The costumes of the field, more exact than the previous day, showed that the master was considered worthy of the compliment; and when, the mist clearing, the beautiful black-and-tan pack, all of a size, and as like as peas, came clustering up with Mr. Saxby, a white-haired, healthy, fresh-coloured, neat-figured, upright squire, riding in the midst on a rare black horse, it was a picture that, taking in the wild heathland scenery, the deep valleys below, bright in sun, the dark hills beyond it, was indeed a bright page in the poetry of field sports.
The Brookside are as good and honest as they are handsome; hunting, all together, almost entirely without assistance. If they have a fault they are a little too fast for hare-hounds. After killing the second hare, we were able to leave Brighton by the 3.30 P.M. train. Thus, under modern advantages, a man troubled with indigestion has only to order a horse by post the previous day, leave town at eight in the morning, have a day’s gallop, with excitement more valuable than gallons of physic, and be back in town by half-past five o’clock. Can eight hours be passed more pleasantly or profitably?
PRINCE ALBERT’S HARRIERS.
The South-Western Rail made a very good hack up to the Castle station.
That Prince Albert should never have taken to the Royal stag-hounds is not at all surprising. It requires to be “to the manner born” to endure the vast jostling, shouting, thrusting mob of gentlemen and horse dealers, “legs” and horse-breakers, that whirl away after the uncarted deer. Without the revival of the old Court etiquette, which forbade any one to ride before royalty, his Royal Highness might have been ridden down by some ambitious butcher or experimental cockney horseman on a runaway. If the etiquette of the time of George III had been revived, then only Leech could have done justice to the appearance of the field, following impatiently at a respectful distance—not the stag, as they do now very often, or the hounds, as they ought to do—but the Prince’s horse’s tail.
Prince Albert’s harriers are in the strictest sense of the term a private pack, kept by his Royal Highness for his own amusement, under the management of Colonel Hood. The meets are not advertised. The fields consist, in addition to the Royal and official party from the Castle, of a few neighbouring gentlemen and farmers, the hunting establishment of a huntsman and one whip, both splendidly mounted, and a boy on foot. The costume of the hunt is a very dark green cloth double-breasted coat, with the Prince’s gilt button, brown cords, and velvet cap.
The hounds were about fifteen couple, of medium size, with considerable variety of true colours, inclining to the fox-hound stamp, yet very honest hunters. In each run the lead was taken by a hound of peculiar and uncommon marking—black and tan, but the tan so far spreading that the black was reduced to merely a saddle.
The day was rather too bright, perhaps, for the scent to lie well; but there was the better opportunity for seeing the hounds work, which they did most admirably, without any assistance. It is one of the advantages of a pack like this that no one presumes to interfere and do the business of either the huntsman or hounds. The first hare was found on land apparently recently inclosed near Eton; but, after two hours’ perseverance, it was impossible to make anything of the scent over ploughed land.
We then crossed the railway into some fields, partly in grass, divided by broad ditches full of water, with plenty of willow stumps on the banks, and partly arable on higher, sloping ground, divided by fair growing fences into large square inclosures. Here we soon found a stout hare that gave us an opportunity of seeing and admiring the qualities of the pack. After the first short burst there was a quarter of an hour of slow hunting, when the hounds, left entirely to themselves, did their work beautifully. At length, as the sun went behind clouds, the scent improved; the hounds got on good terms with puss, and rattled away at a pace, and over a line of big fields and undeniable fences, that soon found out the slows and the nags that dared not face shining water. Short checks of a few minutes gave puss a short respite; then followed a full cry, and soon a view. Over a score of big fields the pack raced within a dozen yards of pussy’s scent, without gaining a yard, the black-tanned leading hound almost coursing his game; but this was too fast to last, and, just as we were squaring our shoulders and settling down to take a very uncompromising hedge with evident signs of a broad ditch of running water on the other side, the hounds threw up their heads; poor puss had shuffled through the fence into the brook, and sunk like a stone.
There is something painful about the helpless finish with a hare. A fox dies snarling and fighting.