A few courteous words previously addressed to the huntsman will ensure his civility during the day; but this is not a happy moment for imparting to him your opinion on things in general and his own business in particular. He has many matters to occupy his thoughts, and does not care to see you in the middle of his favourites on a strange horse. It is better to keep the second whip between yourself and the hounds, jogging calmly on, with a pleasant view of their well-filled backs and handsomely-carried sterns, taking care to pull up, religiously murmuring the orthodox caution—“Ware horse!” when any one of them requires to pause for any purpose. You cannot too early impress on the hunt servants that you are a lover of the animal, most averse to interfering with it at all times, and especially in the ardour of the chase. If the size and nature of the covert will admit, you had better go into it with the hounds, and on this occasion, but no other, I think it is permissible to make use of the huntsman’s pilotage at a respectful distance. Where there are foxes there is game, where game, riot. A few young hounds must come out with every pack, and the rate or cheer of your leader will warn you whether their opening music means a false flourish or a welcome find. Also where he goes you can safely follow, and need have no misgivings that the friendly hand-gate for which he is winding down some tortuous ride will be nailed up.
Besides, though floundering in deep, sloughy woodlands entails considerable labour on your horse, it is less distressing than that gallop of a mile or two at speed which endeavours, but usually fails, to make amends for a bad start; whereas, if you get away on good terms, you can indulge him with a pull at the first opportunity, and those scenting days are indeed rare on which hounds run many fields without at least a hover, if not a check.
Some men take their station outside the covert, down wind, in a commanding position, so as to hear every turn of the hounds, secure a front place for the sport, and—head the fox!
But we will suppose all such difficulties overcome; that a little care, attention, and common sense have enabled you to get away on good terms with the pack; and that you emerge not a bowshot off, while they stream across the first field with a dash that brings the mettle to your heart and the blood to your brain. Do not, therefore, lose your head. It is the characteristic of good manhood to be physically calm in proportion to moral excitement. Remember there are two occasions in chase when the manner of hounds is not to be trusted. On first coming away with their fox, and immediately before they kill him, the steadiest will lead you to believe there is a burning scent and that they cannot make a mistake. Nevertheless, hope for the best, set your horse going, and if, as you sail over, or crash through, the first fence, you mark the pack driving eagerly on, drawn to a line at either end by the pace, harden your heart, and thank your stars. It is all right, you may lay odds, you are in for a really good thing!
I suppose I need hardly observe that the laws of fox-hunting forbid you to follow hounds by the very obvious process of galloping in their track. Nothing makes them so wild, to use the proper term, as “riding on their line;” and should you be ignorant enough to attempt it, you are pretty sure to be told where you are driving them, and desired to go there yourself!
No; you must keep one side or the other, but do not, if you can help it, let the nature of the obstacles to be encountered bias your choice. Ride for ground as far as possible when the foothold is good; the fences will take care of themselves; but let no advantages of sound turf, nor even open gates, tempt you to stray more than a couple of hundred yards from the pack. At that distance a bad turn can be remedied, and a good one gives you leisure to pull back into a trot. Remember, too, that it is the nature of a fox, and we are now speaking of fox-hunting, to travel down wind; therefore, as a general rule, keep to leeward of the hounds. Every bend they make ought to be in your favour; but, on the other hand should they chance to turn up wind, they will begin to run very hard, and this is a good reason for never letting them get, so to speak, out of your reach. I repeat, as a general rule, but by no means without exception. In Leicestershire especially, foxes seem to scorn this fine old principle, and will make their point with a stiff breeze blowing in their teeth; but on such occasions they do not usually mean to go very far, and the gallant veteran, with his white tag, that gives you the run to be talked of for years, is almost always a wind-sinker from wold or woodland in an adjoining hunt.
Suppose, however, the day is perfectly calm, and there seems no sufficient reason to prefer one course to the other, should we go to right or left? This is a matter in which neither precept nor personal experience can avail. One man is as sure to do right as the other to do wrong. There is an intuitive perception, more animal than human, of what we may call “the line of chase,” with which certain sportsmen are gifted by nature, and which, I believe, would bring them up at critical points of the finest and longest runs if they came out hunting in a gig. This faculty, where everything else is equal, causes A to ride better than B, but is no less difficult to explain than the instinct that guides an Indian on the prairie or a swallow across the sea. It counsels the lady in her carriage, or the old coachman piloting her children on their ponies, it enables the butcher to come up on his hack, the first-flight man to save his horse, and above all, the huntsman to kill his fox.
The Duke of Beaufort possesses it in an extraordinary degree. When so crippled by gout, or reduced by suffering as to be unable to keep the saddle over a fence, he seems, even in strange countries, to see no less of the sport than in old days, when he could ride into every field with his hounds. And I do believe that now, in any part of Gloucestershire, with ten couple of “the badger-pyed” and a horn, he could go out and kill his fox in a Bath-chair!
Perhaps, however, his may be an extreme case. No man has more experience, few such a natural aptitude and fondness for the sport. Lord Worcester, too, like his father, has shown how an educated gentleman, with abilities equal to all exigencies of a high position that affords comparatively little leisure for the mere amusements of life, can excel, in their own profession, men who have been brought up to it from childhood, whose thoughts and energies, winter and summer, morning, noon, and night, are concentrated on the business of the chase.
This knack of getting to hounds then—should we consider genius or talent too strong terms to use for proficiency in field sports—while a most valuable quality to everybody who comes out hunting, is no less rare than precious. If we have it we are to be congratulated and our horses still more, but if, like the generality of men, we have it not, let us consider how far common sense and close attention will supply the want of a natural gift.