The Holdernesse is a light plough country, and, like Lincolnshire, its common fence is a deep drain, into which your horse can absolutely disappear. I saw eight men down in one, all at the same time, and a young thorough-bred horse in a deep drain is about the worst company in the world.
There is not a finer country to ride over in England than the Pytchley. Unfortunately, too many people agree with us, which is a slight objection to hunting there.
They have wonderful sport, a first-rate huntsman and a rich community. Lord Spencer is the keenest of masters and best of sportsmen. Whyte Melville says of him in his riding recollections: "The present Lord Spencer, of whom it is enough to say he hunts one pack of his own in Northamptonshire, and is always in the same field with them, never seems to have a horse pull, or, until it is tired, even lean on his hand." I should like to have been praised by Whyte Melville. He is one of the few novelists whose heroes are gentlemen, who can describe English society and a straight forty minutes over countries that we recognise.
The Pytchley is not cut up by railroads, like the Quorn. There is not nearly so much timber as there is in Leicestershire, but it is as big if not bigger.
In old days, Lord Spencer told me, they said, "You may, perhaps, go through the Pytchley, but you must get over the Quorn."
If anything will teach one to gallop, it is riding for a bridle gate in the company of three or four hundred people, none of them morbidly civil.
You must get there, and get there soon, as it is the only visible means of securing a start, or getting into the next field. Sometimes one's horse has a sensitive habit of backing when he is pressed, which allows everyone to pass you. In any case, you will have a horse's head under each arm; a spur against your instep; a kicker with a red tape in his tail pressed towards your favourite mare, with the doubtful consolation of being told, when the iron of his hoof has rattled against her fore-leg that "it was too near to have hurt her." Your hat will be knocked off by an enthusiast pointing to the line the fox is taking, and your eye will dimly perceive the pack swaying over the ridge and furrow, like swallows crossing the sea, two fields ahead of you. If you harden your heart and jump the generally gigantic fence at the side of the gate, you expose yourself to the ridicule of the whole field; for it is on these occasions that your favourite is pretty sure to fall on her head.
No one is responsible for the manners of a field which is largely made up of "specials" from Rugby, Leamington and Banbury. A Northamptonshire hunting-man is as nice a fellow as there is in England, and outside his own country has the finest manners; but the struggle for existence in the field with hard-riding casuals has hardened his heart and embittered his speech.
Every field has its own character; an indescribable "something" which one feels without being able to define. There is a friendliness and distinction about the Melton field peculiarly its own. The Quorn Fridays are joined by Mr Fernie's field, the Cottesmore, Belvoir and others, and is in consequence very large. Tom Firr, the huntsman—and a man who can very nearly catch a fox himself—is less moved by a large crowd than anyone I ever saw, unless, perhaps, it be his hounds who "come up through a crowd of horses, and stick to the line of their fox, or fling gallantly forward to recover it, without a thought of personal danger, or the slightest misgiving; that not one man in ten is master of the two pair of hoofs beneath him, carrying death in every shoe."
A friend of mine—a cricketer—said that he did not know which country he preferred hunting in—Leicestershire or Northamptonshire—but there was the same difference between them as playing at Lords and playing at the Oval.