out hunting, and the
" smartness " of everything connected with the chase.
The difficulties of the old system, which were looked
upon as pleasures by the heroes of old who overcame
them, simply appal many of the young ones who read
of them ; and lately I heard " ingenuous youth " declare
that, in his belief, the sport of the grandfathers of
my generation was only "mucking after a fox with

325

326 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN

a pack of tow-rowing brutes that couldn't go fast
enough to keep themselves warm," and, for his part,
he " wouldn't have been bothered with it."

This, it is true, was after dinner, when the wheels
of conversation had been oiled, and, the ladies having
retired to bed, the talk, as usual, fell upon fox-hunting.

" You say," pursued this twentieth-century philo-
sopher, "that it has always fascinated you to hear
the old Master relate how his father used to wait
with his hounds on the lee-side of a wild, heathery
hill for the day to break that he might drag up to
his fox, and you profess to find a spice of romance
and poetry in such an unchristianlike proceeding."
(Here I nodded and puffed away (^vigorously.) " That
seems to me awful rot, if you'll excuse my saying so,"
went on this Philistine. " Where on earth did the
fun come in ? I suppose the old man got up about
four o'clock, pitch dark, on a cold winter's morning ;
shaved overnight, I suppose ; for they all shaved
then ; wore pigtails, too, I fancy ; dressed by candle-
light, no lamps in those days — I say ! think of the
misery of getting into breeches and a pair of tight
boots by candle-light ! "

" They weren't such asses as to wear them tight
then," I growled.

" Breakfasted by candle-light ! Ugh ! what a dismal
proceeding ! " he continued ; " and then jog-jogging
on in the black dark (sleet or rain, too, perhaps) for
miles over bad roads — and they must have been
pretty bad then ; with a cheery old wait under the
lee of your romantic hillside for an hour or so at the
end of it ! Not good enough, I call it ! "

A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 327

" Hang it ! " I exclaimed, hotly, " at your age can't
you understand the sport and intense interest of the
whole thing, when the day did break ? Old Mr. John
Watson, I dai'esay, wasn't much older than you at the
time. Can't you understand the pleasure of seeing
the hounds spread out and try? The delight when
some favourite opened on the drag and the others
coming to him endorsed his success ? Can't you
realise the excitement as the drag grew stronger and
they drew up to him ? Surely Somerville has been
quoted often enough ! Here is the volume and the
passages : —

" Ere yet the morning peep
Or stars retire from the first blush of day,
With thy far-echoing voice alarm thy pack.

. . . See ! how they range
Dispers'd, how busily this way and that
They cross, examining with curious nose
Each likely haunt. Hark I on the drag I hear
Their doubtful hotes, preluding to a cry.

They push, they strive : while from his kennel sneaks
The conscious vUlain."

" No poetry ! Why, man, that's a classic ! I never
see those words in print ' Hark ! on the drag I hear ! '
without a thrill shooting through me."

" Oh, I know ! " rejoined my tormenter, " that's all in
Jorrocks, and I've read it years ago — read it till I'm
sick of it. Read Soapey Sponge, too ! Do you remem-
ber what Jack Spraggon said of old Scamperdale?
Here, find me the book, and I'll read it ! Here it is !

328 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN

Jack and Soapey are talking about getting to the
meet at Dallington Burn Cross Roads : —

" ' How far? ' asked Sponge.

'" Good 20 miles,' replied Jack; 'it's 15 from us, it'll be a good bit
more from here.' "

" ' His lordship will lay out overnight, then ? ' observed Sponge.

" ' Not he,' replied Jack ; ' takes better care of his sixpences than
that. Up in the dark, breakfast by candle-light, grope our ways to the
stable and blunder along the deep lanes, and through all the bye-roads
in the country — get there somehow or another.'

" ' Keen hand ! ' observed Sponge.

" ' Mad 1 ' replied Jack."

— and with that my young friend closed the book
with a bang and looked up with the air of one who
has scored a point.

"No !" he resumed, "I can't see the pleasure or fun
of these proceedings. Look what a contrast nowa-
days ! Suppose that conversation between Sponge
and Spraggon to take place in these times : —

" ' What distance ? ' says Sponge.

" ' Twenty miles! " says Spraggon.

"Sponge rings the bell for Spigot and orders his
motor to be round at 10.30 to-morrow.

" Or, if Spraggon had said the meet was at a bad
place, Sponge would have buzzed off in his motor to
meet Mr. PufSngton's hounds in the next country.
Also Jawleyford, though he hated putting up Sponge's
piebald hack, would have had no objection to taking
in his motor. So, you see, modern civilisation has a
few advantages where hunting is concerned."

"From more 'advantages of modern civilisation'
may hunting long be spared I " I fervently replied.

A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 329

"Barbed wire, awful crowds, fields that give no hounds
a chance, wages up to treble what they were forty
years ago, artificial manures. South African million-
aires, shooting syndicates of plutocrats, mobs of
horse-dealers who turn out seven or eight horses
daily and give a ' fiver ' to the Hunt — such are some
of the advantages I have seen and heard of ; and I
think we could do without many more ! You talk
about the cheeriness and great sociability of modern
times out hunting, of the number of ladies who hunt,
&c., &c., but looking at the matter purely from a
hunting point of view, remember this — that hounds
would do better if there ivere no field at all, and I
believe every pack would be considerably improved
if they could go out several times in the season un-
attended, except by the Hunt establishment, and find
and hunt their fox, when I'd engage they'd kill him
pretty often and seldom would have their heads up."

" Oh, I know what you'd like ! " said young Up-to-
date. " Ten or a dozen out, all told, all of the severe
order of sportsmen, hack on to the meet and arrive
half an hour too soon, then sit round like a lot of old
owls looking at the hounds, pretending you know
them all, and talking of this one and that, their
fathers and mothers, and great-grandmothers. Surely
it's a lot jollier and more sociable to go out and meet
a host of nice people with squadrons of pretty girls
to talk to the heaps of Johnnies to chaff and tell
you all the last good stories ? "

" I think I like to meet plenty of my fellow-creatures
out hunting, too," I meekly replied. "And also like
ladies to talk to and to look at if they are pretty ;

330 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN

but I like to meet people who have come out to enjoy
a fox-hunt, and not to show themselves and their
clothes. I like to hear a good story, too ; but don't
want it told to me just as hounds have found their
fox, or just when they have checked, which was the
time chosen to inflict a yarn upon me the last day
I was out. But my ideal field is composed of just about
a hundred souls, all, except the grooms, bent on seeing
as much of the hunt as they can, each in the manner to
which he is best accustomed. That number is, I think,
small enough for comfort, but large enough to please
the eye sufficiently. I'm afraid I take too much pleasure
in the humours of the chase to come up to your notion
of the ' severe order of sportsman,' and, great nuisance
as a crowd is, the fun one sees when these mobs are
out is, to me, some very slight compensation for the
harm they do."

" Well ! " replied my companion, " one certainly does
see some very strange creatures on a big day, and
hear a good many comical things said, and it is rather
a relief to have a little room in the afternoon when
they have cut away to catch their specials. But, you
know, you could never carry on hunting if a lot more
folk didn't hunt nowadays than used to come out.
Poultry claims, damages, and wire funds have to be
reckoned with everywhere, and expenses all round
have increased tremendously."

" That's true enough," was my answer, *' but remem-
ber that where we hear of most complaints in England
the expenses have been increased by these very crowds
and their behaviour. No ; looking at it from a social
point of view, I am disposed to think that things were

A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 331

pleasanter when folk stayed more at home and wel-
comed what strangers came to pitch their hunting
camp in the county, and met also at some border
fixture the neighbours from the adjoining Hunt.
Nowadays, in many countries, if you sally out to look
at a neighbouring pack, you find yourself shadowed
with a view to an attack on your purse under the
new rules, although you are ready and willing to put
up any horse or man that wishes to hunt with your
own hounds. Such changes, necessary though they
may be, do not, to my mind, make hunting pleasanter
than in the days of my youth.

" By the by," I resumed, " you said something about
rapidity or pace not very long ago. I'll admit your
motor can leave my dogcart standing still; but did you
mean to suggest that you think runs are faster now
than they were twenty, thirty, forty, or ninety years
ago ? because if you did you fall into an error only
to be excused by your youth and inexperience."

" I feel crushed, of course — simply flattened," was
the calm reply to my harangue ; " but don't you think
they are ? "

" I've good reason to know they are not" said I.
"The chronicles of the chase are pretty accurate and
voluminous about sport in the Midlands of England
at all events, and there were plenty of records of runs
in the beginning of the last century that for pace
and distance will surpass anything that is done nowa-
days. The late Lord Wilton, who, when he rode on
the flat, was allowed to be a wonderful judge of pace,
is said to have given his opinion that they used to go
faster over the Quorn country when he first went to

332 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN

live at Egerton Lodge than they did in later years,
and I have just seen in my December Baily that a
well-known sportsman believes the pace was better
in the Shires in 'Nimrod's' day than now, and that
they required faster horses in those days, when they
had no railroads and no wire-fencing to check the
progress of the horse, and no artificial manures or
deeply drained land to spoil scent for the hound.
Everything connected with the chase was slower, of
course, in the infancy of fox-hunting. ' When each
horse wore a crupper, each squire a pigtail ! ' — but
that is not the time which we ancients consider to
have been the halcyon period of the chase. Do you
imagine that any men go better to hounds now than
those who formed ' Nimrod's ' collection of ' The Hard
Riders of England ' ? Though I grant you that treble
the number of first-rate men are riding to hounds in
the present day. Then, as to hounds, I fancy most
M.F.H.'s of to-day would be glad to possess the pack
that ' The Squire ' brought with him into Leicestershire
in 1817 ; those that Mr. Foljambe sold in 1845, or
Lord Henry Bentinck's pack a decade later; while,
to come to more recent days, I imagine that the Duke
of Beaufort has not much improved on the pace or
hunting qualities of the pack with which he hunted
his fox in the marvellous Greatwood run of 1871.

" Money seems the test of everything nowadays,"
I went on. "Well, in the olden time, as you would
call it, they gave bigger prices for their hunters than
they do in this wonderful twentieth century, and,
excepting the extraordinary prices given for packs in
1909, often as much for their hounds. Forty-one years

A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 333

ago, when Lord Stamford gave up the Quorn, Mr.
Clowes gave him 2,000 guineas for the hounds. One
of his horses fetched 520 guineas at the hammer,
two more 500 guineas apiece. One fetched 480 guineas,
while 460, 450, 420, and 400 guineas (twice) were
given for others, and five more went for 300 and
over. The price for the pack, of course, was not by
any means a record, as it is termed nowadays.

" Big as some of these prices seem, they were common
enough in Leicestershire once on a day ; and I merely
mentioned them to show that if money 'makes the
mare to go ' she ought to have travelled faster in
the olden time. But horses and hounds are as good
as ever they were, the former as well ridden, the
latter as well hunted, I make no doubt, though few,
I fear, in comparison with the great multitudes who
go out take much notice of their hunting, and it is
there that the sport has not improved with age.

" The wire question, of course," I added, " is the
one that may bring the great sport to an untimely
end, for the fastest of you don't seem to be able to
do much with that, and I imagine that £ s. d. is the
only solution ; but it may be (and how fervently do
all sportsmen desire it) ; it may be that good times
are nearer to the farmers than is generally imagined ;
that wealth will flow ' back to the land,' and the
farmers themselves will again become a strong com-
ponent of the hunting-field. Then will the wire cease
to be a danger, and no longer will the ancient fogies
sigh for the days of old."

My young friend yawned, and the talk drifted into
other channels.

334 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN

That question concerning the pace of hounds which
he had raised has often been debated. Many people
hold that hounds run faster now than they did in
the days of our ancestors. When writing recently
on the subject of great runs, I read some of the
pages to a friend who had dropped in for a chat,
and he remarked, apropos of the time of Mr. Bell's
Gal way run in 1906 and Mr. John Watson's run from
Corballis, " By Jove ! how astonished our ancestors
would have been to see hounds flying over the
country at such a pace." But when thinking the
matter over afterwards it came to my mind that
this question of "pace," which so many put before
everything else nowadays, is one that, when studied,
may give results that will considerably surprise the
up-to-date sportsman, who believes implicitly that
the hounds and horses of the twentieth century are
as superior in point of speed to those of the
beginning of the nineteenth as the motor-car that
takes him to covert is to the " Tilbury " that carried
his grandfather. But it was as far back as the
end of the eighteenth century that Mr. Meynell's
two foxhounds were beaten at Newmarket, "four
miles from the town-end Rubbing-House to the
Rubbing- House at the Starting Post of the Beacon
Course," by Mr. Barry's Bluecap and Wanton, who
completed the four miles in "a few seconds above
eight minutes." Now, Mr. Meynell was held to have
the best pack of foxhounds in England ; he was a
great houndman and a scientific fox-hunter, so that
it is not likely that his Richmond and the nameless
bitch who ran with him would have been kept in

A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 335

his kennel had they been able completely to run
away from the rest of the pack. It is fair, therefore,
to infer that Mr. Meynell must have had several
hounds not much inferior to his selected in point
of speed ; yet his champion was beaten quite 120 yards
by Bluecap and Wanton, who ran very close together
all through, so that we may apply the same argument
to the Cheshire hounds.

I do not know what part of Yorkshire was hunted
by the eccentric Colonel Thornton when he owned his
famous bitch Merkin, who ran a four-mile trial in
seven minutes and half a second. Madcap, two years
old, challenged all England over the same distance
for £500, and her brother, Lounger, did the same at
four years old. This challenge was accepted, and a
bet of 200 guineas, to run Mr. Meynell's Pillager ; but
when Lounger was seen at Tattersall's by " many of
the first sportsmen, his bone and form were so capital
that the parties thought it proper to pay forfeit."

It has been said, of course, that in those days they
did not understand " clocking," and that the timing
was probably inaccurate ; but the Bluecap match
was for 500 guineas, and it is certain that at New-
market there would be many sportsmen endeavouring
at least to time the match correctly.

Merkin was sold in 1795 for four hogsheads of
claret; the seller to have two couples of her whelps.
The fashion, or craze, for hound-trials lasted for some
time, but died out at the beginning of the last century.
Still, it proved that our grandfathers were not un-
mindful of the speed of hounds. It may be objected
that these hound-trials in no way represent the speed

336 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN

of hounds over a country intersected by stiff fencing,
and, of course, this is so ; still, they did show that the
animals who ran were not the tow-rowing, muddling
brutes we hear so much about ; and, turning to other
records, we may find further statistics to give food
for reflection.

Fast as are some modern runs, I read in the
chapter on Warwickshire Hunting in Sir Humphrey
de Trafford's Foxhounds of Great Britain, of the
great Epwell run in 1807 during Mr. Corbet's master-
ship, when his hounds ran from Epwell to Burton-
on-the-water, deep in the Heythrop country — a point
of twenty miles, while the distance run Avas thirty-five,
and this was done in four and a half hours, which, for
sustained pace, is not bad. But a few years later
" Nimrod " recorded the great Ditchley run with this
pack, when he declares that over the big fields at
Ladbrooke he had great difficulty in keeping pace
with these hounds "although mounted on a race-
horse in training." I have no record by me of the
time of Lord Redesdale's great Tar Wood run with
the Heythrop in 1847 ; but more than fifty years have
passed since Anstruther Thomson brought off the
Charndon Common run mentioned in his Remini-
scences— found in Claydon Woods and lost near
Merton — sixteen miles, no check; time one hour and
ticenty minutes; no one saw the end, but Mr. George
Drake went the longest. This is the fastest long run
that I ever heard of, and is most authentic.

In Mr. John Hawke's pamphlet. The Meynellian
Science, or Fox-hunting upon System, he tells us that
Mr. Meynell " considered the first qualities in a fox-

A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 337

hound to be fine noses and stout runners " ; his object
was " to combine strength with beauty, steadiness
with high mettle. His idea of perfect shape was
short backs, open bosoms, straight legs and compact
feet. His idea of perfection in hounds in chase con-
sisted of their being true guides in hard running,
and close and patient hunters on a cold scent com-
bined with stoutness ; overrunning the scent and
babbling were considered the greatest faults."

In those days hounds were cast seldom in com-
parison with the practice of our own time, for the
sufficient reason that they seldom required it. This
was in some measure owing to the superior scent-
holding properties of the land before scientific farming,
heavy drainage, and artificial manuring came into
vogue. Even in a tillage country hounds had a
better chance, for they did not plough into the fences
then, but left a good broad headland, which was
almost invariably travelled by the fox. But the fine
noses of the hounds themselves and steady line-
hunting qualities helped fully as much as the state
of the land to do away with the necessity for much
casting during a day's sport, and this steady, relent-
less pursuit was doubtless the reason that they were
able to cover great distances in a time that even in
these flying days cause astonishment. But it is true
that they were in the habit of hunting stouter foxes
then, and therefore these long runs came more fre-
quently. Possibly, with a burning scent, we have
hounds nowadays that could run away from a pack
of Bluecaps, Wantons, or Merkins ; but, unless the
hound-trial and stop-watch is to be called into play

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 23

338 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN

again, I do not see how this can be stated with any
certainty. In Whyte-Melville's Inside the Bar he
makes old Squire Plumtree, in an after-dinner argu-
ment, thus deliver himself : —

" Haste is not always speed. A man may be in a devil of a hurry
and yet slip back two paces for every one he advances. The
same process that kills a hare will kill a fox — the keeping constantly
at him, not the bustling him along best pace for ten or fifteen
minutes. Now your hounds of the present day are always flashing
over the scent into the next field. Either you waste a deal of valuable
time by having to try back, or if your huntsman is as wild as his
hounds, he gallops forward blowing his horn, makes a wide cast,
and loses him altogether. Either way you destroy your own object."

Those who have partaken of the delightful sport
furnished by the Devon and Somerset Staghounds,
and have participated in the pleasures of a run over
the glorious, open moorland will, I think, understand
the old Squire's meaning. You have acquired sufficient
confidence in yourself and steed to ride boldly through
the heather and moorland herbage, knee-deep though
it be. You have got away well and are placed, much
to your satisfaction, pretty close to hounds, and
you mean to stay there. At first it seems a matter
easy enough on a "well-bred horse, who is not taking
anything out of himself by pulling harder than is
pleasant ; for the pace even of those big hounds among
the heather seems nothing alarming. A fast canter
or steady hand-gallop, you think will suffice. But
there is no stopping on a good scenting day on the
moor, no pulling the horse together for a fence or
a halting to open the gate, no diverging into the next
field to get better going or to avoid the fence in front ;

A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 339

you are always hammering on. And after twenty
minutes of such work it comes upon you that you
may as well let your nag know you have a pair of
spurs on ; and it is only if you have to retrace your
steps on the homeward journey over the same line
that you get any idea of the great distance you have
come in so short a time.

In the best gallop I ever enjoyed in my life — it was
from Kiltorkan Gorse in Kilkenny to a ppint between
Bessborough and Castletown where they killed — hounds
never checked ; that is, they never were spoken to ;
they "hovered" but wheeled and caught the scent
up for themselves several times, no doubt, but there
was no distinct pause. All the first part of the run
was over a very easy, open country with low fences
and walls, and many gaps through which the fox had
generally passed. The point is nine and three-quarter
miles, and the time was just five minutes over the
hour. Owing to a thick, misty drizzle on the low
hills near Huggenstown and Booliglass it was not
easy to tell exactly how far they ran, but I fancy it
must have been at least a mile and a half more. Now
the great pace of this run was much talked of at
the time, but the truth is that a great many folk,
including the M.F.H., were left on the far side of
the railway with a good deal of leeway to make up.
As a matter of fact, there was no great difficulty in
staying with hounds who never seemed to be " flying,"
but never stopped " hammering on " in a manner I
have not seen equalled since.

CHAPTER XXII

, CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING

The changes of which I write are not in the manner
of conducting the pursuit of the fox, or in the " horses,
hounds, and the system of kennel," but in the organ-
isation and conduct of the affairs of the Hunt. This
change has gradually been making itself felt; it has
advanced rapidly within the last fifteen years, and
recent events must soon force all who wish well to
hunting to bestir themselves to meet it. So far back
as 1834 " Nimrod " wrote : " We consider it rather
inconceivable that, in the present depressed state of
land property, either noblemen or private gentlemen
should of themselves be expected or permitted to
bear all the charge of hunting a country." And he
proceeds to quote from a writer in the Neio Sporting
Magazine of that year who does not —

" Anticipate the event of the total abolition of the sport, for it is
the favourite sport of Englishmen, and that which a man likes best he
will relinquish last. Still, with the exception of countries that boast
their Clevelands, their Yarboroughs and Suttons, their Graftons,
Beauforts, Eutlands, Fitzwilliams, Segraves, Middletons, and Hare-
woods — their great and sporting noblemen, in fact — we feel assured
that, unless sometbing be speedily arranged, half the packs in England

340

CHANGES INT FOX-HUNTING 341

must either be curtailed of their fair proportion of sport or abolished
altogether. This is not as it should be. Men are as fond of hunting,
at least of riding to hounds, as ever ; but though we feel we may be
telling a disagreeable truth to many, the fact is that most men want to
hunt for nothing. The day for this, however, is fast drawing to a close.
The breed of country gentlemen who keep hounds — the Ealph
Lambtons, the Farquharsons, the Assheton Smiths, the Villebois and
Osbaldestons — are fast disappearing, in all probability never to be re-
newed. True that it is a fine, a proud sight to see an English country
gentleman spending his income on his native soil, and affording happi-
ness and amusement to his neighbours, receiving their respect and
esteem in return, but we cannot help feeling that unless a man has one
of those overwhelming incomes that are more frequently read of than
enjoyed, it is hardly fair that the expenses of a sport that affords health
and recreation to hundreds should fall upon his individual shoulders."

It seems difficult to believe that this extract was
written seventy-five years ago, so forcibly do its argu-
ments come home to us in the year of grace 1909, when
all hunting expenses have increased 20 per cent.
Nothing, as a matter of fact, was very " speedily
arranged," but when the brave old squires whom the
writer enumerates took the field no more, they left
no successors to provide " health and recreation " free
of charge in the districts over which they hunted. The
proud sight of an English nobleman affording happi-
ness and amusement to his neighbours, and in return
" receiving their respect and esteem " (but no subscrip-
tion) is, however, still to be witnessed in two parts
of Yorkshire, in Lincolnshire, in Dorset, on the Welsh
border, and in Scotland ; but elsewhere the arrange-
ment has been made, and subscription packs hunt every
part of the kingdom.

The subscription lists of many of these packs should
" in the present depressed state of land property," be

342 CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING

studied with some attention by those who hunt with
the hounds they are intended to support. It will
generally be found that very large subscriptions are
given by men who hunt very little, or not at all ; but
who, because they are landed proprietors, consider it
their duty to support the county pack of hounds. The
prospects of the landed gentry cannot be said to look
very bright just now, and one is forced to consider
if these subscriptions are likely to be maintained in
the future — nay, to ask oneself if by any right we
should expect them to be continued. If a landed
proprietor is able to let any house or farm as a
hunting-box, or to offer as an inducement to a tenant
that there is " good hunting in the neighbourhood,"
then, indeed, it may reasonably be expected of him
to subscribe pretty liberally to the hounds ; but, as
the writer of 1834 remarked, " the fact is, most men
want to hunt for nothing," and when future subscrip-
tion lists are read over and a small sum appears after
the name of a county magnate, he may be voted a
shabby fellow though he and his ancestors have been
paying for the sport of others for several generations.

It is only just beginning to come home to some
folks, who would be indignant if a neighbour offered
to pay the rent of their shooting or fishing in Scotland
for them, that they have practically been allowing
other people to pay the greater share of the cost of
an amusement which lasts them for five months in
the year.

The matter is now dealt with in many English
countries in a very business-like manner. Take, for
instance, the Grafton — one of the historic countries

CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING 343

mentioned by the writer I have quoted — a private pack
once maintained by the Duke of Grafton, but since
1895 a subscription one ; lowest subscription, £35 per
annum, payable in advance. We may be sure that
this sum was not fixed without due deliberation ; nor,
when one considers the great reputation of the pack
and of the country, does the amount appear excessive.
In countries where second horses are essential, if we
would see a day's sport fairly out, we must possess
the sinews of war, and pay for our game pretty
heavily. Every one understands that, but many are
only beginning to realise that they have now got to
pay for something beside their horses and the expenses
of the stable. It was all very well once on a day —
say, when Sir Richard Sutton ruled in Quorndon — for
the flying sportsman to send his string up to Melton,
" to stand at the sign of the ' 'And in Pocket,' " as
the groom in Market Harborough expressed it ; and
nothing more was expected. But, though there are
said to be many more millionaires in the land nowa-
days than when Sir Richard flourished, somehow or
other we hear of none who are willing to spend £10,000
per annum on hunting a country at their own expense.
South African gold dust may be freely sprinkled on
the Turf. Not very much of it is bestowed on the
hunting-field for the benefit of others.

It has come to pass, then, that all who hunt in the
English Midlands are given to understand that they
have to pay for the maintenance of the Hunt, and what
that means the secretary's accounts will no doubt
explain. The subscription is fixed at the minimum
reconcilable with the expenses of maintenance, and the

344 CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING

amount realised, I believe, usually suffices for so
doing.

But it is where hunting is not so fashionable, and
the number of subscribers smaller, that the matter
is difficult to deal with. Expenses increase yearly, but
the old big subscribers, who very likely hunt less
than the others, cannot be expected to increase their
donations, and difficulties very soon begin to arise —
begin to arise because certain good folk cannot pay
more for the amusement of others who want to play
at their expense. Surely it is not a very pleasant thing
for Smith to feel that he is allowing Brown, Jones, and
Robinson, for neither of whom has he any particular
regard, to pay the lion's share of Smith's hunting
expenses. It has been suggested, indeed, that all two-
days-a-week hunts should fix £25 as the lowest
sum for their Hunt subscription. Were the custom
established, it is said that no one would miss the
money, that the mean man would be " caught," and
the generous non-hunting supporter often relieved of
a burden.

In those countries where most of the hunting folk
have for many years had their hunting practically for
nothing, thanks to the liberality of some nobleman
or a few territorial magnates, it is reported that the
change that has now come to pass is met in a spirit
of great despondency, and anything more than a £5
note is with extreme difficulty extracted. Now, to pay
but £5 for about fifty days' hunting, which is the
magnificent contribution of several acquaintances of
mine, appears such a singularly parsimonious contribu-
tion to the war-chest that I am in hopes they may

CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING 345

be induced to enlarge it when they realise that other
folk who are none too well off must be paying largely
for their amusement.

One of the changes that time has brought, besides
the increase of expenses and the decrease of private
packs, is the extraordinary increase in the number of
ladies in the hunting-field, and it is said in many
quarters that they should subscribe the fixed amount
just the same as mere men, and that from £1 to £5
towards a fowl fund is by no means an adequate sum
to pay for several days' hunting per week. There is
great difference of opinion on the subject. " Let there
be no compulsion in the matter," say some of the old-
fashioned ones ; "let it be our privilege to pay for the
fair! What matter if they do exceed the sterner sex
in numbers (as is very often the case)? If they will
only learn what grass-seeds and springing wheat look
like, and avoid them ! — if they will only practise silence
at a check, difficult though it may be for them at any
time — if they will only do these things, why, ' Let 'em
all come' gratis, free, and for nothing, and the more
the merrier ! "

The changes in the hunting-field are not only
economic. If we attempt to contrast our present
customs and fashions with those of forty years ago,
we find that many differences have grown up.

The " merry spring-time," which lately brought us
such jovial items as blizzards of hail and snow, nightly
frosts and cutting north-easterly gales, has also cut
short our hunting season a good deal earlier than
usual, for some reason which I have not quite been able
to discover, unless it be that the practically uninter-

346 CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING

rupted spell of open weather since November 1st has
given us all — hounds, horses, and human beings —
enough. I am not thinking of any pack in particular.
Some have closed already, and most hunts in Ireland
did not go on into April at all. This is altogether
different from the practice which obtained in the
days of my youth, when it was the universal custom
to try to " kill a May fox " ; but although the hunting
world is pretty conservative, its manners and customs
have altered, and are still changing. No doubt there
is often a very good reason for the change, but it
sometimes affects the antiquated sportsman rather
sadly.

It is safe to say that in Ireland we are no more likely
again to hunt a May fox than to behold a pigtail,
though there is said to be a fashionable hankering
at present after ancient English customs and costumes.
It was not my happiness to have come into the world
when the " hirsute appendage " flourished, but I have
seen a fox killed in the first week of May, and I have
no desire to do so again, believing that all fox-hunting
should close by the end of April.

But the changes in the hunting-field which I myself
have seen are so numerous that it would take up a
good deal of paper to recount them. A few, however,
which occur to me may serve to amuse readers who
are still on the sunny side of middle age. For my first
day's hunting last week I travelled a very long distance
to the meet in a motor-car, the most comfortable, I
think, that I ever drove in. We had twenty-nine
miles to get over before we reached the fixture and
a fair in the village at the gates to get through at

CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING 347

starting, and those who have experience of Irish fairs
will understand that the condition of the streets
might be termed congested. My host allowed him-
self two hours, and we did it easily, with lots of time
to spare, overtaking horses and traps on their way
to the trysting-place at least two miles before we
reached it. Certainly a most comfortable means of
transit was that motor-car — so noiseless and so delight-
fully smooth. She rose the hills with a droning hum
like the buzz of a distant threshing machine, and
glided down them accompanied by the low, rhythmical
clink of machinery, but at times quite silently.

Turning over the pages of an old diary, I see that
in the last week of March, 1866, I "drove to the meet

on Mr. M 's coach. Most of the fellows on the drag

wore hunting-caps. Three other coaches at the meet."
I suppose, being a youth at that time, I envied the
wearers of the hunting-caps the possession of those
sensible articles of headgear. It is true that my driver
of the motor-car the other day was similarly attired
as to his head, but being the M.F.H. that was a matter
of course. Who else wears a hunting-cap now ? —
unless, perchance, the Field Master (an excellent
custom, I think) — and who drives his coach to the
meet at the present day ? Not many folk, I fancy,
even on the Saxon side of St. George's Channel ! And
it is now some years since I saw a coach at a meet of
foxhounds in Ireland, though it was a common enough
sight at one time. Tempora mutantur !

The hunting-cap lingered longer on the brows of
sportsmen in Ireland than in England, despite the fact
that it was the fatal accident in Co. Kilkenny to Henry

348 CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING

Marquis of Waterford, in 1859, that caused the hunting-
cap to go out of fashion. It was thought at the time
that a tall hat would have acted as a buffer and saved
the neck, for the hard, unyielding hunting-cap was only
slightly indented by the fall. Be that as it may, most
Irish squires who were Lord Waterford's contem-
poraries stuck to their hunting-caps for several years
after his lamented death, and after they had become
unfashionable in England. They had not quite gone
out, however, when Whyte-Melville wrote Market
Harborough, for readers of that delightful work will
remember that Mr. John Standish Sawyer made his
first appearance in Leicestershire in a cap, and went so
well in a " merry-go-rounder " with the Pytchley,
that pretty Miss Cissy Dove caused his heart to
thrill by saying " We all agreed that the cap had
the best of it." In Leech's hunting sketches — " Pictures
from Life and Character in the possession of Mr.
Punch " — we can clearly trace the wane of the popu-
larity of the cap, though I think our dear old friend
Mr. Briggs, save when out with the Brighton Harriers,
is always represented in the hunting-field wearing
the headgear to which his wife took such exception
when it was first sent home.

Leech was so close an observer of life and character
that his sketches are valuable as showing the changes
of costume in England during the period in which
he worked. He gives us the gradual progress of
crinolines from the mildly accentuating bustle to
the unmeaning monstrosity of hoops ; he shows us
the advent of the peg-top trouser, the birth of the
knickerbocker, and from his pictures we learn how

CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING 349

fox-hunters were clad between the years of 1842 and
1865. We notice in these hunting sketches a hunting
boot that is now almost as extinct as the pigtail, but
which I remember very well ; these boots were called
" Napoleons," were usually made of some patent leather
and covered the knee-cap, but were cut away behind.

" Don't have Napoleons," a boot-maker in one of
Leech's sketches is saying to a seated customer whose
calf he is about to measure. " Have tops, sir ! Yours
is a beautiful leg for a top boot, sir ! Beautiful leg,
sir ! Same size all the way down, sir ! "

The difficulty of dealing with a limb of muscular
proportions when constructing a top boot is also
noticed in Market Harborough, when Mr. Sawyer is
fitting himself out with a couple of pairs in Oxford
Street, for his campaign in the Shires : —

" ' Very muscular gentleman 1 ' says the foreman, passing his tape
round Mr. Sawyer's calf. ' I could have made you, now, a particular
neat Provincial boot ; but with this pattern it is exceedingly difficult
to obtain the correct appearance for the flying countries. You wouldn't
like a pair of Napoleons, I presume. Very fashionable just now, sir.
All the gentlemen wear them in the Vale of Aylesbury.' "

Another writer on hunting matters at about the
same period says : " Of boots there are just two sorts —
those that protect the mechanism of the knee and
those that don't ; " but it is a long time since I have
seen a boot that " protected the mechanism of the
knee" worn by a gentleman in the hunting-field.
Even in my early hunting days Napoleons were not
fashionable, and were usually worn by our elders —
men who seemed, no doubt, to us to be tottering on

350 CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING

the brink of the grave. What sings Egerton War-
burton ? —

"Buckskin's the only fit wear for the saddle,

Hats for Hyde Park, but a cap for the chase ;
In boots of black leather let fishermen paddle,
The calves of a fox-hunter white ones encase."

It is a long time also since I saw a white top worn
by a gentleman, though I can remember when that
colour was de riguem^ and surmounted a boot whose
great beauty was to be as wrinkled as a concertina;
I have seen many fashions in the shades of tops since
that day, though. It would appear from the verses
of Egerton Warburton that he was one of the inno-
vators who made the velvet cap fashionable and caused
it again to supersede the heavy, quaintly shaped, tall
hat which we see in the pictures of Aiken : —

" Old Wiseheads complacently smoothing the brim.
May jeer at my velvet and call it a whim.
They may think in a cap little wisdom there dwells.
They may say they who wear it should wear it with bells.

But when broad brim lies flat,

I will answer him pat,
Oh I who but a crackskull would ride in a hat ? "

From our very earliest hunting pictures, however,
it would appear that a hunting-cap of dimensions
equalling a fireman's helmet and something of the
same shape surmounted the brows of our ancestors ;
so fashions come and go and come again, and " nothing
is new under the sun."

As regards the change in other articles of attire,
I can recollect when almost every hunting man en-

2i '^ 'S

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CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING 351

veloped his neck in a blue or blue bird's-eye scarf
while some of the ancients tied theirs in a bow, and
to this fashion Mr. T. C. Garth held till the end of
his fifty years' mastership in 1902. The blue bird's-eye
with a scarlet coat is now as extinct as the velvet
cap. The Crimean War and its hardships, it is said,
did away with much of the very tight and shiny
species of dandyism in the hunting-field and else-
where. Many of our heroes wore beards when they
returned from the shores of the Black Sea ; and,
retiring from the Service after the war, remained
unshorn ever afterwards, to the great wrath and
disgust of an elder generation, who would suffer no
growth on the face but what Brother Jonathan terms
a " side-whisker," and had a prejudice against wearing
that of any length. " It's a strange thing," I once
heard one of the old school remark, "that Johnny
Osborne can go and win races with all that hair on

his face. I wish to G d he'd cut it off ! "

In provincial countries, certainly, it was a common
thing to wear brown cord breeches with a red coat,
but, though I regret to learn that there has been a
considerable increase in the number of " Rat-catchers "
since the Boer War, I have only seen one instance
of khaki-coloured legs being thrust into top-boots — a
sensible practice enough, one which is most com-
fortable, and was common long ago. Scarlet single-
breasted coat, brown Bedford cords, mahogany-
coloured top-boots, and a hunting-cap : such was the
kit of many a well-known sportsman when I first
went hunting — the dress, in fact, of many huntsmen
and hunt servants of the present day. Leathers had

352 CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING

then gone out of fashion for a time, and white Bedford
cords were more in vogue than cotton cords, or at least
were considered smarter, but moleskins were seldom seen.

I think if a man had appeared in the hunting-field
on a hog-maned horse at the time I speak of he would
have been considered a lunatic. The only animal
ever hogged was a butcher's pony, and no end of
trouble was taken to make the mane of the hunter
" lie." I well remember the mane of a horse being
removed to get rid of ringworm, which covered the
animal's neck. Dire was the distress of the owner,
who could not bring the horse out till his mane was
grown ; and no one seemed to think it strange that
he did not do so. Hunters' tails were seldom docked
in those days, and the amount of dirt some of the
heavy bang tails would bring into a stable after a
wet day's hunting was surprising.

White gloves, cleaned with breeches-paste or pipe-
clay were in vogue at that time — a senseless fashion
it always seemed to me — and I recollect a bit of
scandal being raised when a lady was observed to
bear the impress of a white hand on her habit about
the region of the waist, when she emerged from a
wood which hounds had been drawing. But there
were so many white gloves in the field that the
youngsters could not " spot " the favoured swain !
There were few ladies hunting then, though a certain
number rode to the meets and saw hounds throw off ;
yet it was not then " the thing " for a lady to hunt,
and very few really rode hard to hounds. I doubt if
there were fifty in the United Kingdom ! I speak
of the sixties, or at least from 1865 to 1870, when I

CHANGES IN FOX-HUNTING 353

hunted a certain amount on both sides of St. George's
Channel.

"The world went very well then," I thought, but
I can well remember that the old brigade said hunting
was " dying out and couldn't go on." Perhaps the
ladies revived it ! Perhaps the old 'uns were mis-
taken, and meant that they were dying out ! Wire,
though, had begun to creep in. It was in 1868, I
think (but certainly not later) that I saw the late
Mr. Henry Briscoe, M.F.H., get a terrible fall over
wire near Fiddown Station, Co. Kilkenny, from the
effects of which he told me he never quite recovered.
The wire on this occasion was run through some
bushes in a gap on the roadside, and Mr. Briscoe
wanted to get into the field to cast his hounds. The
horse tried to brush through, and turned slowly over,
crushing his rider, who, however, was able to ride
home. Leech, in one of his hunting sketches in Punch,
shows a bad accident from wire, where a sportsman
is down and badly hurt apparently, and one of the
Hunt servants is falling heavily close by. Now John
Leech died in the year 1864. Still, wire was very
rarely seen in Ireland till several years later. I
was quite appalled when I returned to the country
in 1877, after four years' absence, to see the progress
it had made even then. It is many years since
Whyte-Melville wrote in Bailys Magazine his verses,
"Ware Wire," a protest to the farmers. His lines
doubtless called attention to the evil, but could not,
of course, be expected to check it or induce those he
addressed to " Up with the timber and down with the
wire." Money, which maketh the mare to go, even
over a country that has been wired, can alone do that.

Hounds, Gentlemen, Please. 24

CHAPTER XXIII

A PLEA FOR THE OLD RED RAG, BEING AN INTERVIEW
WITH JORROCKS'S GHOST

The frost after last New Year was a desperately hard
one and threatened long continuance. Happily, the
threat was unfulfilled, but the time was dreary to
me, though shooting, or rather, walking, with a gun,
in search of evasive snipe or casual duck in unfrozen
fen ditches, served to keep the weight down and the
temper too. These expeditions brought one home
weary, and seldom heavy laden, but always with keen
anticipation of the dinner-hour.

In such hard times the frozen-out fox-hunter has no
need to take thought for the morning. There is no
" sending on " to be considered, and no early breakfast
or start renders necessary a curtailment of the evening
symposium in the smoking-room.

I must confess, then, to a lengthened sojourn in the
depths of my favourite arm-chair on these cold
evenings. The tobacco would sink low in the jar,
and while the snow pattered lightly on the pane a
bright copper kettle occasionally sang cheerily on the
hob. On one particularly frosty night, when the
daily papers had been thoroughly digested, it is pos-

354

A PLEA FOR THE OLD RED RAG 355

sible that the latest novel might have kept one
awake and alert by its exciting revelations of super-
human cunning or skill displayed in the detection of
crime ; but I had no new novel, and fell back on a
beloved old scarlet-bound volume, on the back of
which time and hard usage have almost effaced the
magic words Handley Cross.

No matter at what page one opens that delightful
book, there is always something to amuse. That night
I sat chuckling for the thousandth time over the
humorous advice of the " Sporting Falstaff " to his
" beloved 'earers," and, closing my eyes, began to
ruminate thereon.

Before long it somehow became apparent to me
that some one had entered the room and was sitting
in the arm-chair on the other side of the fire, which
had been occupied in the earlier part of the evening
by the partner of my joys and sorrows.

Not only that, but my visitor had evidently mixed
himself some fairly strong "hot stopping," for
assuredly the odour of lemon, sugar, boiling water,
and, I think, whisky, filled my snuggery. Curiously
enough, I felt no sort of surprise, as I drowsily scanned
my guest, who was attired in sky-blue evening coat
lined with pink silk, canary-coloured shorts, and
white silk stockings. His neckcloth and waistcoat
were white, and a finely plaited shirt frill protruded
like the fin of a perch.

He had a fine open countenance, and though his
little turn-up nose and rather twisted mouth were
not handsome, there was a combination of fun and

356 A PLEA FOR THE OLD RED RAG

good-humour in his looks that pleased at first sight,
and made one forget all the rest. On his head sat
a bushy, nut-brown wig, worn for comfort and not
deception.

Perhaps he seemed a trifle paler than when I last
had seen him — my copy is a genuine first edition ! —
but possibly my strong reflecting reading lamp may
have been responsible for the slight alteration in his
rubicund complexion.

It was Mr. Jorrocks, of course.

My dear old friend seemed in excellent spirits, as
he crossed his plump calves and elevated his jolly chin
while he took a strong pull at his tumbler and smacked
his lips heartily. " Dash my vig ! " he exclaimed, " it
is a thaw ! Do believe you'll 'unt to-morrow ; I knows
if I 'ad this country I'd 'ave a shy at it. I guessed
there was a thaw on," he continued, " for I 'eard
the ghost of Gabriel Junks screamin' before I came
'ere."

" Before you came up, did you say ? " I inquired
drowsily.

" I said nothing about hup ; I said 'ere," replied
Mr. Jorrocks, frowning a little. " Don't try to be so
werry sharp, my friend, but pass along the Scotchman ;
good stuff that, but I still prefers the V.O.P.," he
remarked, as he measured out another jorum. " But,
as I was sayin', I'll lay a guinea you 'unts to-morrow,
and I 'opes you'll 'ave a real good chevy, with a kill
at the end on't ! 'Ere, let's drink Fox-huntin', the
sport o' kings, the image of war without its guilt,
and only five-and-twenty per cent, of the danger.

" What sort of a country is it down — er — I mean

INTERVIEW WITH JORROCKS'S GHOST 357

where you come from ? " I asked, somewhat diffidently,
when the toast had been duly honoured.

" Good country ! " said Mr. J., briskly, — " good coun-
try ! best in Hengland I should say, I mean " — he cor-
rected, " better nor any in Hengland, Europe, Hasia,
Hafrica, or Hamerica ; not but what I sometimes gives
a bit of a sigh for a duster on top of the Surrey 'ills or
a chevy round Pinch-me-near Forest ; but parts of the
Helysian fields is good enough for any hangel ; beats
the cream of the Cut-me-downs 'oUow, I should say ! "

"Big fields out?" I hazarded.

" Hawf ul crowds ! " said my visitor ; " perfect hosts,
in fact ! But room enough for all. Good chaps, most
on 'em, too ! Sportsmen ? Real fliers, some of 'em !
Fly over a comet as soon as not."

"Seen anything of Pigg?" I asked rather doubt-
fully.

" James is going strong," replied Mr. J., slightly
to my surprise. " He's 'appy now he can have his
'cracks wi' 'ard Lambton and 'ard Sebright,' tho'
he doesn't care a copper what he says to any on 'em,
but we doesn't allow no cuss words. Even old
Scamperdale never throws his tongue as he used to
do, and Spraggon isn't 'untin' with us to do it for him,"
he added somewhat grimly.

"But it's 'stonishing how a real 'flying' country
tones 'em all down. Some of the new-comers tried
to haet up to their old reputation ; but it wouldn't
do, for there's no jostlin', no 'ustlin' in gateways, and
no 'eadin' foxes. Why, we even 'as old Hassheton
Smith so tame he'd almost feed out o' your 'and !

" No cussin' or swearin', no hindiscriminate 'ollerin'

358 A PLEA FOR THE OLD RED RAG

allowed," he repeated, "and it would do your 'eart
good to 'ear the music, for we generally 'as a scent,
no tillage being permitted, and no top-dressin' wi'
hartificial manures. It's the right country for music,
and no mistake. Too much trumpetin', in fact, for
some on us, but it's all werry pleasant and cheery !

" What about the 'ounds ? Well, you know," said
Mr. Jorrocks, with a chuck of his chin, " with such
a concatenation o' talent there must be difference of
opinion! I don't 'old with a big 'ound, no more does
Will Goodall, nor the Squire ; nor yet Sir Richard
nor Lord 'Enery ; but old John Warde and Mr.
Horlock, why, they'd like to breed 'em as big as
helephants ! No matter ! difference of opinion never
alters friendship wi' us ! Not but what I likes to
talk these matters over, and some day I might tip
some o' these twentieth-century chaps another Sporting
Lector, for by all accounts they wants a bit o' teachin'.
'Elp yourself, and pass the bottle ; the kettle's struck
hup a new bile !

" Dash my vig ! There's no colour like red, no sport
like 'untin' ! But what am I sayin'? 'No colour like
mustard ! ' ought to be the cry down here nowadays,
and those memorable words of John Jorrocks, M.F.H.,
'ave 'ardly any meanin' in these degenerate times.
What ails them in these days with the Old Red Rag ?
Since this mill in South Hafrica scarlet seems knocked
clean out o' fashion, and mustard colour's all the rage
— shockin' hugly it looks, too, I thinks !

" I 'ad a flutter over a good country the other
evenin', and lookin' down, saw a crack pack runnin'
a fox 'ard and well. Some o' the top-sawyers that

INTERVIEWWITHJORROCKS'S GHOST 359

kep' close to 'em was all right, and dressed like sports-
men and gentlemen — scarlet coat, silk 'at, best o'
Bartley's and 'Ammond's on their understandings ; but
there was a lot more in black tail-coats and mus-
tachers lookin' like music-'all waiters out on the spree,
and a still bigger lot in rat-catchin' or ferretin' kit,
khaki-breeks, puttie leggin's and brown boots ; some
in tall 'ats, some in pot 'ats, and some few in shootin'-
caps. Do the mustard-coloured boys think they looks
better than the pink 'uns, I wonder? I tells 'em the
ladies don't think so, and no more don't I !

"Ask the M.F.H. 'ow he would like his field to be
dressed, and I'll wager he says ' Pass the mustard ! '
Do you all owe nothing to the M.F.H., and is it so
uncommon easy to find another when he resigns?
Ought you not to try and keep him, and please him
by showin' him respect and dressin' yourselves like
Henglish fox-'unters?

"The farmers," continued Mr. Jorrocks, warming to
his subject, and now wearing his wig a good deal
awry, — " the farmers all loves the scarlet, so does all
the willagers and labourers. See the school children
when the 'unt comes by, 'ow they cheers the red coats
and chaff the chaps in mufti ! ' The werry turnpike
man,' wrote a hauthor some years ago, 'relaxes his
grimness in favour of your Pink.'

" And should we not take the farmers into con-
sideration in this matter? I thinks so, anyways, and
they're all for the old colour to a man, and let's you
know it !

" ' Hopen the gate, my man,' sings out Scarlet Coat,
in the deuce of a 'urry, and Bunchclod swings it

360 A PLEA FOR THE OLD RED RAG

open, catches, his shillin', and cries, ' Good luck to
yer!'

'"Hopen the gate ! ' yells Mustard Breeks, and 'Odge
jams 'is 'ands into 'is pockets, and says, ' Hopen it
yourself, you blanky 'orsedealer ! '

" ' My wire's been cut,' says Giles Jolter, the day
after the 'unt, ' and my man tells me it wasn't done
by any of the 'Unt Gemmen, but by a hinfernal chap
rigged out like a gamekeeper. Blowed if I stand
such goin's-on from the likes o' he,' and a row follows.

" What's the matter with the old Red Rag that
ingenious youth should discard it ? " said Mr. Jorrocks
mournfully.

" ' It's so 'ot and 'eavy,' says one. ' Rot ! ' says I ;
' it's no 'eavier than a black Melton, and looks twice
as well.'

" At 'Andley Cross," continued Mr. J., " I said in one
of my Lectors — ' For my part I likes a good roomy
red rag that one can jump in and out with ease ;
good long-backed coats, the back to come down in
a flap, plenty of good, well-lined flaps to wrap round
the thighs,' and nowadays I see warm coats made
of waterproof scarlet serge or tweed that are werry
light and cost 'arf nothin'.

" In olden days there were not many tailors even in
London that could make a 'untin' coat right or cut
a pair o' breeches properly. Poole for coats ; Bartley
for boots ; 'Anderson, 'Ammond, or Tautz for breeches
— that was about the lot. Now there are a score of
men within 'ail of Bond Street, and every one of
them can make as good 'untin' togs as the other, so
there is no difficulty about fittin' out the sportsman.

INTERVIEW WITH JORROCKS'S GHOST 361

" No, it's the fashion that 'as done it ! " said my
visitor siadly. " The King don't 'unt now, more's the
pity, though no one looked better than he did in his
bit o' pink when Charles Payne 'unted the Pytchley ;
but the Royalties seem more on for shootin' than
'untin' now. 'Owever, though fashion keeps the red
coat out of the field, it flourishes in the ball-room,
where ingenious youth, though he dresses like a rat-
catcher out 'untin', now swaggers about in scarlet
with facings of warious colours to catch the heyes o'
the gals, who are supposed to be unable to resist the
red. But I blames the gals, too, mind you ! Not
'cos they don't turn out properly, for they're just the
ones that does. 'Ow smart they do look ! What neat
'abits, what shinin', braided 'air coiled away beneath
a glossy silk 'at or saucy bowler ! See the carefully
folded, snow-white ties with their pretty pins, and
twig a fairish glimpse of a 'ighly polished boot showin'
under the skirt ! 'Ow smart and 'ow workmanlike !
Wot a contrast to 'arf the men ! But I blames 'em,
'cos if they liked they could quickly make the lads clap
on the glorious old red coats they all admires.

" But I tell you what, my friend," said Mr. Jorrocks,
bending forward earnestly, " if you comes in time
to 'unt with us (as I 'opes you will), you'll see no
khakis in the Helysian fields ! Some black coats no
doubt are wisible, for we have plenty o' parsons comin'
out — Harchbishops (Harchangels, I means). Jack
Russell, Froude, Kingsley, and cetera. And of course,
the Duke's men sticks to the blue and buff — nothing
will change them from that. But scarlet's the rule,
and no one complains of the 'eat."

362 A PLEA FOR THE OLD RED RAG

*' See anything of Benjamin these times ? " I inter-
rupted.

" Benjamin don't complain of the cold where he is,"
said his old master drily ; " and no one need tell 'im
to think of ginger now ! I guess he don't get much
'untin' — not fox-'untin', at least ; a fine buoy in his
way, no doubt, but I never could cram any knowledge
of the chase into his noddle, nor any love for it into
'is 'eart, 'ard though I tried !

" Drat 'im ! " continued Mr. Jorrocks testily, " wot
between 'im and old Doleful and that 'umbug Mello
'Andley Cross wasn't altogether just a bed of roses.
'Owsomever, I ain't bothered by any of 'em now, but
if Miserriraus was to come out with us, dashed if
I wouldn't fly over him even if he wore the scarlet ! "

And with that he smote the table such a bang that
the gla-^o^s jingled again, and I started to my feet.

I rubbed my eyes ; the chair opposite me was again
vacant ; the chiming clock on the mantelpiece was
noisily striking midnight, but the aroma of lemon,
sugar, boiling water, and (I think) whisky was still
strong in the room.

"Could I have dreamt it all?" I sleepily muttered,
and, extinguishing the lamp, walked slowly up to bed ;
but there was a soft tinkle of rain against the big
staircase window as I passed, and a southerly wind
seemed to carry from the far distance the faint, weird
scream of a peacock.

TJNWIM BBOTHBBS, lilUITED, THE QBESHAM PBBSS, WOKING AND LONDON.

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