Part of the charm of hunting is the beauty of its surroundings. I know nothing prettier than the different scenes of a hunt. To watch the hounds put into covert, to stand at a corner and see down the ride the huntsman's red coat and all the hounds round him, among the brown leaves on the ground and the dark trees in the background is simply a picture, and time after time in each hunting day such pictures appear, and delight the eye. Then the joy of listening to the cry, and not only the cry, for it does one good to hear the huntsman cheering the hounds in covert, especially if he has a good voice and can blow a good note on his horn.
Even the smell of the dank leaves turned over as the hounds rustle through them is delightful, and like all loved scents it brings back more than anything else the days of long ago.
I never go out cub-hunting now without that scent bringing back to me the old days at Brigstock, when my father[1] hunted the Pytchley hounds. In Spring and early Autumn we always went to the Woodlands, for the Woodland Pytchley had not then become a separate pack, and I once more seem to see him, long of leg and lithe of limb on the raking chestnut mare, and hear his cheery voice drawing those great woods. And as I listen to his view halloa I feel a thrill run through me, and in fancy I see them striding down the broad grass ride, while the hounds fly to him from every side, and with an "over, over, over, over," which simply make one shiver, he cheers them over the ride, while they swing to the right and crash into the covert with a glorious burst of music like a chime of silver bells. It is odd how these things remain in one's heart.
[1] Colonel J. Anstruther-Thomson.
"Wire and silence" will be the end of hunting, so he says; he being my father whom on all things venatic I firmly believe.
I suppose hardly one "hunting" woman out of every hundred who go out, ever know how many couple of hounds there are out, or think of counting them while the Master sits outside the covert blowing them to him. Yet this is interesting in itself, and if you know the hounds personally all the more so, as you watch them come tumbling through the fence by ones and twos and go smiling up to their huntsman's side, with a satisfied expression as if they were saying "here I am anyhow."
ELIZABETH, COUNTESS OF WILTON, ON WILLOUGHBY.