But how in the name of wonder could a young man with an income of five and twenty shillings a week and with a wife and family to provide for, afford to keep horses and hounds? Of course he neglected his home and his business, and ended his days in the workhouse. Nothing of the kind! His wife and children were well fed and comfortably clothed, he never ran into debt, and always had a decent coat on his back. And the way Mr. Osbaldiston managed it was this:—
After office hours he acted as accountant for certain butchers in Clare Market, who paid him in kind. The best of the meat provided the daily dinner for himself and his family, and the scraps and offal fed the hounds which he kept in his garret. Having saved up sufficient to buy his horses, he stabled them in a cellar, fed them on grains from a brew house close by and damaged corn from a chandler’s—writing letters, correcting bills, keeping books, and assisting with legal information the proprietors, and so saving all expenditure of coin. Down in the country where he hunted in the season he gained the good-will of the farmers by giving them a hare now and then and tipping them a legal hint, while the gentlemen over whose manors he rode were so delighted with his enthusiasm for sport that he could go almost where he pleased. If any poor hunting enthusiast of to-day were to keep hounds in a garret and horses in a cellar, he would meet with a very different fate; he would promptly be indicted as a nuisance and summarily be suppressed by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Times are indeed changed!
The poet of “The Chase,” whom I have already quoted, describes hunting as the “image of war without its guilt.” It is not only the “image of war,” but it is the finest possible training for facing the perils and confronting the crises of actual warfare. The following anecdote of a once famous Leicestershire hunting-man, “Tommy” Yule, is one of the best illustrations of this truth that I have ever come across.
On the night of December 5th, 1857, the 11th Native Cavalry, stationed at Jalpaiguri, 650 strong, mutinied during the night, slew their English officers, and galloped off to meet the other portion of the regiment, then encamped some thirty miles off. Next day, having effected a junction with their comrades, they started to join the revolted Sepoys at Dacca. They rode in the direction of Purneah, with the intention of plundering that station on their way to the North-West. But they left out of their calculations a little man who was John Company’s Commissioner at Bhagalpur. Mr. Yule was an old Leicestershire hunting man, and was one of the most daring riders to hounds ever seen even in the Shires. He had ridden at both Newmarket and Liverpool as a gentleman jockey; he could box, shoot, fence, and play cricket in brilliant style—in fact, was a first-rate all-round man. He knew very little about soldiering, but he knew too much for the Pandies.
Well, to “Tommy” Yule the news was brought that the mutineers were “on the rampage.” At Bhagalpur he had with him fifty of Her Majesty’s 5th Regiment, 100 sailors, and two guns. As Commissioner of the district he was in command. Off he started without a moment’s delay to stop the game of murder, plunder, and ravishment. He came up with the rebels just outside Purneah, and dashed at them at once. They, however, had no heart for fighting, bolted, got round the station and made off for Dacca. But Yule’s blood was up. He had brought his stud of hunting elephants with him. He mounted fifty sailors and forty soldiers on them, and pounded after the flying foe. The little party marched all day and night, and got in front of their quarry the following morning. Then the rascals had to fight; ten Pandies to one Englishman, these were odds that even a modern Greek would face. They could not charge; their horses were fagged out. But Yule charged them, with some of his men on the elephants and some on foot, and killed 111 without losing a man. And the nerve, the pluck, the dash which achieved that brilliant success had been fostered and trained by hard riding over the pastures and bullfinches of Leicestershire.
I remember hearing Lord Wolseley tell the following story, which is a further proof of my assertion that hunting develops a man’s pluck and confidence.
“I once saw,” he said, “a Staff officer, a man well known in the hunting field, gallop with an order to a column of cavalry which had been drawn up in a sheltered position behind the village to be screened from the enemy’s fire. As he drew near the column, a round shot struck the ground under his horse’s belly. The horse made an effort to swerve, which was checked by its rider, without taking the cigar out of his mouth. He galloped up to the column, coolly gave his orders, and cantered back over the open ground, where the round shot were striking pretty thickly, still smoking his cigar as if he were taking his morning exercise. A few shots had previously plunged into the column, causing some excitement, which always happens when horses get knocked over; but the jolly indifference of this officer, and the manner in which he appeared altogether to ignore the existence of danger, had a capital effect upon the men.”
Lord Wolseley did not give the name of the officer, but I have been told that it was “Bob” Wood, sometime Colonel of the 8th Hussars.
Lord Roberts, too, paid a high tribute to a noted foxhunter when he declared, after his great campaign in Afghanistan, that one of the most valuable Staff officers in the British Army was Lord Melgund (the present Earl of Minto) who had few equals in those days as a cross-country rider.
The late Earl of Wilton, himself one of the finest horsemen and most enthusiastic followers of the chase the Shires have ever seen, used to say that he “had often heard the great Duke of Wellington remark that England would rue the day when her field sports were abandoned,” and that “amongst his best Peninsular officers were those who had most distinguished themselves in the hunting field,” courage and decision being the necessary attributes of success in the chase.