THE HUNT SECRETARIES’ ASSOCIATION.
Mr. Philip Barnett, Hon. Secretary of the Association, informs us that an annual meeting will be held on the Monday of Derby week, at Tattersall’s Rooms. Mr. Barnett has changed his residence, and his new address is Yewden Manor, Henley-on-Thames.
ASCETIC.
A correspondent kindly informs the writer of the article on Hermit in last month’s number that although the Stud Book is responsible for the statement that the Rev. J. King (Mr. Launde) was the breeder of Ascetic, it is not quite correct; Mr. King gave the mare Lady Alicia to one of his tenants, Mr. Charles Clark, of Ashby, as he could not get her to breed for several seasons. Mr. Clark sent her to a half-bred horse, and that was successful. Subsequently Mr. H. Chaplin gave her a free service to Hermit, and the result was Ascetic. Mr. Clark was, therefore, the breeder of the famous sire of steeplechasers, and, as a good old sportsman, and for long years a follower of the Belvoir and breeder of horses, he is very proud of it. He has retired from farming, and some few years back his friends subscribed a £1,000 testimonial for him, as a proof of their goodwill and esteem. It is rather singular that Ascetic was absolutely Hermit’s first produce.
FIELD TRIALS OF POINTERS AND SETTERS IN SHROPSHIRE.
Following the very successful meetings of the International Gun Dog League and the Kennel Club, which were held on the Orwell estate of Mr. E. G. Pretyman early in April, the spring trials of pointers and setters were resumed at the end of the month at Aqualate, and finished the first week in May on the Duke of Sutherland’s fine preserves at Lilleshall, in the same neighbourhood, near Newport, Salop. Aqualate had been visited more than once by the English Setter Club. Sir Thomas Boughey (who made the Albrighton pack of foxhounds what it is) is a staunch supporter of working trials, and, although he was unable to superintend the beating arrangements as he had done at the earlier meetings, because of serious illness, the best of the Aqualate and Forton ground was placed at the service of the stewards; no trials could have been more thorough. A drawback, in a certain sense, as regards Sir Thos. Boughey’s ground is that it swarms with hares; and, although they were not so numerous at the recent meeting as they had been in 1901, when the Club last visited the estate, they proved to be troublesome, and one which was caught in its form by the Derby winner, Colonel Cotes’s Pitchford Carol, was the downfall of the latter. Although he is a thoroughly broken puppy, he is self-willed, and it would have been almost unnatural had he not pinched the hare, although the proceeding meant his dismissal from the stake. Colonel Cotes, however, had other strings to his bow, for he won the first and second honours in the Setter Puppy stake with Pitchford Dear and Dorothy; and later the former beat the winning pointer, Mr. W. L. Nicholson’s Factor, in a competition for a special prize. This finished the first day’s work on the Aqualate side of the estate. As the brace competition and all-aged stake were the only events which were left on the card, there seemed to be a chance of our getting away early in the evening of the second day; but a snowstorm put a stop to all work, and the judges decided to postpone operations until the following morning. Then the card was quickly run through, although, with the exception of the performance of Mr. Herbert Mitchell’s Lingfield Beryl in winning the all-aged stake, the work done was very moderate indeed. Mr. Mitchell’s Beryl and Linda also won the brace competition; the judges, however, declared that no single item of brace work had been done, the dogs having worked independently instead of assisting one another. The meeting was a great triumph for Mr. Mitchell, but a greater one awaited him, for the next week his bitch, Lingfield Beryl, won the Champion Stake on the Lilleshall ground, and then with Linda won another brace competition, the third they had secured during the campaign. Beryl was, undoubtedly, a little stale towards the finish, but she won easily enough, and brought her owner’s winnings to £256 in three weeks. Colonel Cotes, with a mixed team, won more money, his puppies being a very choice lot, and a contest between his Derby winner, Pitchford Carol, and Mr. Abbott’s Bold Alice, the winner at Lilleshall, would have been very interesting could it have been brought off. The Duke of Sutherland’s ground was excellent, a lot of the work being done on the old Lizard racecourse, where Sir Hugo was galloped by Wadlow in his training for the sensational Derby of 1892, when he won classic honours for Lord Bradford, with odds of 40 to 1 freely betted against him.
THEATRICAL NOTES.
We must reluctantly confess to finding ourselves in the sorry plight of the pitcher that went too often to the well. When we saw “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion” we realised that we have been just once too often to the well of humour at the Court Theatre, of which Mr. Bernard Shaw is the copious spring. Generally one of the most attractive features of the productions at the Court Theatre is the happy way in which the parts appear to fit the artistes to whom they are given. But in the case of Captain Brassbound we have sustained a disappointment in this respect. The only lady in the caste is Miss Ellen Terry, and for her saving presence we are most thankful, and we consider it one of her greatest triumphs that she should galvanise Lady Cecil Waynflete into a very attractive human being. Mr. Fred Kerr is seldom found in a misfit part, but the title rôle of the play, Captain Brassbound, the modern but still bold buccaneer, is scarcely worthy of his art; and a still greater disappointment to us was to see Mr. Edmund Gwenn, who in “Man and Superman” was the very prince of chauffeurs, playing the part of Felix Drinkwater, the prolix cockney adventurer, who to our mind possesses no semblance of humanity. There are a variety of foreign characters in the play uninteresting enough, and altogether we can only hope that Captain Brassbound is an early effort of Mr. Bernard Shaw which we may use as an example to point the advance he has shown in his more recent works, and not as an instance of his present ability.
Having fortified for many a day and night the Garrick Theatre with “The Walls of Jericho,” the fertile pen of Mr. Alfred Sutro was called upon to provide a fresh theme for Mr. Arthur Bouchier and his talented company.