CHAPTER XXXVI.
Hunting then, and now—Hunting near the Metropolis—The Epping Hunt—Fishing—Shooting then, and now—Guns—Methods of proving gun barrels—Big charges—Introduction of the Percussion Cap—Size of bags—Colonel Thornton’s bet.
OF COURSE there was Hunting, both Fox and Stag, but it was not carried out on the same principles then as now. A man, then, kept a pack of hounds for his own amusement, that of his friends, and the neighbourhood generally. A meet, then, was a great social gathering of neighbours, at which, for the time, all were on a courteous equality, engendered by similarity of taste, and cemented by means of the Master, who, at some great expense, kept the pack for others’ use. Now, “the old order changes, yielding place to new;” the probability is that it is a subscription pack—with the subscriptions not too well paid, and the Master frequently changing, owing to his quarrels with his masters, the subscribers, who carp at his doings, and try to dictate their own views. The railway brings down the “London Contingent”—sporting stockbrokers, solicitors, tailors, and publicans—in fact, all who can scrape together the necessary money to hire the “hunter,” and pay its fare to the nearest station to the meet. These people have no sympathy with the farmers, no relations with the county, spend no money, because they return to London at night, care nought for the damage they do, which, probably, is done in ignorance; and it is no wonder that, nowadays, hunting is not so popular among tenant farmers as it might be—and it is pretty safe to prophesy, that in many districts, before many more years, it will be reckoned as a thing of the past.
FOX-HUNTING BREAKFAST.
Then, however, there was never heard a whisper of the scarcity of foxes. A fox found poisoned, or shot, would have been considered as an indelible disgrace to the district. The word vulpecide was not coined, because the crime had not been committed. No farmer ever sent in a claim to the Hunt, and only old women, cottagers, ever wanted compensation for the gander, or the two or three hens that they had lost; as to warning off land, it had never been dreamt of, much less practised.
In other ways, too, hunting was different—both horses, and hounds were heavier, and slower then; it was not the pace of the run that was discussed at night, but its length, and the behaviour of both hounds, and horses. Fox hunting began much earlier in the morning than it does now; and a good solid meal of cold meat, washed down with a tankard of home brewed, was vastly superior to a modern “lawn meet” breakfast, with its wines and liqueurs, to “steady the nerves,” to say nothing of the flask of “jumping powder.” Sport, too, was found much nearer the Metropolis then than now. Morning Post, August 14, 1805: “To Sportsmen and others.—A Deputation to be granted of the very extensive Manors of Hornsey and Finchley, in the County of Middlesex, with the liberty of Hunting and Shooting over, and upon, the said Manors, abounding with game,” &c.
PERCH-FISHING—1804.
The Epping Hunt, too, where the citizens[54] annually met on Easter Monday, to vindicate their right to hunt in the Forest, was not the farce it afterwards became. Most men, then, were accustomed to horseback, and could manage to stick on somehow.