"Mr. Smith," he remarks, "always said, '_Go slow at all fences,
except water_. It makes a horse know the use of his legs, and
by so riding he can put down a leg wherever it is wanted.'"
Long Wellesley had a horse which he declared no man could see a run
on. "He only requires a _rider_," said the squire. "Will _you_ ride
him, then, at Glen Gorse?" "Willingly!" replied Smith, who, after
several falls, killing his fox, was presented with the animal, which he
accordingly named "Gift."
The history of the education of Smith's favourite horse,
Jack-o'-Lantern, is described as follows:--
"We were riding," said Tom Edge, "to covert through a line of
bridle-gates, when we came to a new double oaken post and rail
fence. 'This is just the place to make my colt a good timber
jumper,' said the squire; 'so you shut the gate, and ride away
fast.' This was no sooner done than the squire rode at the
rails, which Jack taking with his breast, gave both himself
and his rider such a fall, that their respective heads were
looking towards the fence they had ridden at. Up rose both at
the same time, as if nothing very particular had happened.
'Now,' said Tom Smith, 'this will be the _making_ of the horse;
just do as you did before, and ride away.' Edge did so, and
Jack flew the rails without touching, and from that day was a
first-rate timber fencer."
Only on two occasions, while hunting, did Tom Smith succeed in breaking
a bone: once at Melton, when he consoled himself by learning arithmetic
from the pretty damsel at the post-office; and afterwards, when one of
his ribs was fractured, owing, as he said, to his having a knife in his
breast-pocket:--
"And yet," says Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "notwithstanding the
gallant manner in which he always rode, never turning from any
fence that intervened between him and his hounds, he never
had a horse drop dead under him, or die from the effects of a
severe day's riding. It is also a fact well recorded that he
was never known to strike a horse unfairly. 'How is it,' asked
a friend, 'that horses and hounds seem never to provoke you?'
'_They_ are brutes, and know no better, but _men_ do,' was the
reply."
The most extraordinary hunter in his stable, "Ayston," was pigeon-toed,
and so bad a hack, that he had to be led to covert; and yet at no time
would his master have taken a thousand guineas for him.
After the famous Billesden Coplow run, in which Tom Smith maintained
so prominent a place, he sold the horse he that day rode, called
Furze-cutter, for which he had given 26_l._, to Lord Clonbrock for
400_l_.
The Rev. Francis Dyson, now rector of Creeklande, on being ordained,
was appointed to assist his father, the clergyman at Tedworth:--
"Mr. Smith," says Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "was so pleased with
his first sermon, that, on coming out of church, he slapped
the young curate on the back, and said, 'Well done, Frank! you
shall have a mount on Rory O'More next Thursday.' Young Dyson
had many a run afterwards out of the squire's stables, for
his performances in the field pleased as much as those in the
pulpit.
"Once, when the hounds were running short with a sinking fox,
a person clad in a long black coat, and evidently thinking
scorn of the fun, inquired of the Whip what the _dogs were then
doing_. 'Why, Sir,' said Dick Burton, throwing a keen glance
down the inquirer's person, 'they are preaching his funeral
sermon.'"
In 1840 Tom Smith proposed to pay a visit to his old friend Sir Richard
Sutton, whose hunting had been stopped by a severe accident. On hearing
of this movement, Mr. Greene of Rolleston, who had been one of his
best pupils in his Leicestershire days, requested him, in his way to
Lincolnshire, to bring his hounds once more into his old country, Mr.
Hodgson, who then hunted Leicestershire, having handsomely placed the
best meet at his disposal. The veteran, for he was then sixty-four,
accepted the challenge, bringing with him eighteen couples of his
finest hounds, of great substance, open-chested, and in splendid
condition.
"It would be vain," writes Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "to endeavour
to commemorate the scene which took place when Tom Smith,
surrounded by his hounds, met the field at Shankton Holt on
Friday, the 20th of March. More than two thousand horsemen,
one-third of whom appeared in pink, were assembled. Men of
the highest birth and station, men who had served their
country with deeds of most daring gallantry by sea and land,
men who in political or social life were the most brilliant
in repute, thronged to do honour to the first fox-hunter of
the day. They had come from remote counties, and more were
pouring in along the grassy slopes and vales, or skirting the
well-known gorse covers. As Dick Christian remarked, 'the
first lot were at Shankton Holt when the tail end wern't out
of Rolleston gates.' Cold must have been the heart of him who
could behold without joyous emotion the crowds of grey-headed
horsemen hurrying forward to shake hands with their old friend
and fellow-sportsman, each calling vividly to memory some
scene where he had acted the most conspicuous part. More than
twenty years had rolled away since he had resigned the lead
in that magnificent country. There had been splendid riders
since his day; and while time had thinned the ranks of the
veterans, younger men had either achieved or were achieving
fame--Frank Holyoake, now Sir Francis Goodricke, well known for
his splendid feats on Brilliant; Colonel Lowther, Lord Wilton,
Lord Archibald Seymour, George Payne, Little[I] Gilmour, Lord
Gardner, George Anson, and a host of sportsmen, well deserving
the reputation they had won, yet all strangers to the doings
of this hero of the Quorn, except through anecdotes familiar
to them as 'household words.' In addition to these were a very
goodly display of carriages-and-four filled with ladies, and
pedestrians without number. The hounds with Dick Burton were
drawn up on the lawn, while the vast group of horsemen formed a
circle, with the carriages and assembled crowd outside. After
the friendly salutations were over, and their enthusiastic
character astonished no one but the Illustrious Stranger[J]
present, Mr. Smith took his hounds to Shankton Holt, where he
drew only the bottom of the covert; thence to Norton Gorse,
Stanton Wood, Glooston Wood, and Fallow Close, all blank. It
was an unfavourable day for scent,--a bright sun with
north-easterly wind, not a cloud to be seen, and the cold
intense. A fox having been found by Mr. Hodgson, in Vowes
Covert, as already stated, away went the hounds towards
Horringhold, leaving Blaston to the right. Here Mr. Smith took
a strong flight of rails into a road, quite like a 'young 'un.'
The fox soon afterwards crossed the Welland, and went away for
Rockingham Park, where, it being late, they whipped off."
From 1830 to 1856--that is to say, until Tom Smith had reached the
age of eighty--with his indomitable energy and undaunted courage he
continued to hunt his hounds at Tedworth, spending his summers at
Vaenol on board his yacht. His head was as clear and his hand as firm
as they had been twenty years ago. If he felt not quite well in a
morning, plunging his head into cold water, he used to hold it there
as long as he could, which he said always put him to rights. It is
true he had curtailed his meets to four only a week, but on these days
the farmers were delighted to see "the old Squire" vault on horseback,
as usual, blow his horn while his horse was carrying him over a
five-barred gate, and, with a loose rein, gallop down the sheep-fed
hill-sides with all the alacrity of a boy. But although the hourglass
of his existence appeared to be still as bright and clear as ever,
the sand within the upper portion of the crystal was now running to
its end. In September, 1856, while at his summer residence in North
Wales, he was suddenly seized with an alarming attack of asthma, which,
by the use of stimulants and by the assiduous attention of Mrs.
Smith,--at this period herself in a very weak state of health,--was
so far subdued that on one of his horses saddled appearing at the
door--although five minutes before he had been gasping for breath on
the sofa--he mounted the animal, and broke away, as if instinctively,
to seek for himself a stronger stimulant than his physician could
prescribe--_the sight once again of his hounds_.
"Although," writes Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, very feelingly, "he
rallied from this attack in an astonishing manner, he was no
longer the same man. The erect gait was bent, and the eagle eye
had lost its lustre."
The able writer of 'Silk and Scarlet' gives the following graphic and
affecting description of Tom Smith the last time he appeared at the
meet with his hounds:--
"The covert side knew him no more after the October of 1857,
when he just cantered up to Willbury on his chestnut hack
Blemish, to see his hounds draw. Carter got his orders to bring
the choicest of the 1858 entry, and he and Will Bryce arrived
at the usual rendezvous with five couple of bitches by the
Fitzwilliam Hardwicke and Hermit. He looked at them a short
time, and exclaimed, '+Well, they're as beautiful as they can
be+,' bade both his men good-bye, and they saw him no more."