The Hunt soon adopted a button with E.C.H. on it. There is a story of Provost Hawtrey arresting one of the whips in the Cloisters and demanding what the lettering on the button was intended to mean. The boy, aghast (for beagling was not allowed in those days), mentioned the letters E.C.H., whereupon the old man, who was not averse to personal flattery, took it to be a compliment to himself as they were his own initials.
One of the runs of 1859 was actually recorded in Bell’s Life. As I have already noted in the previous chapter the Oppidans joined forces with the Collegers on three occasions, this being one of them.
Carter was succeeded by T. J. Huddleston, and Huddleston by E. E. Witt, who held the hounds for two seasons. Of neither of these do we know anything. But Thackeray, who succeeded Witt, first instituted the Journal Book, which was kept right up to the time of the amalgamation in 1867. I have also been greatly helped by the only two College whips of this period who are still alive, R. V. Somers-Smith and A. A. Wace. Here is a letter from the former which covers this whole period from the season of 1863 to the amalgamation:
“I went to Eton as a Colleger in the autumn of 1862, and first ran with the Beagles in the following spring. Thackeray was then the Master, for which position his chief qualification was a copious vocabulary. We then chiefly hunted drags; only occasionally trying for a hare, never with any success.
“The pack had then been in existence only a few years; they were kept at the lodge at the Slough end of the Playing Fields by Ward, the groundsman, and were a mongrel lot. One or two real beagles, some cast-off harriers, some nondescripts, ‘just dogs.’
“As late as 1862 they kept a badger; the brute knew his job and trotted along until overtaken, when he sat down until the field came up. One of the whips carried a sack and a pair of tongs, and the badger was by help of the latter dropped into the former and carried home.
“There was a story against Lewis, one of the whips, that on one occasion the badger took refuge in a useful outhouse adjacent to a cottage, and Lewis was discovered sitting on the sack to prevent the badger escaping this way, making dives at him with the tongs when the badger threatened his legs.
“Lewis was Master in 1864; he was a little Welshman, rather prematurely aged; he was quite a sportsman but a poor runner. I used often to take a whip in his day, but do not think I was in ‘office.’ A. A. Wace was first whip.
“Lewis went to Merton; rather distinguished himself there as a rider—Merton being then a hunting College—and died suddenly in his room there in 1869.