As August draws to a close, we know that, now the reapers are silent and the stubbles are bare, we shall soon be once more astride of our equine companions in the chase, that we shall see the covert quivering and shaking, and sterns waving among the whins. Cub-hunting is a most excellent and pleasant introduction to the serious business of the season. We all—foxes, hounds, horses, and men—require the preparation and the bustling about that the early hours of September and October place within our reach. Much of the season’s success depends on how the pack is used during these two months. A pack, as someone has said, is made or marred in cub-hunting. After the 1st November there is comparatively little opportunity for educating either cubs or puppies.
A man does not go to covert side in September to ride across country; he goes to realise with his own eyes and ears the delightful fact that another hunting-season has begun, to inhale the fresh air of the early morning, to exercise his unconditioned horse, and to join those choice spirits who love the cry of hounds better than their pillows. He knows that it will be “Tally-ho back! tally-ho back!” all the morning, and if, by a lucky chance, a cub is followed into the open air for ten minutes, and he gets a gallop, it is but a hors d’œuvre to whet his appetite for better and more substantial things to follow, and to serve as a reminder to his horse, when blind ditches entrap him, that a good hunter must take care where he puts his feet, and jump big when the boundary between fence and field is undefined. A master is seldom hampered by an unwieldy “field” when he meets at six o’clock. Those who are out at that time are likely to be sportsmen, and able to appreciate the fact that all are there for educational purposes.
Those who, when the season is in full swing, are crowding and watching for a get away and a good start, and causing throughout the day untold anxiety to the huntsmen, are now in shooting-caps and leggings, chatting and indulging in gossip and chaff in a manner that would be regarded as unprofessional when in tall hats and top-boots. Probably nothing exasperates a hunting-man more than when, on the tip-toe of expectancy, as hounds speak in covert, he is compelled to listen to some bore who thinks the occasion suitable for airing his views on local or Imperial politics, or for relating his own exploits of valour the day you were not out. Business and politics should never be permitted as subjects of conversation in the hunting-field, not even during cub-hunting, when any other topic may certainly be tolerated, if not encouraged. One of the secondary pleasures of the chase is social intercourse, the cementing of friendships, and the opportunities of better acquaintance with neighbours which it affords.
These opportunities are not always taken advantage of, for though we all can point to fields where most of the regular followers are on such terms as to make it almost a happy family circle, we probably all know one or more hunts where jealousy, pride, or pure foolishness spoil much of the comfort and pleasure of all. In most fields there is, however, at least one individual whom all agree in desiring to avoid,—some cad, some snob,—to escape whom we hang back in covert, jump some appalling place, or, if in a crowd, endeavour to get our worst enemy or most unselfish friend between him and us. If one of these objectionable persons, or well-meaning bores, comes out cub-hunting, we are at his mercy; he can get at us, and the music of the hounds is mingled with his ceaseless jabber; our only escape is the road home to breakfast. Oh, gentle reader, have you not often, at covert side, endeavoured to stay the torrent of “shop” poured into your ear, by assenting to any opinion, acquiescing in every view put forward, no matter at what violation to conscience and conviction? Have we not all, in the dread that an objection or divergent view, however gently expressed, might open another floodgate, been false to our creeds, and thrown our most cherished prejudices overboard? I wonder if Egerton Warburton had some particular man in his eye when he wrote the following stanza in his famous song, “Quaesitum Meritis.” I am certain that many a man who has sung this verse has thought of some one to whom the words particularly applied—
“For coffee-house gossip some hunters come out,
Of all matters prating save that they’re about;
From scandal and cards they to politics roam,
They ride forty miles, head the fox, and go home.
Such sportsmen as these we good fellows condemn,
And I vow we’ll ne’er drink a quaesitum to them.”