Half a Century’s Hunting Recollections.
IV.
The mention of red deer reminds me of roe. As all the sporting world
knows, Mr. Seymour Dubourg, before he took the South Berks country, was
master of the Ripley and Knaphill Harriers. With these, at the end of
the season, he used to hunt an occasional carted stag, but more
frequently the wild roe deer, which were at that time to be found (they
were never plentiful) between Windlesham, Bagshot, and Easthampstead,
also in the heath and pinewood country south-west of the River
Blackwater. It was a most interesting sport, and none the less
attractive as coming at a time when foxhunting is practically over. The
hounds were small foxhound bitches, I should say rather under than over
twenty inches. With so accomplished a huntsman as Mr. Dubourg, I make no
doubt that they did their work, as harriers, as it ought to the done.
However that may be, they were the best pack of staghounds I ever saw.
They went the pace, and were not big enough to kill a deer, bar
accidents. With roe they drove like furies, but, I suppose from their
harrier training, hardly ever over-ran it.
It is the manner of a roe, when first found, to make a point of 2 or 3
miles; then he returns almost to the starting place, or anyhow to its
neighbourhood, and begins “making work.” In the straight part of his
flight he is seldom far in front of hounds. But having begun his dodges,
if he gets half a chance he will steal away, and, as likely at not, run
the pack out of scent. His resources are legion. He can squat like a
hare, swim like a fish, meuse through a fence like a rabbit, and jump
over any ordinary park palings. He is most difficult to view, as he will
crawl up a ditch or drain, and utilises every depression in the ground,
and of course every bit of covert. He has the cunning of fox and hare
combined, but not _very much_ more stoutness than the last named. In
France, roe-hunting packs are not uncommon, and a friend of my own has
one in Belgium, which, however, hunts hare as well. And a French friend
of mine once asked me to stay with him for roe-hunting, promising to
mount me, and doubtless I should have had a most enjoyable visit, but I
preferred to stay at Melton. By the way, this gentleman valued Belvoir
blood above all else.
The objections to the roe as a beast of chase may be gathered from the
above. It is pretty hunting, but almost all in covert. The advantages
are that you can hunt him all through the winter as you do the fox, and
also that you can draw for him without any bother of “tufting,” as you
never find more than a brace, or at most three together. When the latter
is the case, it is a family party—buck, doe, and kid. The latter would
stand but a poor chance were it not for its squatting, when the hounds
dash away and settle to the moving scent. When roe are carefully
preserved the woods will be full of them, as the young trees will soon
tell you. I know nowhere at present, even in Scotland, where they are
too numerous, and in the country I have described I should say that they
are all but extinct, although some three years ago I saw a brace when
Mr. Garth was drawing St. Leonard’s Forest.
With Mr. Dubourg’s hounds one had to ride up to them, if one wanted the
venison. If he happens to read this, he will doubtless remember what
happened once near Black Bushes Farm. Hounds had been running some time,
and we thought “catching time” could not be far off. They came to (for
that country at least) a very small wood. We each took one side of the
covert (only the master and writer being there), but to our surprise saw
no hounds away. To dive into the wood was, for Mr. Dubourg, “the work of
an instant.” Arrived at his pack, he found that in those very few
minutes they had not only killed the buck but (not bad judges!) had
eaten the haunches, &c., and left only the head, neck, and forequarters.
Unlike our other deer, the roe is at his best as venison, from the
middle or end of October to the end of the hunting season. He sheds his
horns late in the autumn. Roe venison has an undeservedly bad name, as
lessees of Highland shootings often kill them in the grouse season.
As July and August are the months in which most of them pair, August for
choice, _côtelette de chevreuil_ is best avoided until after the
stalking season. By the way, the “stags” mentioned in the late Colonel
Anstruther Thomson’s most interesting book were roe. My kind old friend
wrote to me shortly before his death, to explain that his South Country
hunt servants would call them stags, hence he got in the way of it. Of
course, no red deer have been wild in Fife since almost prehistoric
times. But some folks never can learn the proper names of deer. Once, in
forest-hunting with our late Queen’s hounds, I saw an “instructor” from
Sandhurst, who told me that the deer had just passed him, and that it
was a fallow deer! “Are you sure of that?” said I (I never yet saw one
there, unless he had been put there). “Oh, yes, it had no horns!” was
the startling reply.
A short time ago there was a discussion in the _Field_ as to whether the
progeny of hounds hunting deer, or hares, should be elegible for the
Foxhound Stud book. I think it was decided against them, the theory
being that staghounds do not carry a head. Now this is merely a question
of their quarry. After a few days roehunting, Mr. Dubourg, (by
invitation), uncarted a stag near Bracknell. Comins, at that time the
Royal huntsman (or acting huntsman?), had been roehunting, and we both
remarked the head these hounds carried then. We had a good run and took
our stag safely, but from the moment the hounds were laid on, they went
stringing along (I do not mean “tailing,” a very different thing) “just
exactly like my hounds,” as Comins said to me. I saw the Queen’s hounds
once run a cub in Swinley Forest, on a steaming, warm, wet October
morning, and as they crossed a ride, close to the said cub, which was
dead beat, they carried a head that neither Belvoir, Quorn, nor
Pytchley, could have beaten. They were stopped just in time to save
young Reynard. It was in October, as aforesaid, by which time a cub
should be pretty well able to take his own part. Strange blunders have
found their way into sporting history and been accepted as facts merely
for want of contradiction, _e.g._, how often have we read that, in the
spring, Mr. Meynell entered his young hounds to hare, for want of
woodlands.
The absurdity of entering young hounds just in from walks, and with all
their troubles before them, is obvious to any one who has ever been
within measurable distance of a kennel. And as for no cubhunting ground,
what was wrong with Charnwood Forest, the best cubhunting district in
the world, and even better then than now, in the days preceding the
Enclosure Act? Then, also, foxes were not much outnumbered by pheasants.
Another victim of misstatement is Mr. (“Flying”) Childe, of Kinlet. I
lately read that he hunted the Ludlow country _after_ he left
Leicestershire. It was the other way about. He and the first Lord
Forester went to Loughborough for the Quorn together, Melton not being
invented when he gave up the Ludlow country, and set the fashion of
pressing on hounds. In fact, Mr. Meynell describes Mr. Cecil Forester as
coming out of cover between the fox and the pack! Again, the name of Mr.
Childe’s Arab was not “Skim,” as we are told, but Selim, corrupted into
Slim. His tail (grey) is still at Kinlet. He left some good hunting
stock behind him, and I know where a portrait of a chestnut son of his
is to be seen. Of Mr. Meynell “Nimrod” says, “In chase no man rode
harder.” But he gave his hounds room, which from all accounts the
immigrants from Salop did not. Yet I have read that he and his field
merely crawled over a country. Also quite lately I have seen Mr. Edge,
the welter weight Nottingham Squire, who refused a thousand guineas for
his two horses, Banker and Remus, described as the “humble, silent
friend” of Mr. Assheton Smith! Why on earth will people write on
subjects of which they are ignorant? An outsider, writing on sport, or
soldiering, is sure to make a spectacle of himself. Though this is a
hunting subject, I cannot but call attention to a masterpiece of this
kind in “Charles O’Malley,” by the late Mr. Charles Lever. In one of the
Peninsula battles, he tells us that a general officer galloped up and
gave the word, “14th, threes about, charge!” As this involved their
charging tail foremost, no wonder that the French fled precipitately!
I am often asked whether hunting has altered during my time. I answer,
“In the Shires little, if at all, but provincial sport has, I fancy,
deteriorated. In bad scenting countries nose should be more thought of
than looks, but is it so? We hear a lot more about bad scenting weather
than we used to do. No one would keep a throaty hound, though no less an
authority than “the other Tom Smith,” uncle, by-the-by, of my dear
friend “Doggie,” of that ilk, has said that he never knew a throaty
hound without a good nose. The greatest enemy to hunting, in these days,
is the shooting tenant. He destroys the breed of good wild foxes, and
can only be disposed of by the hunt renting shootings. But for the
railways, the Quorn country would be more easily crossed now than when I
first knew it. “Oxers” have nearly all vanished, hand-gates and bridges
have replaced yawning sepulchres—notably so at John O’Gaunt, the bottom
below Wartnaby Pond, and at Sherbroke’s covert, over the Smite, which is
the “march” ’twixt Quorn and Belvoir. Also the Twyford brook need no
longer be ridden at, unless one chooses. The Whissendine brook, however,
retains its old fame. “Lady Stamford’s Bridge,” over the South Croxton
and Queniboro’ brook, was just made in the earliest of the sixties. As
regards dress, we are not very different from the heroes depicted by old
H. Alken, in Nimrod’s “The Chase.” “Snob, the tip-top provincial,”
appeared then in a frock coat, and so he would now. But I have always
wondered why the artist should have made the fence which stopped “the
little bay horse” a high bank, suggestive of Shropshire, or Essex, but
of a pattern non-existent in any part of the county of Leicester, and
especially as the letterpress so carefully describes the obstacle—ditch
from you, but the lower part of the fence bristling towards you after
the fashion of the old “Prepare to receive cavalry” of an infantry
square. In the old days the master was dressed like other people. He
often wore a hat, and so did many more. Mr. Tailby always wore a cap.
Lord Gifford dressed like a hunt servant, ditto Captain Percy Williams
and Colonel Thomson; but they did not spoil the effect with a moustache.
One very dear friend of mine, who dressed the character, though “with a
beard on him like Robinson Crusoe,” was tipped a sovereign by a
stranger, who had been impressed by the masterly way in which he hunted
and killed his fox. I regret to say that it did not profit him, as, on
his return, the predominant partner nailed it, to keep as a curiosity,
as (she said) the only money that “Charlie” had ever in his life
honestly earned! A master’s, as indeed a huntsman’s and first whip’s
second horseman, used to be dressed like yours or mine. Now most hunts
have, in servants alone, six “scarlet and leathers” men. This hardly
makes for economy, and we hear too much of expense. Up to the end of the
late Duke of Rutland’s reign, the hunt servants wore brown cords, “drab
shags,” as Mr. Jorrocks called them. I think white cords look better,
but looks are not everything. No men ever went better to hounds than his
late Grace’s servants, and what do the breeks matter if their wearer
can, and will, give you a lead over the Smite?”
As regards horses, I think, speaking under correction, that we have got
them too high on the leg; the result is that “boots” form a predominant
item in the saddler’s bill. I have before remarked that, in my young
days, there was about one roarer in a hunt. Now, if there be only one in
a stud the owner is lucky. As we breed our racehorses from roarers, and
as they are the sires of our hunters, this is not wonderful.
In talking of dress, I ought to have mentioned that, as a small boy,
visiting a schoolfellow in Cornwall, I saw a pack of harriers belonging
to the last Lord Vivian but one, with which every one was in red coats,
officials and all. A similarly attired Yorkshire huntsman of harriers
told me that he and his whip wore pink, as being more easily
distinguished on the moors. This is a good reason. I have omitted to
mention a pack of staghounds which, for some seasons, showed excellent
sport—I mean the Collinedale. Mr. George Nourse was master, and hunted
them himself. A better staghound huntsman I never saw. This was lucky,
as he was not well whipped in to.
The first time I ever saw these hounds is worthy of mention. A friend of
mine asked me at the club whether I should like a mount with staghounds
next day. I gratefully accepted the offer, and asked at what station I
should meet him. “Oh,” said he, “come to my house to breakfast and we’ll
ride on to the meet.” I asked no questions, but duly appeared at my
friend’s very charming house; a little beyond the Swiss Cottage station,
and then nearly in the country. We rode on to the meet, which was at the
Welsh Harp, Hendon. We had two stags, but they had hardly got over their
autumn dissipation. One turned round and charged the hounds, and the
other went over a fine country, the Harrow Weald, but not far enough for
me to get on terms with my mount, a hard-pulling four-year-old, with a
very light bridle. And the Berkhamsted, which are still going, deserve a
word of chronicle. I only saw them once, but thought them a marvellously
clever pack, and not too big. Any possible deficiency of size was made
up for in the person of their master, the late Mr. R. Rawle. He was a
keen sportsman, a capital huntsman, and as polite and kind as any man
could be. I was never impertinent enough to ask him his weight, but,
crushing though it was, he got wonderfully to his hounds. He rode the
right sort to carry weight. None of your seventeen-hand prize-winners in
a show ring, but steeds more on the lines of the baby hippopotamus, with
well-bred heads; hence these triumphs.
An old Suffolk M.F.H. told me, in my youth, that Mr. R. Gurney’s famous
“Sober Robin” was only 15.2. He also remembered the moonlight
steeplechase from Ipswich Barracks. Another fine old sportsman told me
that he recollected the “orange” coats worn with the Atherstone in Lord
Vernon’s time. He described them as looking much like ordinary “pink,”
until you saw one of each together, then the difference was clearly
marked.