Melton Mowbray is about three hours and a half from London. By leaving London at 7·30 you can hunt with the Pytchley at an eleven o'clock meet. You must get up earlier to hunt with the Quorn. I doubt if many people would risk leaving London between five and six in a climate like ours, where you cannot be quite sure that between five and eleven heavy snow may not have fallen, or that the damp in one county is not hard black frost in the next.
Some say that Melton is not what it was. Perhaps this is because there are no poets left to sing of it. Bromley Davenport, Whyte Melville and others have left us. Perhaps the red town has spread, and the old fox-hunters who grumble have grown older. Of course the old days were better when they found themselves leading "The cream of the cream in the shire of the shires." These days do not come twice. A man is fortunate to have had them once, and be able to say with the poet and philosopher,—
Be fair or foul, or rain or shine,
The joys I have possessed in spite of fate are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power.
What has been has been, and I have had my hour.
It is no small consideration to a Meltonian that he can hunt six days a week, and never leave his house at an undue hour.
The Duke of Beaufort told me that the three best huntsmen living were Tom Firr, old Mr Watson (of the Carlow hounds), and Lord Worcester, and he is pretty sure to be right on any sporting matter. Whatever people may think of the last two named, Tom Firr's reputation is as firmly established as was Fred Archer's in another line.
From criticising the countries, I should like to pass on to the riders, both men and women, that I have seen and admired; but, not being a journalist, I could not commit this indiscretion. I shall content myself, and perhaps not offend anyone, by writing a few general observations on women's riding.
No woman can claim to be first-rate over a country, unless she can take her own line. Most women have pluck, and would follow their pioneer were he to attempt jumping an arm of the sea; but place them alone in an awkward enclosure, they will not know how to get out of it. They need not of necessity take a new place in every fence, but if a gap is away from the line they imagine to be the right one, it is irritating to see them pull out to follow one particular person. They don't diminish the danger by surrendering their intelligence, if they are well mounted and conscious of what they are doing. A good rider chances nothing, but must of necessity risk a good deal.