“Before finishing I should like to add a word about the rumour which at one time was rampant, that half the beaglers spent their time in smoking and other divers amusements. All I can say is that, whatever foundations there were for starting the rumour (it started long before my time), there is certainly very little reason for going on with it.
“The popularity of beagling amongst Masters, boys, farmers, and even outsiders, is very fast on the increase, and may beagling at Eton one day fulfil my most extravagant dreams, for I assure you there is no better training for mind and body to be got anywhere for the modest sum of two pounds.”[10]
To T. C. Barnett-Barker it is impossible to render sufficient praise. His interest in the E.C.H. was whole-hearted. He was not a great runner. He had not a particularly good hound voice. But nevertheless, his perseverance and keenness overcame everything, and he provided the only thing necessary to render beagling at Eton as popular as it has ever been, a really good season. To kill 36 hares in 49 hunting days with a pack consisting largely of eight season hounds is a great achievement.[11] But this is what he did, and now it will be comparatively easy for future Masters to continue showing good sport.
During Barnett-Barker’s Mastership Mr. R. S. de Havilland, who had filled the post of Treasurer since 1899, expressed his intention of resigning. He was presented with an illuminated address by the hunt. I have already mentioned how much he had done for the beagles. His death has caused a vacancy at Eton which it is impossible to refill, and the E.C.H. has lost its best friend. No stauncher supporter ever existed. Requiescat in pace.
Mr. E. V. Slater has taken on the duties of Treasurer, and has already proved himself to be a worthy successor to his great predecessor.
And what of Champion? Or should I say of the Champions, for the family now consists of four? Champion married in 1903, and the family besides himself are his wife, than who no kinder or more courteous woman ever existed, his son George, who with the blood of so many huntsmen in his veins is certain to prove his worth, and who is already showing that he is inheriting his father’s knowledge and love of hounds, and his five-year-old daughter Marjory, to whom the hounds are always ready to lend their backs for a ride. Those readers who have ever had the pleasure of knowing Champion will be pleased to hear that he ran third in the veterans’ race at the police sports at Aylesbury, and could have been first, only he went for the third prize, a spacious and very comfortable walnut chair.
During this Michaelmas Half, season 1921-2, the hounds have shown very fair sport, in spite of an execrable scent on dry hard land, and have killed eleven hares. Thanks to the very kind loan of six couples of hounds by Capt. E. C. Portman, the pack is well up to the standard of last year’s, and every one can look forward with optimism to the future.
How can I end this history more appropriately than by the words which have closed every season’s beagling in the Journal Book for the last twenty years, and portray the hopes of any one who has ever hunted with the E.C.H.?
FLOREANT CANES ETONENSES.
