“The pack was very uneven. One hound ‘Forester’ was over twenty inches. He killed a lot of hares for us, but was always a long way ahead of the pack and prevented their being covered with the proverbial sheet, so we weren’t really sorry when a G.W.R. express put an end to his career on the main line near Slough. Our best sport was in the country between Taplow and Slough, but the railway was always a source of great anxiety to the whips, and there were miraculous escapes of the whole pack being cut to pieces. Lock and his son used to take hounds on to the meet—there was no hound van in those days. We used to exercise on non-hunting days in the Playing Fields, and I can remember some wonderful fast bursts after a cur dog which we often coursed from Upper Club across Sixpenny to the Fives Courts, when he used to get to ground in old Joby’s shop. Rather derogatory to the dignity of the hunt officials, but it helped to keep hounds fit.
“The whips used to get lots of perquisites in the shape of wounded partridges and unsuspecting rabbits, which helped to supplement our evening meal, though hounds were severely rated for running riot; it was some compensation, after running one’s guts out over a heavy plough, to return with a rabbit in the capacious pocket of one’s beagle coat! As far as I remember Barnett’s mastership was very successful also. He was a wonderful runner, and no day was too long for him, but I don’t think he had quite as much ‘science’ as Barnard. His whips were Charlie Bentinck,[5] Claud Pennant and myself. I hunted hounds a few times when he was laid up, and I can well remember the difficulty of blowing a horn when one had run oneself to a standstill over Dorney Common or some 50-acre plough.
“The Eton beagles taught me a lot about hunting, but the most important lesson I learnt was never to hustle a horse over heavy plough, and I am sure my horses ought to be grateful to the E.C.H. for teaching me this lesson.”
Barnett, as a matter of fact, had a much more successful season than his predecessor, equalling Hunt’s record of seventeen hares. His last hunt produced an incident worth recording. “Our beaten hare,” says the Journal Book, “was killed by a lurcher and stolen, but Barnett and Lock went for a policeman while Douglas-Pennant took the hounds home. The policeman, who was a ‘nailer,’ soon got us our hare back.”
After this season it must be owned that the E.C.H. ceased for a time to show such good sport. During the next thirteen years the pack in no way improved, and with the exceptions of the years 1892 and 1898 the sport was inferior on the whole to that of the ten years just recorded.
“THERE SHE LAYS.”