“The Eton College Chronicle which you sent me woke up many memories of the good old Eton days. I think the Chronicle is wrong as to Charrington having been the first Oppidan Master. The present Lord Cloncurry (then Valentine Lawless) and Hussey got up Beagles in 1858. I don’t think there were more than two or three couples. Charrington’s was a rival pack. He and his supporters hunted sub rosa. No one except a few privileged ones knew where they met. Lawless and Hussey were high up in the School then, Charrington and his lot much lower down.”
On more than one occasion Charrington combined forces with Lawless, sometimes with considerable success. The combined meets attracted a big Field, which proved that the interest in the Beagles was rapidly growing. Here is an entry from Charrington’s diary:
“Tuesday, 9th of Feb. 1858. Wh. Hol. I bought a hare. Got her from Ipswich and joined packs with Hussey. Met at Sanatorium and turned her out; over a hundred fellows out. Hussey hunted the hounds. Ran her to Chalvey and lost her there.”
But, whatever the footing of Lawless and Hussey, it is to Charrington that we owe the Oppidan Beagles. His was a subscription pack of 8½ couples of hounds. His subscriptions in 1858 we do not know, but his 1859 funds amounted to no less than £52 10s. Thus the hunt was placed on a sound business footing.
Considering the inconveniences, the sport was apparently good. There were terrible difficulties. There used to be Chapel at 3 o’clock for all, and after 12 was too short altogether for a pack of Beagles to wear down a hare.
Col. Meysey-Thompson writes:
“It should not be forgotten what a very limited time we had in which to reach the kennels, get the pack out, find a hare, return with the hounds to the kennels (the Master and Whips), and be ‘changed’ and either in school or Chapel by 3 p.m.—missing our dinners sometimes. When there was ‘Absence’ it was worse, for we had to be there, and I remember on one occasion Balston finding fault because so many boys were late for Absence, and I pointed out to him that we the Whips were there, although we had had to go to the kennels, a long distance out of the homeward path, so that the others should have been there too if they had hurried up. He accepted this plea. We never got out of school till 11.45, and were supposed to be at dinner by 2 p.m. In the afternoon when there was ‘short’ Chapel we did not get out of Chapel till 3.20, had to change and have one run and be in by lock-up, which of course was early. I sometimes wonder how we did it, when perhaps we had run very nearly to Maidenhead. It was the getting back which was the crux.”
The pack was kennelled near the Dorney Road beyond the Sanatorium, the kennel huntsman being Alf Joel, Joby Minor as he was called. There is always a Joby at Eton, and this one undertook the duties of kennel huntsman. Charrington used to give him various sums of money (he had no fixed salary), for which he fed and housed the hounds.
Charringon’s Beagles hunted anything; a bagged fox, which resided at the kennels “within earshot of the musical harmony of his relentless pursuers,” an occasional bagged hare; innumerable bagged rabbits, which invariably met with untimely ends; a drag, usually a hare-skin, and anything else which presented itself.
Here are some extracts from his diary which illustrate the character of the sport: