Peter Beckford.
I OWE too many pleasant hours to hunting hares to damn the sport with faint praise, but, kind reader, if you notice a want of enthusiasm in the following chapter, pray do not ascribe it so much to my sympathy with the quotation that heads this article, as to my desire to pose as an impartial critic. Silence, care, and science are the qualities that a hare-hunter should pride himself on; youth and high spirits, eagerness and impetuosity are the life and soul of fox-hunting—dangerous qualities in the chase of the timid little hare. I have had many a day with beagles and harriers—many a happy one; and yet in fairness I must make the confession that the days I enjoyed best were those when they got on to a fox. Ah! I fear if I made a clean breast of it, I should have to tell of days when my brother (who had a fine little cry of beagles) and I used to get up before daybreak, mount our horses, and hie off to the moors by ourselves, out of the ear of the sleeping world, to give a belated marauder a jolly good dusting before he made his distant and unstopped earth; and, more rarely perhaps, the eternal craving for “a run” was so great that a man with a bag shook “something” out of it in a lonely spot. Dear me! I could tell some tales. I have in my mind’s eye a day when my brother, with another more famous master of harriers (now, like some others, an M.F.H.), and myself were beaten by the little hounds as they raced away over the moors after an extraordinarily fine-smelling fox; but I must check myself, or my style will degenerate into that of a fox-hunter’s.
After all, I have a conviction that many a green-coated gentleman has a sneaking sympathy with my sins and want of orthodoxy. If these lines meet the eye of any hare-hunter, whose indignation and contempt is becoming too strong for words at the levity with which I speak of his sport, let him keep cool and take comfort, for have not I, as prescribed by the ancient rules of the Cleveland Hunt Club, laid my right hand on the hunting-horn and solemnly declared myself to be “no enemy to fox-hunting and harriers.” Let me answer such an one that I, like him, regard the man who is so innocent of sport that he declares the triumph over the timid hare to be poor, as an ignorant simpleton; and if any one with superior airs were to hazard such a statement to me, my reply would be “All right, my boy! you try your hand on an old buck hare on a cold scenting day in February, on horseback, if you like; or, if that is too easy, get off and hunt them on foot, be up to them, see them from start to finish, and tell me how you got on and what you think of it.”
Personally, were I to criticise hare-hunting, I should say that too much of the chief diversion is the monopoly of the huntsmen—certainly the days I have thoroughly enjoyed have been those when I carried the horn myself. Again, with fast harriers or 20-inch fox-hounds, you must ride, but then you would do better with fox-hounds. If you went on foot, nature must have been lavish in her gifts if you have the physical power, courage, and endurance to enable you to keep near enough to see the beautiful detail of harrier work; and, finally, when you have killed your hare, it is rather a miserable-looking trophy that is yours. You may ornament your smoking-room with your hares’ heads, but you alone will feel that they are appropriate mural decorations; for your friends a few lop-eared rabbits would be more interesting.
I notice that all authorities on this subject dwell on the fact that hare-hunting is an ancient sport; that old writers describe with great ingenuity and veracity all the qualities and ways of this clever little beast. Some of these descriptions are most quaint, for example, the following:—“There are four kind of Hares: some live in the Mountains, some in the Fields, some in the Marshes, some everywhere, without any place of abode. They of the Mountains are most swift, they of the Fields less nimble, they of the Marshes most slow, and the wandering Hares are most dangerous to follow.” The habits noted by the naturalist-sportsmen of this period are as wonderful, and bespeak as much observation, with almost as excellent results, as those given by certain writers on natural history of our own day; for instance, we are told of the hare: “Her ears lead her the way in her chase, for with one of them she hearkeneth to the cry of the dogs, and the other she stretches forth like a sail to hasten her course.”... “Tho’ their sight be dim, yet have they visum indefessum.”... “When they watch they shut their Eyes, when they sleep they open them.”... In these good old times they used the correct terms for all the proceedings of the chase, and for every habit and description of each and several kind of beast they had the appropriate language. The hare was a beast of “venery,” and her meat “venison”; whilst, for dislodging a hart, you used the word “unharbour,” for a buck “rouse”; you “start” a hare, “rear” the boar, and “unkennel” the fox. When once the hare is on foot, if she takes the open field, she “soreth”; when she winds about, she “doubleth”; she “pricketh” on the road, and you “trace” her in the snow. Hounds “hunt change,” “hunt counter,” “draw amiss,” “hunt the foil”; when first they find, they “challenge.” If they are assisted by a relay of hounds, it is called a “vaunt-lay”; if the hare tries a place and gives it up, it is called a “blemish.” When hounds kill, and the hare or any part is given to them, it is the “reward.” The hare was always reckoned among the beasts of chase, and sometimes as the “king of beasts”; her order amongst beasts of venery came third or first, according to the fancy of the period, but always far ahead of the fox, which was vermin. Here is one list of the “Beasts of venery.” “Hart, hinde, hare, wild boar, wolf. Beasts for hunting: ye hare, hart, wolf, wild boar. Beasts for the chase: ye buck, ye doe, fox, marten, roe. Beasts which afford greate dysporte: badger, wild cat, otter.”
It is interesting, I mean for a fox-hunter, to try and discover why the hare was so much preferred to the fox by the sportsmen of two hundred years ago. One of them gives this reason: “The Fox never flies far before the Hounds, trusting not on his Legs, Strength or Champion ground [champaign = open country] but strongest Coverts,” and “when he can no longer stand up before the Hounds, he then taketh Earth, and then must he be digged out.” From these two sentences it is obvious that harriers, accustomed as they were to find their game in the open country, had not developed the habit of drawing thick coverts, and were probably poor hands at bustling a fox in a whin cover and at forcing him out. Indeed, we find that they were not always good at finding a hare in the open, for it was a custom to employ “hare-finders,” and Peter Beckford, though he admits paying two guineas in a single day to the men who were thus employed, laments the demoralisation of hounds, consequent on the custom making them bad finders. But there were other reasons. Hares were “game”; they were protected under the Game Laws and by special statutes, such as that of 15 Henry VIII. cap. 18, which made it a penal offence to destroy hares in the snow. The hare was, moreover, ubiquitous, whilst foxes were vermin, and regarded as noxious animals with a price on their heads, fixed by law or local custom—they were scarce and held in contempt when packs of hounds first came in vogue.
Miss Lavender Pease on “Zaccheus.”
From a painting by Mr. Heywood Hardy.