Of course the great handicap was time. But the letter which I have already given has shown the immense difficulties in this respect. What enthusiasm was required to surmount them all and to carry on as they did!
All the accounts of the College Races are also included in the Journal Book. There was an unpleasant incident at the end of the season which may as well be recorded just to show how to deal with people who are not gentlemen.
“It was much to be regretted that several ‘gentlemen,’ who in no way contributed to keep up sport, thought it necessary to make remarks which only showed their ignorance of the art of venery, and complained of there being no sport for their adequate remuneration for subscriptions. Their subscriptions were returned, and, extraordinary to relate, the E.C.H. still existed. These gentlemen (?), like the ‘London Brigade’ with the Queen’s Hounds, were generally if not always choked off at the first check, and, if there was no check, were indeed ‘lost to sight’ but not ‘to memory dear.’”
And here is the obituary notice of a really kind and pleasant farmer, Mr. Gough of Datchet. A sporting farmer is a treasured article in any country, and when one dies the Hunt sustains a serious loss. This Mr. Gough had been particularly good to the E.C.H.
“The E.C.H. has much reason to regret the loss of Mr. Gough, a tenant farmer, who by his sportsmanlike conduct conduced in no small measure to the prosperity of the Hunt. On his land a sure find might be anticipated, and bagmen were unknown commodities. By his example several of the surrounding farmers were induced to open their lands to the E.C.H., and, though a lawn meet was not often the fashion, Mr. Gough’s hospitable house was never drawn blank for beer and luncheon. The ‘Gough breakfasts’ in the Lent term afforded many a pleasant recollection for dreary after fours, and his tales, though generally ‘twice told,’ were rarely tedious.”
H. J. L. B. Lewis was Master in 1864 with J. B. Wood, A. A. Wace, who is still alive, and R. V. Somers-Smith as his whips. Here is a letter from Mr. Wace which describes the sport with admirable vivacity:
“The Master of the College Beagles in 1864 was Lewis. He rejoiced in five Christian names; three, really surnames, indicated Celtic origin, of which he was very proud. Though of a short sturdy frame his lungs were not so good as his heart, as an early death at Oxford showed; and being slow over plough he left much of the field work to his long-legged whips. Lewis had learned how to handle hounds in kennel and field in Wales, and he gave us a very happy season with his knowledge, generosity and good temper. We had, if I remember right, five or six couples; dwarf harriers, rather than the beagles of Sussex; though there was one true to the latter type which generally did as well at a bad check as Lewis did. They were kennelled at Ward’s Lodge on the Datchet Road. We hunted, I think, three days a week, and our country extended from Salt Hill and Cippenham to as far beyond Datchet as the calls of hall or lock-up allowed us to get. After we had got our little pack and our lungs into some training by following drags we took to hares, but without much success except for exercise. Agar’s Plough and Cippenham were always good draws; but we rarely killed, for Ditton Park, lying in the centre of our country, was too convenient a sanctuary. It had its advantages, however, for us as well as for the hares, as we learnt to bless it as an excuse for being late for hall or lock-up. We could so often honestly say that we had lost time in getting hounds out of the Park coverts; and that seemed to please the Master in College; for, as he often told us, its ducal owner was his wife’s cousin. Hounds, then often disappointed, required blooding with a bagged hare or rabbit, neither ever giving a decent run; and I disliked the job all the more because Sussex had shown me a better way of using beagles for rabbits; and I thought of the hours spent with my gun in a ride while real beagles hustled rabbits round and round a big wood. Tiring perhaps of these ‘bags’ we yield to a suggestion, made I think by Joby Minor, that a badger would give us more fun, certainly more scent, and would always live to fight beagles another day.
“It was bought and did give us some fun at first; but this palled because the badger soon realised that it could save its skin without so much exertion as a long run over heavy ground. It used to make for a long coppice beyond the Datchet Road, and when the pack ran into him there he would run up and down immune, and finally run quite kindly into the bag in which he had left his pleasant quarters at Ward’s Lodge. He also developed a natural love of drains; and thereby hangs a tale, memories of which seem to discredit Joby Minor. Our badger had found a drain under the S.W.R. a nicer refuge than even that wood, and so Joby was ordered to stop it before unbagging the badger out that way. One ‘after twelve’ we had a merry run up to that drain but found it stopped. Hounds swore badger was inside; Joby swore he had stopped it; and suggested that finding this the badger had got out to the metalled line one way or the other, leaving on that no scent. It was dangerous to test this, and, casts on the fields either side failing, we drew off homewards. On the run back suspicions seized us, and two of us undertook to shirk hall or cut it short and run out again to that stopped drain before Chapel. Joby was right, but very wrong too! He or his understudy had stopped the drain, but not till the badger had been allowed to run in! He unstopped it when we were safely gone, and the badger had walked into its familiar bag. Had we two not met him just leaving the line he would probably have tried to sell us that badger the following week! I still cannot think unkindly of Joby when I recall the humour of this incident; or think of the Beagles of 1864 and of many friends who followed them, of whom two later on—Frere and Somers-Smith—ran for Oxford over shorter distances than we covered.”
Lewis was famous for his Rape of the Block, which was restored to the Head Master in 1891. The Block, as all Old Etonians will know, is used by offending boys to kneel on during the process of being swiped.
About this time the kennels underwent some improvement. “A new room was added, a new palisade raised and the brick pavement laid down. The appearance of the whole was workmanlike and neat, but not gaudy, reflecting credit on Mr. Martin, the carpenter.”