“In 1865 A. J. Pound became Master. Pound was a remarkable character—intellectually rather below the average, but endowed with some originality and an exceedingly strong will. I have sometimes doubted whether he was quite ‘right’; he looked at the world and mankind from a point of view entirely his own, and made no effort to adapt himself to convention of any kind. But he was thoroughly honest and straightforward; the kindest and most faithful of friends.
“He subsequently went to the Bar, the last profession for which he was fitted, was for a time a magistrate in British Guiana, married an American, and latterly fell into pecuniary difficulties and took his own life.
“His eldest son is a distinguished sailor.
“Pound took up the Beagles seriously. He got together quite a decent little pack, and began to hunt hares regularly.
“Our great difficulty was the shortness of the time at our disposal. ‘After 12,’ the interval between 11 o’clock school and dinner at 2, after allowing for time spent in changing, we seldom saw even an hour’s actual hunting. Too short a time for beagles to run down a hare. ‘After 4,’ from Chapel to lock-up, was little better, especially as hares always made it a rule to run away from home, compelling us often to whip off in order to get back in time. One of my most abiding recollections is that of long trots back from the parts beyond Langley and Slough to get back to Absence.
“Pound adopted a scheme of his own of hunting in the morning. With one or two choice spirits he would arrange that we should be early at the ‘Saying Lesson,’ then the invariable early school, thus getting away soon after 7.30, run across to the ‘Dolphin’ at Slough (which stood on the site of Aldin House where old John Hawtrey subsequently flourished), breakfast on beer and biscuits and hunt until it was time to get back to 11 o’clock school. That gave us a good two hours’ actual hunting, and we began killing hares pretty often.
“I was Pound’s first whip and principal coadjutor for two years, and it nearly killed me! In fact I was sent home in the middle of the Summer Half of 1866 supposed to be threatened with consumption. Tindal and Gosset were whips, and subsequently Armitstead, who was a very fine cross-country runner, and at Oxford an oar of some repute.
“Of the 1867 season I have no recollection. I was not allowed to run for reasons of health, and I cannot even remember the name of the Master; possibly this was the year of amalgamation.”
Here is the first run recorded in the Journal Book: