The Naturalist on the Thames

by C. J. Cornish

Shooting with a neighbour on some land adjoining Nuneham, my attention was drawn to the very elegant appearance of all the gates and rails adjacent to the road. As the ground was always beautifully farmed and in good order, the condition of the gates did not surprise me. There was, however, a story attached to their smartness. A seller of quack medicines had sent out advertisers with most objectionable little bills, which he had posted on every gate adjoining the roads. My entertainer, who was the occupier of the land, had brought an action against the medicine man for defacing his gates, which was only compromised by the delinquent undertaking to paint every gate. He demurred at first to painting the railings too, but in the end had to do this also.

The stalking-horse is still part of the sporting equipment of some old Thames-valley farmhouses, but not in this neighbourhood. Only one wet season fell to my lot, and then, though I often saw bodies of duck, I had no opportunity of getting near them. A neighbour anchored a punt under a hedge on the line which he believed the duck would take at dusk, and killed several. Hard frosts send large bodies of duck to the river; they come as soon as ever the large private lakes, like those at Blenheim, Wootton, and Eynsham are frozen, and lie in small flocks all along the river. Water-hens are so numerous on the river now, owing to their preservation by the Conservancy, that any small covers of osier near are full of them. They make extremely pretty old-fashioned shooting when beaten up by a spaniel from the sedge and osier cover. I once turned out a dozen water-hens, a brown owl, a woodcock, and a water-rail from one little withe patch. When shooting the wood we always had one or two water-hens in the bag, and sometimes a chance at a duck flying overhead from the river. Only once were there many woodcocks in the cover. There must have been at least five, and all were missed. At last, as we were finishing the beat, one of the guns, who was young and keen, went off after the last-missed cock along the river bank. As we were loading up the game at the wood gate we heard a single shot. Then he appeared in the ride with the cock. Both he and his excellent old spaniel received warm congratulations. For my own part I was never tired of by-days in the wood in my first season. The best sport was starting rabbits from under the rows of fresh-felled ash and hazel poles, which the woodman called drills. They are about five feet high and seven feet through. The rabbits get under them in numbers, and sit there all day. We had an old retriever who was an expert at finding them. The next process was for the gun to clamber on to the top and stand knee-deep on the springing faggots, while a woodman on each side poked the rabbit out with a pole. He might bolt any way, and was under the next drill in a trice, so the shooting was quick. I bagged twelve one afternoon in this cheerful manner. Another great ambition of our lives was to get the better of the hill partridges. There were plenty of them, but they always dived into the wood, and were lost for the day. Only once did we score off them. We drove about sixty from the hills into the wood. There they were seen running along the rides like guinea fowls, but by placing a gun at the corner of the wood, and beating towards him, we killed nine brace.

[A FEBRUARY FOX HUNT]

When the Yeomanry left the hunting field for South Africa, and "registered" horses were commandeered by Government, fox hunting in counties where it is not the main business of life might be supposed to languish. As a matter of fact, it did not; and if the fields were smaller than usual, and a good many familiar faces missing, the master very properly felt that as he had his pack and there were plenty of foxes, he might as well employ the one and hunt the other, and keep up the spirits of the county by good, sound sport and plenty of it. Masters who take this view, and there are very few who do not, are public benefactors and shining examples; for it is not only the men who hunt who benefit vastly by the change and exhilaration which hunting brings in its train. The whole countryside enjoys a wholesome tonic by the frequent visits of the hounds, and the well-equipped company with them. Nothing cheers up the village, or cures the influenza, or brings oblivion of war news, or puts every one into conceit with themselves, so quickly, or leaves such a glow of sound satisfaction behind it. It would be odd if it did not, considering the amount of time, money, and trouble spent before the pack trots up to the green before the old grey church at eleven on a February morning. Wittenham Wood lies on the very edge of the Old Berkshire country, and as the river blocks all one side of it is naturally not one of the favourite meets. But at the time of writing, early in February a meet was duly advertised, and punctually to time the hounds were there. Some people seem to think that modern fox-hunting is not so thorough as it was in the past. We know better, and without imitating Mr. Jack Spraggon, or reminding every one present of that "two thousand five hundred--twenty-five 'undred--pounds a year" which Lord Scamperdale did or did not spend on his pack, are very well aware of what our master and the servants and the hounds had done that morning. The meet is on the edge of his country, sixteen miles from his house, and he has ridden over all the way, rising before the sun has got through more than the outside layer of the mists. There is no special honour and glory awaiting him in return. The cover to be drawn is surrounded for miles by deep and holding land now soaked with rain. A run of any distinction is most improbable. On the other hand, there will be plenty of hunting of a certain kind, and the chance of seeing it, for the wood is overlooked by lofty hills. Therefore, though the meet is small, the neighbourhood as a body expect to see plenty of the hounds, and turn up expectant, the farmers on their cobs, the young ladies on ponies and in dog-carts, and all the village who can be spared for an hour on foot, while the small boys regard each other with rapturous grins, and practise "holloaing" to improve their lung-power when the fox breaks. When the hounds appear--they have come nearly as far from the kennels as the master has from home--they are covered with road mud from foot to head. The gritty splashes have changed all the white and tan to grey, and made the black badger-pied. While some roll on the grass and push themselves along sideways to get clean, and others attempt the impossible task of licking the mud off their legs and feet, the older hounds, who are less self-conscious, poke their heads into the hands and against the chests of their ready-made friends, the village children, who rush in while the master and the field and lookers-on are exchanging courtesies, and embrace all the pack whom they can reach. Meantime the "assets" for the day's sport, the material complement on which this present assembly must rely for its day's hunting, lie in the cover and its contents. A hundred acres of wood, in all stages of growth, from the high thickets which the woodmen were felling yesterday, to the teazle and stump-studded slope which they cut last year, with the deep river below and the swelling hills above, is the cover.

What the master would like would be that it should hold but one fox, that that fox should get away over the hills and on to the downs beyond as quickly as possible, and that he should never come back, but be killed three parishes away. But no one believes in such luck; and the local lookers-on do not in the least desire it. They want to see "a day's hunting" in the wood, and a fox to every half-dozen hounds. As a fact there are five foxes, not one, in the wood; and, passing from the general to the particular, we may explain how they came there. The heavy rains of the end of January filled all the drains, in which many foxes lie, so full of water that they abandoned them in sheer disgust, and took to the warm lying of the wood. Among these was a most attractive vixen, whose society kept the rest from leaving when the weather improved; consequently, the wood seemed full of foxes, none of which were disposed to leave it. When the pack trotted up to the main ride, and the huntsman's ringing voice sent them crashing into the four-years' growth by the river, a brace were lying snug and dry in the old ash-stumps. One slipped into the river at once and quietly swam to the opposite bank, while the other crept all along the outside hedge and curled up in the corner waiting on events. The vixen slipped into a badger earth under an old oak and stayed there, and a couple more dog-foxes moved on into four acres of low slop, brambles, shoots, and blackthorns, where they were winded by half the pack, while the other half were running the first fox up the fence. The crash and music of the hounds re-echoed from the trees and the enfolding hills above, the shrieking of the jays as they flit protesting from tree to tree, the hearty ring of the huntsman's voice cheering his hounds--surely all this should send each fox flying out over the fields beyond! But a fox has no nerves. He keeps his head with the coolness of a Red Indian, and a "slimness" all his own. The first fox doubles back along his tracks, crosses the big ride, twenty yards lower, just as that part of the pack which is hunting him flings on up the fence, and waits again till he hears them break out where he first stopped. From outside, where the field are waiting on a knoll which gives a downward view into the rolling acres of the wood, the rest of the pack are seen forcing another fox upwards towards the hills. The sight is as pretty as our woods can show. Down below the red coats of the master and huntsman move up the rides, and the heads and sterns of the broad line of hounds, now all clean and bright after brushing through the wood, rise and fall, appear and vanish, as they leap over or thrust through the low slop and brambles. In front, where a goyle runs up to a hollow of the hill, the ground has been cleared of wood, and the forest of tall teazle-tops is full of goldfinches, flying from seed-head to seed-head, too tame to mind the noise or care for anything but their breakfast. Yet even they gather and fly before the approaching tumult. Hares come hurrying out, and dash over the smooth hillside; magpies rise, poise themselves, slue round, and dive backwards into the wood; and then circumspect, lopping easily and lightly along, a fox crosses through the teazles, and slips down to a drain in the hollow; and see! another fox behind him, along the same path, and on the same errand, for each trots up to a covered drain, looks at it, and finding it stopped, pauses a second to think, and takes his resolve. One slips back into the wood, the other canters to the fence, rising the hill, looks out, whisks his brush and is off--across the turf, over the fifty-acre field of growing wheat, and away to the back of the hills. Half the pack are running the first fox, who has slipped back to the river, but with the other half every one gets clear off, and does his best over the awful ground. The mud explodes like shells as the hoofs crush into it, but somehow every one is across and away, and on to the green road and a line of sainfoin much sooner than could be expected. The fox can be seen crossing the back of the hill, looking big and red, and full of running; but after twenty-five minutes over all sorts of ground, from medium bad to "downright cruel," for the soaking rains have made a very pudding even of the pasture, the fox is run into and killed close to the Thames. No one need be sorry for him, for he had lived by theft and violence for the past two years, and was duly eaten himself by his natural enemies. Then back to the wood again, where the rest of the pack had been whipped off their fox, and were waiting dolefully to begin again, by which time the other foxes, of which two elected to stay, had resolved that come what might, they would stick to the wood, of which they knew every inch by heart; and by keeping under the river bank, sneaking under layers of felled brushwood, dodging along drains, and other devices, postponed their fate for two hours, when one was "chopped" and one broke away and was run till dark. This is not the kind of thing that keeps hunting alive, but it is the kind of day which occurs in most ordinary counties in February, and at which no one greatly grumbles. But if a slow woodland day is unattractive, the man who hunts in a modest way from London and wishes to be sure of a run has no lack of choice. Try, for instance, a day on the South Downs, five miles from the sea, on the vast uplands and among the furze-covered bottoms behind Beachy Head, when the snow-clouds are rolling in from the Channel and dusting the summits of the downs with white. There is at least the certainty of foxes, and of a gallop over the highest and soundest land in the South, and even "February fill-dike" cannot make the going heavy.

[EWELME--A HISTORICAL RELIC]

At the head of one of the smaller Thames tributaries, a few miles from the river, lies Ewelme, the ancient Aquelma, so called from the springing waters which rise there. There are trout in the brook and excellent water-cresses higher up, which are cultivated scientifically. Also there was a political row in Gladstonian days over an appointment to the living. But the real interest of this exceptionally beautiful Thames-valley village is that it is a survival, almost unchanged, of a "model village" made in the time of the Plantagenets. As such it deserves a place in any history, even a "natural" history, which deals with the river.

The village lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, not far from Dorchester. The persons who made it a model village just before the Wars of the Roses were William de la Pole, the first Duke of Suffolk, and his Duchess, Alice, the grandchild of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Duke, as every one knows, was for years the leading spirit in England during the early part of the reign of Henry VI., whose marriage with Margaret of Anjou he arranged in the hope of putting an end to the disastrous war with France. His murder in mid-Channel--when his relentless enemies followed him out to sea, took him from the ship in which he was going into exile, and beheaded him on the thwarts of an open boat--was the forerunner of the most ghastly chapters of blood and vengeance in civil feud ever known in this country. But the grace and dignity of his home life in his palace at Ewelme, with his Duchess to help him, are less well known, though the evidences of it remain little altered at the present day.