“Con—found all ’ares wot takes to parkses” (vide Mr. Jorrocks) was very appropriate to their country with Stoke Park and Ditton Park in the middle of it as tempting places of refuge for a sinking hare.
On one occasion in Lewis’s season he was favoured with a visit.
“Wednesday, St. Matthias’ Day, dies creta notandus, the great Pomponius Hego and Scrutator, known as having long held a proud position in the first flight of the E.C.H., leaving the ‘Shires’ favoured the provinces with their presence. Thackeray and Moore brought down a hare from Oxford, which Pound turned out at Queen Anne’s Spring.”
The sport, however, on this occasion was not good, “every inch of scent being trodden out by gentlemen who seemed to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion.” This season ended after rather unsatisfactory sport. In Lewis’s case ‘the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak,’ and he frankly owned that his running powers did not enable him to prove a capable huntsman. Ichabod, Ichabod.
But Pound got together a much better pack. His season has already been so well described by Mr. R. V. Somers-Smith that it is unnecessary for me to add anything. Pound seemed in all his accounts to have been completely dissatisfied with the world in general, for he scarcely ever praises anything in big records, and he speaks of almost everything in embittered terms.
On one occasion a hare was put up at 10.45, i.e. a quarter of an hour before school. The huntsman and whips returned to school while the hounds went on by themselves and killed their hare, which was stolen by and afterwards recovered from a sweep. This was only the third occasion on which a wild hare had ever been killed by these hounds.
One day the hounds joined with the Prince’s Harriers, and the Prince and his retinue passed close by and inspected the little pack, “no doubt with an admiring eye!” The unlevelness of the pack may be shown by the measurements taken on March 25th, 1865:
| Abigail | 19″ |
| Rouser | 18 |
| Valiant | 17½″ |
| Pliant | 17″ |
| Smuggler | 16½″ |
| Jargon | 16½″ |
| Affable | 16″ |
| Wellington | 16″ |
| Rattler | 15¾″ |
| Dainty | 14½″ |
This was by far the most successful season the E.C.H. had ever seen.
So much for the College Beagles. It is to be wondered at that at this time there should have been two packs of beagles in the school, but it was about then that the differences between the Collegers and the Oppidans were one by one abolished. The amalgamation of the Beagles was almost the last of these reforms, and some account of it will be given in the next chapter. It was quite natural that the attempts to introduce beagles should have begun in an unofficial and semi-organised manner. But the pack in the time of Pound was very different from that of Carter. Just as the Oppidan pack had been brought to a respectable standard, so had the College pack; and it only remained for the amalgamation (hideous word!) to establish hunting at Eton on a very firm basis.