The men of old time were not so particular about country as the heroes of to-day. Loughborough was the headquarters of the Quorn Hunt under Mr. Meynell, by no means in the cream of the country. The late Admiral Meynell once asked me (in the early sixties) whether Button (properly “Buddon”) Wood, close to Quorn, was still a crack covert. At that time I should think that very few Meltonians could have located the place at all, and it certainly is nasty to get away from. Still, even in those days it was not all beer and skittles. In the diary of Jones, Mr. Meynell’s cork-legged whip, appears this entry: “Found in Mr. Kent’s Thorns” (now generally called Cant’s Thorns). “The gentlemen over-rode the hounds at starting, and we lost him.” I have seen something very much like that happen at that place myself. Certainly a Leicestershire huntsman has not a bed of roses. As poor Tom Firr once said to me, at a check, “Most huntsmen have to think where their fox is gone, but I’ve also to guess where my field is coming to!” And of many men, riders or not, it may be said that, the longer they hunt the less they know about the chase!
No doubt in old days, when foxes were really wild and stout, grand sport was had in rough countries. Any one who has read “Nimrod’s” “Hunting Tours” must allow that. But the men of old times worked harder than the Agamemnons of to-day. “Nimrod,” in his northern tour, mentions the fact of the late Sir David Baird having ridden fifty miles to covert, and the same distance home, after hunting. And I have lived to see certain of the silver-gilt go by train from Melton to a meet at Brooksby, six miles. I should have thought that the bother of catching a train would be far greater than getting on to one’s hack, and cantering to the meet, especially as there are good grass sidings all the way. However, “Chacun à son gout,” and this is supposed to be a free country.
I have tried to remember all the packs with which I have ever hunted, not including harriers, whose name would be legion. But I have quite forgotten one, the Surrey Union to wit. I was at a “Crammer’s,” near Leatherhead, and as Paidogogos liked a holiday as well as I did, I got out as often as a certain very tidy little hireling could come. Colonel Sumner was Master, and his kennels were, I think, at Fetcham. He had a hound called Falstaff, of which I believe he thought highly, but I do not remember much about the pack. I do remember, though, a meet at Epsom Windmill, and also seeing a fox found on Box Hill. I see an advertisement in a Highland paper for “freshly caught foxes.” They are to be delivered in the Old Surrey country; I presume that the advertiser has shot his coverts. As he is the son of an old schoolfellow of mine, I will mention neither name nor place.
I can safely say that, out of Leicestershire, the most charming line of country over which I ever rode was with the Meynell. The late Mr. Clowes and Lord Waterpark were then joint masters. I cannot say exactly where we ran, but it was an eight-mile point, all over grass. I only saw one bit of arable, it was certainly not four acres. But I remember it because the fox crossed it (we had no need to do so), and I noticed that the hounds “said more about it” up that furrow than they had been doing over the grass. This was on the Radbourne side, and I believe the cream of the country, as well it may be. The fences, though wanting a hunter, were “nout to boggle a mon,” to quote Mr. James Pigg, and though we had a bit of a brook, it was also of an inviting nature. Lord Harrington went gallantly on a three- or possibly a two-year-old thoroughbred one. He saw the run, at the expense of two or three rolls! I much admired the hounds, having seen the dogs on one day, and the ladies on the Radbourne side. I thought the bitches had more muscle on them than the dogs, but that may have been fancy. One has to see hounds on the flags before one can pass a judgment of this kind. We did not catch our fox, which was a pity, as the hunt, with a kill, would have been perfect.
As droll an arrangement as I ever saw was that by which, with the late Sir Humphrey de Trafford’s Harriers, every one was mounted excepting the huntsman. In a wired country one could understand this, but in those happy days wire had not made its detestable appearance. However, this man legged it to such good purpose, that perhaps a horse would have been thrown away upon him! A certain M.F.H. once gave as his reason for not allowing his huntsman a second horse, that this official took quite enough out of one!
Mr. G. S. Lowe, in the January number, seems under the impression that Osbaldeston’s “Furrier” was a mean-looking black and white hound. I possess a portrait of him, in oils, and must repeat what I wrote about him elsewhere: “Light of bone, and not straight, but no better topped dog is now in the Belvoir pack, and he is the right colour too” (black, white and tan). I do not like the custom of not rounding the ears of foxhounds, if only that the ears are a distinction between a full-grown puppy at walk, and a stray hound, which may be a matter of moment to a whip going back to look for the latter. And I do not think that hounds, in good kennels, have improved at all in the last fifty years. They certainly cannot go faster than Bluecap and Wanton did when, in 1762, they ran four miles in, as nearly as possible, eight minutes. I have always thought that the Quorn couple got “cut off” on that occasion.
Besides we all know that hounds, running a drag, will often leave it if they are pressed upon by horses. Certainly they go fast enough for most of us now. I once, some thirty years ago, saw two Belvoir puppies, outside Old Hills, fairly course down and catch a hare in view. Hares are not at their strongest in October; but I said nothing, and let them enjoy their prey, as I admired their performance, illegitimate though it was!
I fear that we have, as I hinted before, seen the best of foxhunting. New difficulties seem to crop up daily, but the worst of them are the pheasant and the wire fence. Too many foxes are practically bagmen, having been turned down a day or two before the coverts are drawn, and if a hunt is to rent even half the shootings in its limits, hunting will indeed be the sport of the rich, and most likely the nouveau riche at that. Let us hope for the best, but ere now Hope “has told a flattering tale!” I have omitted to mention Mr. George(?) Grey, of Dilston(?), who not only when some 70 years old cut down many of the young Meltonians, but when totally blind, rode over Northumberland, after a pilot, who described the fences as he came to them. Space prevents my saying much about the Cottesmore. At an interval of over forty years, they ran from Launde Wood to Kirby Park, killing each fox, one under the park wall, the other a bit farther on, by the River Wreake. But as space is wanting, good-bye, Brave Boys.
F. J. King King.